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AMD Considering Getting Out of Fabrication Business
mytrip writes "2007 has not been kind to AMD, but it's surprising to hear rumours that they might be considering outsourcing chip fabrication. Analysts are predicting that AMD will try to cut costs by moving some fabrication elements out of the company by early next year. 'One Citigroup analyst is predicting a "transformational move" that would result in AMD's lower-end CPUs being manufactured by a third party and possibly selling off part or all of its Dresden, Germany facility. Another report from Goldman Sachs outlines the investment firm's belief that the company will leave manufacturing completely in the hands of third parties.'"
There's no Busines
Like Show Busines...
The perfect time to start buying up stock.
"AMD Considering Getting Out of Fabrication Busines"
/. helper routine and emailed the on-duty editor, and this still went live with a blatant typo.
You know, I even did the good little
I'm not trying to sound like a jerk, but come on editors, this is basic stuff here.
but this might actually be a "good thing."
Why? Because the main reason that no one but AMD can curretnly compete is because of the hight cost of the fab's... If third party fabs, capable of producing transistors the size that Intel makes, start springing up around the world we will probably see other design companies come out of the woodwork and start producing innovative and competitive chip designs.
If Via, for example, could produce chips in a 65nm fab in reasonable volumes... they might compete for the laptop market.
It may not be the best move for AMD, but for the buying public it should encourage innovation and competition. Which ultimately benefits everyone.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
as quality remains the same more power to them. If they can save money hopefully that'll be diverted to further R&D. It is a cut throat business, anything that can give them an edge is great as long as quality remains the same or gets better.
Lately, IBM and AMD have been the only firms out there capable of keeping up with Intel's process advances, with most of AMD's due in significant part to IBM. This move could well usher in an era of consumer level technology stagnation. We saw what Intel did while AMD was a non-competitor (how many damn generations did they ride the basic pentium pro architecture??) and how badly they react to renewed competition (Yeah, great job on both the 1.13ghz P3 and the whole Netburst architecture). Intel has just in the past year or so bothered to give consumers worthy processors, and now if IBM doesn't decide to take a look at the consumer market and keep Intel on its toes, well, we're fucked.
:'(
Awesome news! Next up, Torvalds indicted on murder charges when a mailing list discussion gets so heated he sticks a pointer straight through a face? Netcraft confirmation of BSD's death? Ron Paul is assassinated as republicrats cheer in the streets?
PS - why does CmdrTaco like such small units? 50 character headlines, 120 character sigs, 3 inch penises, 24 bit indexes....
Leaving all of their production in the hands of third parties sounds very risky. I have an older AMD Sempron desktop still chugging along; I wonder if the third party CPUs will be as reliable.
Napalm is nature's toothpaste
Outsourcing and "Getting out of the business" are totally different things. When HP outsourced laptops to Taiwan, nobody said they were getting out of the laptop business. In fact, they were just about to take off.
While I can see the case for reducing the short-term capital investment due to the perhaps-ill-advised aquisition of ATi...in the long run I think this would be a bad idea. Sure, dedicated fabs run by 3rd parties specializing in such things can probably be run more cheaply..but they also want to make a profit. Cost to AMD in the long run is at best probably break-even...and more realistically higher cost per chip (those 3rd parties are going to want a ROI on THEIR capital investment...PLUS make a profit) and that's assuming the same quality and yield can be met. If AMD feels that running fabs is just not a core competency that they want to keep due to expensive head-count or whatever..I wish them the best of luck. Intel's gonna have 'em for breakfast as they continue to reap the "keep all the money in the family" strategy of production..while AMD goes the outsourcing route and has to pay all the middlemen's cut. There's a reason that Wal-Mart kicks everyone's ass...high volume and as-direct-from-manufacturer-to-consumer as possible. Intel follows the Wal-Mart model. Currently, AMD is Target...same idea, just smaller scale. But they are moving to a botique model if they get out the fab business...and that's just not gonna cut it. But, I wish them well :) Competition has been great for the consumer!
Being fabless works for lots of companies, for example NVIDIA (disclaimer: I work for the gentle green giant).
There are lots of companies who only do fabrication, just as there are many other fabless semiconductor companies. With process shrinks occuring as quickly as they are today, it makes a lot of sense to let someone else (or several other someone elses) deal with the cost of developing fab facilities capable of the latest and greatest process size.
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
I'm sure this is going to be a dumb question, but how can a business as high-tech as AMD outsource production? Isn't that kind of like Ferrari outsourcing its car production or NASA outsourcing the launching of the space shuttle?
A-Bomb
Most use Taiwan TSMC, UMC and others. Can't AMD just start to operate like these two? Offer high end fabs for anybody who has need? And why would anybody buy AMD's fabs when they are hardly a good investment due to high price.
Both Intel and AMD seem to keep going through many wild gyrations that don't seem to make long term sense. For instance, both got into the mobile CPU business (Au1000 and XScale) and baled out.
However, the change to outsorcing fab does make sense. Having inhouse manufacturing was critical to success in the 1980s and 1990s, but is no longer so. These days it is relatively easy to get your chips made elsewhere and not have to worry about huge capital outlay and fab lines going obsolete. It makes sense to get get someone else to do this for you.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
...another company that doesn't actually make anything.
When the Core series were released, things didn't look to good for AMD. When they announced the delay of Barcelona, things started to look really bad. There are a few reasons why AMD may go bankrupt in a few years:
-AMD is behind in the laptop market, which is growing at a staggering pace. -Intel has as extreme cash flow, and therefore more room for mistakes. -The marketing team at Intel has been doing a better job than its counter-part. -Intel is ahead of schedule. In the meantime, AMD is behind. -AMD recently purchased ATI. It is not necessarily a bad move, but it cost them tons of money. To make things worse, ATI is behind schedule and also behind its only competitor, nVidia, which means less money for AMD. -AMD shares are currently falling.
I can only hope that I am wrong but I would definitely not buy AMD shares today.
Full Tilt
add to this many outsourcing companys don't have a very good understanding on your business and it's a recipe for failure. I work in an industry where out sourcing is common, and most of the time the contractors are hopeless.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
You line of logic is spoken like someone who knows nothing of the semiconductor market.
The semiconductor market is one of the most brutal markets in existence. Capital costs are through the roof, demand is unstable and hard to predict, and the margins are razor thin. AMD is doing itself a favor to extract as much of itself out of the market as possible and focus on design. Design and production are as different as night and day. Competency in one speaks little about competency in the other.
What AMD is gaining is mass market production above and beyond what they currently have. Do they have to pay a middleman a cut? Sure, but in return they are getting access to massive foundries that can produce on an industrial scale. The foundry doesn't care what runs through its lines, so long as something is running. The more they run, the cheaper it is. It isn't like they will just run AMD chips. They will run a whole pile of other chips that run on the same equipment. The result is that they can sink the massive capital costs that a modern day semiconductor factory costs and run enough volume to make it profitable. Short of becoming diving into the foundry business and running lines for other companies, AMD has no way of running the massive volume it takes to make justify the horrific capital costs that a cutting edge semiconductor foundry demands.
The semiconductor foundry business is a cut throat world to be in. Massive capital costs, low profit margins, and over capacity makes keeping a foundry running a full time struggle. AMD is doing itself a favor by doing what AMD does best. AMD designs good chips. AMD isn't a semiconductor foundry. The slightly higher costs in paying 'middlemen' is pittance compared to the horrific cost of dropping a multi-billion dollar foundry down every couple of years while at the same time selling and junking your old multi-billion dollar foundries.
back it up or shut it up, bitch
Texas Instruments outsourced their R&D to foundries in January. Kind of sad considering Jack Kilby was one of the guys that got the whole semiconductor business going. Link1 http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml;jsessioni d=2YWDTRBQ4NQHIQSNDLPCKH0CJUNN2JVN?articleID=19700 0906/
Link2 http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml;jsessioni d=2YWDTRBQ4NQHIQSNDLPCKH0CJUNN2JVN?articleID=19800 1319/
But with the infinite number of universes theory, do you think there is one just for slashdot with "business" spelled correctly?
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Great post.
A horse can't be sick, you know, even if he wants to.
It is well known that running a state-of-art foundry efficiently requires ginormous production volumes, so most semiconductor companies go fabless these days. However, if a company like AMD can't afford its own fab, then Intel might have a huge advantage here and we might see less competition in the microprocessor market from now. Just look at Sun's experience. Sun Microsystems had been historically fabless. Their newest SPARC processors were being fabricated primarily by Texas Instruments, and Texas Instruments has pretty much ruined Sun's ability to compete with Intel on CPU speed because it often took TI years to start producing a new Sun chip in significant numbers. I remember how Sun's introduction of UltraSPARC III was the longest and most painful CPU rollout ever. It took them something like three or four years to replace the major UltraSPARC II products.
The only way I can see it making sense for AMD to outsource high-end fabrication is if there's some drastic change in the chip industry that creates a market for independant fab houses with cutting edge equipment. Not impossible, but not going to happen soon.
It looks to me a lot like the article about Microsoft divesting its massive cash reserves a while back. It's "analyst" speculation by people who, by virtue of being in the "analyst" business don't actually understand the industry they're speculating on. This is what they think AMD will do because "that's how it's done." Never mind whether or not AMD thinks it'd be a good idea.
Speculators speculate on money moving, so it's rather unsurprising that they'd suggest that the response {large company} would have to lackluster performance would be to spin off the cost centers and reorganize to maximize the synergy of the core competencies.
Now, it is beneficial to make sure you're only worried about the business you're in. A lot of companies in the 90s for instance had huge in-house IT departments despite IT not being the thing that makes them money. They'd have a lot less headaches if they'd subscribed to an IT service to take care of their needs there, freeing them up to worry about the thing they really sell. You wouldn't worry about that any more than you'd worry about a company purchasing paper instead of milling it themselves.
To my untrained eye, AMD appears to be in the business of selling microprocessors. The manufacture of those isn't an incidental part of the business (the manufacture of the tools to manufacture the chips would be such an outside activity), but a key layer in their vertical integration. Unless their numbers are really small, I can't see why it'd be cost effective to drop that.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
"real men have fabs".
However, if chips are their core business, then they should probably maintain at least some manufacturing capacity of their own just to be able to maintain control of their own destiny. It might be cheaper for a third party to make some of their chips now, but in just a short while I bet it becomes more expensive when the third parties realize that AMD can't make their own chips any more. What are they going to do? They will have AMD between a rock and a hard place. Besides, AMD has already had problems in the past with ramping up to production fast enough to satisfy demand, and more than one person mentioned potential availability concerns as one of the reasons Apple went to Intel instead of AMD.
If AMD does this, I hope they look to copy how Apple does things. As far as I understand it, Apple doesn't manufacture much of anything themselves any longer. Apple's core business is not "making computers" or "making ipods." No, Apple's core business revolves a lot around design, usability, etc. With that clearly understood, then it makes sense for Apple not to be a "manufacturer" (building computers and circuit boards from scratch like they used to).
I certainly hope this isn't a short pier that AMD will be taking a long walk on. Time will tell.
. 62,400 repetitions make one truth -- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Don't get too worked up. AMD will be outsourcing bits of production, that's public knowledge. They've contracted with Charter for CPUs, and ATI, which AMD bought in 2006, has always been fabless. So, yes, more outsourcing is in the cards.
Will AMD go completely fabless? I highly doubt it. IMHO, top-end chips pretty much require in-house fabs. That extra 10% of control and 10% of benefit to tweaking a fab to your own specific needs and 10% benefit to setting your own time lines can make the difference between being competitive in the high-end and not. (Yeah, I'm making those numbers up, but you get the idea).
Sure, AMD is having a tough year, but hopefully things will get on track. When they do, having at least one in-house fab is pretty much crucial to being competitive in the top-end... and the top-end counts because the margins are incredible there.
The mid-range chips and lower end stuff can probably be pushed off to a 3rd party... and I think we might see something like that from AMD.
How about if AMD used its debt investments in new fabs in Germany and NY to accept outsourced fabrication for other companies it doesn't suffer from boosting? That would make a lot more sense than getting in debt to sell capital facilities at a loss of both investment and competitive control.
These analysts don't know anything. They just want every business to cut costs and debt while still producing the most revenue, for the most short-term profits, even if trying to do so is a stupid strategy that wrecks the company. When was the last time any published equities analyst was right about some surprising transformation of an industry leader? If they understood business strategy, they'd be running one, or privately advising one on equity development. These are people who can't even hold a job speculating in the market, so they try to make it speculating on the market.
--
make install -not war
Does anyone still remember once upon a time when AMD had no fabrication capability and was basically little more than a design firm? Back then Intel reigned even more supreme than it does now. Could AMD have made a serious dent in Intel's monopoly had they not chosen to cut the long-term cost of production, by cutting out the fabrication middleman's cut and moving it in-house? If not, then I'm confused... exactly how will this move to divest fabrication and increase total fabrication costs again - by once again paying middlemen to do it - help AMD to remain competitive in the long term?
This would seem to be an admission of defeat and the beginning of a long drawn-out whimper of an end for AMD. The company execs are going to increase short-term profits so that they can cash out and then leave the skeletal remainder for someone else to fret over.
It was fun rooting for the underdog while it lasted, but the vultures were always watching, even from within the company. Now the bones will be picked clean and the fight of the underdog relegated to song and poem.
Maybe the high end executives could take a pay/benefit cut and save the company a couple million a year, and push their fabs into 65 or 45nm process, which would save them money on silicon and improve chip yields, also allowing them to push down their prices a bit.
I know atm I can buy a 3800+x2 at wholesale for 75 bucks, which is a STEAL!
If AMD could push more chips at the same or lower prices due to higher yield they could probably edge back in a bit.
They really need to get barcelona out though, and especially if they can get down to 45nm that will make the pricing much better looking than intels atm.
1/ stop hiring young morons to write articles like this.
2/ check the files for old stories.
someone trots this garbage out every once in a while. for those that have brain cells in proximity to work together as a memory cell, AMD used to FAB out there chips. and they languished in red ink all the while. The only time that AMD ever made money was when the build there own FABs and ran them to poduce enough chips for the market place. Who would make these for them. Small companies are a joke, Motorola never made enough chips for Apple to make Macs, IBM is constantly coming up short on chips for other people. ask Sony how they like being shorted on cell chips for the PS3.
AMD has a memory. They will not give up the power to make their own chips, so they can go back to being enslaved by some dumb ass partner who never comes through when they need volume to fill the market demand.
Take the writer of this article and the financial folks who are guessing by examining the coffee ring in the bottom of their Starbuck cups after all night bender of expressos so they are wired up like a chipmunk mainlining crystal Meth, and recommend to their bosses that they sell off their offices, and these guys can rent space by the day in a temp office. see how they like having no security or long term planning
Fraken idiots for writers.
I mean, really nobody remember that AMD used to have their chips made by TSMC? or borrow technology from IBM? Nobody remember that the first fab of AMD was set-up only nine years ago??
You can never outsource your core business, the thing that makes you unique and that you hope gives you a better product compared to other companies. If AMD wants the most leading edge new techniques in chip manufacture, they HAVE TO do it themselves. If you outsource, all you get is industry standard last-generation technology. If they give up manufacturing, they have given up half of their core business, and it will be very difficult for them to ever make a product innovative enough to compete. I'll put it this way. When a new CPU line comes out, often every other cycle is a real redesign, and the cycles in-between are a die-shrink to smaller features and often a bigger wafer. Half of the innovation in chipmaking is the die shrinking and wafer sizes. They can't leave half of the innovation they need to keep up with Intel in the hands of someone else.
This is going to be outsourced to China. What this means is that Intel will likely follow the suit, and in 20 years all CPUs will be made AND branded by a Chinese company, just like all cars are Japanese now. The dismantling of American industrial economy and destruction of its industrial base by MBA mid-/upper management is going to massively backfire, but then it will be too late.
Yep... because buying up a failing business is a great retirement path. My De Lorean stock is merely sleeping. Beautiful plumage.
-Mr. Coward
Spare capacity could increase AMD's profits over current procedures if they sold it (even at peppercorn rents) to others.
Why did Apple change to intel? their supplyer didn't care about Apple's business. AMD can't afford to buy chips from Intel if their fab contractor becomes more enamoured of fabbing GPU's.
The ONLY way this outsourcing could help AMD is if they need to keep short-term profitability by screwing their fabbing provider. If they run their own fab's this robs peter to pay paul. If the fabs are run by an external company, that company has a bad quater. The fact that the supplier will remember the screwing you gave them last year and scew you back when they can profitably do so isn't a problem for short-term CEO speculation.
So if you have stock in AMD, do you hold?
AMD announced last June that had decided to construct a new fabrication facility in Albany, NY (as opposed to Germany, where they were planning to otherwise build it). This was the single best news the upstate NY economy had in a long time.
I suppose that this means that Albany is going to be left in the dust yet again. Which is sad... until about thirty years ago upstate New York was home to major tech and industrial powers such as General Electric (Schenectady), Corning (Corning), Kodak (Rochester) and IBM (Binghamton, Poughkeepsie).
Outsourcing is not a good idea. New York taxpayers have offered 1.2 BILLION DOLLARS and has probably paid out MILLIONS OF IT ALREADY over in order to lure AMD to build a semiconductor plant near Albany, Schenectady, Troy, Saratoga NY. It would be unethical to ignore the social impact of this possible abandonment. Years of funding and planning that has already gone into the Luther Forest AMD project.
http://blogs.timesunion.com/business/?p=770
AMD has always had a manufacturing segment: consider AMD's Automated Precision Manufacturing (APM) and related patents.
...because they seriously need to get out of the production business and back into the "better design" business. They've been a full generation behind Intel now forever, which puts them on the same level as nVidia, ATI, all the memory producers etc. which are also usually the same distance behind. They've not been able to sustain the kind of process lead that Intel has, so they might as get the volume of outsourcing.
I've been using AMD from Duron 700 -> Athlon 1200 -> Athlon 2000+ -> Athlon64 3500+, but now I've jumped ship. I got myself a Core 2 Q6600, which kicks major ass at 105W TDP in a regular one-socket mobo. It just takes everything I throw at it and keeps asking for more, only downside was the price. I never was much of a fan of ATI, I have had one ATI card recently but when I was looking for my latest machine there was no doubt - the newest ATIs draw power like crazy. I got myself a GF8800 GTS, and they run beautifully on a Shuttle box with 400W PSU. Show me an AMD/ATI system that comes even remotely close...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
You'd think maybe the high end is a good target to put out. If in doing so they get access to the latest scale of fab so down to what is it 45nm? They with the best designed (open to argument) chips on resolutions to match Intel would be a super serious leader.
To own and run ones own fabs, one has a LOT of cash tied up in fabs. That means carrying tremendous debt levels, and given AMD's shaky financials, at a higher interest rate than Intel. This gives Intel a competitive edge, just from the finance side. Selling the fabs would let AMD reduce its debt levels, improve it's balance sheet, and possibly cut costs.
AMD's "tough" years are in part because as a company with its own fabs, it has massive fixed costs (and the interest expenses associated with it), which means that when cyclical demand trends downward, their numbers get destroyed by the high fixed costs. High fixed costs are irrelevant to huge market leaders, but the nimble competitor gets eaten up when things get painful.
OTOH, if one can move capital intensive projects off balance sheet, the company's financial reports improve, which can improve their bond rating and lower their interest costs on other areas.
Right now, AMD must focus on chip design, chip manufacturing, chip marketing, and financial maneuvering. Going fabless would let them focus on designing and selling chips, instead of manufacturing them and managing complicated financial operations to fund everything.
Whether they gain a competitive edge by owning the fabs is another question, and the only people that know that are inside of AMD. Whether the CEO and Board will ask them is another question, but AMD's internal guys know whether they are really good at manufacturing or not.
I don't know if this is true or not, but I heard that the x86 cross licensing deal between Intel and AMD (amongst others) states that no more than 20% of fabrication can be outsourced to others.
If true, it makes this story seem somewhat unlikely, especially since most of the bulk is at the low end.
The perfect time to start buying up stock.
Or a long term short on it.
As it reminds me of like when NorTel divested it's manufacturing, it was not long after they got into big trouble.
If AMD was smart, they would get a "true" quad core out there, then price it at $60. Go out in the true competitive spirit and give Intel a licking.
AMD has unfortunately failed to execute on both the graphics and processor sides.
Intel has many irons in the fire. If they screw up, there is generally a backup plan.
AMD is not large enough to have this safety net.
I think Opteron was successful enough that they let their guard down.
They are in grave danger.
Part of how they do well is by not always matching what they know with what they say. The rich guy over there, you might seek his advice because you figure he's smart about getting rich. But here's the rub: Does he give you advice that leads to actions that make you richer, or does he give you advice that leads to actions that make him richer?
In making a public case for AMD divesting its fab business, Goldman Sachs is speaking to two audiences: the stock buying public, and AMD executives. And Goldman is hoping the reactions to this "news" will be actions on the part of one or both of those audiences that help Goldman make money to stuff its Sachs with. This most often means they're playing one or both audiences for suckers. What it surely does not mean is that we'd be smart to listed to their "expertise."
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
McDonalds to outsource burger production, focus on making annoying TV commercials. "Its what we do best," says company spokesperson.
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
No, it would not be a good idea, it would be a terrible idea, and it would basically mean AMD intended to get out of the CPU business if not completely liquidate.
Outside of the last couple quarters, AMD's biggest problem has been production capacity. As in, they can't make enough chips, their market share is artificially capped, and as big players like Dell sell more AMD chips others are having a hard time buying enough.
That is NOT a problem you solve by becoming fabless. The already have foundry deals with e.g. Chartered, simply to provide some flexible extra capacity. It CAN NOT replace their current capacity with foundry deals, much less expand it. Being Yet Another TSMC Customer is not how you maintain your position as a top cpu maker.
The way you solve a capacity problem is by building another fab, which is what AMD just did. They built a whole new fab abutting the existing fab in Dresden, to the tune of $billions. $Billions that comes largely in the form of debt. You can't undo that by selling the fab because like a car the equipment begins to depreciate immediately. The only way to recoup that investment is to build parts in that fab and sell them. Now some analyst is saying that AMD is going to dump the fab, abandon that investment as a wash, and essentially give up the ability to have more than a pitance of marketshare while still carrying all the debt for building the fab? That's a great way to shore up the financials!
Utterly. Retarded. Analyst.
But I repeat myself.
The enemies of Democracy are
True, Intel doesn't have debt on their balance sheet, but they "have it" in that the opportunity cost of having that cash tied up there.
If Intel were to sell $5 billion in bonds secured by the fabs, and then return that $5b to the shareholders, their economic position would be similar. The decision to carry debt or not versus give the cash to the shareholders is theoretically neutral. In evaluating the companies performance, one needs to compensate for the leverage difference. Basically, Intel chooses to NOT juice returns for shareholders with leverage, because they are cash rich.
AMD has 7.3b in debt and 5.7b in equity on their balance sheet, with a market cap of 7.5b.
AMD could, tomorrow, sell half the company for 7.3b in cash (well, it would take months, sell equity, pay down debt, enterprise cap stays the same, but walk through the exercise) to pay down debt, and the new AMD would show:
Market Cap of 14.8b, $0 debt, 13b in equity on the balance sheet.
Now, shareholders are "equal" because they own half what they did before, but the company is worth twice what it was before, and the enterprise value is the same... Enterprise value = value of company - debts of the company... I'm oversimplifying the equation to illustrate the point...
AMD should be worth twice what it is now if it was debt free, however, AMD has chosen to finance expansion with debt instead of equity. This is seen as good for shareholders in good times, as debt holders get interest, but not growth, and gives them more bang for their buck.
Again, it's a "theoretically" neutral decision by corporate finance, not a matter of Intel having the cash or not. CFOs generally try to keep a certain leverage level, because that gives the shareholders the expected return that they are looking for. More leverage = more risk = more expected return... which also means lower price today...
Going fab-less really worked well for Transmeta, now, didn't it?
..... including all now known and any to be invented. RISC processor designs are ten a penny, and some of them actually could work (well, they'll all work, but most of them have performance bottlenecks which don't show up until you try to run actual software on them). If you didn't have to worry about Windows compatibility, you could build a whole new processor design, which would not necessitate paying a penny in royalties to anyone; and then once you've got a compiler together, there is an absolute stackload of software you could run on it, for little more than the effort of typing "make install".
The faxt is, the x86 party is over. Well, not quite over just yet; but the flowerbeds have been trampled and puked in, the only booze left is the stuff you've got to be already pissed to even think about drinking, the loud, obnoxious drunks are in evidence, there's no smoke left and the DJ has played Agadoo for the third time.
x86 only exists for one reason: to keep Microsoft's Source Code secret. It's a fact that other OSes besides Windows run quite happily on other architectures
Imagine somewhere like China, India or a coalition of several Latin American countries announcing a new, government-funded, Linux- or BSD-based, PC programme. Microsoft shout out "..... but these machines will end up being used for running pirated Windows Vista!" And the government there respond "Not bloody likely, mate, these machines will be physically incapable of running Windows, pirated or not!" Checkmate!
It's going to take a big effort, but it could happen. Look at the OLPC design. It's based on ax x86-class chip today, for sure, because that was what was cheapest right now; but there's no reason why OLPC Mk.II or III couldn't be transitioned to an entirely new RISC processor design. And because all the software it includes by default is either Open Source or interpreted, it would make hardly any practical difference.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
So AMD lost the limelight to Intel with the release of the Core and Core-2 architectures. That doesn't mean that AMD is going out of business though. In another year when everybody is buying AMD Barcelona and Phenom chip-sets, people will be talking the same bullshit they are now except that statements will change from to So if you did want to invest in either AMD or Intel, now would be the time to go with AMD while people freak out over this speculation. And even if you don't want to hold those stocks till late 2007 or 2008 when the K10s are due to be out, you could sell those stocks a month from now when everybody realizes this article is the same bullshit speculation we always see and people are looking to buy back those stocks they sold off at a loss - bringing about the #5 step in any
AMD had revenue of $5.25B last year (An increase of 25%), note that this is revenue, not profit.
Intel's marketing budget for last year was $2.5B
But at Intel I am sure they spend $2.0B talking about procedures for doing and improving marketing with only about $0.5B going to actual marketing.
Religion is the main cause of atheism.
i have 3 computers with athlon 2700+ here. ...
.. TINY .. desktop.
two desktop, one server.
doing everything i need to do.
just bought spare socket A athlons, so
if i'm set for another few years.
still no killer-app out there that wants me to
upgrade anytime soon (yeah okay, those uber niffty
first person shoters maybe).
got a amd64 rig for a 4 person office, so it can do
some samba, squid, apache stuff for them
anyway, i think we really need smaller form factor
computers. these ATX "motorboards" are way to big.
i'd love a computer with a process power of maybe a
athlon 2500+ but
that would be uebercool. (dont be stingy with
them network cards!)
specifically the quad-core
Yet I can't buy one in the local component store, but they're piled high with a cracking Intel quad core for a very seductive price. Wait a month and it'll get even more seductive, do you think the AMD will be in by then?
I wouldn't say the two are really the same. I work for an outdoor power equipment manufacturer and we outsource all the part fabrication. Our engineers draw up all the prints and other companies produce the part, much like AMD is thinking of doing.
But, like any outsourcing, how do you know the quality of what is being sent out with your name slapped on it?
Our company would like to do it all, its just not capable of doing so as cheaply as others can. It all comes back to the margin.
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoo m/0,,51_104_543_5730~32703,00.html
AMD made sure that (of all things) NetBSD ran on the K8 architecture 18 months before engineering samples were available.
What do you want from them? They just bought ATI and frankly their software development team was a mess, AMD is just beginning to untangle that.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
But management at Microsoft told the OS dev teams to can it before it went gold.
NT 4 on archs other than the x86 was pretty much a disaster. It had a chicken and egg problem w.r.t. hardware and legacy software... although NT4 on Alpha apparently still has a following. Old copies of VC6 turning out ports of apps like PuTTY and whatnot.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Many folks in Austin would welcome this news if it were true. AMD is in the midst of building a new FAB on top of the recharge zone for a sensitive aquifer, one that is the sole source of drinking water for several million people stretching south of Austin past (and including) San Antonio. They've already been caught dumping construction waste, which only helps further poison the water table every time it rains.
Austin itself gets its drinking water from the Colorado river, but due to rampant construction over the past 20+ years, those who rely on the aquifer are getting more and more thirsty.
Perhaps it's just fair turnabout that AMD is also getting more and more thirsty (for dollars)...
The new AMD better show up with something outstanding soon, and I believe they will. But it can't be good business to hire out or sell any fabs (when you got only two), or loose good employees that you may need when business picks up? Personally, I think AMD should consider freelancing a little, like TSMC, for example. I'm sure their machines could be tuned for different IC's that the market requires. If they could assemble an adaptive staff and production line on based on existing tech in Dresden, they could better focus their R&D and High-End production where they now forge AMD/ATI tech into tomorrows creative solutions. I hope they realize what it takes to nail it the different markets. Peace.
It is too bad that AMD cannot compete. If AMD goes, look for a 50% increase in cpu prices. Competition keeps the prices in line.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada