Slashdot Mirror
Intel to Spend $2B To Stay In The Game
hexed_2050 writes "AMD has declared dominance in the gaming and server microprocessor market in 2004, and Intel needs to respond.. fast! This is why Intel has planned to spend 2 billion dollars to upgrade their eight year old, Fab 12 plant in Arizona. "Part of what I do is put the emphasis on how fast we respond," explains Robert Baker, Intel's top manufacturing executive."
wow, what an amazingly negative quote.
is Intel resigned to only "respond" to AMD from now on, never to lead again?
Say what you want about Intel, but I'm happy to see they are investing $2 billion in an American plant, instead of sending those jobs away. Course, it could be that with the dollar falling they couldn't afford as much in other places... another reason why I think the value of the dollar going down isn't necesarily a bad thing.
I remember back when AMD announced a 64 bit desktop CPU. The common consensus was that they were completely daft, and other than the rabid early adopters who buy anything... it wouldn't do all that well, given that PCs are still tied to 32 bit software.
Now fast forward a year or two, and AMD is on top, and Intel is trying to play catch up. I never would have dreamed this would happen. I really have to tip my hat to AMD.
Jerry
http://www.syslog.org/
I wonder if this isn't just Intel trying to reverse the spin on AMD's announcement.
1. AMD announces they're top dog.
2. Intel decides to minimize the effect of this by bragging about how much money they can spend.
3. Neither is looking at any immediate, dramatic, change in business because processor sales follow seasonal patterns more than Ad campaign release dates.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
I heard the same thing after ATI came out with R300. nVidia is going the way of 3DFX. Now AMD seems ahead and those that think Intel is the evil empire are praying for it to disappear. It ain't going to happen. I'd venture to say the long-term prospects are better for Intel than AMD. For consumers, the pitched ATI/nVidia battle has been good. Same thing for AMD/Intel. Tough competition brings choice and lower prices. I hope Intel moves fast. I don't want AMD ruling the market anymore than I want Intel.
Intel has its chance to make the jump into the 64bit market and decided it was better to hold on to 32bit processors at the time. And it probably wouldn't have been a bad idea, if they had a plan to deal with the heat issues in their prescott line of processors. 33% more power for 5% less performance does not sit well with the market (prescott vs. northwood)
Valkyrie is about to die! Wizard needs food -- badly!
Gaming is a niche market. The reason AMD can do well with it is that it's a botique market, and they produce so many less chips than we do.
Look, MY ego's been undergoing enough thrashing lately. Gamers, it's your turn: The reason AMD is dominant in the market segment is a past Intel decision to concentrate on MHz rather than FPS. There's money to be made in gaming chips, sure, but not all that much compared to corporate desktops and laptops.
Sure, the world of processors is changing, but Intel is adapting to the overall MARKET, not merely to AMD's strategies and successes.
Side Note: How come you anti-globalization folks aren't applauding Intel for expaning a facility in the USA? Hmm? Where are AMD's chips made again?
What is this "make shit up for the headline" hour? Lets see what a professional news organization has to say: http://olympics.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type =technologyNews&storyID=6960222
They neglected to mention the location was Arizona, India. Its a new company town Intel is building.
Yey, slashdot started a AMD/Intel FanBoy battle.
Can we just admit that both have a lot of strengths, and that Intel or AMD ain't going anywhere and be done with it. When you go to store to buy your next CPU, buy the one you like and leave the rest of us the fcuk alone.
They aren't "staying in the game", they are the game.
Wake me when AMD provides complete solutions, chipset, motherboard, with integrated audio and video.
Intel is upgrading because 8 years is a long, long time for a modern chip fab. The "we'll make chips cheaper than AMD" crap is just investor PR.
AMD is only a threat to but one small fraction of Intel's business.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
For my accounting class, I did a financial comparison between Intel and AMD, and the results were quite shocking. I'd never bothered to look indepth at financial statements until then, and I'm amazed that AMD is still going despite having trouble posting a profit. While AMD may be in the lead technologically, the company is still a financial basketcase. The question is whether AMD has the ability to parlay it's lead into actual monetary gains.
take all the money that's going into those crappy blue man group commericals, and use it for some R&D...i hate those commercials...
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
Intel blew it when they cared more about advertising, clock speed vs. work done, and their precious high margin that looked so good to investors. This is the fault of Intel's corporate culture. The ability of your product, not its appearance or attractiveness to investors, is what matters. Hooha for AMD.
--Gentoo Baby!
AMD got the lead because they offer better performance for the same price or better price for the same performance (or somewhere inbetween). Intel WON'T win the race by spending more money on much faster, much stronger and much more expensive hardware. Do you think they will let these $2B just evaporate? They will try to get it back in processor prices. And that's their way to failure.
Other thing besides competing in CPU prices Intel could do would be to remove overclocking cap (say, by overclocking you void warranty, if they want to protect themselves from people who burn their CPUs) and possibly limit other such monopolist practices that people just perceive as customer-unfriendly.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
"AMD has declared dominance in the gaming and server microprocessor market in 2004: I've yet to see an AMD equipped server. If even 5% of all servers are equipped with AMD processors I'll be amazed. This reminds me of when the CEO of Pepsi released a book deatailing how Pepsi "Won the cola wars". I'm sorry if your still #2 in sales you didn't "win" and if you have only begun to break into the marked you certianly aren't "Dominance" For one, I think that AMD is doing great things with their new stuff (been syaing for years they need to do more than just clone Intel CPUs) and that Intel would be wise in paying attention to what AMD is doing but declaring dominance, at least in the server market is kind of like Ralph Nader declaring victory in October.
The only reason I buy AMD processors is because they're cheaper than Intel for the equivalent processor speed. If Intel wants my business back, they need only lower their prices below those of AMD.
Plus my system has been unstable for a long time and I am afraid my AMD cpu or motherboard may be to blame. Perhaps that fear is unfounded... I don't know... But peace of mind is worth something, and I have never had any reason not to have faith in an Intel CPU.
Translation: At Intel we decided to put our effort into having a CPU that had an insanely high clock speed, which we decided was much more important than actually getting the CPU to do a lot of processing, which would help contribute to higher frame rates for games and higher output for most users. Our evil competitor AMD realized that it was important to have the computer do something with the cycles they used, and built CPUs that not only did more, but did more at slower clock speeds. We are trying to figure out why this allowed them to win in a market we previously owned, but so far we've only come up with this MHz rather than FPS marketing phrase.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
AMD may declare what they want, but the numbers speak for themselves. I strongly doubt anyone can provide numbers showing that AMD is ahead of Intel in the server market (though I may grudgingly concede the gaming market).
Join the NFSNET. Our prime goal is making little numbers out of big ones. http://www.nfsnet.org/
Interesting to see how an Intel employee is now deriding higher-performing AMD CPUs as "about gaming" and basically implying Intel doesn't care about that "boutique" market.
And to admit Intel's all about marketing labels like MHz instead of true processing power (derogatorily refered to a mere "fps" here....).
Yeah, Intel's "adapting to the overall MARKET" - with an admitted marketing strategy centered on the fact their clock just happens to spin around a bit faster than and AMD clock.
Boy, all the words like "boutique" and "niche market" and "adapting to the overall market" make me feel like I've just seen a marketing droid's powerpoint presentation....
I call BS. Intel has plenty of resources to go after all kinds of different markets. Further, AMD chips do better at many other kinds of applications. Even further, Intel went so far as to rebadge very expensive Xeon chips (Pentium 4 Extremely Expensive Edition) to go after the "unimportant" gaming market. Finally, for most server usage, Opteron vastly outperforms Xeon, especially for multiprocessor servers.
Sure, the world of processors is changing, but Intel is adapting to the overall MARKET, not merely to AMD's strategies and successes.
I hope your company has a high rate of adaptation, it'll need it.
Side Note: How come you anti-globalization folks aren't applauding Intel for expaning a facility in the USA? Hmm? Where are AMD's chips made again?
Yes, that's nice, though I'm quite sure Intel made the decision based on dollars and cents rather than any warm-and-fuzzy pro America sentiment. Good PR doesn't hurt either - and Intel could sure use some. ;-)
It should also be pointed out that AMD could soon be manufacturing chips in East Fishkill, NY if Forbes is right.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
"Part of what I do is put the emphasis on how fast we respond," explains Robert Baker, Intel's top manufacturing executive
And it gives me goosebumps just wondering what the other part of his important job is... Aside from the fact that you should have been proactively whooping AMDs cache to begin with, not responding to their dominance.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
The problem with the opening statement from CmdrTaco is that this plant upgrade is not solely due to AMD's dominance in the gaming market. Remember, people, Intel makes a hell of a lot of other chips besides microprocessors. The article even states that AMD is considered to be the leader in automation processors. There is only a brief mention of gaming systems in the article, and Intel has other threats besides AMD. So, CmdrTaco's opening statement is somewhat misleading of Intel's reasons for this upgrade.
Regardless, one of the reasons why I prefer AMD is price/performance. Most of the benchmarks that I've seen in addition to my personal experience make AMD the clear winner in this scenario, particularly for gaming. AMD chips run cooler, take up less electricity, and cost less than their Intel counterparts. But that's only a small part of the competition's offensive against Intel. Intel now realizes that.
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
Geee...lets see: Intel has 85% market share and has a market cap of over 10 times that of AMD. Intel operates at a profit margin of 22.68% whereas AMD is at 2.89%. And yet the fanboys are declaring "AMD's dominance". How pathetic. Wake me up in 2015 if AMD still "dominates".
Maybe the fanboys should compare some basic financial statistics of Intel and AMD. This stuff doesn't change overnight.
I don't mean this in the "News for Nerds" sense - it's just that this is part of the normal business cycle. If you all recall, AMD took a lead during the "MHz wars" a few years ago when they hit 1 GHz first with the Athlon. Intel ramped up and recaptured that lead, but with an architecture that wasn't as efficient (the P4), but even though AMD retained the performance lead the little bit of momentum they brought into the mainstream desktop war was dissipated.
Plus, Intel had bet the farm on Rambus back then, and when that panned out they had to play catch-up. They eventually caught up. Then AMD hit a nive niche with the Athlon 64, but it's still a blip relatively speaking. Gaming is a niche market, and so are servers (though a bigger niche). Sure, AMD is the leader in gaming, but Intel has the volume, overall market share, and roadmap to compete where most of the dollars are. Plus Intel sells everything including the motherboard to vendors - AMD doesn't.
So Intel revamping a fab isn't really that big a deal. Heck, at the volumes they deal in, $2 billion is almost play money for them. We'll see how both companies manage the next transition - for market share to change appreciably towards either company will require either a major leap forward (not likely) or a major misstep (much more likely). Meanwhile, both companies will keep on pouring money into the fab for each now generation of chips, and continue until someone blinks.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Intel screwed itself out of a market, clear and simple.
When AMD began offering cheaper, but equally capable CPU's (Thunderbirds, Celerons), Intel chuckled about how they ran much hotter than their Intel counterparts. All the while AMD was eating up the low-end PC market.
When AMD began telling the world about their 64-bit plans, Intel chuckled about how the world wasn't ready for 64-bit. Additionally, they pushed their way-overpriced 32-bit Xeon's whenever anyone brought up 64-bit server CPU's.
When AMD began talking Opterons, Intel talked about their outrageously overpriced, and seldom utilized Itanium technology.
And when 64-bit AMD chips began to outsell Intel chips, Intel dragged their feet on adding 64bit extensions to their own chips.
Intels attitude seemed to be one that dooms nations, individuals, and companies: They were too arrogant and complacent!
They knew that they were the CPU kings of the world. They knew that the same company that had stolen the low-end PC market could never threaten their corporate market. They knew that 64bit CPU's were not needed yet, and they knew that they could basically put out what they want, when they wanted to, and that people would beat a path to their door, simply for the Intel brand name.
And now they know they were wrong.
Face it... Nations fall when they ignore the barbarians at the gate. People fall when they think they're more important than they are, and companies fall when they ignore the competition, and their target markets needs.
Intel wasn't developing what people wanted, they were developing what they thought people needed. There's a huge difference there. When creating art, you can do things your way. When manufacturing product, you do so to create what the market wants. Intel got it backwards, and their current state shows what happens when you do: Roadmaps tore up, lackluster sales, and a company that's now trying to re-invent itself, just to stay competitive in a market that it once owned.
Intel screwed up! It is the 21st century's IBM in a way, and as IBM had to do in its day, Intel must now change in order to stay alive in this industry it created.
No.
Businesses look for somebody else to blame. It's the first thing they "teach" you in MBA "school". Make sure somebody else can catch the blame. Hopefully you can blame a black, a jew, a gay, a woman, or some crippled person. Save the white straight male at all costs.
The reason I'm looking at AMD for my next upgrade is price. I simply get more for my money with AMD than with Intel.
Intel's spending 2B to upgrade its facilities, but who's paying? We are, that's who. So if chipset prices go up again, AMD will still be on top for the cheapskates among us.
Mercy was given to me by Christ...I must give the same to others.
When XBox 2 comes out neither Intel nor AMD will be the main players in the gaming market. The main players will be IBM, NVidia and ATI.
Hey guys ... Intel has been working on that rehab for quite a while. It's not in response to AMD's anything, it's just part of the plan.
So Bush wants the dollow low compared to other currencies which are pegged to the dollar ... ... but then he runs up massive debt which is paid for by bonds sold to those same countries.
That means they have a 3rd option. Re-peg their currencies to the Euro and let the US economy crash. It's a lot of short term pain for them, but a lot more short term and long term pain for us.
Opterons are dominating Xeons in 32-bit server performance right now and they will dominate them even further in 64 bit performance once Windows Server and Solaris 10 go 64 bit in the next couple months. Athlon FX processors are dominating Prescott P4's in 32 bit gaming performance right now and will dominate them even further in 64 bit gaming performance when XP64 is released in March.
And then there's the dominance in stock performance going on...AMD's stock price has more than doubled in the last 3 months; Intel's, "not so much". :)
I'm heavily invested in AMD right now and have made 2.7 boatloads of money on them since September. I expect to make a few more boatloads when 64 bit OSes go mainstream in the next quarter.
oooooooooo 3 hours!!!! wow... I can get 5 on my iBook.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Surprisingly, in all the comments, hardly anyone has given importance to the one amazing card that Intel holds: Dothan.
a spx?i=2308
Anandtech review on Linux performance on Dothan:-
http://www.anandtech.com/linux/showdoc.
Yes, everyone agrees that Prescott is too hot and doesn't quite match up to the FX-55 and its descendants. Shut up already.
Dothan's a different cheetah though. With it's mind-bogglingly cool thermal envelope, a moderately overclocked Dothan holds up to a FX-55 (which is a pretty hot processor, albeit not in the Prescott level) in most cases. Best of all, Dothan delivers GAMING performance almost as good as the top of the line AMD offering: FX-55. There's also tons of headroom for overclocking a Dothan to further increase its performance. All this when Dothan is not even running DDR2, PCI-E, or a performance optimized (as opposed to power optimized) mobo! Come Alvisio, things will get even better.
If Intel sheds a bit of Prescott ego, and it's already showing signs of doing so, and adopts Dothan variants for its upcoming desktops, it will whup some serious ass. Believe you me.
The only sadness is that current Dothans and especially their desktop mobos are horribly expensive. I'm just waiting for the prices to come down in the next 6 months. Can't wait to get my hands on a passive cooled, super silent Pentium M desktop that delivers the same performance as all these over-hyped FX-55s and Prescotts. Heck, i'm even willing to take a 10-20% performance hit, as long as i don't need to use an industrial exhaust fan or liquid nitrogen coolant. I can always make up for the processor performance by spending more on a graphics card anyway.
I love processors, not brands, btw. Hats off to the Israeli design team that pulled the P-M rabbit out of their hat!
Many AMD chips are made in Austin, TX
Just to point out, Fab25 is a FLASH plant now, not CPUs. Those are Fab30 in Dresden.
There's money to be made in gaming chips, sure, but not all that much compared to corporate desktops and laptops.
That seems to be Matrox's theory also (younger people here might be asking who the hell is Matrox?). I wonder if it's working for them.
Look at what NAFTA did to the rural Mexican economy-it pretty much destroyed it. NAFTA was pushed by much the same economic interests as benefited from illegal immigration in the US. This may not be formal coercion(i.e. rounding of slaves)-but it is isn't exactly "voluntary" or "democratic" either.
The big thing I'd add here:
frontiers. If you have a viable frontier, immigration can be much more beneficial. If you have immigration without a frontier, and with a social welfare state, you have a giant contradiction.
The US elites have turned their back on frontiers-and have as you pointed out fallen in love with imperialism and slavery.
I looked at the link. It referred to a very simplistic "immigration good or bad" type of poll. The writer of the piece nicely mixes up the 9-11 terrorists with people from Latin American who come to America... to work.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.