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AMD Announces A Shift In Focus From PC Processors
slughead writes "Forbes Magazine is reporting that AMD will no longer compete with Intel to make faster, smaller, and more efficient processors. Just as Mac users would be worse off if Windows didn't exist, Intel users will be much worse now that AMD will no longer compete. You see, there's this thing called demand, and when there are no competing products in a market, a good or service will always increase the price to the economic equilibrium, unless forced not to by the state (forget that right now, communists!!). In English: you're going to get less new technology, and higher prices on existing technology." On the other hand, AMD is definitely not exiting the chip business -- they're just trying to branch out from chips for microcomputers.
This is a serious blow! It'll completely ruin my plans for my new desktop, not to mention my --
Oh.
Oh, wait.
I use a Mac!
Phew!
penis burning devices
So this means that there will be less choice to choose from, so that means I'll be having to buy Intel if I want the best and the greatest, on the other hand this new microproccessor chip that are in the walmart computers, C3 if im not mistaken should be good.
This may be a mistake on AMD's part.
Free means no restrictions, ironic the FSF's GPL forces restrictions, isn't it? What's your definition of free?
I really don't see anywhere in the article where it actually says that "AMD will no longer compete with Intel to make faster, smaller, and more efficient processors."
There's something else called supply which is what actually changes when a more aggressive supplier enters the market, moving the equilibrium price to a new spot on the same demand curve. As long as you're handing out patronizing lectures on microeconomics...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
AMD will probably still have the best bang for your buck desktop processors but they wont be as fast, and that is all right with me. I never buy the absolute fastest cpu as I do not like to pay out my ass for the litte bit of extra performance that is not absolutely necessary.
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
I'm an AMD fan... their processors often offer more bang for the buck compared to intel.
They do run hotter, but so what? (and how else will I heat my server room in the wintertime?)
competition is always good; free markets demand it, and consumers will suffer when choice is reduced.
Does anyone know some more specifics? C'mon you AMD employees out there... I know you read slashdot... Please tell me this is some kind of sick joke.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Am I the only one this makes no sense to? AMD's stuff offers better bang for the buck than Intel's, at least judging by the reviews posted here, and they're the CPU of choice for a lot of DIYers, I'm sure. So is it just because they don't seem to be getting the OEM contracts Intel does, or is the R&D effort to stay competitive not worth it? Even so, you'd think the prestige/brand recognition of building CPU's would be worth it.
And before you flame me for not reading the article, I didn't read the article.
Click here if you just like to click on shit.
>Why did anyone ever buy these POS power guzzling space heaters anyway?
Becuase at one point in time they really were faster, and then they were equal and cheaper, and now their shit again. they are returning to the hell they crawled out of really. The K6 was shit, the Athlon was a fluke, but it was their day in the sun.
I think its fitting they bow out this way with some grace rather than pursuing things and going tits up. They'll have their day again.
I think it should also be mentined that crap chipset put the largest number of nails in the coffin for amd.
-Polyhead-
AMD has very good CPUs, the quality of them is exceptional. Along with their warranty, they also usually out-perform Intel. In my case Intel has always used the most power, and AMD has used the power it has better.
I stopped using Intel along time ago, my last Intel chip was a 550MHz, but I have built them for clients that didn't like the idea of AMD. In the end AMD is more bang for the buck.
So in the end, your opinion is just another anonymous coward. Have you even bought an AMD?
Free means no restrictions, ironic the FSF's GPL forces restrictions, isn't it? What's your definition of free?
It seemed that AMD couldn't make money even when the Athlon was the hottest thing going (literally and sales-wise), simply because the PC market is so driven by price. It takes far more R&D costs to come up with a processor that can compete with the latest from Intel, and the profit per unit is probably abysmal.
To compete with Intel, they were finding that they had to compete in every area, in order to please the OEMs it was courting. They had to make a mobile chip, they had to make a low-cost chip, and a multiprocessor-capable chip, and now they're hard at work on a 64-bit chip. All of which will sell a fraction of what Intel will sell but with similar R&D costs.
It's just another example showing that it's very hard to compete against an entrenched monopoly.
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
If transmeta's new Astro processor will fill this niche for an alternate. As reported here on Friday, their chip apparently outperforms a 1.8 mobile.
Their president said that they're branching out into different markets, and Forbes went on the comment that this is a shift away from an emphasis solely on the PC market. But nobody said that AMD is going to stop making chips for PCs.
I don't see this as necessarily being a bad thing. The consumer computer processor market is a funny market today--the fabs cost billions to construct, the research costs millions and these chips are some of the most complex things ever created--and you can get then for $50 basically.
What's the point of every home user having a 3.0GHz processor? I'm not saying "640k should be enough for anyone" but at the moment, few applications (minus gamers) even need a 1ghz processor to shine--processors will no doubt continue to improve but until some radical paradigm shift in computing, it won't be that big a deal (memory, 3d cards, bandwidth are where I see the possibilities for a lot of improvement).
Let AMD get into market where the r&d is lower, and the margins are higher, this sounds like a good thing to me.
Amd can't compete with intel. First of all Amd sucks at advertising. They should have used spec benchmark instead of the equivalent to intel measurement and come up with some advertising to mock the ghz is the only determiner of performance much like apple has . They should also have moved away from the x86 architecture. It's garbage.
wouldn't intel's move out of the microprocessor business make Intel a Monopoly?
-MRben
Sadly, the AMD 64 bit processor has now slipped to "the first half of 2003". It was supposed to ship in Q4 2002 not so long ago. I wonder if it will ever ship. This is bad. Intel's Inanium is not a place you really want to go.
AMD's prices are just *dirt* chip, this is why they aren't making any money. An 800mhz PIII chip costs 89$, on pricewatch (which I would never buy from by the way). 87$ buys you an Athlon 2100 cpu, which is just about 1ghz faster then the intel part. AMD's processors are an amazing value, but AMD has to have trouble making a profit on them.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Err x86 architecture is important as it is what most programs were designed to run on. I dont want to have to go out and buy all new software just because a few people think that x86 is "crap".
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
I think this is in the best business interests of AMD. I am a software developer by trade, and gamer by hobby. For years I was on the bleeding edge of technology (and paying a hefty sum for the bragging rights). I used to dabble in overclocking/custom cooling and really "pushing the preformance" on my machines. But the truth is, right now, as a software developer (VS.net[C#/C++], Java, Perl, Python) and a gamer (Worms, Warcraft III, Natural Selection), I simply feel no pressing need to upgrade my system.
In the days of 3.06Ghz HT boxes and 64bit processors... my systems are meek by comparison... My primary machine is a Sony Viao Laptop 1.0Ghz (AMD) with 512 + 40gig IDE (15.1 inch screen). My gaming machine is a 1.7Ghz (P4) with 1024 + 120gig WD (Special Edition). Yet despite my primary machine being 1/3rd the fastest(and more so if you count the advantage of HT) in the industry -- I feel no pressing need to upgrade.
The bottom line is, nowadays I don't feel like I am waiting for my system todo what I ask it too-- and until that feeling returns due to more powerful [or more bloated] software, I don't think I will be running out to buy a machine based on CPU.
If AMD is cheaper, cooler and does everything I need to in a smarter way (sound like Transmeta's plan anyone?), they will get my bucks.
ya gotta wonder with all the rumors of Apple sending out AMD boxes running OS X if all the rumors were wrong to conclude x86 was involved at all....
Maybe AMD is 'branching out' by manufacturing PPC chips for Apple. No evidence is conclusive but this will definitely add fuel to the rumor fire around the AMD/Apple connection.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
For those too lazy to click though, here's a sample quote:
It says nothing about "not competing with Intel". What a load of sensationalist crap.
Slashdot.
Tabloid News for nerds.
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
Jumping to Conclusions.
Please read the article. Note that there is
nothing in it about "no longer competing with
Intel." Notice also that Forbes article came out
of Comdex, which was full of AMD CPU demos
for the PC market...
When there are no competing products in a market, the door is wide open for competition. As the equilibrium price rises (out of lack of competition), the barrier to entry lowers. As the barrier is lowered, competing firms will surface. These firms will fight it out until one "wins" by forcing the others out of business. Then there are no competitors in the market, and the door is wide open for competition...
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." -Voltaire
They don't say they won't try to compete but are shifting their focus which I take it to mean branching out. Intel did much the same thing by branching out into networking and other things. The only impact was a re-allocation of the companies resources to other ventures, I wish the article would be so vague. My whole perspective on AMD is that it only got so big by having a competitive chip cheap, I mean there probably is a 10 to 1 ratio to people who took up an Athlon based systems vs. a K6 systems. If indeed they are not striving for a competitive chip anymore, that would be a huge mistake, since one of the lessons for the blue chips after the dotbomb crash was to keep on nurturing the core business, their goose that laid the golden eggs letting them finance other things in the first place.
wow my first post on slashdot's main page and I messed up on why market equilibrium shifts AMD makes other stuff besides PC chips that we can use.. like flash memory... and moon pies
Latewire
that is what it USED to be... new pricing suggests otherwise: AMD & Intel pricing comparison
I've been waiting for YEARS to get me an AMD branded toaster oven. Wonder if it'll use Athlons as the heating elements?
Hey, there's always Via and their crappy Cyrix! (btw: i have that mini-itx mobo with 800mhz via c3... performs like a p2 400, sigh)
_________ Help me get a PSP!
I share some of the concern regarding the effect on competition with Intel, because there's only so much R&D money to go around in any company. However, let's say that they slow down trying to compete with intel over the very fastest chip on the market. People buy AMD because you get more chip for the money/the same performance at a lower price. If they invest enough to keep themselves just a step behind intel in their fastest chip, but still delivering better value, they might be able to sustain similar profits with substantially lower R&D and other costs. This would still keep the pressure on intel.
Damn, this sucks by a lot.
;)
AMD has been only decent competition for Intel, and as AMD leaves Intel can bid even more for their processors, even they wouldn't be goddamn expensive allready.
So in a few years we won't paying a hundred to few hundred euros for our cpus, we will be paying thousands and not getting much more.
Well, it wouldn't be wise not to put Hammers on the sale soon, hope AMD will still continue fast R&D on cpus and keep prices down.
Or this could just be a PR trick also, announcing a thing like that might make some people think they focus on the server side, and perhaps make Intel think 'Phew, got rid of them there, whEEE!!!' and Intel drops some R&D doing desktop specific research and boom! AMD suddenly release next gen CPU
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
Great, the God Slot now comes at me via /.
If I was after that, I'd go sit in a cold, drafty church...
-MT.
Many people choose the higher price/performance ratio of AMD proc's over Intel. But you have to keep in mind that many disciminating in-the-know users still prefer Intel's slight lead in motherboard (chipset) stability. A quick look at any x86 server-class rig will show you that Intel is still recognized for their stability. (Note: I'm not trying to start a fight here, as I own procs from both companies, but you have to admit not many servers run AMD stuff.)
The other big factor is marketing. Intel spends much more money marketing their stuff, and they seem to be doing it in an efficient way. AMD is still thought of by many people who don't know any better as a "cheap imitation."
As far as R&D goes, they seemed to be doing quite well until recently. Maybe someone else can shed some light on this for us.
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." -Voltaire
then theres something wrong with the world. let's change it.
It is a sad day, in deed. Troll half way around the planet are crying. Tragic, nobody could have predicted this price-gouging consumer moment. Back to the welfare office we go...
Sure just because 1/10th of 1 percent of people think this way... x86 is going to be here for a while whether you like it or not. ...x86, the instruction set that refused to die...
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
Hello,
Is this sensationalistic or biased reporting... Probably just sensationalistic. AMD pricing gets awesome right after teh 2200's, here's a bit from pricewatch. Everything after the 2100's is almost half the price.
$178 - Athlon XP 2400
$139 - Athlon XP 2200
$87 - Athlon XP 2100
$74 - Athlon XP 2000
$72 - Athlon XP 1900
$64 - Athlon XP 1800
$52 - Athlon XP 1700
$185 Pentium 4 2.4GHz 533MHz
$190 - Pentium 4 2.4GHz 400MHz
$172 - Pentium 4 2.2GHz 400MHz
$173 - Pentium 4 2.26GHz 533MHz
$173 - Pentium 4 2.26GHz
$145 - Pentium 4 2.0GHz
$135 - Pentium 4 1.9GHz
$149 - Pentium 4 1.8GHz
$117 - Pentium 4 1.7GHz
Hmmm... Pie...
More buckbanging ... or do you mean more watts for the tw*ts ?? Nothing heats up a computer Lusr fast as an AMD chip. Like diapers for barbie-baby-dolls, AMD should give AWAY their cpus and SELL heat-sinks and fans.
I always wanted a quad Athlon MP motherboard, but looks like I'll need to go buy my Quad CPU solution from Intel via a dual Pentium 4 HT CPUs solution (quad).
Yes, but does God masturbate? And if so, can He do it without even touching His Almighty Cock?
I'm still waiting for the so-called "theologians" to answer that one.
Hmmm... Pie...
Once Intel sells everyone a P4, they need to convince everyone to buy a second P4.
Then they have to invent some reason to replace the P4; and the second P4, and buy a new P4+.
Intel has to compete with itself.
That's why Macs have such high resale values, as a corrollary; they only have to compete with themselves, and the way Apple has structured the G3 and G4 lines, they don't cannibalize and compete with each other, and thus maintain a high initial price and a high resale price.
All because Apple only has to compete with itself. If, like AMD, Apple competed against Intel, Apple would be forced to compete on price-since it doesn't, though, Apple can price according to other features, such as Altivec, OS X, iDVD/iMovie/iPhoto/iTunes, iCal/iSynch/iChat, long battery life, appearance, etc.
GPL Deconstructed
With a 3d interface and half naked nymph chicks made up of several million polygons to guide you in it...
Yeah, well as long as they're exists powerful enough hardware we'll find something awesome to do with it.
Hmmm... Pie...
AMD will put compatibility ahead of sheer speed. The press release mentions embedded devices, but also demos of 64-bit game and database software. AMD is emphasizing that its 64-bit processor has better backward compatibility than Intel's with 32-bit software, even though its 64-bit mode is slower. This looks to me like a bid for industry support for its x86-64 architecture, hardly a concession of the PC market.
IMHO- AMD has found its market for desktop CPU's and were pretty loyal. So why not branch out let Intel have Compaq, Gateway and Dell etc. OEM's arent doing real well right now anyway. Surely Intel sells P4's to the OEM's at prices like we pay for Athlons so there is no geat advantage for Intel.
May I remind you that Intel is not exclusively in the chip market either. Intel spread to new concepts in computing years ago and are better of for it (e.g. From their site: Consulting Services, Compilers, Performance Analyzers, Threading Tools, Training Center, LANDesk* Software etc...) While most of these are certainly related to the PC chip industry it is not nearly as narrow as AMD.
In doing what Intel did years ago, they are actually increasing their competitiveness. In fact a quick look at Intel's (INTC) financials confirm just that.
Hats off to AMD. for keeping capitalism and competitiveness alive.
I hate people that dont have a sig
With amd cpu's oem processors are always the way to go so you can buy your own heatsink/fan (usually no more then $20 dollars for a good setup).
nt
AMD now stands for:
Amish Micro Devices.
They're building components for use in butterchurns, now, after finding out it was a much more lucrative market.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
In fact before AMD started hounding Intel in the x86 market they made a wide range of processors and chips! I do electronic repair work for the military and I see plenty of older and newer boards with chips from AMD, Motorola, and TI. Not too many from Intel.
I understand the vision they have about future computing, if you try to shove a AMDXP or PIV in ever piece of hardware you will limit your capabilities greatly. There are times when a RISC processor will do a better job then a chunking x86.
Sure their stock took a hit, but those damn investors always freak out when change is in the air.
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
Obviously whoever at Forbes wrote this was on something. AMD has said before they're no longer interested in a pointless war of clockspeed, they tend to focus on other things, like 64bit CPUs.
Whoever wrote the article seems to have completely misread what AMD was talking about.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
comdex stuff, check these links
Link 1
Link 2
and it sounded like marketing-speak. however, I think some concern is warranted, particularly when you read between the lines (which always requires a bit of interpretation and speculation, but still...)
A shift away from the PC market could mean that they will no longer be trying so hard to compete with intel. The comptetition has arguably been good for BOTH companies, and even better for consumers. Isn't that what is often argued here, that competition against microsoft (in the form of linux, OS X, etc) would be a Good Thing (TM)? Improve quality? Lower price? yes?
I think we are justified in asking the question, and being concerned about this move. I'll repeat my call to the AMD employees that read this site... more information, please. Don't be shy... the worst you can be is an Anonymous Coward!
I love your nick, by the way...
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
With AMD moving away from x86 and compatible, we should work further on a less architecture specific approach to computing. Any software written at high level should be easily portable and we should let open sourse OSs like Linux embrace all architecture. I personally don't see why RISC isn't the favoured platform nowadays.
This is a good thing, it may spawn further arch-shifting and we may actually get competition from other manufacturers like Transmeta.
What makes a man want to be a mouse? (Python's Flying Circus)
Last year my company purchased a workstation for me that runs at 900 Mhz... which is plenty fast for anything that I really need to be doing at work (web dev with a few servlets here and there)
This year they are buying machines that are 1.8 Ghz standard. So next year its gonna be what... 3.6? Where does it end and who pays for it?
Forbes Magazine is reporting that /. reader slughead recently failed his 2nd grade reading comprehension test. Even more astounding is /. editor Timothy failed to do his homework - err job function.
Come on people.
Excuse me, but how is capitalism to blame for consumer CHOICE ? You dont have to use windows, you dont have to use IE. Netscape and Macs have been around equally as long.
.. that what you want?
.. too bad not a dog would have bought it.
.. well there are MANY MANY examples of that failing.
You want the government to hold the monopoly?
Look at North Korea vs. South Korea
Microsoft may have a supposed "monopoly" (why do they charge $200 for windows instead of $1 million?) but guess what you still have the freedom to go live in the hills, live off elderberries, and run Linux and Open Office. So guess what the monopolist corporate state that the communists want you to believe will come has not arrived and there are no examples of it happening.
I rather not have the govt. intervening and telling people what to do. Microsoft didnt force anyone to sign a business deal. Maybe if they didnt sign the deal they would go outta business well tough luck. If they cant compete too bad. There were no good alternatives available cause MSFT was able to offer things cheaper. Being cheaper is a good thing. Offering the best deal is a good thing. If Dell wanted to sell Linux or freaking Solaris they could have
Communism/socialism
Learn some crap. Free trade has never screwed over any economy. Dont believe theoretical craps.
Nobody is forcing windows down anyone's throat.
If your job "requires" windows, go work at McDonald's and let someone more deserving who bitches less get your job.
Quit player hatin' on Bill Gates.
-Johan
For whatever reason, it seems to me that AMD has been underpricing their stuff, and it hasn't worked. I paid like $179 for the AthlonXP 1700 I bought a few months back. The equivalent P4 was quite a bit more expensive.
I don't know if it is true, but word on the street has it that AMD chips will melt and burn if the fan flubs because the chip lacks a tempurature sensor and/or a shut-down mechanism. Perhaps it is FUD from Intel, or a rumor based on old chips, but it does not make people very comfortable.
Table-ized A.I.
I can't help but put on my conspiracy goggles on this one. Wasn't AMD the only Wintel chipmaker to openly vow to continue non-Palladium based chips? Were they muscled out my Microsoft and Intel in efforts to control the home computing experience?
moto411.com
x86 is outdated and quite frankly sucks ass. Let's group together and develope a better Opensource spec and begin porting linux and open source apps to it. I dunno about you guys but that constitutes all the software I care about... windows users can remain in the dark ages as long as they wish, they are happy there now aren't they?
"FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!"
This is what I believe is on the minds of savvy techies all over slashdot in response to this announcement. While I'm not intending to be a troll, I'm trying to simply tell the truth (and see if I can get a post with the F-word modded up!)
Less Competition != Good for Consumers
Hell, they way things have been going, get ready in the next 12 months to be buying your Computing Devices from Microsoft Intel Inc.
Chicago2600.net more than a lifestyle, its a survival trait.
fuck you. USA. consumerist pigs. head up their asses. wonder why people hate them. ever heard of Imperialism? I can picture your patriotic response now. Ignorant. Brain washed. Enjoy your new fascist police state. you brought it upon yourselves. eat shit.
A modern fab is a billion dollar investment. Given that AMD can't charge a premium for thier chips and that thier credit is not as good anymore I don't see how they can expect to conitnue the race to make smaller faster chips against Intel. Intel has very deep pockets and more production capacity so in a way the Mhz race is how Intel is pushing AMD out of serious competition. Deemphasizing the cpu part of their business is a smart move for AMD but not good news for consumers.
Again, verbatim from my site:
Attention Slashdoters:
Don't get all your news from Slashdot
I should really start out by saying that I have never owned and Intel chip, my PC is an AthlonXP. I'm about to attempt to put an end to any dispute, and I'm going to use Forbes as my main source (because I think the man might know a thing or two about money, because he's got a lot more than me).
After the PC market's recent downturn, AMD was facing tough times. However, unlike Intel, AMD has little diversity in chip manufacturing. Recently, Intel announced their 3ghz processor with hyperthreading (a way of fooling software into running more efficiently). So AMD cut 15% of their employees shortly after.
Not that anyone needs to be reminded, but when a company cuts jobs, it doesn't just mean that they will have less employees, it also means that they will pay taxes. In addition to their current financial problems, just 5 days ago, AMD converted $300m of debt into stock, which will hurt their economic standing in the future, and by extension, the present (the news left AMD's stock in shambles at $5.90).
Converting debt into stock on such a large scale has consequences. Like, for instance, S & P could cut your credit rating. Of course, when the S & P does that, you have to convert more debt into stock.
Just a bad time for PC CPU mfg.ers? Well Intel's doing great, so how about that?
So whether the article said it directly or not (I read it 5 times and I think it pretty well did), AMD will not be competing in the PC market for a while. Their 64bit chip might help bridge the gap between 32bit and 64, but it has to come out first, and then it has to beat Intel's benchmarks on 32bit applications (which I could presume it will not). It will beat it in UT2003 though, hopefully that'll be enough!
Latewire
contrary to what a lot of the above posts say, there _is_ a hint that AMD will be withdrawing (to what degree, who knows) from the processor market. but i think the most interesting part of the article is where it mentions that AMD will be raising $300 million in convertible notes.
what does that mean? it means they're not really retreating. i think it means that they're going to be broadening their efforts; they'll stop focusing so much on processors for PCs, and dedicate some resources to other places.
they did very well with their flash memory division for a while (nevermind how it's doing now). that shows that they are able to succeed in areas other than the PC processor market. this gave them a taste for pursuing interests besides processors. additionally, their bitter struggle to compete with intel, and it _is_ bitter and brutal, led them to realize that in order to truly succeed as a company, they're going to have to work on multiple fronts instead of tying their success on one admittedly difficult marketplace war.
in short: nevermind the hype about AMD retreating. focus on the interesting aspects of the article. focus on the fact that they're taking a risk in raising $300 million and lowering their credit rating. then think about _why_ they're doing it.
Is there a way to mark this whole thing as a Troll?
Seriously,
Yea I expect a bunch of posts from people who have never had an economic course and have everything wrong in spades. But, in the frigin body? Are you trying to spread fud around?
1. Make great chips
2. Sell them low
3. ???
4. ????
5. ?????
6. ??????
7. well?....
Table-ized A.I.
Also, I don't think it's fair to assume Intel's primary domain is purely in PC Chips. Their work in Communications chips is nearly as important, and is becoming more so. I think they're trying to develop it into a stronger market force in the next few years.
All circuits busy.
Didn't AMD just mention that it planned to surpass Intel as the world's number 1 chip maker?
And I quote:
AMD BOSS HECTOR RUIZ says AMD is "dead serious" about ousting Intel to become the number one player in the "computational processor market".
"We're not just trying to be a good number two," he said.
Ruiz claimed its "competitor" had done "everything possible" to keep it from competing in new segments of the market but, despite Intel's best efforts, AMD was on course to make significant progress in a number of areas.
Surely AMD didn't change its entire business direction and core corporate strategy in a matter of days. It seems to me that there is a misunderstanding, and seeing as how the Forbes article quoted not one single comment from AMD brass stating that they "will no longer compete with Intel", I think it's Forbes, and the story submitter.
I seem to recall rumors back when AMD was kicking ass that Intel planned to leave the PC CPU business to pursue more "long term profitable measures." Well, what sure doesn't seem to be the case.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
AMD exiting the x86 market, you think x86 NEEDS to die, new technologies are on the horizon i would say. New platform i hope. Would Windows die finally like it should have at 95?
Yes--I agree that AMD is making a smart move. The only segments of the PC market that are going anywhere are the budget PC market (think under US$500), the mobile market (notebooks, tablet PCs, etc) and new form factors and "non-pc" consumer devices(ultra-compact desktops, set-top boxes like PVRs and game consoles). These all have a few common elements: the edge goes to the one who can produce low-cost, low-power, low-heat designs. The high-end desktop/workstation market is flat at best (and most likely in decline). Few in the market for a new PC are geeks who want to compile their Linux kernels faster than all their friends or render sophisticated 3D videogames at framerates higher than their eyes can perceive them (or most monitors can display them).
BUT---hold on a minute. Who said AMD was just going cheap. I got the idea that they were diversifying their market strategy. Until now, their marketing has been very unsophisticated to be polite. Hell, in an effort to win a petty pissing match over who is the king of the crap-pile they have gone so far as to give their processors "model numbers" instead of labelling them by clock speed. Joe blow on the street gets very confused when you try to explain what the 2100+ means on his "Athlon XP 2100+" (no it isn't REALLY a 2.1 GHz chip--it's only 1.733GHz but it's just as good...huh?). time to shape up.
Now, AMD is promising to get a bit smarter in selling their bleeding edge technology. Why languish in a stagnant high-end PC market with razor-thin profits against a giant comptetitor? Instead of trying to find, retain and support thousands (millions?) of geeks and "keep-up-with-the-joneses" types, each with 1 to maybe 8 processors each, perhaps it would be better for business to land a deal with hundreds of customres like Cray, or NASA, or JPL, or governments and big corporations, who each need thousands of processors to meet their needs?
Big customers don't need their hands held--they order in volume, making production runs easier to manage and cheaper and margins higher. They engineer and support their own products. These big guns are also much better at showcasing the latest technology. Think about it. What would be more impressive to the average person (and the mainstream press):
* If AMD powered supercomputers rendered the latest CG animated hit movie, an AMD-powered cluster of servers made Google search 500% faster, or predicted storm movements on Jupiter or repeatedly beat Kasparov at chess...etc
* AMD scored higher on some obscure benchmark on Andtech and Tom's Hardware, the pizza-faced kid next door got his 3D gam to go 120FPS at 32-bits and some insanely high resolution (ultimetely more a testament to his video card's performance anyways), and the computer salesman made and Athlon XP system boot faster than a similar but higher priced P4 system
I'd say the former would garner more respect and a higher profile than the latter.
Motorola did the same thing a few years ago and that's why IBM is now Apples only source of PPC.
I bet there are a lot of motherboard engineer that will be looking for work when this happens.
Shouldn't that be "Windows users would be worse off if the Mac didn't exist"?
Centaur Technologies and Cyrix were both bought out by Via. I know Via's C3 processor is the butt of many jokes about its slow speed, but in every other respect it is highly advanced compared with Intel's offerings.
They're working on a faster chip which will come out next year. If they manage to make it a decent speed, they'll be the ones to watch.
Well you could do that -- or you could buy an 4-way Operton system for about the same price once it becomes available. The difference being that those will be *real* processors, as opposed to "virtual" processors.
Plain and simple, they lost. And its a shame, because they came into the game losing (post-K6, beginning Athlons). At the peak, less than 6 months ago, they were the favorite chip among hobbyists, and really had the better, cheaper, faster chip. They were winning (in the way that it counts, at least to me).
What a shame, especially when they realize that Intel can beat them in the areas they are focusing on too.
are "fast enough" for consumers, at least for the time being, and are looking at a PC marketplace in the near future where MOST (typical users) will be satisfied with their PC experience for several years to come. With a shrinking market for NEW PC cpus they should logically look elsewhere to sell their product, elsewhere being other consumer markets, whatever they may be.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
I don't even know her!!!
my opinions are the same as the majority of /. users when I say 'you suck'.
they also think you're gay, you smell bad and that you may or may not be the illegitimate offspring of RMS and goatse.
I will agree with the parent post on this... Intel may not have the price/performance ratio that everyone likes... but the chipset selection for AMD servers (w/ respect to stability) just sucks... I've managed a pair of Athlon based servers... they weren't as stable as the Intel system adjacent to them (A P3)... and all 3 were using the same peripherials... only motherboard/cpu/ram type were different about the systems... VIA - nice features, good performance, crap stability.. I hate the Via chips on this MSI board with my Duron.. stinks real bad. I also had an extreme disklike for my first P3 that I had paired with a via chipset. Sis.. I can't comment on them as much.. I haven't used a mobo based on one of their athlon chipsets. AMD makes a nice stable chipset (or should I say DID in limited quantities make the only good chipset for a server IMHO). All my Intel setups that have used an Intel chipset have been rock solid.. EVEN under WINDBLOWS. I use a dualboot on this machine (win2k / redhat 7.3) both are solid ... I use windows on it mostly... i do everything from bryce renderings to playing Tribes 2 online, to just websurfing and email... I maybe reboot this machine once a week at most.. usually to hop over to linux for a bit. ok i've rambled long enough....
From your headline and all the usual comments about AMD, I am assuming that you are blaming them, when in fact, it was an Intel chip. If you are not blaming them, please clarify (although your link does).
Put identity in the browser.
slughead's grasp and explanation of markets and economics was truly remarkable (not).
Note that by using the term 'suck' I am in no way trying to influence AMD's stock price. I am simply stating how much they suck compared to an Intel chip.
Just as Mac users would be worse off if Windows didn't exist, Intel users will be much worse now that AMD will no longer compete.
Don't you mean Windows users would be worse off if Macintoshes and the Mac OS didn't exist? Microsoft and PC manufacturers have to get their ideas from somewhere. Outside of slapping in the latest bus and RAM architecture, they develop little else.
Intel isn't exactly betting the farm on the PC market, either. Although Itanium isn't quite as do-or-die for Intel as the Hammer series is for AMD, they both know full well that making CPU's for PC's will be a shrinking part of their revenues. Making chips for servers is the market they are both shooting for. The margins are much higher and the market is actually growing at a good clip, unlike the PC market.
So I guess this may be bad news for folks who want really cheap bleeding-edge performance on their desktops. But business users don't need any more performance on the desktop than they already have, and even gamers are increasingly looking toward GPU's and not CPU's as the most important factor for performance in their systems. Intel and AMD are laying their bets in the server room.
Given that AMD already has the technology in hand to deliver more bang-per-buck than Itanium and with a smooth and solid migration path, this may be the most sensible move they've made in years.
"Just as Mac users would be worse off if Windows didn't exist"
How about:
"Just as Windows users would be worse off if Macs didn't exist"
I got a Athlon XP 2000+ on my newly built linux box, and it was so fast I had to UNDERCLOCK it to 1.2 Ghz.
It runs at 37 C, body tempreture.
Was just about to say that. ALWAYS use reseller rating. I post and use that site all the damn time. It is a must have for online business.
My first PC was 386 SX 16. It had Intel CPU of course. Then I bought 386 DX 40, then AMD 486 DX (DX4? something like that) 100, then Cyrix 6x86 166+, then K6-2 500, then Athlon XP 1800. As you see I haven't used Intel for a long time.
If AMD is going to increase prices and stop active development - there is a place for a new competitor. You probably don't remember Cyrix CPUs from pentium times. Thanks to Cyrix - Intel and AMD put new CPUs faster on market. Of course they also created very aggresive marketing (I still hear "Cyrix is unstable" sentence). If AMD stop now - whole market will slow down.
We need Transmeta in Desktop PC. Is it possible?
what about Crusoe? what's the status of the Crusoe processor and why don't they take advantage of this opportunity and jump into the market?
"The ones who dont do anything are always the ones who try to pull you down" -- Henry Rollins
eWeek has another write up...
I've got no doubt that if Apple dumps Motorolla, and they're very likely to do so, then they'll be going for IBM's amazing 64bit PowerPC design. However, IBM hasn't been in the mass-market CPU production arena for a while, so I wouldn't be surprised if IBM, Apple & AMD got together in this with AMD doing the physical production. AMD would have an assured and profitable market, IBM would finally get their designs out the door, and Apple would finally be secure in having fast and long-term available CPUs (not to mention AMD could merge their design tricks with IBM's to create something truly fast).
;)
Only one problem, everyone knows AMD CPUs need loud cooling fans
This may sound shocking, but a great place to buy hardware online is eBay. At least with eBay, if something goes wrong, it's usually easier to track down the user than to try dealing with some no name online vendor that might be out of buisness next week. I feel much more confident buying hardware from users with high feedback than online vendors listed on pricewatch.
[/offtopic]
As for AMD, I hope they keep making great processors. I've become annoyed with Intel's focus on GHz. Intel's idea of performance seems to be, "Let's just throw lots of clock cycles around!"
Also, if you want a good laugh, you can read my Intel rant. I should warn you though, it's almost totally devoid of logic... ;)
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
I've ordered from them at least 6 times now. Perfect everytime, decent prices (sometimes a bit high) great service and fast shipping. PriceWatch - well, I've been shafted twice now from 2 different companies, but I still use it sometime (btw, newegg is on pricewatch for some items). So, use with extreme caution and stay the heck away from yahoo sellers...all dumb as boxes of roxes (unless you don't care at all about service.)
sig: There are two mistaakes in this sig.
Just as Mac users would be worse off if Windows didn't exist,...
A more appropriate comparison would be:
Just as Windows users would be worse off if the Mac exist
Dude. I still play Bandit Kings of Ancient China, KOEI 1989, in sparkling EGA glory, and Stars!. The inavailability of Stars! Supernova Genesis does twist my nibblets though.
To a guy like me you're on the bleeding edge of gaming.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
Haven't you watched any science fiction movie in the last half-century? What we need is a debugged HAL9000, but at this moment our computers can't even read lips.
I don't think AMD is leaving the x86-compatible CPU market anytime soon. I think AMD was just unfortunate that the current market conditions won't allow for the company to be profitable in the CPU market; what AMD wants to do is expand into building other specialty products that will better insulate itself from market conditions. If you look Intel's wide range of products they are heavily into networking, specialized-market RISC CPU, and so on.
The thing is that AMD--unlike previous competitors in the field like Cyrix--has demonstrated that can produce CPU's that are very competitive performance-wise against Intel's products. The Athlon XP 2800+ --which should ship any time now--has proven it can keep up with the Pentium 4 2.8 GHz CPU in most benchmark tests. Intel can't sit on its laurels with the new Pentium 4 3.06 GHz CPU that has the Hyperthreading functionality; they very well know that the Barton-core Athlons due the first quarter of 2003 will probably keep up with the Pentium 4 3.06 GHz, because the new Athlons will not only sport 512 KB L2 cache on the CPU die but also other changes to the main CPU core to improve performance.
Like other people stated here, home users usually need top notch CPUs mostly for games.
But other then AMD you also have nVidia and ATI with their graphic processor units that just get better and better. And lets not forget that Intel pretty much failed trying to compete in this field. Even now, lots of gamers spend more on a video card then on the CPU.
Demand should stay the same, but supply may - at least in the short term. So the price may not change in the medium to long term, because the demand curve hasn't altered - people still want x86 processors, so supply should increase. But it is a crimp on innovation, i.e. what do Intel have to do to stop you from going to another supplier? nothing, because there isn't one. But they want to keep companies out of the market so they'll still innovate.
Intel and AMD Conspiring to slow down research/moores law to save on research funds.
There's still plenty of competition.
Via makes a rocking low power processor (C3).
There's also Transmeta and NEC, just to mention a few.
We had a customer the other day who dropped her computer in friday morning (after a storm) complaining that the modem was not working. We found that somehow (probably the storm) had fried the COM port.
Now she took the computer back home and we rang Intel on friday lunch time to get an advanced replacement for the 2.5year old motherboard (Basically they send the board first, then you send the broken one back).
Monday lunch time, the courier came and delivered the new board. Now this board had made it all the way from Malaysia or somewhere to Brisbane, Australia.
In other words with intel products we are able to offer the customer a warrenty repair in three days at no cost to us at all. You can't get that kind of service from AMD.
While I think this forebodes evil in the PC market in that, if AMD goes under soon, Intel will be able to fix prices much higher than they recently have. What might very well happen is that the latest Intel CPU's might slowly start selling at prices in the $1000 range. Without much competition Intel can charge what it likes and treat customers the way Microsoft, or even worse, Quark , do. The end result is that PC prices might start going up again and that PC makers will make bigger margins. The end effect is that realistically, standard PC's could be selling in $2000 range again, in the next few years.
Although that is a rather dark scenario that will probably not happen soon, the recent announcements of PPC based motherboards and a revival of the Amiga on PPC using morphOS might very start up that market again. Although I cannot really see the practical advantages of Amiga over Linux, Amiga had it's largest user base in Europe, especially in Germany, where the national need to tinker with things found a partner in the Amiga. Although I seriously doubt that they'll market it well and that it will take off in a large fashion, it might provide that need critical mass to get the PPC into the mainstream, thereby providing a small bit of competition to Intel.
What might also happen though, is that China's x86 efforts finally take off and that China becomes a major deliverer of low cost commodity x86 CPU's. Who knows.
Here is the actually press release from AMD. Theres nothing in there that says they are stopping consumer chips (infact, they talk about the 64bit chip, and unreal). they do mention that they are 'branching out' Microsoft branched out from Operating systems (everything from keyboards, to chairs, to crappy networking hardware) but they still make the same great os!
Come on, AMD switching to a different market than PCs, and Macintosh looking for faster cpu's...
Come on, a 1.0Ghz laptop, and a P4@1.7Ghz it's still very fast.
How must i feel with my old Duron@750 and K6/2@333?????
If I remember correctly, Intel just released its 3.0 GHz chips. If I were AMD, and I wanted Intel to slow down a bit, I'd want them comfortable and happy in their current position so they didn't have quite the same sense of urgency about developing newer, better, faster technology.
;)
In fact, I might just start off with such a press release. I might continue by quietly starting up subsidiary firms, owned by the AMD corporate head office, and moving people and tech over to those companies, while making a big show about how the AMD CPU processor focus is being back-burnered, production factories are being retooled for different things, the corporate vision is changing (frequently), etc... All the signs of a firm that is visionary, bold, courageous - in other words, about to show up at fuckedcompany.com.
And when Intel was sitting pretty, regaining market dominance and feeling pretty good about its position vs. "former competitor" AMD, AND the market is starting to boom and demand is increasing, AMD could release something that blows Intel's doors right off.
Yes, it's risky. Long term profit in the face of a short/medium bear market usually is.
With Transmeta still trying to push into the PC CPU market I'd think AMD backing off a little would be good news for them. Two names is about all most customers can keep track of. This will let the Transmeta name have a chance at becoming known outside the geek society. If the recent news of Transmeta's new much faster and even more effecient CPU is true and that CPU is cheap and faster (and more energy/heat effecient) than a 1.8Ghz Intel CPU then they might grab some decent market share.
Just to make a wild prediction I'd say handheld wireless devices will be a big boom over the next decade or so.. faster CPU's probably will matter less than extending battery life. If they can make them cheap enough and so that they don't need massive cooling then they also should work well for parallel designs.. for the power users.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Fcsking grap a brain and read the article yourself, form your own opinion, and then DISCUSS it here, on /. Oh-yeah, and open an account.
I'm so sick and tired of people nagging behind their safe A-C 'bout the quality of /. Go somewhere else if you got a problem with what happens here.
1Ghz is plenty for the rest of your list, though.
I heard they heat their oil up on their heatsinks before they lather each other up and talk about how 3DNow will kick SSE's ass.
Have a taste of some examples of this problem in action:
A wreck happens at a semi-busy intersection involving multiple vehicles. No fire is present, no environmental hazards observed (natural or not) and therefore the most important thing is to carefully extract the victims. However, before you can even finish assessing the scene fully you spot a "helpful" bystander that unlike the crowd of slack-jaw idiots gawking to the side, he has stepped up to help. He unfortunately has not rationally thought through the situation and weighed the situation calculus, thus explaining his action of grabbing a driver stuck in their vehicle from under the shoulders and yanking them out of their vehicle.
Hopefully there will be no spinal injuries, not to mention any other damage from his misguided action (picture in your mind an artery or blood rich non-elastic organ being punctured by a bone fragment). This has been referred to in the past as "Bystander Bob" syndrome, btw. Bob will be used as a scapegoat unfortunately (mainly by the slack-jawed sheep gawking to the side in order to justify their pathetic lack of action and willingness to get their hands dirty and help)
Next we have a pilot in a small aircraft. Since this aircraft is not a military or other such vehicle it is very "stable" by design. However if the pilot is not experienced (or is drunk) they will forget this fact and in the event of a sudden change in attitude (not altitude) they will in fact be the worst enemy of themselves. When something knocks the plane's attitude off kilter what happens is that the planes design affords itself to fixing the problem. This varies based on the usual variables including mass, velocity, altitude, etc. However as a rule of thumb and as an example here, when the planes nose is knocked down (not a sheer dive however) then it is more likely that the inertia (to sum it up shortly) of the plane within the air stream will actually pop back up and over its level plane. If the pilot does not understand this and actually tries to "help" then the plane will overshoot and like a swinging pendulum that you add energy to upon a return swing, it will actually be displaced MORE on its return swing (in this case a positive plane angle) than it was originally when knocked down.
Keeping your hands steady on the controls but relaxing and letting the design work its magic is the magical formula for success. Like the pendulum the planes nose will oscilate in a reducing cycle until it is steady once more. This is why turning is an active process.
Next we have many medical cases where a quack doctor treats the patients file rather than the patient. The result is a patient that in reality required a "helpful push" that worked WITH not against their own biology. Instead, the quack introduced elements that merely covered up and masked the problem within resulting in massive damage to the homeostatic operation of the body and most likely resulting in a patient that will forever be forced to "attack the symptoms" and never actually be TREATED. Sure the doc helped... but shouldn't we be thanking the wonders of brute force chemistry, and not the doctor? A good doctor would attempt to work WITH the patient to treat the problem and look to the long term. (note that this does not include ER situations to which basically it is more than reasonable to simply stabalize the patient with any means necessary)
The pattern between these all is basically that of "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." While everyone can dumbly bob their heads and say, "Yep! I knew that chief, why don't you wax some philosophy we don't already know" Well then here you are you mindless talking monkey. This lesson like so many others that float around in word, is only that... WORDS. If you repeat the words but ignore the meaning (as proven by your actions) then it is not hard to observe at that point that you do NOT in fact understand or "know" that basic bit of philosophy. (the above acid is directed towards those idiots out there who place superficial coverings above real substance)
The real lesson here is that as always you must look to the larger picture if you wish to analyze the situation. If AMD decides to make this change, then more power to them. However understand that as it stands now, the vast majority of computers are vastly (maybe I can find a third time to say it :) under-utilized. If prices go up for awhile then so be it... that will attract more competition based on the flowing springs principle. (in harsh, dry climates a watering hole can at times be a sort of "safety zone" for animals to get drinks without as much worry about predators... the other times it is the cunning predators that take advantage of this situation) If there is a market still for PC's then AMD or others will come back to it. If prices go up too much, then people will stop buying as many new machines and make better use of their old ones. This will in turn drive up demand for more efficient software (thank God for that) and just maybe we would have less bloat, less hard coded (or just plain stupid) design and actually have software that was engineered not thrown together.
Also, I have to chuckle at the repeat in history to where the Microcomputer market is being viewed with a parallel mode of thought as was all computers (and later the concept of PC's) decades ago.
Sure.
;>
And 512k is more memory than anyone needs. So are 4MHz CPUs.
Unless they do realtime 3d graphics, oop, n-level GUIs, run all sorts of rickety AIs to guess what your next mouse coord is going to be, GHz LANs, broadband internet, and all the stuff that was developed to cater to business presentations, admin users and, oh yeah, gamers, too.
Its going to be tough to run ultra-SQUID neural interface interfaces with intra- and extra-cranial holographic displays mediated by real-time multi-language multi-syntax real-language interpreted op systems, running on multi-host inter-neural network networks.
Actually, consumer tech is seriously lagging behind the times. I mean, optical entanglement sharing quantum-tunneling time-dilation intensive parallel probability universe pondered CPUs should be well advanced in research labs by now.
5GHz isnt going to be nearly enough.
If you look at the bottom of the page in a story for the current headlines at CNN.com you'll see it:
<BR>
<BR>
<B>Beauty queens flee Nigeria as death toll rises</B>
Couldn't agree with you more as far as AMD underpricing stuff. While I like the fact that AMD has made ludicrously fast chips available quite inexpensively over the last few years, I've always wondered about their pricing.
/OPINION
I've always viewed Intel's strategy as "price the fastest available chip considerably higher than the rest, and that'll pay for R&D." This seems to have held reasonably true over the years, where the fastest chip out there is more expensive than the second fastest by 50% or more. If people really want that much more performance, then that'll give Intel the financial incentive (and more importantly, the finance) to go out and develop something faster.
AMD in the grand scheme of things, hasn't had a whole lot of experience with ground up development in the x86 arena (i.e. very complicated chips) until recently. (Note that this does not apply to other chips, such as the terrific 29xxx RISC processors they made for embedded control, and then dropped.) They started life in the x86 world as a second source x86 manufacturer. (I imagine IBM wanted more than Intel making 8086's, because Intel was pretty small at the time.) They built x86 chips under license from Intel (i.e. they got the masks from Intel and just ground out copies) up to and including the 386 to my knowledge.
Then Intel marketing really started to turn up the heat and realize that there might be something to that whole PC processor business right around the time the 486's were getting popular. The "Intel Inside" campaign started to take off sometime around then. Also with this came the fact that Intel was well established at this point as a manufacturer, and no longer felt the need to license to second source manufacturers, and AMD was sort of left holding the bag and scrambling to do design in the x86 market, something they hadn't needed to do before.
Right around the same time, Cyrix, who started in the PC biz making the notable "FasMath" math coprocessors (because Intel's weren't terribly fast until the Pentium; more on this later), started to make whole x86 procs themselves. With the 486, doing this design wasn't too bad for AMD and Cyrix because the 486 was mostly a logical extension of the 386 (with an internal math-coproc), and added things like more L1 cache (a few bytes vs. 256 bytes in the 386), higher speeds, some other things I don't remember, and clock multiplying (i.e. running the proc at some speed faster than the system bus). In fact AMD and Cyrix were typically bettering Intel's designs at the time due to this fact. (Cyrix, I think, had a write back cache before anyone else did, and AMD built some crazy fast version of the 486; up to 160mhz if memory serves me right!)
What really started to bring Intel forward was the Pentium. Intel, I think, has always seemed to have a gift for getting a feel for what's coming along in the next 3-4 years, and designing ahead of time to meet it. When the 486 came out with an integrated mathco, everybody was like, "only CAD weenies and the like need those; they just add cost!" Even Intel catered to that crowd and made the 486SX, which shipped (at much lower cost), with the mathco disabled, and later versions had it removed entirely. But that decision proved to be fortuitous in the fact that applications begin to take advantage of that power in the 486's lifetime.
In the Pentium, Intel pushed farther by doing 2 big things to make the chip faster:
1. Making it superscalar (multiple exectition units that could perform operations simultaneously, for the most part)
2. The performance of the mathco really got good in the Pentium
Enter now AMD into the Pentium forum. Now they're beginning to get caught with their pants down. The stopgap solution to counter the performance advantage of the Pentium was just to make really fast versions of the 486. They would do a performance rating of equivalence to a given Pentium. I think the 133mhz version was equivalent to a Pentium 75, and the 160mhz version (anybody have one of these?) was I think equivalent to Pentium 90. After a while, it became obvious that this strategy wasn't going to work. So after much apprehension, AMD rolls out their home brewed competitor to the Pentium, the AMD K5, and in a nutshell, it ends up totally sucking.
In all fairness to AMD, it wasn't that bad a chip (I still have one in a rsync backup machine) but they made some short sighted design considerations, and fixed relatively minor problems while leaving larger ones untouched. Notably, they decided to spend their transistor budget (I'm talking physical transistor count on the chip, not money), which was slightly less than Intel's, but not a whole lot less, on fixing the 'u'/'v' pipeline interdependency problem (one of the pipelines on the original Pentium couldn't support every instruction the other could) and making considerations to make mixed 16/32 bit code (think Windows 3.11 and Windows95) run faster, instead of making their FPU go really fast. They sort of banked on the fact that the FPU performance still wasn't terribly important compared to integer execution speed. Which was probably true when they were developing the chip.
But all of a sudden the internet got big, and people wanted to do really FPU intensive things like 3D gaming, playing MP3's, and digital video. The fact that they had a shitty FPU and the fact that they were manufacturing on a process that was old, and consequently couldn't get the chip to clock as fast as Intel's offerings began to hurt them. The K5 was not going to cut it. Which brings us to the next important part of AMD's corporate strategy, buy your way out of trouble!
Lucky for AMD, a small company called NexGen was working on a comptetitor to Intel's x86's, but their offering, the NexGen 586 (anybody have one of these?) was not doing so well. They were also working on a fairly impressive chip that was basically RISC inside but chomped up x86 instructions into RISC sized bites, sort of like the Pentium Pro (and P2, and P3). This chip was the NexGen 686. AMD liked it so much that they thought buying NexGen out was a good idea, and the NexGen 686 became the AMD K6. Because NexGen had applied a modicum of thought to the design, it turned out to be relatively extensible too; over the course of its life it added a 100mhz bus speed (Super Socket 7) and some onboard L2 cache (64k for the K6-II, 256kb for the K6-III). While it still wasn't as fast as Intel's offerings, AMD could offer it quite a bit less expensively than Intel's stuff. They even managed to get the 3dNow! stuff going and sold a chip with inferior FP performance to the gaming crowd. An impressive feat.
But by the time the 450-500mhz chips were coming out, AMD was once again in trouble. Intel had figured out with the Celeron-A how much faster having an onboard full speed cache could make a proc, and more importantly they could get themselves into a much less expensive design to manufacture (Slot 1 was hella expensive to make). AMD's K6 was beginning to show it's age.
The solution to this, from what I understand, was basically to buy portions of the Alpha processor design (and maybe some members of the design team) to put the Athlon together. This theory seems to hold some water in the fact that the original Athlon (and maybe the later chips too) used the Alpha EV6 bus for I/0, so obviously there must of been some resemblance in design.
What AMD chose to do here is to crank out Athlons as cheap as they possibly could to try to sway consumers, PC manufacturers, and maybe some Wall Street analysts on their side and beat Intel in the raw numbers game. What they should have done was raise the price of their high end chips somewhat and started putting money in the bank for R&D, and get prepared for the time when the Athlon would start to fall behind. We're now beginning to see this, I think, with AMD having to shift away from the clock speed battle (probably a smart move) in the Athlong XP performance rating system. More recently, the setbacks with the Athlon XP 2800+ and faster seem to imply that AMD is starting to reach the limitations of the Athlon design.
OPINION
I wonder if the Clawhammer (and other x86-64 designs) are going to be all that good because, clearly, AMD has less of an R&D budget to play with. My interpretation of their recent annoucement is that it is possibly some spin-doctoring to buffer the fact that when the Hammer comes out, it's not going to be in the same class as Intel's and will not to be able to compete. From a marketing/PR standpoint, and perhaps a relations with investors standpoint, this may make some sense because investors are less likely to have their faith shook if they think that competing with Intel on the desktop market wasn't part of the game anymore, as opposed to x86-64 failing while in open competition with Intel. Customers are also less likely to lose faith with AMD as well, and simply see them once again as a budget manufacturer of x86 chips, as opposed to one that offered better chips.
If AMD does focus less on making fast x86 processors to compete with Intel, the hobbyists will be disappointed, but I applaud AMD for having the business acumen to make that decision and try to stay in business doing what they can do, as opposed to trying to go for broke in a CPU performance "pissing contest" with Intel. In the early to mid '90s, AMD cancelled production of the very good (and reasonably well selling) 29000 series RISC chips because the cost of supporting them (making compilers, etc.) was too high to make any money from the chip. Maybe if AMD had priced the chips just a bit more they could still be in business of making 29xxx devices, and maybe, just maybe, if they had charged $5 or so more for each of their procs, they would have had the R&D funding to go after Intel, and keep up in the clock speed dept.
I live and work in a tropical country without AC either. Pretty hot, no need to say. Mains electricity is as jumpy as the music, too.
My AMD box (and all the rest) works fine, going on 3 years, now. With a nice big fat powerful cooler.
And the best satbilizers available (no no-breaks - too costly and fry out too much).
No over- under- or side-clocking, either.
it's not a troll, i remember paying $700 for a p200 (just the chip) the day it came out oh so many years ago and now i would have to pay someone to come throw away the same machine (if i stil had it anyway)
and i worked at the store i bought it from
just recompile your carbon or cocoa app as 386 in project builder an it will run.
OSX is alive on x86 processors (AMD) to be exact. Demo of Carbon and Cocoa apps have been shown.
Classic apps cannot be done.
just recompile your carbon or cocoa app as 386 in project builder an it will run.
I cannot recompile Photoshop because Adobe does not provide the source code for its applications. Heck, I don't even think Adobe could "just recompile" signal processing cores written in assembly language.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Why does Intel having no other competitors making PC Chips mean that they have no competition.
The truth about intel's competition is found by changing your sites on where the competition lies.
The Internet, as Microsoft correctly concluded was their competition. More and more processing power moves away from the PC, and onto large servers processing all the information, thus, rendering the great masses of PC's as Dumb Terminals. "The local operating systems as a replaceable commodity."
Let's face it, more and more, Intel Pentiums have become processors for dumb terminals.
Once a PC's processor has the capability to display any image in realtime at 24 Frames Per Second, then there is no need for advancement in processing power. All the additional processing power is used and demanded by servers.
Seems to me some of the greatest advancements in PCs' performance has come more from:
1. Cheaper yet faster Memory (RAM and HARD-DRIVES)
2. Faster more powerful Graphics Display Hardware.
Than from the microprocessor's MIPS rating on the CPU.
I really can't think or conceptualize over 1 Billion commands to give my Pentium ever second. But, I certainly could visualize a Billion Bytes worth of info for my Graphics card to process in the form of an (.mpeg), say, to watch a movie or something.
Just as Mac users would be worse off if Windows didn't exist,
Huh?! Apple would be places you can't imagine if Windows didn't exist. That's Microsoft's biggest crime, IMHO. Their illegal tactics have kept Apple safe in a little, harmless niche.
such as Final cut, which is way more of a beast than Photoshop, then adobe can also do it.
the onus isnt on the user to recompile, youve been living in linux land too long
AMD is saying that besides desktop chips, they are also moving into workstation and server chips. How exactly is this "pulling out from competition with Intel"...? Quite the contrary, they will now be competing not only with the Pentium and Celeron, but also with the Xeon and Itanium (and with chips from Sun, HP, etc.). And judging from the support they're getting before even releasing the Hammer, I'd say their future looks quite bright indeed.
I'm sorry for the rant, but for the last couple of years Slashdot has become a swamp. Half the articles are from someone pushing their personal agenda ("Microsoft sucks", "Apple rules", "Person X is a bastard", etc.), and the other half are simply wrong. The readers then comment on the Slashdot "news items" without even bothering to read the original articles (thus propagating the ignorance) and finally the moderators mod things as "interesting" or "insightful" without bothering to see if they're even remotely true.
RMN
~~~
You are assuming that there will be new entry. That's a big assumption. What we've seen is that the Microprocessor design and manufacturing industry is a natural monopolory (ie declining marginal costs, increasing returns to scale) it is simply efficient for the market to be served by multiple firms.
What's more interesting is the appearant issue of a durable goods monopoly that intel (and MS) is facing; where they aren't competing against other firms, but rather they must compete with their own products. "Why should I upgrade, my 1.2Ghz runs just fine?" With a monopoly on a durable good, to the extent that the good is truly durable the price will approach marginal cost. (as if the market were competitive.)
First of all, AMD does have diversity in chip manufacturing. They make flash memory.
Second, cutting employees doesn't mean you pay less taxes. The pre-tax charge that you link you has nothing to do with taxes. This pre-tax charge is a one-time expense associated with the restructuring. It mostly represents the severence pay they'll be giving people.
I've read your story submission (which slaughters any reasonable economic theory) and this. You shouldn't try to write about finance until you get an education.
That which does not kill me only makes me whinier
Amd have a 64bit chip coming that will scale to 8 processors without any bridge!
How much money is their in servers ?
Shit loads is all i know!
Why would AMD want to sell 10M cpus for 100 USD when they could sell 1.12M for 500 USD and make the same money!
(This is based on production pries of 50 USD)
500 - 50 * 1.12M = 500M
100 - 50 * 10M = 500M
CIA Factbook 2002 (US):"Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households
It is my personal opinion that Economics is a bunch of bull. You can't actually use Economics to do anything, you can't accurately predict anything with it and you can't even really accurately explain things with it.
Yeah, you could use economics to say that this will mean chip prices will go up, but you could just as well use economics to show that prices will go down.
There's a joke used by a lot of economics teachers where they say "This week's homework is the same questions as last week's homework, all that's changed is the answers".
Economics is a pretty shady science (if you even want to call it that, I wouldn't) and most economics professors will tell you this. Economics can never be used to "prove" anything. Economics = Bull.
The market for PC is soft, and probably will be for a while. Most people now have an fast enough PC.
On the other hand, the market for embedded devices is still thriving, as everying seems to have a processor embedded in it.
Yeah, the embedded market isn't as sexy as the processor market, but there is huge volume potential.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
AMD has a very effective roadmap ahead for Athlon, where it basically goes head to head with Celeron. Athlon is smaller and faster there. Hammer is expected to debut at 3400+ ratings and Opteron is expect to hit 4000+ and higher in 2003. Besides being faster, these chips will have native 64 bit capability which P4 lacks. They will smoke P4 across the board, and have a smaller die size to boot.
If AMD can execute (every sign is they can) they should take off during any tech recovery. Believe me, when Hammer starts selling like hot cakes, the CEO will sing a whole different tune! :-)
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Hmm,let's see here, we live in a society where 1% owns 40% of the assets, and the bottom 40% own 1%. The median income of the bottom 20% is 7,000, and the median household income of the 20% that is second from the bottom is 19,000 per year. Our society is dominated by authoritarian insitutions, where the majority of life choices are to either be dominated or to move the ladder and dominate others. Hey, I have an idea, what about democracy? Do we have that, even in government? The answer is no, we have representatives, who are required to accept money contributions from extremely wealthy "beneficiaries". These politicians then serve these interestes while paying lip service to the rest of us, who have no voice.
So, while authoritarian socialist regimes have been tried, democratic socialism has not been tried. IN FACT, I THINK THAT IT IS ARGUABLE THAT DEMOCRACY ITSELF HAS NEVER BEEN TRIED. You cannot have democracy in a society that allows for complete control of the assets of production by such a small minority. The writers of US Constitution were very aware of this and created a representative government to keep the majority from being able to address their needs directly. What they didn't count on is the level of corruption that extreme differences in wealth would promote in a representative government.
What is more efficient? Is it something that takes less energy? By definition it will produce less heat and thus will cease to do what you imply it must do on the first place - burn penises.
You can't handle the truth.
Smarter devices instead of raw computing power.
Realtime rendering is sorta nice, but not really in the general interest of computing. Look at a human brain: A single neuron transmits information much slower than a microchip. But as a whole, the system simply wrecks a intel (amd, motorola, etc etc) in computing power.
Its specialized, sure. But in terms of speed, microchips already fulfill 80 - 90 percent of our daily computing demands - the stuff where a mass of neurons is bad at, e.g. all sort of clulating. Difficult, but not real smart stuff.
On the technical side, the current hype is phones, not pc's - think Europa & Asia. And the next big thing will require smartness. Something a single general purpose chip, even in its multi giga hertz form, can't handle. Raw Speed alone is losing it's selling point.
AMD seems to get it.
The only skin on a computer should be porn.
hmmm microsoft to be dominant while apple is obsolete.... we MUST be the alternate universe. ... where kludge reigns king.
the bizzaro world
Two words : Uh-Oh!
The Forbes article is nonsense. AMD is not leaving the PC processor market, and is a strong contender. Forbes is one of those magazines for the rich and rich wannabes that tell the rich what they want to hear.
"AMD, which has fought a losing battle in recent quarters against Intel Corp.,
Be VERY careful about this article, and ones like it. The stock market is close to 100% corrupt, as recent TV programs like 60 Minutes have shown. The purpose of the article could be to get lots of people to sell AMD stock because someone realizes that the new processors from AMD will be very successful, and wants to buy the stock.
See the comments to this story beginning at (#4742661).
I don't doubt that AMD, and Intel, will pursue other markets. For most people who have bought a computer with a speed of 800 MHz or more, there is no need to purchase another computer. But the day will come when video is much more important than it is today. (Remember when GUIs were new? Remember when color printers were new?) When video becomes important, everyone participating will need much faster processors than are made today.
Perhaps this will teach a lesson to all those wishing to compete. It will also fuel the fire of fanboys on both sides of the equation while those who go for logic and reason will continue to laugh at the stupidity of both sides. Pick what works, not what your 'team' goes for... idiots.
They never said they were pulling out, just shifting to makeing processors that consumors will use more, especially in devices OTHER than PC's, but they didn't say "We're not making processors for the PC market," or anything like. They're just saying that their main focus will not be the current speed race with Intel. It's fine with me. Why focus so much on pure speed of numbers, when things can be done to make the processors more useful and efficient?
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley..." - ROBERT BURNS
Perhaps we'll see long gone competitors make a comback now? ...like Cyrix??
he... hehe.... hahha...hhahaaahhahaha..HAHHHAAHAHAHA!
man I crack myself up...
Think about this for a minute... if AMD reached number 1, don't you think they'd sell out just like Intel? Spend all their money on ads, screw around and make crappy decisions? This is not uncommon to all different things, like music bands. Once they got popular, they forget their original fans and do all that promotion shit.
Would AMD do that?
blog & fiction: jd87
Regardless of fanboy bullshit for or against MS, the fact is that MS does not produce an operating system. They produce an environment. An operating system would not confuse the GUI with the component interface and interaction. The GUI would not be put actually into the kernel in a way that made it difficult or damn near impossible to fix problems with crappy design (which is in itself crappy design). Windows is pretty, but the METHODS for its interfacing are shitty. How many times must I find that it is indeed those guys in Redmond that tell me how I can configure my system, run programs, view the files, etc. What about my choices? How about letting users actually decide for themselves what software runs on the system and where it is put? I wouldn't mind getting rid of all that CRAP that both bloats the system and also increases the threat of penetration. For that matter, I think that the "required" bloat should be axed out of existence and in its place put professional software engineering practices where a modular system (collective of small working parts) is put in place instead of requiring a user to have this 7 meg bloated piece of crap that is only required for about 0.000001% of the operations of the system.
Hey! I know lets all walk around punching ourselves in the testicles! When people ask why we are doing something so obviously foolish we will blindly lash out and call them anti-MS zealots (ignoring the hypocricy of our stating that) and simply wear pretty clothes and market ourselves well. We will still be punching ourselves in the nads, but at least now we look good.
MS has yet to produce a user friendly system. Of course by user friendly I mean that you can do more than the pre-scripted and very restrictive functions. Remember those RC cars that could only turn in one direction and that happened anytime you reversed? That is the MS promise. We promise to take a super fast machine and bring it to its knees all the while restricting you from being able to do what you need to do to get your job done because of shoddy engineering. (Hint: no programmer, designer or engineer can EVER think of everything a user could need to do... it is therefore imperitive to create a flexible (as in works with OTHERS and can be EXTENDED) system that gives the choices to the user... sorta like Legos --- wow, what a concept!)
There's been a growing shift of attention to embedded devices in the last few years. In the last five years or so, we're starting to see Joe Consumer spend more time with their embedded computers:
Palm Pilots and Handheld PC's.
Smart Cell phones (with games and cameras, even!).
Sophisticated set-top boxed.
In-car navigation/entertainment systems.
Portable entertainment and recreational technology.
One of the reasons Microsoft went into developing WindowsCE is the realization that there is consumer demand for lower-performance systems that are also less resource-intensive.
AMD is going after some of this market -- witness their acquisition of Alchemy -- the Au1x core cranks out 500 MIPS of processing at 1 Watt. (Heck, at lower speeds, you can almost get down to 1/4 watt.) And does it much cheaper than Intel or Motorolla.
AMD also came out with their new 802.11b chipset that will wifi-enable the next generation of portable gadgets, reducing processor overhead and power demands.
AMD should stop trying to compete head on only int he PC Market. There's a lot of money selling silicon for other applications.
The way I understand this is simply that they wont concentrate on making the fastest CPU anymore. They will probably concentrate on good value instead, just like a duron is plenty for anything you want to do on the desktop today, the future AMD CPU will do the job quite nicely.
The only things where a (speculative) future AMD wouldnt do the job is high end gaming and workstations (3d/etc). Will they make a custom CPU for high end servers/workstations not based on x86? Who knows... their new 64 bits arch may be the key to their market shift.
Back in the day, AMD was a chipfab. Intel made processors, but most of them were contracted out to independent companies, who could do a better job. Then one day, AMD realized that with their efficient factories, they could make a pretty good 486 clone. Intel sued, and in the end, AMD was forced to [a] stop directly copying Intel, and [b] use a different name.
The rest of the story's history. AMD started making the K5 and K6; then they made the K7, their first processor to not be compatible with Intel-standard mobos (remember when every processor used Socket 7?) And their custom architecture, in the end, almost netted them 25% of the chip market.
Then, for whatever reason, AMD started doing badly. And they said to themselves, maybe competing with Intel isn't such a good idea after all.
I expect AMD to release Barton and the like, simply because they're already developed. I expect them to release Opteron and future x86-64 processors, but only with cache/speed/price configurations designed for servers, because there's still money in people switching from proprietary Unix to Linux. I expect Apple to soon make an announcement that AMD is its new supplier; whether that means AMD buys Motorola's desktop PPC chip business, or whether it simply becomes a fab for Apple/IBM-produced designs, I have no idea. But I don't expect AMD to announce any new desktop x86 processors from now on. If this article means anything, it's that Barton's it.
No, no, no. You see, there's this thing called demand, and when there's not enough demand for a product, it generally exits the market place.
If consumer processors make AMD money, AMD makes consumer processors. If consumer processors don't make AMD money, AMD doesn't make comsumer processors.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Ok, you got me! Due to some queer time anamoly, April 1st has arrived at the end of November, right? Right? ^_^;;
AMD is thinking on the right track.. they are essentially saying that they will expand their market because there IS something as 'too fast' (for the workstation market, anyway)..
/w 128mb ram is more than enough for web-browsing, email, and an instant messager and fast enough to use any bus architectures required to access your devices such as cameras, pdas, mp3 players. Why should people upgrade if there is no need? Sure, there may eventually be a need for real-time digital editting in Grandmom's computer.. but it isn't needed yet.. so why should Grandmom buy a computer that can do that??
Sure, chips will keep increasing in speed.. but they can't increase so drastically their uses drastically overshadow the uses of their target audience.
A 400mhz Celeron
Computer purchases will slow down considerably in the next few years (and it has already begun) until there is a new 'killer app' that requires something more..
Perhaps when we finally have 3d capable desktop software, we may begin seeing more upgrades... and even more when 3d capable screens are available (holographic 'screens'!).
The point is that the consumer market has been leveling while the chip speed as been flying higher.. there isn't any money in doing R/D if nobody is buying the product! So they want to start looking into other markets, the markets of which the consumers are shifting their eyes to. Digital Cameras, PDAs, Wireless networking, etc.
AMD is standing on one leg, they need another foot otherwise they may topple once the chip market levels. Intel has already done it, they are making wireless equipment and webcameras... they know that when the chip-market is doing poorly, they have a little leg to stand on.
What? IBM Apple's only chip supplier?
Jesus Christ. That's sort of amusing because it's probably the product of a quick glance at whatever AIM-related stuff Slashdot runs. There's so little Motorola love round here, I can kind of see how an idiot might reach this conclusion.
For the record: Apple's G4s come from Motorola exclusively, though IBM did put out many of the iMac G3s back in the day. And Big Blue's upcoming Fishkill plant might pump out some nasty future G5s, along with the PowerPC 970.
But that's in the future. Please stop making stupid pronouncements.
I agree with this post. It's going to be a wonderful Intel-Windows-Nvidia world!
I'd say a 4-way Opteron system is about as 'virtual' as it gets at this point...
Wonder if this news will follow w/ severe Christmas time price drops?
Might be just the opportunity I was waiting for to build an x86 box (and finally retire my old G4).
----
The difficulty of a system is comparable only to the ignorance of the end-user.
#SickNotWeak
Someone hook this guy up with a reality-check pill. Intel is horrible, windows is horrible, you ever used a REAL computer? Didn't think so.
The ecomomical answer isn't to invest tons of money in developing faster CPUs, it's to throw available CPU cycles at the problem -- stealing cycles from other systems.
If you use a un*x varient, check out distcc
http://distcc.samba.org
It should make your day much more productive.
-- Intrusion prevention for Linux servers. www.cylant.com
AMD's can't hold a cabdle to the new P4's with a decent chipset. I just don't see where they are going to survive ? Their chips can't compete in the imbeded market, to much energy use. Their chips can't compete in the Server market, to SLOW and not enough memory addressable. Their chips apparently can't compete in the desktop market either...I think it is time to drop the last few shares of AMD I've got left....This is really bad news for the consumer though...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Windows - Intel Apple - Motorola Linux - AMD Could it really happen? Three separate desktop platforms with their own processor manufacturer? It's kind of scary if you think about it.
Have you hugged your penguin today?
Great, so hopefully this means AMD will do other architectures other than x86 now. For instance, Intel has also made inroads in the embedded market with their StrongARM - AMD could make an embedded competitor to this. Or even take on higher-end customers with a SPARC or Alpha-based design. If they're talking to Cray as the article suggests, it doesn't sound too far-fetched for them to do something else entirely.
Ummm... I think he should have typed "Just as WINDOWS users would be worse off if the MAC didn't exist."
Macintosh humor! MacComedy.com
Or at least it's to the point where there's no point to it all, except for the people who just have to buy an $75,000 Lexus, because they perceive it as being better than a $25,000 Toyota. Sure, it may be better but it isn't three times better, nor is it worth the higher maintenance costs and poorer fuel efficiency. But you really can't argue with those people anyway.
Here's where we stooped to: Intel reports a 9% increase in raw clock speed, which translates to a 4% increase in synthetic benchmark performance, and the power consumption increases by 15% at the same time. Great. Or NVidia ships a new graphics card that requires an external power supply and has all these great features that are effectively worthless, because it's just barely getting to the point where a game can require hardware T&L--something that's several generations old--and still make a small profit. Never mind all the stuff in later generation cards. Unless you're John Carmack, there's no incentive for developers to support this stuff, especially when an entire game console costs half as much as new video card.
Well, we've finally found out what slashdotters fantasize about. The site is slashdotted!
It's the other way around. If it wasn't for Macs, PC users would still be stuck with DOS. Microsoft has always been a step or two behind Apple.
Perhaps my post was marked off topic while the others weren't because it hits a little too close to the truth.
This was a poorly worded Reuter's story on Forbes. This information is not correct, and nothing has changed from what CEO Hector Ruiz has been saying for months. AMD will more closely partner with companies in CPU design, as we reported months ago. They will also partner in FABs as with the announced UMC deal. They have never focused on the high end where AMD is. Why do so many completely incorrect statements get upped to 5 insightful when they are wrong? Bottom line is AMD is continuing even greater level of partnerships, and is going to listen to customers, not tell them what to do like Intel does. They are not going to no longer compete with Intel. Thanks Reuters! Hire a real tech writer please.
ignorance is bliss. googlefiberatx.com
if wisdom is realizing how little you know, yet knowing others and enlightenment is knowing yourself, then how do you explain that someone knows what you know about them?
I was absolutely thrilled when we got a state-of-the-art 386Mhz PC and I could compile in only 30 minutes. I still did the design work on paper, then programmed it, then reviewed it. Then compiled during lunch, preferably on a different PC. If the compiler did produce an error, I would fix it on my development PC, but would probably wait until I had more work finished before compiling again.
So compile the piece being developed and then unit test it rather than recompiling the entire project. Full builds should rarely be done more than once a day. It may only be ten minutes to rebuild the entire project, but that should be followed by at least a few hours of integration testing, which provides the ToDo list for more development. Errors in the code are BUGS. Take the time to code it right the first time.
Have you read about any software development methodologies? Most of them recommend that you review the code manually, rather than depend on the compiler. The old "Code Complete" strongly recommended it, and the new Extreme Programming suggests paying someone to review your code as you type. Compiling should be the last step before you hand off the code to QA, not part of the development process.
May I assume that 170,000 lines of code is not being developed completely by one person? So who approves the changes to the "high up" header files? Who tests it? What tracks what is affected by each change, and who verifies that each affected piece still works? Why do YOU need to recompile the entire project more thn once a day?
I am also assuming you understand what you are programming. If you really need to see "hello world" on the screen to know what the code should do, your programs may suffer other problems, such as lack of design, which is unacceptable outside of Redmond.
Back to the topic (or rather, I guess I should say something about the main article):
I have friends who are still happy with Pentium133s, since all they do is email, browse, and occasionally edit pictures. Of course high end graphics require better processors. The latest games have us buying the latest PCs. FPSs have been acceptable at almost movie quality for a while. But editing a video with a Pentium500 is painful. Movie-editing is about the only app left to push CPUs.
Now that the Intel-AMD war has made the 2Ghz processors really inexpensive, they can sit back and collect some supplies before charging into unneeded territory. I don't mind.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
It would be nice if the choice of Architecture was more open ->
Sun -Vs- x86 -vs- PowerPC -vs- Other designs.
While most of the market feel they're stuck to one I happy to try anything, especially if it can mean lower prices because I generally use a recompilable OS - Gentoo Linux or BSD.
x86 is so common that it's slowing improvements down. If Intel/whoever could scrap it and and start again, making sure BSD/linux or something open could run it then things would be most different.
Prognosis:
- OpenSource programs can redefine the market, making it more competitive by reducing industry inertia in terms of CPU arch. This is most applicable to anything licensed loosely.
- Binary programs increase industry inertia by seporating customers, commiting them to a platform. This is most applicable to restrictive properitory licenses.
Thus, technology is not just progressing by demand but also by the seller making note of what the buyer doesn't consider, aka ignorance.
Now, where can I buy a RISC, PowerPC cycled chip with Hyperthreading?
The patent offices have always had a big effect.
A blog I run for the wealth
Technically, your interpretation of their words is valid. However, since AMD is ALREADY producing plenty of non-solely-PC-market items, such as
* flash memory (they and Atmel more or less 0wn the flash-memory market),
* high-throughput ethernet controllers (the 79C976 is WAY too efficient to justify putting in today's average desktop box), and
* embedded microcontrollers (the Elan SC520 is pretty much an entire 486 motherboard and processor in one chip),
I tend toward a more pessimistic interpretation.
Paranoid
Bwaahahahahaa.
I don't think the Forbes article was telling the whole story. From bits and pieces I've seen around the web, it seems like AMD is just going to get the Athlon scaled up a little more and shift focus to the ClawHammer. Who cares about a 5GHz P4 if it can't run 64-bit apps which might be common in two years? A lot of people who buy computers today thinking they're hot stuff are going to be very pissed off in the near future when they start having compatbility issues, even if software developers do both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of their apps. If Hammer is on time for next year (Yeah, right!), I suspect we'll see mass migration to 64-bit apps by '05. A lot of people probably don't anticipate upgrading for another five years or more.
if apple can do it
The Classic application environment is more of a virtualized native environment than it is emulation of hardware.
Carbon vs Cocoa, on the other hand, is like Winelib vs Qt, just a different toolkit to access the same underlying graphics system (Quartz or X11).
the onus isnt on the user to recompile
But if your proprietary software publisher refuses to recompile its application for your hardware platform, tough shit. One more reason for free software.
Will I retire or break 10K?
AMD makes a really good competing processor to Intel. It's hard to find anything in the tech industry nowadays that competes well as a substitute for another product. I hope AMD will at least keep up with Intel even if not aiming to beat them. I think AMD is perceived as a good solid company by standards, but seems to have entered the race a bit too late. I guess now they are trying to enter new races earlier, which might not be a bad idea.
The important word here is "key". Saying something is not they key doesn't mean that you're going to abandon it; it just means that it's not the only thing you have to worry about.
But you cannot compete directly with Intel running on half your spark-plugs. It is sort of an all-or-nothing deal.
Maybe they can pick one x86 niche, like the low end or the high end. However, Intel can focus on such niches to kill them in that sector. Similar to Microsoft using a monopoly to target another market at a medium-term loss.
For example, lets say AMD focuses on the high end. Since Intel will have no competition on the low and medium end, they can use such cash cows to *subsidize* their high and, and ruin everything for AMD. Plus Intel can use the research for one X86 segment in the others, while AMD cannot "distribute" its development costs as much over different products. The research-costs-per-chip is higher for AMD if they try such.
I don't think it feasible to have one foot in and one foot out. Like somebody said in the "natural monopoly" message, the capital investment for that market is too high to be worked by smallbees (barring something revolutionary).
Table-ized A.I.
Context: Porting to "just recompile your carbon or cocoa app as 386 in project builder an it will run."
Then cwebster wrote: photoshop is available on i386/win32 nativly
True, recent versions of Adobe Photoshop Elements are available on Intel(tm) i386 architecture, win32 platform. However, recent versions of Photoshop rely on Windows features that remain poorly understood by independent implementors of Win32 API services on, say, FreeBSD/i386. (Darwin, the Mac OS X kernel, is FreeBSD on top of Mach.)
Thus, Mac OS XI users on hypothetical Mac hardware based on i786, Hammer, or Itanic processors would still run into hurdles for Mac apps that 1. aren't recompiled for i386 and 2. don't have an equivalent that runs in WINE.
its not like they lack i386 assembler to match thier ppc stuff...
But you still have to deal with the fact that the publisher reserves the right to refuse to make or to publish the port, in which case access to source code + patches distributed under 17 USC 117(a)(1) is the only way to get a port done.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Come on, it's not the end of world. AMD isn't going to quit manufacturing PC processors or anything, it's just a matter of moving the focus from competing with Intel (which takes a lot of money, time and effort and gives nothing) to more profitable things.
You all shall still have your daily Athlon upgrades..
Geek Slack List
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http://www.subgenius.com/
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http://www.slackersguild.com/
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BBC News
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http://www.memepool.com/
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http://www.plastic.com/
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http://www.arstechnica.com/
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http://www.metafilter.com/
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http://www.techdirt.com/
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http://www.bottomquark.com/ (Science News)
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http://newsforge.com/
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/
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http://www.anandtech.com/
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http://www.bjorn3d.com/
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http://cellar.org - Image of the Day
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http://www.collegehumor.com/
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http://www.everything2.com/
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http://www.kuro5hin.org/
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http://www.theonion.com/
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NASA - Astronomy Picutre of the Day
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http://www.majorgeeks.com - Windows Shareware / Freeware
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http://www.advogato.org/
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http://www.sweetcode.org/
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http://www.disinfo.com/ - Disinformation
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http://www.somethingawful.com/
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http://www.astronomynow.com/ - Astronomy News
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http://www.aip.org/ - American Institue of Physics - News
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http://www.adequacy.org/
And finally to be at least somewhat on topic, and for reference when you need to justify slacking:Hope this helps =)
Apple fans are probably pissing themselves with excitement. Perhaps now Apple will actualy be able to deliver faster computers!
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
A lot of OS-X apps are written in java these days, and those would run right off.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Itanium chips do Run x86 code, but, they are not optimized for it. They have a new, modern ISA thats supposed to be really good. Hammer on the other hand, is simply a 286->396 style extension to x86.
:P
Of course, Itanium chips don't really seem to run all that fast, so who knows what's going on
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
What I'm really hearing here, is that AMD won't be shelling out tons of bucks in competing with Intel to crank out the latest 9-gazillahertz equivilent chips. It's not to say that they're backing out of making processors, or even that they won't make fast chips, just that it will no longer be their target focus.
As many may notice, Intel's been cranking out higher-gigahertz chips on a fairly regular basis. AMD can probably hit the same numbers, just not in the same amount of time. Fine by me, how many people would actually *USE* a 3.2Ghz chip?
If they're expanding their market, perhaps we can forsee AMD moving into more intelligent chips, and perhaps assisting more in other peripherals (video cards, etc).
If this switch is successful, perhaps we'll see a happy ending. AMD gaining a stronger market in other areas could give them a bigger push in comsumer processor market a few years from now, whereas at the current time it's costing them money to compete.
I remember reading somewhere that nVIDIA is putting serious thought into entering the CPU market. Considering nVIDIA's Linux track record and awesome benchmarks on their GPUs, AMD's resignation from the CPU market isn't nearly as bad as it sounds.
I am still somewhat bitter with AMD's pathetic K6 releases, their performance simply didn't measure up as well as others claimed, even with "integer" operations.
Then in all fairness, I am still very bitter about the first Celeron (the one with no L2 Cache at all), and the FC-PGA Celerons, which should have started at 100 MHz bus.
AMD's idea of making a bargin chip is: Let's design a chip that costs less to make. Intel's idea on a bargin chip is: Let's take an expensive chip and cripple it a staggering amount.
I was also wary of how easy it is to crack a core, AMD's physical chip design is simply too unstable, even the frigging huge heat sink is only held on by a tiny clip. Not exactly the positive bolt-on lock that the heat sinks that my Alpha and Xeon system have.
This is a valid and common concern, and I have a friend that cracked his core... but: If you have an AMD-approved heatsink, they are designed to put the exact amount of pressure on the core without crushing it. Also, you can order copper "spacers" which help protect the core from the heatsink, and also aid in cooling. Please check out 1coolpc.com as they have the best computer cooling solutions, period.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
Stop this fooling around and nonsense. WIth AMD out and Intel the only way to go really with PCs, MACs have never looked better. MAC processors have always been better than Intel's practically. What's this already obsolete bullcrap. That just pisses me off. I'm not a regular MAC user, but I'm not blind and can see that they're great. Especially OS X. Fact that it's UNIX based is unbelievable. Honestly, I'd love it if Apple once again reigned supreme in the computer industry. Just give users more freedom to choose components and let stores sell the stuff and that's it. We go tit made. blah blah
Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because
God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software
engineer.
-- Fred Brooks
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