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Is AMD Dead Yet?
TheProcess writes "Back in February 2003, IBM predicted that AMD would be dead in 5 years (original article here), with IBM and Intel the only remaining players in the chip market. Well, 5 years have passed and AMD is still alive. However, its finances and stock price have taken a serious beating over the last year. AMD was once a darling in this community — the plucky, up-and-coming challenger to the Intel behemoth. Will AMD still be here in 5 years? Can they pose a credible competitive threat to Intel's dominance? Do they still have superior but unappreciated technology? Or are they finally old hat? Can they really recover?"
I was wondering if anyone could explain to me why they purchased ATI. They spent oodles of money to R&D the new quad core architecture to really be a seamless 4 core proc that shared caches etc. Intel just slapped two dual cores together and shipped that. Turns out that in benchmarks for consumer programs, intel's stuff works quite well. AMD's cache sharing and topology of memory access that seems better for true multithreaded applications is irrelevant and occasionally a hinderance when you're running multiple single threaded programs. So they spend oodles on R&D and may not see that much of a return until apps can utilize it better. . .Then they go off and buy ATI? Wouldn't it make sense to hang onto money a bit more than just purchase another company? Could that move end up dragging ATI down too?
If you are about to mod me down, keep in mind that this post was most likely sarcastic.
And they went with trusted computing. That was the last straw for me. I would have continued to buy from them despite the flaws listed in parent post, if they just continued to build computers that I could trust.
They've done it before. Beat all odds and started developing better chips than Intel for awhile. There's always a chance they could do it again, but I don't foresee that happening in the near future.
I hope that AMD soon becomes the darling of the community once again, it's because of them that I recently got back into PC gaming. I had totally given up on gaming on the PC, I had bought a gen1 X2 4200 and AM2 motherboard right before the Core 2 Duos came out and I was cursing my bad luck ever since - until I realized that the real holdup in my system wasn't the processor, but my aging 6600GT. In fact, even though I had bought my AM2-based system almost 2 years ago (or longer! I can't remember when the platform launched) I still had a fairly recent system that could actually support even the newest AMD chips. The real kicker came when I bought my Ati Radeon HD3850. This thing, in my oppinion, should be getting just as much press as the 8800GT. For someone like me, spending $180 on a graphics card is a whole lot more reasonable than spending $250+ on an 8800GT just for performance gains in games like Crysis. My housemate dropped over $1000 on a new Intel Quad-core based rig with an 8800GT in it and my system keeps pace with his very well under almost all scenarios. There is a difference, sure, but considering my entire rig probably cost less than $500 (exluding monitor), I'd say I'm doing pretty well. AMD is doing a great job at catering to people like me who were about to be console-only gamers because keeping up to date on the PC side was getting expensive. AMD offers an affordable upgrade path at a lower performance point - but it's good enough to make my Xbox 360 jealous! I'm proud to say that I'm still an AMD fan. Will an X2 5000+ Black Edition beat a comparably clocked Core 2 Duo? No! But look at the price! I'd say the price to performance ratio is way up there!
AMD could survive, albeit much diminished, as a foundry - they have a huge fab in Germany, and there are always companies willing to have their designs produced somewhere. Fabs really have no problem getting contracts.
AMD makes a ton of FLASH memory.
And then there's the GPU division (ATI). It's a bit hard to imagine that both CPU, GPU and Flash RAM will all tank at once.
Could it happen? Yeah. Everything is possible. I would not bet my apartement on it, though.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
In the past, AMD had an architecture advantage over Intel and Intel had a slight process technology advantage.
Now the situation is different:
-Since the introduction of the Core 2 Duo Intel has the better architecture (minus memory controller though).
-Intel is smoking the rest of the industry with 45nm high-k/metal gate in therms of process technology. Compared to what has been published by IBM about their hkmg technology IBM/AMD has a long way to go to catch up.
And let me say this: Intels technology is extremely clever, they did one fundamentally different thing (gate first) against conventional wisdom which took them onto an entirely different path. Getting the fundamental flaws out of this approach enables a flurry of additional optimizations that IBM/AMD will not be able to apply in their technology. (full metal gates, not using any exotic materials for the gate)
The only disadvantage for intel could be higher cost/lower yield associated with the hkmg process. However they have the benefit of scale (in therms of volume) on their side. In addition they went go through the painful hkmg transition two years earlier and hence things will be much easier for them at the 32nm node. IBM/AMD will be in even more trouble than they are now. I predict that Intel will have a very quick 32nm ramp around the time IBM/AMD managed to get their 45nm hkmg process to manufacturable yield.
I'll admit I don't know much about the matter, but they seem to be fairly Free Software friendly, in terms of their releasing of documentation for both their CPUs and the ATI GPUs.
Does anyone have any detailed information on this? Perhaps the Free Software community can support AMD's openness by buying AMD hardware, *and letting them know this is the reason*.
... when I deliberately switched to Mac.
Before I switched to using Macs, I would always build my own PC's from components, and I always chose an AMD processor (starting with the 450 MHz AMD K6-III).
Until Macs start coming with AMD chips, I doubt I'll buy another one any time soon.
I've built a very good number of machines for people lately with Abit micro-ATX boards, with built-in graphics (d-sub and DVI). Throw in a 2.4 GHz X2 and 4 gigs of memory, a hard drive, and a burner, and the hardware comes to something like $300. Good, fast, and CHEAP.
One of the offices was broken into lately, and the thieves bypassed the "wimpy" micro-ATX cases and stole big, heavy machines... which happened to be older, slower stuff.
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
I've used several AMD processors (couple of Durons and now an Athlon X2). I chose them on a value for money basis. I never buy the fastest chips that command a heavy price premium, so the arguments over who has the top chip of the moment are irrelevant to me. I considered an Intel for my current PC, but the price difference was minimal and I know the AMD-based chipsets a bit better so I knew it should work for me. I do like to support the underdog, but not if it exceeds my budget.
Even in the last few years I have met people who consider AMD to be inferior or less reliable than Intel chips. Intel's marketing millions must be doing something for them, but I find their jingle intensely annoying when it crops up in the middle of an ad.
Or for processors that can still run x86 instructions, how about VIA?
AMD decided to price match Intel? I thought it was the other way around. Here in the UK at least you can get a quad core 6600 for £164.99. That's the CPU I use and I reckon that it's the total sweet spot for price/performance, plus you can overclock it about 40% using stock cooling. AMD have had to slash prices to compete on price/performance, leading to their current woes.
In fact looking at the AMD page on ebuyer they have great cheap AMD dual core chips. If I were building a nice but cheap system for friends/family I'd probably go with one of those AMD's unless they wanted to play the latest games. Then it'd be Core2 all the way.
I think you've got it exactly the wrong way round. Intel moved in on AMD's market, not the other way around.
Me too, just bought a dual core AMD 64. The price of same type of system from Intel would be about $100 more, which isn't much when spending $1500, but I trust AMD more and I believe them when they say there will be an upgrade path from the AM2+ I bought to newer CPU's. (Assuming they stay afloat long enough). Intel however have no such guarantee and I had a very tough time figuring out what CPU went with which boards.
IMHO AMD Athlon/Turion 64 X2 chips are still very great chips, although they are not the *fastest* in the market. It is too bad that most of people only look at benchmarks for evaluating CPUs, specially when most of the major benchmarks out there are *owned* by the market itself.
Looking at most of my friends who have core 2 duo laptops mostly with Vista, I'm still impressed how buggy the Centrino technology is. They get BSOD and cold reboots when turning on the wireless card or even when they are actually doing nothing! I'm sure most of you will say: "-Hey dude, it's windows!". But, might it be windows fault?
I own a Turion64 X2 + nForce + Geforce laptop. This hardware combination is awesome, the system is always smooth even under heavy cpu or hdd I/O. I never had a machine hardware exception, no overheat nor compatibility problems. What I would want more? Nothing. I would not trade this laptop by any superior Core 2 Duo solution.
And why average Joe cares having a fast multi-core CPU when all his applications are word, excel, mostly single threaded programs?
FRAUD ALERT? First, for me this story crossed a line. It looks like stock manipulation. Was KDawson paid to post this story? Who at Slashdot or its parent company has recently sold AMD stock short, betting that the price will fall? Are any Intel employees involved?
... through dumbness rather than
malice."
I would like to see a statement added at the end of this Slashdot story that KDawson took no money for this story, and that no one at Slashdot or its parent company took money or will benefit from a drop in price of AMD stock. I'm not accusing anyone of anything; I am just concerned that this story is worded in a way that seems sleazy and possibly fraudulent to me.
Second, in response to the parent comment. ATI is the premier video CPU provider now. nVidia is so lame that there is an entire web site devoted to fixing nVidia driver issues: LaptopVideo2Go. I spent hours trying to get one of my laptops, which has an nVidia chip, to work correctly with an external monitor. It works well now, but I could never have done the work without the help of LaptopVideo2Go.
Third, Intel is suffering from very bad management. For example, see the comment I posted to an earlier Slashdot story, responding to someone saying, "Intel's behavior regarding the OLPC is reprehensible."
Fourth, AMD seems to be the more technologically dedicated company. Intel has a history of dumb mistakes. For example, see this December 2000 article about the Pentium 4, which calls Intel "Chipzilla": Pentium 4 Linux problem all Chipzilla's fault, apparently. Quote: "Intel... failed
I seem to remember that the entire Pentium 4 architecture was abandoned in favor of the Pentium 4 Mobile architecture, which is what Intel is shipping now.
Both AMD and Intel make VERY sophisticated processors. It's amazing that a product that is so tiny it is affected by quantum physics is cheap enough for everyone to own. When one is temporarily ahead, it is simply silly to say that the other is dying.
Stock prices are often affected by hysteria. This is especially true of prices of technical stocks, which are often owned by people who don't really understand the technology of the company they partly own.
In terms of manufacturing technology, Intel and AMD are indeed taking different roads. One of the biggest advantage that AMD has yet to realize with their technology (SOI) is to implement Z-RAM for their processor caches. Z-RAM is a type of memory so dense it requires only 1 transistor per bit instead of 6 transistors for traditional SRAM, potentially allowing AMD to have caches about 6 times the size of Intel's caches on the same die area. Of course nobody knows yet for sure if/when Z-RAM will turn out to be doable. But if it is, Intel would have to way to implement the technology without massively reconverting their fabs to the SOI process.
I remember back in the 486/pentium era there were at least three smaller vendors competing with intel for the low end PC market (IDT, cyrix and AMD). AMD are still competitive, IDT and cyrix essentially failed in the general purpose PC cpu market and thier PC processor related stuff ended up owned by VIA who use thier IP to produce low performance low power PC compatible processors for embedded and thin client markets but they don't even try to compete on price/performance even at the low end of the market.
Since then afaict there has been on new entry (transmeta) in the PC processor market which was a miserable failure.
So we are down from three to one serious competitors for intel. If AMD fall I wonder if anyone else will ever manage to break in.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Well, I tested it in the only benchmark that matters to me, my own applications. The result? For some applications involving video processing, those where I need most CPU, it performed at about 25% of the level of an Intel 2.4 GHz Pentium 4. For my own applications, the "AMD 2200+" is actually an "AMD 800-".
I really don't care about how much better it performs in office applications, or whatever other tests AMD did to "prove" that clock speed doesn't matter. You can only stretch the truth so far, when one is doing number crunching a faster clock will get you more performance than faster context switches.
Anyone thinking that Intel can always be ahead of AMD should read the history of the Pentium 4 on Wikipedia. Two quotes:
"Finally, the thermal problems were so severe, Intel decided to abandon the Prescott architecture altogether, and attempts to roll out a 4 GHz part were abandoned, as a waste of internal resources."
"The original successor to the Pentium 4 was Tejas, which was scheduled for an early-mid-2005 release. However, it was cancelled a few months after the release of Prescott due to extremely high power consumption (a 2.8 GHz Tejas consumed 150 W of power..."
Silly me, I thought you were going to drag out AMD being the first to 1GHz and intel's failed attempt to leap frog them with the 1.13 GHz.
Kinda like Linux, AMD's big year has always been just around the corner, but has never arrived.
Yes, it did. And in 2007 they shipped millions of machines. And most of them were laptops or uses laptop CPUs. And in the US laptop market Apple had some 20%! That is a considerable market share. I believe the OP was right in saying that AMD would be hard pressed to supply Apple with that many chips - and still serve the rest of their customers. But that's just my guess.
People are selling AMD stock short, betting it will go down. To make money, they need the price of AMD stock to drop.
Often a company's stock price reflects market manipulation rather than any sensible estimate of the true value of the company. This Slashdot story is very likely to drive the price down, as short sellers want. Check the price after the market opens.
When AMD integrates ATI video with AMD CPUs, the resulting combination is likely to be very competitive. AMDs technical prospects seem good to me, although I have not done a thorough analysis. Remember that we are no longer in a CPU speed race; CPUs are fast enough now for the average user.
The simple fact that one of the biggest differences is made by having a multi-core processor when running modern Operating systems rather than raw processor speed should yield one obvious comment:
The cheapest Dual-Core processors I can quickly find :
The performance is within a hairs breadth of each other... and yes, when coupled with a modest graphics card they both do just fine in all but the latest bleeding-edge 3D games.
In other words, for normal home or business computing with light to moderate gaming - there is an obvious choice. Even with more demanding gaming, thats £30 more to throw at your graphics card which will make far more difference - or £30 more memory (2 GB !!!).
With this sort of thing going for them, and the higher-end really matching Intel in the price/performance stakes I suspect theres life there yet... quite a bit of it.
As far as graphics goes, everyone is happy to compare ATI with nVidia - but the only choice when it comes to on-chip graphics is not "ATI v nVidia" but "ATI v Intel"... you have looked at Intel graphics lately right ?
http://www.microway.com/8wayopteron.html
http://hpcsystems.com/AMDQuadOpteron_A5808-32.htm
where you at Intel (IA64 doesn't count)?
I call bullshit.
The original Pentium 4 models were widely and famously known for the fact that their clockrate was vastly out of proportion to its real-world performance. I believe that clock-for-clock, a Pentium III performed 1.5 to 2x as fast as a Pentium 4. It is quite possibly, the least efficient CPU in terms of clock per performance ever to be manufactured.
The early Pentium 4s were almost universally slower than the Pentium IIIs that they replaced.
Likewise, only very specific types of "number crunching" actually took advantage of the Pentium 4. Certain types of video encoding worked quite well, whilst "general purpose" calculations were pathetically slow. Intel was also widely known for running highly-optimized benchmarks on their processors, and then running unoptimized i386 compiles on AMD's machines to make them look poor by comparison.
AMD's chips, at the time, however, had clock speeds that were more closely pared to Pentium IIIs.
Intel wound up getting a taste of its own poison after the architecture proved to be unsustainable in meaningful yields past 4Ghz, and its low-power Pentium 4 M chips began outperforming their power-hungry desktop equivalents that were priced twice as high. This architecture eventually evolved into the Core series of chips. In the interim, Intel had a *very* tough time marketing its chips, and for a time, Mhz ratings dropped out of Intel's marketing entirely.
AMD's speed rating was pegged to the Pentium 4, and from what I can remember, it was a fairly faithful benchmark. Although the "fake" speed ratings aren't as necessary today, it's still nice to be able to vaguely compare processors across generations.
If it weren't for the Core series of chips (which weren't even developed by Intel's main development group!), AMD would almost certainly be on top of Intel right now, provided they could keep up with the demand.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Yep and workstations. Opterons are still popular for HPC uses as well (re the recent article on /. that the next top 500 supercomputer will be a Sun/Opteron system 15k+ quad core CPUs). I think AMD still wins on the small but growing x86 64 bit market.