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Upside interviews Jerry Sanders of AMD
An Anonymous reader writes "Titled The Last Man Standing, this Upside interview offered an inside view of the bloody war between the two CPU makers from Sanders' point of view. He also talks about upcoming Hammer, flash memory, Transmeta and telecomm bubbles. Somehow I get a feeling that both companies are living under the heavy cloud of Microsoft. Pretty lengthy, but an interesting reading.""
When it hurts this bad, you don't wanna do it again.
Could it be? Probably not - I'll have to wrest control from an AC...
It's finally happened. Banner ads have replaced content all together. Either that or Upside is not mac/netscape 4.7 compatable.
Lostbrain Predicts the Oscars
tcd004
Fellow slashdot readership, I am a troll. I was born a troll and will undoubtably die a troll. I strive everyday to maintain the higest standard
in my trollishness. We trolls are fairly simplistic creatures, we enjoy many of the same things as you do. And often have similar vices as well.
But alas you refuse to treat us a equals, You see us as disruptors, interelopers, vagrants, vandals, visigoths, and worse... We ask for respect, and you spit upon us. We implore you for mercy, and you bitchslap us. We plead for help and you ignore us. We demande substance and you give us Katz.
We shall take this no longer. This is a TROLL REVOLUTION. I call for all freedom loving trolls to stand up and take a stand on what is important to you. Do your worst to drive conversations offtopic, use your trollish wit to confuse the masses, throw another kerosene soaked log on the flamewars of justice! We shall regain our equality! This is a Trollish Jihad, By the Graces of Allah we shall be Victorious!
HOT GRITS
After 33 years, the unthinkable is happening: W.J. "Jerry" Sanders III is leaving his position as CEO of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), the company he co-founded after working at Fairchild Semiconductor (FCS), where he had already established himself as a legendary seller of semiconductor products.
The "last man standing" appellation is deserved, because, as you'll see in our story, AMD is the last remaining microprocessor manufacturer among the 15 companies that Intel (INTC) licensed as second sources for the Intel 8080 at the beginning of the PC boom in the 1980s and the only real challenger to Intel's total domination of the microprocessor industry.
Upside: As you look at AMD on your 33rd anniversary, what do you see?
Sanders: One thing constant through our history is people first; products and profits will follow. All companies pay lip service to that, but it's honored more in the breach than in the action. When AMD started out, circuit design was pretty simple: We had bipolar technology, then we moved to MOS technology, and then VLSI [very large scale integration]. Today, the semiconductor industry is based on process-technology
leadership.
We put together a team in 1990 when we brought in William Siegle from IBM (IBM) as our chief scientist. Since that time, AMD has made dramatic improvements. In 2001, we had more than a thousand AMD patents granted, many on process technology. I think that made us number 13 of all the companies in the world in patents [held]. If you consider the fact that AMD is a company of $4 [billion] to $5 billion in revenue, that's awesome. 2000 was our first year of a thousand patents. At the IEDM [International Electron Devices Meeting] in Washington, D.C., we introduced the world's fastest transistor, a 3.3THz transistor. That's faster than Intel's 1THz or IBM's 2THz [transistors].
See how AMD's stock price has changed over three decades.
What changes do you see in semiconductor companies generally?
At one time, you had to have your own fabs. Now you've got this Taiwan and China syndrome. The fab is determined more by the equipment maker and money than it is by the original device manufacturer. The processes are largely determined by the equipment maker--Applied Materials (AMAT) or Novellus [Systems] (NVLS)--which works with the large user of equipment to give them the process they need. That large user was IBM, TI [Texas Instruments] (TXN), Hitachi (HIT), Fujitsu, NEC (NIPNY), or Intel. The big spenders going forward are the foundry guys, TSMC [Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company] (TSM), UMC [United Microelectronics Corporation], and maybe Grace Semiconductor [Manufacturing Corporation], a mainland China company. So process technology has now become available to everyone through a foundry, except, of course, for memory and high-performance microprocessors.
Do you foresee more alliances?
AMD's got the design and process technology base that enables us to make alliances with foundries, or nations, like when China says, "We want to be in this game."
You recently announced an agreement with UMC of Taiwan, for example. Correct. AMD and UMC have just made a tripartite agreement. The first aspect of the announcement is a straightforward foundry relationship. We are going to qualify a UMC fab to make 130-nanometer [AMD] Athlon processors, with output beginning at the end of this year. That will increase our output by 12 million pieces per year.
The second part of the agreement is the collaboration with UMC in the development of the logic for process technology, which will allow UMC to produce 65-nanometer technology on 300 mm wafers in mid-2005. The third part of the agreement provides for a fifty-fifty sharing of the ownership of this fab between UMC and AMD, but the intellectual property will belong to AMD. That will give us additional production of 300 mm wafers in the near future, without going to the expense of investing in new fabs.
So why is Intel building multiple 300 mm fabs?
Because their die is so goddamned big, they use that space up. If we have a competitive offering, we'll be able to undersell Intel. We'll be the lowest-cost provider, and we can beat them. But right now, what they're beating me with is their treasury, their market-development funds, their sweetheart deals, and their advertising. That's what I've got to overcome.
What is the future of AMD's business?
AMD has focused its business into two major areas, with a third one coming, where our technology can make a difference. [First] PC- or Windows-compatible microprocessors. In the future, and even in the present, they're moving into servers and workstations. I'm sure they'll be in games. Intel is the dominant player, with AMD as the only real alternative. [Second] in flash memory, where the same thing is true. You want to have the smallest cell; you want to have the highest performance and the lowest cost. AMD has a mantra: We're going to use process technology to drive the lowest costs. That means simple processes, but, most importantly, it means small dies. When you talk small dies, everybody says, "Yeah," but everybody's based on the international road map, going from 130 nanometers to 90 nanometers to 65 nanometers, and of course they are.
So how do you differentiate?
If our metamorphosis in the '90s was to process-technology leadership, and our metamorphosis in the mid-'90s was to become a megafab leader with our Fab 25 in [Austin] Texas and our Fab 30 in Dresden [Germany] with copper interconnects and flip-chip technology, then our new metamorphosis is emphasis on design leadership. Example number one: flash memory. We're doing something called [AMD] MirrorBit next year to double the capacity of a cell without compromising the integrity, reliability, or endurance. Intel has something called [Intel] StrataFlash [memory]. They're basically dividing the charge in half, so there's a compromise in the endurance and the reliability because there's only half as much charge to give the information. MirrorBit is an example of a superior design. All of our flash memories have smaller cell sizes--design excellence like the Athlon processors. We have a design that is only 80 square mm in a 130-nanometer technology, compared with maybe 136 square mm for the [Intel] Pentium 4 [processor]. So we outperform the Pentium 4, and our die size is much smaller.
Intel's approach is threefold: a PC line of processors, a server line of processors, and a multimedia line of processors. They're a processor company.
They have over a billion dollars in communications-related circuitry, but they lose over a billion dollars on it. The only place they make money is in microprocessors. In the processor business, only one market matters, and that is the PC market. The PC market is over 135 million units a year and growing--and growing.
Aren't embedded processors outgrowing PC usage?
There is no market that uses a single operating system that can compare with 130 million PCs a year. The next closest is games. You can call those embedded, but there's nothing bigger. Automotive? Forget about it. There aren't that many cars built in a year.
My point is, Microsoft (MSFT) rules. They won. In case you missed it, their operating system drives all of the volume in PCs and is now moving into network servers. If they have their way--and my guess is they will over time--they're even going to move their Windows NT64 into the high-end Unix-Linux domain. So if you can't make it in the PC-processor business, you're screwed, because the volume elsewhere won't enable you to generate enough revenue to support your design effort, your infrastructure-support effort, and your manufacturing.
Can gate-array or semicustom technology create a successful processor?
Not a chance. Not in the PC space and not with the performance. If a guy builds a server, he wants performance. And what gives him performance? One of the things is integrated memory on a chip--a cache. What? They're going to put an L2 cache or an L3 cache on a gate array? The chip would be huge, so it wouldn't be cost-effective.
So what about telecommunications, the cellular market?
[That's a] whole different deal. We believe that the PC, in mobile and desktop form, will continue to be the hub of the digital universe. Only Intel and AMD have the resources and the technology to succeed. Intel is trying to continue their monopoly, because otherwise their business model doesn't work. They're going to make all their own chips, and they're going to invest in factories, and as they invest, the only way they can get it back is by charging high prices.
As opposed to AMD?
[We have] eroded their margin from 48 percent to 24 percent. And, at AMD, we see that the answer is not more factories, but better design.
Speaking of which, where are next-generation fabs going to be built?
They're going to Taiwan and China, because those countries want to be in the business and because capital is low-cost there. Wafer fabs today are like steel and automobile factories in the past. Every nation feels that if it's going to be a world player, it's got to have an indigenous semiconductor capability.
So what happened in Europe, which wanted an indigenous industry?
They've got it. Siemens [Semiconductors] (SI)--or Infineon [Technologies AG] (IFX), I should say--and ST [STMicroelectronics] (STM). And then AMD in Dresden. Intel is in Ireland and Israel, if you consider Israel [part of] Europe. When you look at the economies, the reality is that very few companies can afford to have their own fabs. In a study by the Goldman Sachs [Group], they determined that unless you're doing about $8 billion of revenue, you can't afford to have your own fab. Very few [semiconductor] companies are doing $8 billion in revenue.
And what about generations of technology?
Everyone except Intel will have to be using foundry relationships or joint ventures. AMD is working with its own fab, because we developed the technology. Or [like AMD] you have to develop your own transistors, which is why a foundry like TSMC, UMC, or Grace Semiconductor would want to have a relationship with AMD. We can provide that extra performance in the transistor through our technology development. Collaborations between foundries and leaders in process technology, like AMD, will mean we don't have to make the massive investments in plants. That is an incredible changing of power, because it [means] Intel can't beat me to death with their capital. That era has passed.
We've got a foundry that's currently supplying us our first samples of a 130-nanometer Athlon processor. We're producing 130-nanometer Athlon processors now, in Dresden. I don't need to be a 100 percent owner of a megafab that costs billions of dollars. Intel has committed $7.5 billion this year to megafabs, because their die size is too big. What they're trying to do is offset the cost disadvantage of a large die by accelerating the move to 300 mm. Even then, their die size is so large that they won't be able to offset my cost advantage. My 300 mm will be done in partnership with someone who values my technology enough to give me an advantageous position. I've done this before in our joint venture with Fujitsu.
Banking analysts raise the issue that AMD is limited by capacity.
We'll produce 32 million processors this year. We can produce 50 million when my Fab 30 is at full ramp, which [will be] by the end of 2002. Our issue isn't with producing; it's getting orders away from a monopolist who makes very aggressive deals.
Talk about your processor lines.
The desktop processor is the [AMD] Athlon XP [processor]. It's what we are selling against the Pentium 4 on the desktop. We have the [mobile AMD] Athlon 4 [processor], which is the same core but has a dynamic-feedback capability that adjusts the speed at which it runs depending upon the performance required by the application. The higher the speed, the more power it burns, and therefore, the more battery drain. The [AMD] Athlon MP [processor] has a dual processor for servers and dual-processor workstations. We've got the little brother of the Athlon, the [AMD] Duron [processor], for mobile or for low-cost servers. At the end of next year, there will be a 64-bit processor called the "Hammer." That's the internal code name, [and it has] a remarkable capability in that it is based on a Microsoft-supported instruction set developed by AMD.
I thought Intel dominated the Microsoft relationship.
We call it x86-64 [architecture]; it supports all of the x86 instructions. We've added 64-bit capability and instructions that Windows NT64 from Microsoft will support. This is unprecedented in history--Microsoft supporting x86 instructions other than those developed by Intel. This means anybody can run existing 32-bit applications with higher performance and move to 64-bit [applications] seamlessly. This is in marked contrast to the Intel approach, which requires developers to go to a whole new instruction set and rewrite all their software. Or, if they want to run their 32-bit software, it will run on an [Intel] Itanium [processor], but at a degraded performance. When we start shipping in 2003, my life's work will have come to fruition: an independent platform supported by Microsoft that will compete with the Intel monopoly.
Explain that.
I started the company in '69, but we made our first fixed-instruction set processor in '75. It was the 9080A, which we renamed 8080A because it was a plug-in replacement for Intel's 8080, an unauthorized second source. As a result of that, we negotiated a technology cross-license and patent cross-license with Intel in 1975. Roger Borovoy was [general counsel] at Intel at the time. Leo Dwork was [the director of contracts and licenses], and he worked out the details. We negotiated a 5-year patent cross-license, which was renewed in 1981 on an expanded basis for 12 years. The ill-fated technology exchange threw me into arbitration with Intel for close to six years.
AMD's first microprocessor was developed in a Chinese wall environment, with a compatible-code instruction set?
Yes. There wasn't microcode in those days, so it was just knocking off their chip. We took their chip, looked at it, and redid the logic on a smaller die. I remember [Intel Co-Founder and Chairman Emeritus] Gordon Moore said to me, "So what?" The reason he said that was because their price was so high. Intel has always based their products on the fact that they'll be able to command a high price. That's why they couldn't be successful in memory; they've never been successful in any business where cost was a criterion. That's why we're going to win.
What was the order of events?
1975 was our first 8080A, an unauthorized second source that resulted in a patent cross-license agreement with Intel and their request that we second source the 8085, because they were losing business to Zilog's Z80. The 8085 was just a second generation of the 8080A. Then they said they didn't want us to do the 8086, and that really annoyed me, because the 8086 was the next generation. So we went to market with a Zilog Z8000 deal.
In those days, Intel needed a second source for the 8086 to satisfy IBM. In 1981, we renegotiated a deal with Intel that would make us an authorized alternate source with full legal rights. We did that with the 8086, the 8087, and then with the 286 and 287. Then they went to the 386, and there were two versions, and it was at that time that Intel said, "No more. We're not going to give you any more technology."
"Is Your Love Strong Enough? "
From the soundtrack to the movie "Legends"
Tangerine Dream (and Bryan Ferry on vocals)
Just one step at a time
And closer to destiny
I knew at a glance
There'd always be a chance for me
With someone I could live for
Nowhere I would rather be
Is your love strong enough
Like a rock in the sea
Am I asking too much
Is your love strong enough?
Just one beat of your heart
And stranger than fantasy
I knew from the start
It had to be the place for me
Someone that I would die for
There's no way I could ever leave
Is your love strong enough
Like a rock in the sea
Am I asking too much
Is your love strong enough?
This guy is a fucking guru at bullshitting. The interview is about as interesting as a fucking year end report from AMD. There's absofuckinglutely nothing of importance there that you cannot get from Anadtech or Tomshardware. Stuff like "AMD is going to be better than Intel because our chips are smaller."
I'm not so upset at that PR pissant as I am at the interviewer. It's a common trait amongst faggoty web journalist to cream their trousers when thrown a bone from a major corporation. The corporations know that the bush league fuckfaces won't dare write anything bad, for fear of getting black listed.
I'm so fucking mad about this shit. And what is that bullshit Microsoft crap? AMD markets their fucking chips for the Microsoft market. He's playing the Linux crowd as a bunch of two bit cock whores who can't tell spin from fact. It's nice to see that AMD has people as fucking stupid as any other corporation. Cocksuckers.
The break with the 386 was when? 1986. That's when they refused to honor the agreement. The 286 was in the time frame of '84-'85. In '84, the PC market took a huge downturn. Intel wasn't interested in us anymore. They jerked us around until 1986, when I filed for arbitration. When I filed for arbitration, they canceled the agreement--or tried to cancel the agreement. We won the arbitration, which gave us the right to make the 386, but by that time, who cared? It was 1994 before we made a 386 on our own--again, an unauthorized version. They sued me on that, and they lost that time, too. When we finally settled in 1994, the agreement we made was that we could not replicate their microcode after the fourth generation. If we would agree to that, then we could again have a patent cross-license and have a license to all of the technology so that we could make a Microsoft Windows- compatible device, because they didn't think we'd be able to do it without copying their microcode. We stunned the world with the K5, because the K5 was an independently developed RISC-based x86 processor. It took the x86 instruction set, which was a complex instruction set computer, broke it down into RISC instructions--which were then executed in a superscale RISC processor, the K5--and then reassembled the whole thing, transparent to the user running his applications. It was the K5 that made the AMD name really prominent?I That's right; it differentiated [AMD]. When we were making a 386, the problem we had then was just finding somebody to buy it and plug it in. The only advantage, as far as the customer was concerned, was its lower price. With the K5, we had higher architectural performance. You could plug it into a Pentium socket, because it had the Pentium bus. And then Intel, through another little weenie and their agreement with me, [wouldn't allow AMD] a Pentium II-compatible bus. Actually, Intel had a 66MHz bus, a Pentium bus. We came out with a 100MHz bus that we called Super 7, which was the same bus running at 100MHz. We were selling K6s with 100MHz buses against Intel's Pentiums with their 66MHz buses, and we started beating them in the marketplace. We got into a clock-speed race. The K6 broke? The design was never for a device to run at those speeds. When we introduced the thing, a 300MHz version, we pushed the speed all the way up to 550MHz. We couldn't get it to 600MHz, and Intel had introduced a new product, which was the Pentium II processor, changing the rules of the game. The point is, when we went from the K5 and K6, we were still using an Intel infrastructure--that is, a chip set that would interface with ours. So when Via [Technologies] did a chip set or SIS [Silicon Integrated Systems] did a chip set, they could work with either Intel or AMD. When they went to the Pentium II, they came out with a module version, and they had the so-called "Slot A." An option for a daughter card? That's right. At that point in time, we were forced to introduce a completely new infrastructure, which the K7 did: the Athlon in September 1999. It was an Earth-shattering event, because the Athlon, when it came out, had a superior design, a small die size, and a higher clock frequency than Intel's [processor]. And used less power? Less power and a different bus--200MHz EV6 bus architecture. The only problem was that nobody was building chip sets. We had developed a chip set, but we were neophytes at chip-set development. The order of processor numbers is ...?
The K7 is the Athlon, the K8 is the Hammer [family of processors], and we're working on a K9, which is hopefully not a C-A-N-I-N-E version.
At what point did Intel announce ramping up clock speed?
When we announced the Athlon, they started running up the clock speeds. But we were the first guys with the 1GHz part. We came out with that in March of 2000. We beat them to market, which made them furious. They ran out of clock speed at 1.13GHz and recalled the part. In fact, there was a lawsuit filed in December against Intel. It points out how Intel introduced these products earlier than they had historically done, to stop AMD from getting customers.
Back to the K7. With the K7, we had to develop our own infrastructure. Today, we have it. Via makes chip sets for it. A lot of people make chip sets--20, 30, or 40 motherboard guys. We're producing 8 million units of these devices per quarter, and I expect that we've gained market share up to the 22 percent range.
How are you with the top five PC manufacturers?
The only guy that we don't do business with in the top five is Dell [Computer] (DELL), because they're Intel's favorite customer, and they get a better deal. But we're not giving up. We haven't been able to break Dell, but we never give up.
What's next in terms of products?
The forthcoming Hammer product family, which has a different chip set, a different bus, and different instructions. The Hammer family is the culmination of my dream, a truly independently developed microprocessor, with a different bus and a different instruction set, but one that is Microsoft Windows-supported. We think that it's going to change our relative position in the industry. We think Intel is terribly wrong with the Itanium. It's a very large die. It will never be competitively priced for the network-server market. It is a niche product for the very high end. Intel doesn't have anything announced after Pentiums, and our Athlon already outperforms the Pentium 4. They have higher clock speeds but poorer architectural performance; we have higher performance in applications.
The Hammer, which is an eighth-generation processor, is 103 square mm, versus our seventh generation, which is 80 square mm. [There are] 67 million transistors in the Hammer--67 million transistors in 130-nanometer technology. It's extraordinary.
When we introduce that device--and we will--for the first time, we'll have clear unquestioned superiority over anything Intel's got. Having said that, we're starting to hear what I'll call more Intel FUD [fear, uncertainty, and doubt]. Vapors are drifting out ("Well, maybe they'll introduce an x86 with 64-bit instructions; stand by.") because customers are telling Intel, "We don't like Itanium; we like Hammer." If they would do that, I'd say it's an acknowledgment and a validation of our strategy. AMD's challenge will be to ensure that the customers aren't dissuaded from going forward with an AMD Hammer solution, waiting for Intel to come out with their "sometime later."
Is the litigation still going on with Intel?
No. It turns out we now have a 10-year agreement that goes out to 2010, but I'm pretty sure it's 2011. The limitations on the agreement are only that we can't make a bus-compatible processor. It's just that they can't sue me anymore. I don't need anything from them. I've never needed anything from them. All I've wanted is patent peace.
You didn't have access to any of their technology or designs in any of those early agreements?
No, the very first one was just a patent cross-license. That was the '76 license. In the '81 license--the one that we had to finally resolve in arbitration--they were supposed to give me the database tapes so I could make an exact replica of their processor, and they did that on the 8086 and the 8286. On the 386, they balked. We wanted that, but we never got it, and by the time we did get it, we'd already developed a 386 independently.
So the new agreement, then?
It means that they can use my instruction set, and I can use their instruction set. They can use my patents, and I can use their patents. The one thing I cannot do is use an Intel-compatible bus. And the reason for that is that third parties would be as useful to AMD as they are to Intel, because [currently] Intel has an 80 percent market share and we have 20 percent, in round numbers. It's pretty clear the [other manufacturers] always do the Intel chip set first, which puts me at a time-to-market disadvantage.
That's why, for the Hammer, the chip set will be available before I've got the processor--the first time in my history I'll have a chip set before we introduce the processor. After 33 years--starting out as an alternate source, with humility, just helping customers solve their problems--we have now managed to remove every obstacle to doing business with AMD, except Intel's wealth.
Their wealth being technical prowess?
No. Their wealth is the fact that they've got an advertising budget of a billion dollars a year. They spent $300 million promoting the Pentium 4 this quarter. It's very difficult for me to get customers to put up a billion dollars a year in advertising and market sales.
Back to strategy for the company overall.
We have a three-track strategy. Everything we do, believe it or not, relates to the Internet. We believe the future is the Internet. We believe the PC, which is one of our tracks, is the hub and will continue to be the hub of the digital universe. A second track for AMD is servers, and the whole concept of e-commerce requires servers. Our third track is what we call Internet-access devices: PDAs, but also cell phones, because a cell phone is an Internet-access device. They'll use a lot of flash. We believe in wireless, so we're doing development on wireless things like 802.11a, [802.11b], and radio technology, so that we can have the complete solution.
You retire [in April 2002]?
Hector [de J.] Ruiz is my president and chief operating officer and will succeed me. He was president of Motorola (MOT) Semiconductor [Products Sector]. He lives in Austin [Texas] and commutes to Sunnyvale [Calif.], the same way that I lived in Los Angeles and commuted to Sunnyvale.
You're going to retire yourself?
I'm going to step up to be chairman and not CEO after April 27. I'll be like Andrew Grove [Intel chairman of the board and former CEO]. But I think that Hector will do a better job than [Intel CEO] Craig Barrett. Hector's got a Ph.D. in solid-state physics, and Hector is a more than 20-year Motorola veteran. I hired him two years ago in January, and I told him, "When I turn 65, I'm going to step down, and I'm looking for a successor. If you do a good job as COO, you can be my successor." He's done a good job, and we're on track. In April, I'm going to put more poetry into my life, to quote Gerald Levin [former CEO of AOL Time Warner (AOL)].
Is Jerry Sanders the personification of AMD?
That's a good question. I don't know, and I have great anxieties over it. To think that this company I started 33 years ago is the only company to mount a legitimate challenge against clearly one of the best-known, most highly regarded brands and [one of] the most successful companies in American business history. The only thing that's keeping Intel from total domination of the computer world, as we know it, is AMD. It's awesome. Zilog, National [Semiconductor] (NSM), and Motorola all went away. They're all gone. There were 15 licensees of the x86 in the '80s. We're the last man standing.
Will there ever be another AMD?
Look at Transmeta (TMTA). They tried; they came out with a new technology. Intel squashed 'em. Transmeta stock was 50 bucks. At one time, they actually had a market cap higher than AMD's. [Transmeta's] revenue this quarter is going to be less than a million dollars. Their stock is down to below two bucks a share, and they've got enough lawsuits on their books that I don't see how they can endure without somebody acquiring them. What would you do with those lawsuits? I don't want to take on those kinds of obligations. They must have 30 different class actions. Toshiba couldn't launch in the U.S. because, as Intel explained to Toshiba, that would make them no longer an Intel-preferred customer. IBM canceled their program with AMD because Intel gave them a sweet deal if they were exclusively Intel.
You're CEO till April?
I'm chairman by contract through the end of 2003.
Thirty-three years.
From 1969 to 2002. Yeah, it's a long time. There's never been a CEO of AMD except me. So it's going to be very hard to give up my baby, but I really want to do this.
What's the future?
Microprocessors, flash, and wireless. The entire semiconductor industry this year will be about $130 [billion] to $135 billion, down from $200 billion last year. This is the largest drop by a factor of two in percentage and eclipses everything else in dollar terms--$200 billion dropping down by 30 [percent] to 35 percent. This is just extraordinary. The largest drop historically was 17 percent year on year.
So this isn't an ordinary cycle. No. This is the aftermath. This is the hangover of the telecommunications bubble that burst, which was the biggest bubble in the history of American business--maybe world business. It eclipses any of the tulip mania. A multitrillion-dollar-market cap bubble bursting is huge. It's not just Internet; it's fiber optics, telecommunications, and wireless licenses for [third-generation technology]. It's valuations that were put on things totally disproportionate to their true values. So it's the end of a 10-year bull market. When you look at that, you say, "Gee, it's a $140 [billion] or a $130 billion microprocessor market. Why wouldn't I go for that?" It's me and Intel, and I'm not letting those guys have that. Hector won't let 'em have the PC-processor business.
And in flash memory?
Who's the biggest guy in flash memory? It's Intel. We're second. I want to be first. Our business in flash memory last year was about $1.6 billion. Cypress [Semiconductor] (CY) has got a little piece; Fairchild [Semiconductor]'s got a little piece. Intel has got about 23 percent market share; we've got about 13 percent market share. Our joint-venture partner Fujitsu had about 12 percent market share. So, in 2000, AMD and Fujitsu together were bigger than Intel. But Intel has done well this year. Fujitsu has fallen on its face this year, and so our market share is about the same. We've held market share, Fujitsu has lost market share, and Intel has gained market share.
What's written on your tombstone?
Never surrender; never give up. I mean no surrender, no retreat. You know, a lot of guys say, "We're pulling back for now." [They're] full of shit.
Is there anything you would do differently?
I would have liked to have not competed with Intel. That leaves me an awful lot of alternatives. I don't like the thought that at 65, at least half of my life is gone. Not too many people live to be 130. So when I look back, I think, "God, how did I wind up in this hand to hand with Intel?" And it's because, basically, they offend my sense of fair play. Intel tries to shove down an [engineer's] throat a RAM bus solution that they don't want. Slot A, nobody wanted, and AMD said, "You don't need that. We'll put a flip chip in a package." That's the K6. And [Intel] had to change. They didn't change on their own; they changed because competition made them change. So I'm proud of that.
10. Slashdot sucks
...with building up strategic alliances and subcontracting out manufacuring, but Intel still doesnt seem to be phased by any advances AMD has made... And i dont know why.. I would like to see somebody do a good writeup comparing AMD and Intel's practices, pointing out the strenghts/and/or weaknesses in both.. so one could get a feel of what makes Intel tick...
I lost my concept of community when my community lost all concept of me.
shaddup you ass mountain goating fuck faced ugly suck monster
does slashdot sell monkeys? it would be a great way to make money. And no thank you jamie, I do not want a slightly used goat instead.
AMD is full of shit. They have no chance of surviving in this current business climate.
Of course most slashdotters just LOVE AMD because it's not Intel. Of course, most slashdotters like the man pussy too.
I LOVED his cable TV show! All the "behind the scenes" stuff and all. But I am very disappointed that we can only see it in reruns.
He was a lot better on TV, much funnier, than in this article that shows up as nothing but banner ads in my browser.
Is he still pals with Joan Rivers? She should be the spokeswoman for AMD, IMHO.
A stick, a stone,It's the end of the road,It's the rest of the stump,It's a little alone
It's a sliver of glass,It is life, it's the sun,It is night, it is death,It's a trap, it's a gun
The oak when it blooms,A fox in the brush,The knot in the wood,The song of a thrush The wood of the wind,A cliff, a fall,
A scratch, a lump,It is nothing at all It's the wind blowing free,It's the end of the slope,
It's a beam, it's a void,It's a hunch, it's a hope And the river bank talks Of the waters of March, It's the end of the strain, It's the joy in your heart
The foot, the ground,The flesh and the bone, The beat of the road,A slingshot stone
A fish, a flash,A silvery glow,
A fight, a bet,The range of the bow
The bed of the well,The end of the line,
The dismay in the face,It's a loss, it's a find
A spear, a spike,A point, a nail,
A drip, a drop,The end of the tale
A truckload of bricks In the soft morning light,
The shot of a gun In the dead of the night
A mile, a must, A thrust, a bump,
It's a girl, it's a rhyme, It's a cold, it's the mumps
The plan of the house, The body in bed,
And the car that got stuck, It's the mud, it's the mud
A float, a drift, A flight, a wing,
A hawk, a quail, The promise of spring
And the riverbank talks Of the waters of March,
It's the promise of life It's the joy in your heart
A snake, a stick, It is John, it is Joe,
It's the thorn in your hand, And a cut in your toe
A point, a grain, A bee, a bite,
A blink, a buzzard, A sudden stroke of night
A pin, a needle, A sting, a pain,
A snail, a riddle, A wasp, a stain
A pass in the mountains, A horse and a mule,
In the distance the shelves Rode three shadows of blue
And the riverbank talks Of the waters of March,
It's the promise of life In your heart, in your heart
A stick, a stone, The end of the load,
The rest of the stump, A lonesome road
A sliver of glass, A life, the sun,
A night, a death, The end of the run
And the riverbank talks Of the waters of March,
It's the end of all strain, It's the joy in your heart.
"Waters of March", Antonio Carlos Jobim
Today on Jerry: 'Caught Cheating'!
Audience: Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!
Jerry: OK, settle down! Welcome to the show! Today we're talking to computer users who are secretly using better processors on the side!
Audience: Ooooh!
Jerry: Let's meet Dan-0411. Dan says that's his work machine has a PIII in it, but there's something going on. Dan-0411?
Dan-0411: Yeah. PIII, I've been using an Athlon in a laptop on the side, and it's over, Intel boy! She divides better than you any day!
PIII chip: You (expletive)! (lashes out at Dan, throwing a punch)
Audience: Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!
Dan-0411. Get it? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
I think Yahoo News coverage is better for this story. At least they capture both sides.
Baby's on fire
Better throw her in the water
Look at her laughing
Like a heifer to the slaughter
Baby's on fire
And all the laughing boys are bitching
Waiting for photos
Oh the plot is so bewitching
Rescuers row row
Do your best to change the subject
Blow the wind blow blow
Lend some assistance to the object
Photographers snip snap
Take your time she's only burning
This kind of experience
Is necessary for her learning
If you'll be my flotsam
I could be half the man I used to
They said you were hot stuff
And that's what baby's been reduced to
Juanita and Juan
Very clever with maracas
Making their fortunes
Selling secondhand tobaccoes
Juan dances at Chico's
And when the clients are evicted
He empties the ashtrays
And pockets all that he's collected
But baby's on fire
And all the instruments agree that
Her temperature's rising
But any idiot would know that
-"Baby's on Fire", Brian Eno
Program SucksDot;
Var
x:boolean;
y:string[1];
begin
y:='';
Write('Does CmdrTaco Suck Cock? ');
read(y);
if (y='y') or (y='Y') then
x:=true else
x:=false;
If x=true then writeln('you are correct!') else
writeln('you are an ass gnome!');
end.
Oh, telecomm bubbles. Sorry, I started my weekend a bit early. Never mind.
Intel have the bucks to hand out deals to keep Dell etc sweet and market others into submission, but while AMD keep producing good value chips, they will still have a market amongst those who know better (generally the geeks of the world :) ).
I hope AMD keep going, but I hope they never crush Intel entirely, otherwise they may fall into the trap of becoming complacent and progress will slow.
While /. provides that the article mentions Transmeta, I read and searched the entire and did not find Transmeta.
What is spoken of Transmeta?
"There ought to be limits to freedom"
DUH
The Linux as Phallus In an increasingly technological world, the male has a narrowing outlet for typical masculine activities. Social groupings arise to replace these necessary behavoirs. One need not look further than the chest-beating testosterone laden world of the Linux Community to see instinctual hunting behavoirs played out daily. Linux can be seen as a return to the primordal. An arcane OS that is largely inefficient yet terribly attractive to anyone with a small penis, looking to wield a large extension to their lacking sexual prowess. The Linux becomes a phallus, or an extension thereof, and stroking it ("hacking") is the means in which to control it. It is the sword in the stone; tugged by many seeking the fortune and glory of it's mastery. All night coding runs The hunt has long been the integral part of masculine society. It is a right of passage to manhood in many tribal societies and it's importance is paramount to ones social standings within a group. The best hunters are revered; much like the linux guru who shines in the "all night coding run" he organizes with his pack-mates Of course modern man hunts with an M16, but GNU Hippies are wll-known for their blatant inefficiency. Which of course leads one to the conclusion: GNU Hippies represent a de-evolution of man. It is urged to avoid these flute wielding primates at all costs.
A quote on why Intel is building multple 300mm fabs: "Because their die is so goddamned big".
Hah! When's the last time you heard a suit say that in a public interview?!?!?
I didn't know Jerry Mathers worked for AMD! Amazing!
"Never surrender; never give up." - Jerry Sanders
"Never give up; never surrender" - Galaxy Quest
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
If you want the full (hi)story about Intel, AMD and lots of other companies in the PC processor and how the PC chip market became what it is today go read the book: Inside Intel by Tim Jackson.
3 8/
You will realise how much this Intel vs. AMD has been a personal fight between Andy Grove and Jerry Sanders. Great story.
See e.g.:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/04522764
That was an amusing and informative interview. I'm a fan of AMD, and really admire their will to succeed.
Good job, Jerry! I hope your successor has the same fire you did when it comes to taking on the dominant figures in whatever markets AMD decides to compete.
Long live AMD!
"Never surrender; never give up. I mean no surrender, no retreat. You know, a lot of guys say, "We're pulling back for now." [They're] full of shit. "
That sounds an awful like what another stubborn bulldog once said:
"[...] we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender [...]"
"Speaking of which, where are next-generation fabs going to be built?
They're going to Taiwan and China, because those countries want to be in the business and because capital is low-cost there."
And becuase labor is so fucking cheap you can get 15 hours a day hard work for peanuts.
It's a damned shame a US based company is out-sourcing in these trying times like this.
At the close of the interview, Sanders says:
In other words, Intel came up with some new technology they wanted to throw out there, and competition made them change their ways, in the process giving the consumer cheaper, better products. Kinda makes me wonder what would have happened if MS had a serious moneyed competitor. I can't help but believe that we'd all have HAL staring at us from the phones on our desks.
I have come to believe the following: No matter how technologically superior your product may be, if you compete directly with Microsoft you will lose (i.e. you will make less money, and have less market share). Why this is true for OS's and not for microprocessors I'm not sure.
"Dan-0411. Get it? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?"
Actually, I don't get it...and Ferris is off having a parade, so help me out some.
When the K6 (K6-II, I believe) beat the Pentium-du-jour in some benchmarks, I first couldn't believe it (who had really heard of AMD at that time ?) then I thought
"OMG, there's gonna be blood spilled, and cheaper processors ! W00t !".
I'm glad today that competition drives both AMD and Intel to excel, and I enjoy watching their strategic moves: Athlon vs P[34], Hammer vs Itanium, it's like a boxing match from which the customer can only profit.
AMD vs Intel is a textbook example of healthy competition.
-- don't discount flying pigs until you have good air defense
After a couple of years break, I've again started building Intel-only computers for my workplace.
PIII Tualatin is a sweet core. Plug it in and it beats the hell out of P4:s without melting the motherboard like Athlons. And that blessed silence! It hardly needs active cooling at all. For an AMD CPU you need a fan that sounds like a jet engine and sometimes even that is not enough.
The owls are not what they seem
This reminds me of the ATi/nVidia relationship. Because AMD is now outperforming Intel where they were losing before. And before the GeForce4, the Radeon 8500 was outperforming GF3Ti500.
This article is pretty good if you want to see a management level rewrite of history. Mr. Sanswers leaves out a few interesting details, like how AMD's turning point at the K6 came from buying out NexGen and rebranding their NX86 chip. It is hard to make AMD look like a small company battling a giant when they were buying out smaller companies, filing thousands of patents per year, and knowingly violating IP agreements hoping Intel would settle.
Nonetheless, it all worked. And I'm very glad it did.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
The article says: "At the end of next year, there will be a 64-bit processor called the "Hammer." " I thought that Hammer was supposed to be out at the end of THIS year?
It's the name of a bug found by some guy named "dan" in the fpu of pentium IIs and pentium pros. They named the bug using a scheme borrowed from astronomy...like: [discoverer's name]+[number]. (e.g. comet Shumaker-Levy 9, dan-0411).
I love how he failed to mention that they bought the K5 from NextGen lock stock and barrel. But as they said "...and then there there was one..."
I also loved how he failed to mention snapping up all the DEC people and the EV6 to make the K7 have the FP and bus to match intel.
When Compaq and HP start screwing around under the covers the first night I hope Alpha runs out the door and into the waiting arms of AMD.
You have a choice: tax and spend Democrats, or borrow and spend Republicans. Choose wisely.
An interesting article, with a lot of good truths from a business perspective. I can't believe he waffled on Slot 1 (Intel) vs. Slot A (AMD).
However, he does take credit for a lot that was, at best, shrewd investing on AMD's part. One of the Lost Tales in silicon history is the saga of NexGen, a little operation funded by Compaq and a few other players, which was the real developer of the microcode/x86-to-RISC architecture later seen in the K5 and K6 (-2 and -III flavors, too) cores. NexGen survived for a while, selling the two-chip Nx586 solution on some custom Alaris boards, but PCI versions were late in coming, and few, if any, versions were shipped with the fabled FPU. (As it was, you got the equivalent of a plain 80386 with the integer performance of a 100MHz Pentium, off a 90MHz core.)
AMD swooped in and bought the ailing company, using their engineering talent and one-chip Nx686 design to produce the K5. I thiiink a very small number of real Nx686s made it to market; TigerDirect was listing them back in 1996 or so.
Apparently AMD reorganized to produce the Athlon, and much of the NexGen team left or were laid off. Compared to the K6, the Athlon we know and love is something of a 'brute force' chip- NexGen designs relied on their very accurate branch prediction logic, while the Athlon threw it out in exchange for more execution units.
He's biting me!
The *bleep*ers biting me!
*bleep* off, you *bleep* *bleep*!
The world is mine!
The world is mine you *bleep* *bleep* !
Just curious...
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
The article was a nice read until I came to the phrase:
"If they have their way--and my guess is they will over time--they're even going to move their Windows NT64 into the high-end Unix-Linux domain"
Okay Jerry, and your next prediction is what? That Richard Stallman will become the next CEO of IBM?
According to The Register, Microsoft is designing the new Xbox 2 around an AMD processor. It seems that Microsoft is trying it's best to help AMD against Intel, as the interview with Jerry mentions Microsoft helping AMD out with their 64bit Processor. Any thoughts on this?
Why people insist on publishing his looping rants as corporate manna is beyond me.
I have come to believe the following: No matter how technologically superior your product may be, if you compete directly with Microsoft you will lose (i.e. you will make less money, and have less market share). Why this is true for OS's and not for microprocessors I'm not sure.
It's because it's a lot easier to make a fully-compatible chip clone than it is to make a fully-compatible OS clone.
A chip's instruction set, bus interface, etc. are well-documented and relatively simple. An OS's API is far more complex, and can much more easily have a cloud of NDAs overshadow the dissemination of its documentation.
I know which I'd try to clone.
It's too bad more technology entrepreneurs don't have Sanders's sense of moral center. Listen up, Scott, Bill, Larry! It's not all numbers and hype!
Somehow I get a feeling that both companies are living under the heavy cloud of Microsoft.
I found this little tag line to be unnecessary and wrong. From the below text from the article:
I thought Intel dominated the Microsoft relationship.
We call it x86-64 [architecture]; it supports all of the x86 instructions. We've added 64-bit capability and instructions that Windows NT64 from Microsoft will support. This is unprecedented in history--Microsoft supporting x86 instructions other than those developed by Intel. This means anybody can run existing 32-bit applications with higher performance and move to 64-bit [applications] seamlessly.
MS is actually HELPING AMD to compete. How do you figure they're living under a cloud?
"I'm going to step up to be chairman and not CEO after April 27. I'll be like Andrew Grove [Intel chairman of the board and former CEO]."
Somebody quotes Churchill, so you quote
Bill Clinton. Geeez.
Jerry Sanders, cool? Jerry Sanders is an arrogant, egotitistical bastard who's generally been nothing but bad news for AMD. He wears pin strip suits where the pin stripes say "Jerry Sanders". He is chauffered around in an AMD owned Rolls Royce at times when he's cutting the salaries of his employees. He reprices his own options (with help from his buddy-buddy Board of Directors) without repricing the options of his engineers. He gives himself raises during years that the company loses money.
Jerry Sanders is an idiot and the computer industry will be better without him.
Entrepeneurship is the rarest commodity, not engineering skills. How does the fact that he/they acquired technology and knowhow from outside have any relevance? Should they give props to the universities who educated their engineers too?
Contrary to popular opinion and belief most CEOs of large and mid sized companies are foul mouthed asses.
I certainly don't agree with all of his ideas.(Especially the ones about MS and Linux...) But this guy truly deserves credit for being on the side of technical superiority in his products, forcing a giant like Intel to HAVE to compete with a company that started with very humble beginnings. It's been a long time coming, but AMD is definitely one of my favorite tech companies. Keep an eye on this company's stock this fall when Hammer is unleashed on the world! And watch Intel's response when they are forced to swallow their pride and make a clone. Hah! Justice just might be served.
Russian Russian Russian RussianDollSig DollSig DollSig DollSig
"What's that noise?"
"It's the wailing and gnashing of teeth of /. wennies."
"Wennies have teeth?" "Why the wailing and gnashing?"
"Put on your teflon/asbestos suit first then I'll tell you"
"OK so tell me... hey what's that... it smells like flamebait... Whoa... so that's why the wailing, gnashing stuff."
Microsoft (MSFT) rules. They won. In case you missed it, their operating system drives all of the volume in PCs and is now moving into network servers
a 64-bit processor called the "Hammer." That's the internal code name, [and it has] a remarkable capability in that it is based on a Microsoft-supported instruction set developed by AMD
"Yes... the /. wennies are upset because AMD was their shield, the ageis under which they fought the evil, Redmond beast and if your shield tells you it's over in the OS dept then it's over. But now we have to placate them."
"Why are we gonna placate the /. wennies?"
"We're Karma Whores. It's what we do."
AMD would do well to remember the outcome of MicroSoft's deal with IBM that lead to the development of OS/2.
Yes. I really do have far,far too much time on my hands.
heuristic algorithm seeks stochastic relationship
Remember when Dell had that very prominent survey on their website about whether we would buy Dells with Athlons inside? I'm sure almost everybody wanted this, and many people even begged. I bet you Dell got some pretty sweet prices on the next batch of Intel chips! This is just good (and evil) marketing.
You only dual-boot for games, right?
Suuuuuuuuuure.
IP agreements, patents, etc. are all intended to be violated if you want to get anything done at the appropriate time in the market. the reason you file tons of patents yourself is for bartering when you -are- sued by the original people you violated.
welcome to standard business practice. if you do it any other way you'll never be a huge success.
Dan-0411 was the pseudonym to describe an employee of Transmeta who discovered an FPU bug in the P-II, as reported by Robert Collin's on hiw www.x86.org site.
This was before TMTA went public with their "we're making an x86" statement (something I did not suspect until I interviewed there myself.) But as far as I know, the identity of the person is still a secret. It could be any of Ludloff, Brooks, or Collins himself. I doubt its Brooks as he'd likely want the credit himself -- both Collins and Ludloff are subversive enough for it to have been them.
The beta silicon is for the clawhammer - I'm not sure, but I think they may be releasing the sldgehammer later, ie, next year . . .
.
Then again, it's more likely either a typo or a thinko . .
himi
My very own DeCSS mirror.
I am impressed that AMD had the smarts to develop what amount to a from-scratch CPU core using the original NexGen technology to address the major limitations of the Intel Pentium III CPU.
Umm... K6 was the nexgen processor. Of course all processors build on what was learned previously, but I would not say Athlon was based on NexGen technology.
"My point is, Microsoft (MSFT) rules. They won. In case you missed it, their operating system drives all of the volume in PCs and is now moving into network servers. If they have their way--and my guess is they will over time--they're even going to move their Windows NT64 into the high-end Unix-Linux domain."
Strange, it appears he doesnt know that linux runs on PC's. I believe it is only recently that linux can run on a mainframe.
Did someone ever mention to this guy that there is a ton of low end linux servers that was once microsoft's domain?
Actually, the Athlon CPU is a combination of NexGen, DEC Alpha and AMD's earlier K5 technologies.
What resulted is one very amazing CPU.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
...moron who doesn't know Moore's Law...
I was going to say the same thing, but couldn't have done it better, especially in reply to a flame by a dumbass.
your comment couldn't be truer.
This is the same garbage you posted in your original comment. Try to think up something more creative, will you?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Is anyone else bothered by the quantity of [clarifications] the author/editor inserted? It seems to me that they might change the meaning in some cases. Besides that, most of them are unnecessary.
The ocean parts and the meteors come down
Laid out in amber, baby.