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AMD Hires Bank To Explore Sale Options
Dainsanefh tips this report from Reuters:
"Advanced Micro Devices has hired JPMorgan Chase & Co to explore options, which could include a potential sale, as the chipmaker struggles to find a role in an industry increasingly focused on mobile and away from traditional PCs, according to three sources familiar with the situation. ... Some investors believe part or all of AMD could be bought by a technology company that might want to emulate Apple Inc's tight control of software and components, a strategy credited in part for the success of the iPad and iPhone. Microsoft Corp, Google Inc, Samsung Electronics, Intel Corp and even Facebook Inc have been suggested by Wall Street analysts as potential suitors that could benefit from some of AMD's chip business, including its graphics division, PC processors and server chips. Others say AMD's most valuable asset may be its deep bench of engineers or its patents."
Update: 11/14 01:44 GMT by S : In an emailed statement, an AMD representative said the company "is not actively pursuing a sale of the company or significant assets at this time."
Oracle? So they can make some sense out of Niagara... :-D
Sony? So they can make another poor decision...
They hired the most mercenary company they could find in order to salvage what is left of their shareholder's wealth. I'm sure they've already parted with whatevery IP allowed them to compete to date. I wonder what J Pee Morgan will be able to find in this pile of smoking rubble...
Their real estate and facilities must be worth something. Too bad they don't own clear title to their employees. Chatel used to sell well, back in the day.
They're the only likely candidate. Regulators would shit all over the idea of Intel buying AMD, even if they had a good reason to do it. nVidia might be interested, but again regulators would probably demand they'd divest themselves of the old ATi portion of the business. Facebook and Google? Don't see why'd they'd be interested. Dell or HP might have a sniff, but most of their business has always been built around high end Intel processors. Samsung are the only ones who make much sense, out of the list of potential suitors.
They want their own CPU and intel wont give the flexibility they want. Apple would gain their own GPU to tinker plus with bulldozer (or whatever they call it now) can have a nice APU for thei MBAs or IPADS with the x86 port replaced with an ARM.
Of course that would suck for us as I am typing this on an all AMD/ATI phenomII from Asus. But good for Asus investors since it looks like they wont survive this new recession that is starting.
http://saveie6.com/
I hear ya.
I love the fact that my $549 special I bought 2 years ago is hex-core and has virtualization to run many VMs in VMWare. A shocking surprise to say the least where I do not need a XEON workstation to simulate networks. It was the best ROI for bang for buck I ever made. Sigh
http://saveie6.com/
Somewhere between Arduino, Raspberry Pi and the $279 HP PC I use for a media server, there's a fertile market.
People need small machines to use for everyday tasks, from automating other machines, to serving data, to experimental purposes in a lab.
Make yourself a custom chip-set, AMD, and install your own flavor of Linux on it.
Truly bring (computing) power to the people.
Futurist Traditionalism
I can't see anyone touching them with a ten foot pole unless the price is REALLY beneficial. AMD was done for when they bought ATI. You knew they were desperate then and even more so now. I know a lot of geeks love AMD, but they will never beat Intel because of Intel's brand recognition and DEEP DEEP pockets. And besides, Intel is in bed so bad with companies like Microsoft and Dell then AMD stands no chance of gaining anything there either. I could see Microsoft buying them as a last ditch attempt at catching Apple but if they did, it would be the end of Ballmer and many executives at MS. If they thought the investor fallout has been bad from the Surface debacle, this will be a hundred fold.
My sig of choice is Marlboro
Because comparing Intel to AMD is foolish. Intel is a monster with fabs and techniques second to none. AMD has always remained the scrappy underdog that had moments of glory, but in the end didnt have enough tricks up its sleeve to fend off the intel juggernaut. The plain fact is, intel processors soundly trump AMD in almost every conceivable metric that matters. Intel has better engineers, better techniques, more money, deeper research, it goes on and on.
Good-bye
That's worth something only if employees are bound serf-like to AMD, as opposed to being able to move to a different company if they don't like the new owner.
Similar post-sale exoduses happened when DEC sold itself off chunk by chunk.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
...AMD's most valuable asset may be its deep bench of engineers or its patents
Engineers profoundly hate to be sold along, as if they were pieces of equipment, with the company they work for. Moreover and ipso facto, it is nigh impossible to sell what engineers have in their heads: resourcefulness, the capacity to come up with ever-new ideas.
Patents ? Mebbe. Valuable for patent trolls, yes. Valuable for Microsoft, Samsung, Apple, Oracle ? Doubt it.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
... I thought these people were supposed ot be experts in thier fields and stuff. I think even the most casual observer saw the market interest changing. Personal computing is evolving. They should have been evolving along with it. And what's intel doing? They remain quite relevant... not so much on the mobile end I guess... their Atom processor ain't quite it you know?
Still, for home appliances, Atom is pretty good stuff.
My system I got for $549 had a nice ATI 5750 as well. I wanted a decent gaming system that was only 15% slower for 50% of the price. An intel one at the time would give me FPS in the single digits.
With the speed of the processors these days I could care less about the minor speed. It is a great value for a multi purpose machine that I couldn't get with Intel and Nvidia.
http://saveie6.com/
All Bulldozer-based processors and future generation AMD processors have hardware accelerated AES. Intel usually doesn't, but frequently they don't even specify it.
http://ark.intel.com/search/advanced?AESTech=true Right down to the first-gen Core i5's
AMD processors all support ECC memory, while Intel usually only supports it in the Xeon processors (which can cost thousands of dollars).
http://ark.intel.com/search/advanced/?s=t&ECCMemory=true Even i3 CPU's support ECC.
AMD was also committed to Coreboot for a while, which was great for our freedom. (Unfortunately, they haven't released the required specifications for their more recent chips.)
You mean they not only failed to promote your freedom, they also reneged on a promise?
Bribery and blackmail in the end gave Intel the edge over the competition.
This statement is either false, or "analysts" are even dumber than I expected.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
8 core processor on my desktop for $120? Yes please. "Not enough oomph"-- except on my desktop, where I have the ability to massively multitask while simultaneously nesting ESXi instances, all in a box that will cost under $500....
Seriously, what on earth does the average desktop user (those of us still alive) need with an Ivy Bridge processor? Lower power usage-- who cares? Faster single threaded performance-- except its already fast enough for 90% of desktop apps.
IBM, so they can definitely revenge themselves for their humiliation at the hands of Wintel.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
...intel processors soundly trump AMD in almost every conceivable metric that matters...
I am a big fan of AMD. I really don't want to see them disappear. The /one market/ they have is cheap, high core density servers and they fucked that up when they laid off their Linux kernel devs.
I was in the process of speccing out some new 32-core (dual socket, 16-core CPUs) 1U servers and when I heard that I shifted gears... now I am lost trying to figure out what to do now...
AMD wasnt "doing well independently", why do you suppose they spun off GlobalFoundries? Theyve been getting stomped since ~2006 when the core2 came out and dominated AMD's lineup.
Intel Corp ... suggested by Wall Street analysts as potential suitors
I realize it says "Wall Street analysts", but what utter moron even among that crowd of utter morons could possibly think having effectively all desktop CPU production controlled by a single company would be a good idea?
If only Valve/Gabe Newell had enough capital to buy AMD.
"Microsoft Corp, Google Inc, Samsung Electronics, Intel Corp and even Facebook Inc have been suggested by Wall Street analysts as potential suitors"
Intel would never buy AMD. Face it - right now, Intel is *winning* in the market, pretty much legitimately (not 100%, and they used to cheat like mad, but right now they're winning more-or-less fairly). But they need a competitor to avoid a massive antitrust investigation. They need AMD as an enemy more than they need it as an asset.
Facebook would not, and could not, buy AMD. They may be riding high on the Web 2.0 Bubble, but they're an absolutely terrible match. Facebook's made it a point of using off-the-shelf hardware and open-source solutions. They have very little experience with hardware (besides setting up networks and racks), and gain nothing from producing their own hardware.
Google doesn't need them. They're doing fine running on commodity servers for their web stuff, and trying to produce their own mobile chips would anger their hardware partners for Android. It might give them a slight edge in the long run, but the short-term harm seems to outweigh that.
Microsoft *might* work. They need some special edge in the tablet war they just jumped into, and AMD is a good match with their successful Xbox line. But AMD isn't known to be particularly good at low-power chips. Perhaps they just haven't tried yet, or some older design could be successfully adapted into tablets (a single/dual-core, low-power K8 paired with a good Radeon design might be a good A6 competitor, especially if Microsoft tries to bill itself both as an 'enterprise' tablet *and* a 'gaming' tablet). But really, although it makes sense for Microsoft to buy some hardware company, AMD isn't the best choice. NVidia might make a better one, but I don't think they're looking to sell out right now.
Samsung might buy parts of the company, but they wouldn't want the whole thing. I imagine they would love the graphics section, maybe some of the CPU engineers, but I doubt they want to enter the full-on CPU market.
You know who might make more sense? Cray, or maybe IBM. AMD stuff is popular for supercomputers, both their Opterons and their FireStream/FirePro cards. IBM isn't too likely (they have enough good hardware people already), but Cray or one of their competitors seems at least more plausible than any of the other suggestions.
Another idea is some gaming company. AMD has a somewhat-competitive graphics division, and a compute side that could handle gaming loads well with some tweaks. Sony is really the most likely - they've *never* been good at the hardware side, only lucking into success with the PS1 and PS2 after some clever business decisions. But I also doubt Sony is smart enough to try to do that, especially since buying AMD might hurt their (Intel-focused) laptop business.
I only see Google buying them, or at least the ATI division, only if they want to do something like they did with WebM/VP8, push for open GPUs. can I dream right?
Hire back Linux Kernel Devs and focus on servers.
The fact is that AMD's Opterons are very competitive perfomance and feature wise vs Intel Xeons. The price puts them over the top, though.
You can build 64 core, 1U servers for ~$5000 with moderate DDR3 ECC RAM and HDDs (you'd probably want a SAN though). Fully maxed out still less than $10K.
I respect AMDs cheap desktop and mobile lines but Intel is a juggernaught in this space. They have better contracts with more manufacturers.
AMD and ATI should have never merged. The companies were doing well independently, but together they're like oil and water.
No they weren't. AMD was already for a mugging victim of Wintel for many years and ATI was desperately in need of better process technology.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
...intel processors soundly trump AMD in almost every conceivable metric that matters...
I am a big fan of AMD. I really don't want to see them disappear. The /one market/ they have is cheap, high core density servers and they fucked that up when they laid off their Linux kernel devs.
I was in the process of speccing out some new 32-core (dual socket, 16-core CPUs) 1U servers and when I heard that I shifted gears... now I am lost trying to figure out what to do now...
And the terrible thing about that is that if you want a high density server, 16 cores per socket for instance, your choices are AMD for a reasonableish price, or Intel... oh.. wait... no.. no you can't. Because there don't seem to be any 8+ core Intel CPUs.
So, AMD 16 core part for $519 per socket for Intel for over $1000 for an 8 core. Plus far more expensive motherboards and such. AMD going down will likely end up a disaster for anyone wanting lots of cores and not wanting to spend $1000 - $2000 per socket.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
The only thing anyone would want to buy is the graphics division - it's the only part that's competitive anymore. Reading the Piledriver review I was thinking, yes! 10% improvement over Bulldozer - keep this up and in another 4 years they might be competitive with Sandybridge
AMD wasnt "doing well independently", why do you suppose they spun off GlobalFoundries? Theyve been getting stomped since ~2006 when the core2 came out and dominated AMD's lineup.
One should also remember that wasn't it about that same time that Intel was paying server manufactures not to use AMD chips?
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
That was my favorite processor ever. I upgraded from a pentium 4 to the X2 series "actually the opteron 170 I think." It provided a dramatic improvement in performance over the single core P4, and trounced Intel's Pentium D.
Then Intel came out with the Core series, the Core2 providing a dramatic improvement over the X2's.
AMD responded with Barcelona, and it was all down hill from there. I promptly bought a Core2 based system and have been using Intel again ever since, AMD never became truly competitive again "I believe they've had some success competing at the lower-end."
I really loved AMD, they made some great products in the past but have slipped too far. I used to actually check out AMD's new offerings when they debuted, but I haven't done that in the past year. I just have no faith they can ever be competitive with Intel again. Sad really...
Remember the X2...
If AMD left that market completely, it would be devastating to the industry. Intel's CPU innovation would cease, and prices would shoot up sky high in the mid and low segments of the x86_64 market.
And that would be the end of the x86 market. Arm would most likely take over and there are many Arm manufacturers.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
I don't know that Intel has better engineers. They doubtless have more engineers. Intel also has fewer constraints on their engineers. It harder to build a low power chip on a larger process. Its going to be hard to beat, on instructions per watt, the highly competent engineers at Intel who have access to 22nm process when your fabs can only do 28 and larger, even if you put together an engineering dream team.
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AMD processors all support ECC memory, while Intel usually only supports it in the Xeon processors (which can cost thousands of dollars).
While there are some very expensive xeon processors they aren't the ones that are relavent here. The relavent ones are those that have ECC support but are otherwise comparable to the desktop parts.
Intel does charge a bit more for xeon processors than equivalent desktop processors but the difference isn't massive as you imply. For example looking on newegg an "i7-3770K" is $319.99 while a "Xeon E3-1275 V2" is 356.99
The main downsides of going the xeon route ar lack of overclockability and needing a server board to take advantages of them. But IMO if you are the sort of person who needs ECC neither of those is likely to be a big issue for you.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
The article text actually says that they are not pursuing a sale strategy but they need to fix their profitability. AMD is the GPU supplier for the Wii U, and early development boxes for the new xbox and playstation are running AMD chipsets. So AMD should just need to stay afloat until all the next gen consoles are released to return to being profitable.
A game has objectives and is competitive, anything else is just play
Indeed. ARM is Intel's biggest competitor these days, not AMD.
AMD had two high points: the Athlon/Duron when Intel were trying to tell us the P4 was a good deal, and of course AMD64. They've always seemed to lack the guts to capitalize on their advantages, though.
And the terrible thing about that is that if you want a high density server, 16 cores per socket for instance, your choices are AMD for a reasonableish price, or Intel... oh.. wait... no.. no you can't. Because there don't seem to be any 8+ core Intel CPUs.
That's a shock, because I have a bunch of them here, bought over the counter from a server OEM. They run sixteen threads per CPU and they're stonkingly fast.
Even i3 CPU's support ECC.
To be fair he did say "usually" it's only on the Xeons. Those i3's listed are a minority of all i3's.
intel processors soundly trump AMD in almost every conceivable metric that matters
Except price/performance.
Only for a small, random smattering of chips. The vast majority of i5s and i7s you find on Newegg and the like don't, and most systems that ship also don't include CPUs with ECC support. It's certainly not universal across all products, while AMD has made things like VT-x, VT-d, and ECC common to all their processors.
...and run as hot as the surface of the sun. So does my AMD FX 8120. I had to go liquid cooling to get that temp down. No heatsink & fan could get it done.
"That's right...I said it."
There are 24 Core CPU's with ECC support.
On the contrary. Their graphics division is what's keeping AMD's head above water right now, and is still turning out competitive hardware. Also we wouldn't have had Fusion, which is more attractive than any of Intel's offerings for cheap laptops.
Despite this, sadly the end is near for AMD. People have always said that Intel needs AMD to survive to avoid any anti-monopoly action but I'm not so sure now. The battle lines have been drawn for the next chip wars and ARM is much better equipped to take on the might of Intel.
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
Is this not similar in some way to Microsoft and apple in the the 90's? If AMD goes away Intel is in a bad position.
"Others say AMD's most valuable asset may be its deep bench of engineers or its patents."
I thought part of AMD's decline came about from them laying off engineers and moving to software-driven design instead of hand-crafting.
You are either stupid or you are being deliberately misleading. I can see 7 i3's launched all the way back in... Q3 2012. Nothing before that, and no mainstream i5/i7's. All the other Core CPUs in that list are for laptops (sockets BGA1288 and FCBGA1023).
In contrast, every single one of the AMD CPUs supports ECC and that has been the case since AMD64 launched.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Intel makes chips with more than 8 cores.
10 core Xeon: http://ark.intel.com/products/53580/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E7-8870-30M-Cache-2_40-GHz-6_40-GTs-Intel-QPI
Granted, it's incredibly expensive (as you point out) and I've only seen them in blade applications. But, they do make them. It's also worth pointing out that on the whole, one intel core gives far superior performance than one AMD core of the same clock speed (see http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html). Moreover, Intel's hyperthreading can be of a huge help, if your application profile fits.
Measuring $/core or $/CPU Cycle is not a very accurate way to gauge price/performance.
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Sorry for presenting facts along with citations.
Misleading facts with citations are still misleading.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
They run sixteen threads per CPU and they're stonkingly fast.
Hyperthreading is not the equal of a full-fledged core. On the other hand, an AMD bulldozer core is only half of a floating-point core. But, on the third hand, if FP is a big part of your workload you are probably handing it off to gpus anyway.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I'd still buy 'em if I was you, its not like all that FOSS code is gonna disappear and too many corps support Linux on servers for them to let the code rot, so I'd say your safe as houses.
Hell I'm still buying AMD across the board even though I sell Windows desktops and laptops, the bang for the buck is still incredibly high and for Joe and Jane Average even an Athlon triple core is frankly overkill for the kind of work they have for their system to do. And on the gaming front my boys and I are quite happy with our AMD systems, we have two Thubans and a Deneb quad and they just crank through the latest games no matter how many fireballs and particles are thrown across the screen. heck all three systems cost less than one upper midrange Intel gaming setup so i have no problem recommending them to those that want to game without breaking the bank. Finally the AMD E350 units make kick ass low power HTPCs and office boxes, i have switched several offices over and the employees just love 'em, they can actually talk on the phones and not hear a single sound out of their office box while still running anything they need to run, its nice.
So if it were me I'd buy 'em, 32 cores should give you plenty of power and the money you save can go towards more RAM which you of course can never have too much of.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
/b/ never was good.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I really wouldn't put much stock in that list friend, it SAYS it was updated this month yet they have the 1100T listed as a $300 chip and the 10xx chips at nearly $200, whereas I've been buying 1035T and 1045T chips for around $110-$120.
When you look at the ACTUAL prices, not what is listed there, you can get some truly insane deals on AMD, we're talking $50 Athlon 3.3Ghz triples, $60 for the quad, $70-$80 for the Phenom II standard quad, $90 for BE, and $100-$120 for the X6 chips.
So when you look at real world prices it honestly doesn't matter if Intel is getting 50% faster performance per core because you are paying double or better for that 50% performance boost.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Hell that is nothing, i built a fricking gaming PC for my oldest using an AMD hexa, the final cost? $420 after MIRs. Man you can NOT beat that price! I mean you can buy Phenom quad kits, NOT Athlon but honest to God Phenom II quad kits for $150 after MIR and that includes 8Gb of RAM, just add whatever HDD or SSD you want and any cheap burner. Hell you can buy the hexacore chip for $106 with NO rebates now how in the hell you gonna beat THAT kind of bang for the buck?
This is why I've been sticking with AMD, frankly most people just aren't gonna slam even an Athlon triple core, and the prices have been so low i can build people damned nice machines and still make a decent profit and they are HAPPY, damned happy, for the performance they are getting at that price. I also put my own money where my mouth is, not only is my entire family using AMD desktops and laptops but I've been selling AMD exclusively in the shop the past 5 years and people are happy as clams.
Its gonna suck balls if AMD goes tits up, especially for those that need real cores instead of HT. I'm just glad I got myself a 1035T, those 6 cores just chew through transcodes while giving me cores left over to multitask, you just can't beat having 3 cores for transcodes, one for my music playing, and a couple for browser threads and background tasks. Even with a couple of hours worth of transcodes running in the background my music never skips, the computer never feels like its under load, it just keeps cranking.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The problem was money both times. AMD lacked the money to advertise properly and Intel both times tapped their huge war chest to literally PAY PC manufacturers not to use AMD chips.
On the other hand, recent tests of current-generation (desktop) processors showed Intel processors to be twice as fast and four times as energy-efficient on a per-core basis.
Those programs are being ported over to the web.
No really, for real this time, honest.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
I'm sorry but I have to agree your "facts" are HIGHLY misleading, like how much good is ECC gonna do you in a laptop? And the ONLY non Xeon chips they have are a few low end i3s, that's it. Where are the i5s? The i7s? that's right, you can't have it because Intel "pre-cripples" and have going back years now. Contrast this with AMD where ALL the chips, even the E350 APUs, support ALL the technologies, including ECC and VT. Hell my little E350 netbook even holds 8Gb of RAM, Intel to this very day pre-cripples the Atom at a pathetic 2Gb which is just a joke.
To use a /. car analogy its like someone said "I need a vehicle similar to this Dodge to haul my loads" and you say "We have one of those!" and show him a boat. Sure it might haul the load in question but its really not gonna do him much good on the freeway now is it? the i3 is simply too weak for any of the work being discusssed here and moreover Intel knows this which is why they don't sell i5s and i7s with ECC, just as they won't sell you an Atom that will take over 2Gb, its to force you to be upsold if you want what should be a very basic standard feature.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
11 i3's, 2 i5's and 11 i7's
i3 CPU's are used on low power servers, hence the ECC. Google found Super Micro make a bunch of ITX sized server motherboards with the i3/i7 ECC CPU's
The Atom N2800 supports 4GB
Hyperthreading is not the equal of a full-fledged core.
Which is why I said sixteen threads, not sixteen cores. The original claim was that Intel had no CPUs with 8 or more cores, which merely proves the poster has no clue about current CPUs.
Measuring $/core or $/CPU Cycle is not a very accurate way to gauge price/performance.
When you're looking to build up a virtualization environment I'd wager the cost per core will tend to beat most other metrics. After all, what you want most to avoid is core contention. They do make 10 core CPUs, but even if you can get them the cost of one of them will likely outweigh the cost of the rest of the an entire blade. In fact, I know some people who are standing up an ESX system with AMD based blade servers. Each blade server, the entire thing with 16cores and gobs of RAM cost less than Intel CPU alone.
So if you want lots of cores, you're only practical option is AMD unless you absolutely need peak performance per core and throwing more cores at the problem won't help you.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
And the terrible thing about that is that if you want a high density server, 16 cores per socket for instance, your choices are AMD for a reasonableish price, or Intel... oh.. wait... no.. no you can't. Because there don't seem to be any 8+ core Intel CPUs.
That's a shock, because I have a bunch of them here, bought over the counter from a server OEM. They run sixteen threads per CPU and they're stonkingly fast.
Unless you've got a magic source, you've got an 8 core CPU which runs 16 threads in softcores. Hardly the same thing. As a bonus for those not 16 cores, you got to pay twice as much as the AMD solution. I hope you're twice as happy. :)
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
On the other hand, recent tests of current-generation (desktop) processors showed Intel processors to be twice as fast and four times as energy-efficient on a per-core basis.
Even if it really is twice as fast, which I admit I doubt, if you're talking desktop CPUs then you're not likely going to 16 cores or even 8. So even if your point is accurate, it isn't relevant to this thread.
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
If you're doing virtualization then the number of cores do matter a lot.
Not only that, even with the Xeon line which are supposed to have ECC support, they still flip the middle finger at you by crippling the "lower-end" E3 line to only support unbuffered ECC, not registered ECC.
Aren't the new AMD parts more like .75 fpus/core (they added an extra decoder in the last revision I think, so It's two schedulers, two decoders, and one execution unit per a pair of cores).
I think the execution unit can even do 2 of some operations in a cycle.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Too bad that servers are pretty much like desktops, the octo-core FX-8350 competes against quad-core i5/i7s and their 16-core server chips compete against Intel's octo-cores. You might as well say AMD is winning the desktop market because they're the only one to offer "lots of cores".
So, AMD 16 core part for $519 per socket for Intel for over $1000 for an 8 core.
A 6200 series CPU with the same cores as "Bulldozer" yes, it's called a fire sale. I'm guessing that price is the Opteron 6272. Well they're selling it for $4 less than AMDs bulk price, probably to get rid of inventory, I doubt Newegg will keep selling these at a loss for very long. If you want the 6300 series CPUs with the same cores as the FX-8350 then
a) You must pay over $700
b) It launched a week ago
c) It's nowhere to be found and no review site has gotten a chip for testing
P.S. There are some bizarrely expensive 10-core Intel chips, lots of high end RAS functions etc. but they're in a market where AMD has no offerings at all.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I don't know that Intel has better engineers. They doubtless have more engineers.
Which is a huge advantage, because they can hedge their bets. They didn't have to put all their eggs in one basket with Netburst or Itanium and they could afford to dedicate a team to make low-power, low-cost Atoms that both made Intel a pretty penny and sapped AMDs strength in the low-end market. Intel also just put up their first Xeon Phi card, the first real result from all the money they've spent on compute/HPC research. And they can still afford to fail miserably. AMD on the other hand can't afford misfires like that and sadly Bulldozer is a gamble that just didn't pay off.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The original claim was that Intel had no CPUs with 8 or more cores,
He wrote "8+ cores." You apparently chose to believe that meant 8 or more cores, anyone with basic knowledge of these things and a desire to find truth rather than pedancy would understand that he meant "more than 8 cores." But even a pedant could have just cited the tons of 8 core xeon models out there rather than go off on a tangent about 16 hyperthreads.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Measuring $/core or $/CPU Cycle is not a very accurate way to gauge price/performance.
Maybe not, but when I can get 8 64bit cores in a complete system like this: delivered for $500, that gets my attention. Throw some Linux distro on there and it's good to go.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
If you're doing virtualization then IOPS and network bandwidth will likely matter more.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
They didn't have to put all their eggs in one basket with Netburst or Itanium and they could afford to dedicate a team to make low-power, low-cost Atoms that both made Intel a pretty penny and sapped AMDs strength in the low-end market.
What they can do though is invent some amazing shiny new stuff that totally demolishes their current offerings, and lock it away in a cabinet against some future day when a challenger appears, because if they put too much progress on the table at any one time it demolishes the demand for their current chips. EX: big hosting farm runs 1000 shared websites and 10 virtual hosts per physical host. If they sell Larrabee with Xeon cores on an add-in card, the hosting farm puts 2 cards in each server and bumps their numbers to 10,000 shared websites and 100 virtual hosts, and Intel sells 10% as many Xeon CPUs. From your own example, they strip most of the intelligence out of the cores on the card, rendering it more useful for HPC but less useful for virtualized servers, and get a product that doesn't "cannibalize" their server processor sales.
Intel needs a sound competitor to keep them honest.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
If some court were to find that Intel abused its market dominance to count coup on AMD it would not go well for Intel. Fortunately for Intel they can be held blameless for their chief competitor becoming overburdened with debt to overpay for an acquisition like ATI that didn't provide sufficient cash flow to service that debt, leaving them unable to provide sufficient money to invest in R&D. That's an AMD strategic error Intel had nothing to do with and that seems to be AMD's undoing. It is not unfair competition to make the best products you can and charge for them all the market will bear.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
COME ON!
Their chips occupy most of the best price/performance ratios of any high performance chip, including Intel's offerings . Their 8-core $189.00 8320 is much faster than anyone realistically needs a chip to be. IF anyone is thinking about buying a new computer, check out PASSMARK's rating of your options for high end CPUs and focus in on the price performance ratio and then realize that this is just the single-threaded measurement, and AMD really shines in multi-threaded / multi-core computing , like the kind you do every day while you watch YouTube and edit music and chat with your friends etc etc etc.
Yes, I know I am asking for it from Intel employees and fanbois here... Sorry.
Why don't they just keep moving forward on the desktop front and open up new areas of revenue which leverage their ability to make fantastic chips inexpensively, revenues to be had in mobile devices and more forward looking, The Internet Of Things? That would give them this profile: Making fantastic desktop chips now? Check. Proven ability to leverage existing capabilities into current, rising markets? Check. Excellent long term outlook and R and D dedicated to soon-to-be-exploding, near future emerging computing markets? Check
Verdict- buy.
What I don't understand is one day, another chip maker will rise. That chip maker will spend a LOT of money and have to earn-the-hard-way a LOT of knowledge just to get where AMD is now. It's ridiculous that AMD is even thinking about throwing in the towel when they have the know how and capacity produce chips like they do at the prices they offer.
AMD leaving the stage would be the worst possible thing for consumers. Intel is a very highly manipulative company, still to this day offering a deliberately confusing array of chips with various abilities disabled so as to create an artificial "tiering" of the "market"- a practice which started back in the days of the 386 SX vs 386 DX and their disabled floating point chip...
What do you think is going to happen to prices and options if Intel is left alone on stage? They're going to make GP computing a niche market for millioniares while the rest of us can connect via dumb terminals to "the cloud" on what amounts to a pentium chip for a few hundred bucks a month courtesy of our "cloud provider" which will look a lot like our "cable provider" whilst our data, we're informed, no longer has the presumption of privacy.
Computing is too important to the progress of society be left in the hands of a corporation which has proven itself time and again, most enduringly, to be basically sociopathic.
No, seriously, it is.
I like AMD as much as you (I pretty much expect posts about CPUs to be filled by your posts, hairyfeet.), but the Atoms support 4GB, at least the D525 and D510 do and those already are on the market quite a while... (By extension: also the single core equivalents of those chips). If you see support listed as less, it means that the motherboard doesn't support more. The chipset is or physical layout is what determines what you can put in the machine. Example: I just bought a Zotac ZBox Nano ID61 with a Celeron 867. Accordin to ark.intel.com, that CPU supports 16Gb, but there is only one SO-DIMM slot and the documentation say 8GB. Well, if it becomes cheap, I can obviously try a 16GB module (if they come out). Sometimes that works, as my experience tells, but it remains a gamble.
I've been coming back from my Atom craze. The above Celeron CPU is one reason: pretty conservative on the power use and more oompha than an Atom at about the same price-point. The main reason, though, is that many Atoms come with proprietary graphic chipsets that are not the Intel HD nnnn that have excellent open source driver support. They're PowerVR and suck under Linux. I've looked at E-350 based solutions, but where I am, motherboards for those start at 100€. For that price, with Atoms I can have the motherboard (obviously with CPU) and RAM and perhaps even a small disk or SSD. Sure the E-350 is better, but it's often irrelevant given the application these machines are used for.
I loved the AMD A4/6/8/10 APUs. Those give a quite nice bang for the buck. Yes, an i3 will beat them, but the motherboard for the i3 will cost more and support less RAM. I think they wanted to get the A-series sold by OEMs, but somehow that didn't work. A shame, they make nice low-cost machines that barely make any noise.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Everyone who has a smartphone and/or tablet STILL has a PC and/or Mac.. ALSO, AFAIK, companies don't have their workforces using tablets or mobile devices to do their daily work. This seems like a fishing attempt by AMD. If AMD sold out, it would be detrimental to the PC industry.
Why not the Acer group - in particular, ALi? Or SiS? Already, there are Intel and NVIDIA in the markets, although NVIDIA doesn't make x64 CPUs. Via has the old Cyrix & Centaur - whatever they've digested and retained. ALi and SiS are the 2 other chipset companies out there. Already, AMD has spun off Global Foundries, and so now, they might as well sell off the remainder of the company to a Taiwanese or Singapore based corporation, and let them make the best use of their IP assets.
IMO, Acer is the best candidate - since it has an US presence as long as AMD's (unlike SiS), and with it, it can control AMD's production and supply according to both its own needs as well as that of other vendors. Those who are Intel only houses can stay that way, while those who are AMD customers would still have a stable supply.
A LITTLE expensive? I could build a whole damned AMD server rack for the cost of the damned chip alone! THIS is why its gonna royally suck if AMD goes under, intel has been pushing Ultrabooks and the ultra high end for awhile, the ONLY reason you have chips like the i3 and the Pentium is to keep AMD from owning everything below $1000. if AMD goes under they won't bother as it'll be their way or the highway.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
In the days of Windows NT, I used to suggest that Microsoft should buy DEC and own the Alpha, but now, I think they should definitely buy AMD. The ARM is a misfit as far as their plans go, since Wintel apps won't run on them, and they'd be at a disadvantage to Linux, which is how bad it would be. Above, I had suggested Acer, but aside from them, Microsoft is a good option as well. They get to own the hardware basis of their reference platform Windows, which is increasingly a 64-bit OS, and regardless of how their relationship w/ Intel continues, they would have designs for chip manufacturers, CEMS, ISVs and so on. Essentially, Microsoft has a lot to gain if they avoid being blindsighted by ARM and take up this offer.
MSFT already moved once from Coppermine (Pentium based) to Xenon (POWER based). Are they really unhappy w/ Xenon that they'd consider a new CPU again? As per Wiki, the XCGPU that MSFT uses in the X-Box 360 integrates the Xenon CPU and the Xenos GPU onto the same die, and the eDRAM into the same package. It is manufactured by Advanced Technology Investment Company and x86 competitor AMD's GlobalFoundries on a 45 nm process. That is the extent of its AMD connection, although since AMD has nothing to do w/ Global Foundries any more, it has nothing to do w/ X-Box either. Unless MSFT is actually moving from Xenon to the quad x64 that you mention.
4gb? Please. That is still WAY too little. If it doesn't support at least 8 gb there's no point to consider it unless it is being given to me. Cramming laptops/netbooks/media PCs with ram is VERY sound because it means that windows can cache lots of files and compensate for the slow hard drives these machines typically have.. My one C60 simply FLIES with 8gb of ram.
I also have a Asus X53U-RH11 AMD C60 that I went full retard with. I got 16gb of FAST laptop ram and crammed it into the two memory slots, the machine only "officially" supports 4gb IIRC. BIOS recognized the ram right away. Took a couple of reboots and removing and re-installing the second stick a couple of times for Windows to say that all 16 were useable. Made a 6gb RAMdisk and loaded all the program files onto it. Only way I can get that thing to start chugging is to play 1080 video on it and sometimes it can keep up if things aren't too busy.
Loading up computers with 8gb or more of RAM is a very sound thing to do due to prices being so cheap. 4gb is simply too restrictive as it limits upgrade options. I bought an open-box E450 mobo off NewEgg for a file server and I am going to be putting 16 gigs, yea I know it only supports 8 officially, in that thing just because it is so cheap I want to future proof it. Every PC/mobo I have throw away was thrown not because of the processor, but because it didn't have enough RAM and by the time I wanted to buy more, the prices for the older ram had shot up to where it didn't make sense to buy more.
I'm not disagreeing, as you can get 16GB for very cheap in laptops and desktops. However, there is a diminishing point of return, which is - granted- dependant on the workload. As a matter of fact, my mom has 16GB in her Ubuntu machine. From what I see, it rarely uses more than 4GB, including the caching (there are only so many files you'll open) and she's got an SSD, so on loading time, she's fine. My wifes iMac: 16GB too, same deal: rarely uses anything over 4GB including cache.
Even my i7 laptop, which originally came with 4GB RAM. I upped it to 16GB as it's dirt cheap. I personally wouldn't dare to say it feel speedier. My workload is obviously higher.
My home server, one of those D510 machines, has 4GB RAM. It runs OpenBSD, and current memory usage is: "Memory: Real: 87M/769M act/tot Free: 3187M Cache: 597M Swap: 0K/8197M". This machine does much much more than just fileserver.
So, while I do agree with the premise: dump as much RAM into your machine as you can afford (eg my moms motherboard supports 64GB, but that is cost prohibitive). However, you can actually measure a bit and decide whether it's worth it. 4GB is fine for a small file server and average desktop usage. Do you buy longevity? Perhaps, depending on the use-case. That file server isn't going to do much much more in the future, is it?
I'm sure, *you* can use more, but I doubt that's the case for most people. If you build machines for other people and you need to take into account that they have to pay for the parts (even if you build for free), going 8GB over 4GB for a barely noticeable effect (to them), is probably not the best idea.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
My main concern though is the upgrade path. A Core2 Duo CPU/board built 5 years ago is still perfectly serviceable as far as processing power for people like my dad and many of my relatives. The big bottleneck I have found has been how much ram those older boards can take. A 4 memory slot 775 board is golden as you can fill it with 2gb DDR2 sticks, which are relatively cheap and plentiful. 4gb sticks are rather expensive.
I don't equip any of those boards with SSDs when I put together a system for my relatives, I'm using used parts I get from work, so the caching becomes a lot more important, and even my aunt can easily get a 4gb RAM Windows 7 build to fill up all the main memory with cached files. Granted her programs only use about 2gb so windows still has a 2gb cache, but with a slower hard drive that cache can still make a big difference even with non-power users.
I would agree that an SSD would reduce the need for caching, but with platter drives it is very important. A 4gb 775 Core2 Duo board still works today, but who knows for how long. 8gb gives you far more leeway in the future. Intel continuing to limit Atom boards to 4gb is a stupid move, as it pushes people to AMD for low power systems simply because the systems can handle more RAM. They can see the trend, my guess is that they don't let the Atoms have more RAM in order to get people into the i3/Celeron/Pentium. AMD is the underdog and wants to get as much business from Intel as they can, they can't afford to nerf anything if they don't have to because, for them, there is no benefit to doing so.
Anyway, with all due respect. I think you are doing things you shouldn't be doing. If I understand it correctly, you are somehow creating RAM disks, and moving all data there upon boot in order to speed up access times, correct? It's the ancient way of doing it from the days yonder where operating systems didn't know about caching. Well, modern operating systems, all of them, including Windows XP, have adequate to very good caching. It's only the first time you load an application that the data is transferred from disk to RAM, close the application, and restart it, it will be next to instant. Why? It's been loaded to RAM, and the machine "knows" that and isn't going to bother to redo all the I/O it required.
Now, I'm not familiar with Windows, but on a Linux machine, a default desktop with some applications will use 1 to 1.5GB truly used memory ("active"+"wired", read up on the terms here). All the rest is available for caching ("buffers" in Linux lingo). Even then, the RAM is often not used, if you're not actually taxing the machine much, which normal users like my mom won't do.
Personally, I am very skeptical about having such huge speed differences. Have you actually measured application startup times with 8GB versus 4GB RAM? You're initial move from platter to RAM-disk must be counted in, keep that in mind. Sure, it's at bootup, but it still is time doing I/O. You're right that the market segmentation Intel does with the Atoms is pretty stupid, but then, with Intel you get what you pay for. Don't pay much... Don't get much.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Why is the upgradeability your concern? You state that you use used stuff from work, so in a few years there will be better used stuff.
Ah, very valid question. The answer is that the stuff I can get is at least 4-5 years old. The problem is that we are still mostly deploying Socket 775 boards. (We stocked up and because the older boards have features we need that are hard to find on newer boards. We still have plenty of systems that require ISA slots) So in 4 years all I will be able to get are.......Socket 775 boards. I MIGHT be able to get a few Socket 1155 boards, but they will be scarce and far between. The only improvement will be DDR3.
I think you are doing things you shouldn't be doing. If I understand it correctly, you are somehow creating RAM disks, and moving all data there upon boot in order to speed up access times, correct? It's the ancient way of doing it from the days yonder where operating systems didn't know about caching.
Well it feels a lot more responsive to me and it's not my main system anyway. You're probably right that the caching will eventually learn the usage patterns, making the ram disk unnecessary, but hey, I had 16 gb to play around with so I figured why not. I'll probably eventually try swapping the ram disk with an actual disk partition and see how the caching compares.