AMD Back in the Black

XaXXon writes "CNN reports that AMD had a profitable quarter for the first time in over two years. According to the story this is mostly because of their 64-bit line of chips (both Opterons and Athlon-64). AMD has forced both HP and Intel to change long-standing plans of only supporting Itanium, with HP coming out with Opteron-based systems and Intel releasing chips mimicking the 32/64-bit behaviour of the Opteron. According to the story, 64-bit processors are better than 32-bit ones because 32-bit processors 'can't take advantage of more than 4 megabytes (sic) of memory at a time.'"

Comments

Profitable

[0mni]

I guess its easy to understand that AMD would be running in the red, its prices are really quite low. Even with small production prices I couldnt imagine there would be too much profit for them.

Re:Profitable

[Anonymous Coward]

They haven't been that low for the last couple of years. I remember a time when every AMD CPU cost about half of what you paid for a comparable Intel.
Heavy investing and comparably small market share would have more to do with the losses.

Re:Profitable

[Loki_1929]

"According to this article in Toms hardware,"

I can't believe anyone still reads that rag. Let me give you a hint: Tom's was bought and sold about 3 years ago. Since that time, it has descended to the ranks of online propaganda host for Intel and a number of other companies. Tricks with driver versions and other such foolery causes them to get benchmark results drastically different from those of almost every other hardware site. No one's bias is more apparent than Tom's himself. Many of the conclusions to their own articles are non-sequitur, and the articles themselves are often little more than a press release for the company doing the most advertising at the time.

The few folks left defending Tom's tend to either be Intelbots or those who like to feel they know something after having read a few dumbed-down for-public-consumption articles from the site. To quote them is to invite laughted upon yourself. You would do well to visit other sites instead for your hardware news. Anandtech, Ace's Hardware, and plenty of other sites provide good, in-depth and trustworthy analysis, as opposed to operating a propaganda machine designed to rake in cash.

"prodution yield is about 30%, it it expected to rise up to 60% after two years of production CPU's are just too complicated to be produced with yield of 98%-99%."

But I say that production yield is about 80%, and is expected to rise up to about 95% after three months. And best of all, I can make up numbers and formulas to make it look very official and correct. When I see Tom in a 'bunny suit' on AMD's FAB floor, I'll believe their 'analysis' of production yields. Until then, he's making up numbers and statstics, adding to the other 73.4% of statistics that are already made up.

The quote from the article, which you have parroted here, is as follows: "However, we doubt that AMD's yield will be any more than 30% - this is based on information from other chip manufacturers that use similar processes."

Now, let's put a little bit of brain power into dissecting this, shall we? First of all, the whole thing is rather vague - using words and phrases like 'we doubt' and 'similar processes'. Secondly, these so-called 'other chip manufacturers' aren't even named. Are they talking about IBM? Or are they talking about 'Phil's CPU FAB', which is run out of a basement in a townhouse in Idaho? Just what are 'similar processes'? Is there someone else making Opteron and Athlon64 CPUs? Someone really ought to tell AMD about that. Or perhaps they're referring to the 130nm 'process', which describes almost nothing about the chips themselves? Maybe they're even talking about the 'process' of getting from wafer to die. Well, so far as I, or anyone I've ever talked to knows, AMD didn't go out and re-write the book on die construction with the K8. The 'process' of getting from wafer to die for K8 isn't that much different from that of K7. I would assume then that Tom's is also asserting that Barton and Thoroughbred yields are also a mere 30%. Or perhaps there's an entirely new made-up number for their yields.

It's amazing how you can throw a few numbers onto a website and everyone will believe you. It's almost as amazing that throwing a few numbers into a post will yield +4 Informative.

You can't compete if you're bleeding

[ObviousGuy]

I'm glad to hear this kind of recovery by AMD. Not only for the employees of AMD who won't have their lives disrupted by layoffs, but also for the stockholders who can reap the benefits of a company that is now making money.

What's more, it forces Intel to compete against a competitor that can actually put extra top line money towards research and development. Everyone wins when companies can compete.

Congrats

[Killjoy_NL]

Congratulations to AMD, they've been more innovative in the CPU market than Intel (which is a big feat in my book)
They've also setup a big solid state memcard department (I'm dutch and can't remember the correct name for it right now) which is running along nicely as well.

I hope they can continue keeping up the good work, they deserve it.

Re:Congrats

[Plammox]

Face it. AMD and Intel need eachother. For me it's a sign of health that Intel's roadmaps are affected by AMD's moves and vice versa.

It's easy to imagine how Intel or AMD products would be more inferior due to lack of competition.

Re:Congrats

[Killjoy_NL]

I don't mean to give them a +1000, Innovative.
+500, sure :D

They designed a cpu that's a much better workhorse than that of their competitor (Athlon), then they did it again (AthlonXP) and again (Opteron/AMD64)

That's innovation from where I'm standing.
I know Intel has a lot more different products, but they use those products more as cashcows, trying to milk as much money from it as possible before the market demands something new.

AMD have been better than Intel for some time...

[mu-sly]

...however, it's not about better products, it's about mindshare of the buyers.

I've been building PCs for quite a few years now, and have nearly always used and recommended AMD processors over Intel. In my opinion, AMDs cost less, often outperform their Intel equivalents, and lead the way when it comes to new innovations.

I guess the reason they don't have a bigger market share is because a lot of the OEM companies only sell Intel, and because Joe Public only knows about MHz as a measure of speed.

Main Reason for profitability

[MadX]

As long as they have a product that their rivals cannot compete with, they can keep the prices at a premium.
Hence, until such time as Intel release a competitive product, AMD can enjoy high profit margins.
This will change once Intel do release their competitive product though.

BTW: As was said in the article, the other arm of AMD's fabrication was also responsible for their profits ie: flash memory for cellphones. It's only because they have a majority stake in the joint venture with fujitsu, that they are able to declare the income as part of their overall turnover.

Re:Go, Go AMD

[AndroidCat]

AMD won't have won until Intel starts rating its processors in "equivalent Athlon64 performance". ;)

Re:4gigs of ram

[AndroidCat]

You can address more than 4 gigs of ram with an 8 bit processor. That doesn't mean that the result is pretty or that you should do it.