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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...
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?
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.
"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.
...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 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
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.
Actually the company was already dead sadly, the former CEO completely gutted the company by firing ALL the chip designers for lousy software automated chip layouts, killing the next gen of the promising chips like Bobcat, and killing Thuban when he knew that bulldozer was gonna be a dog.
Let us just hope somebody buys them and turns the company around, they could do just as Intel did by going back to their K8 design and doing to it what Intel did to the P3 that became Core, because if they close their doors get ready to get royally fucked by Intel. You think their chips are high now? Wait until they have ZERO competition, hell the ONLY reason you have the Pentiums and Celerons is to keep a foot in the low to mid markets, no AMD? You won't find anything but Ultrabooks and $600 chips, mark my words.
Its a fucking shame, that's what it is, just a fucking shame. the Thubans still have a hell of a bang for the buck as do the Athlon triples and quads and work great for almost any task. I'm just glad i got my Thuban when i did, it should last me for a good 3 or 4 years and maybe by then this whole mess will have straightened out for the better.
One final thing, for those that are cheering ARM as its "anything but win tel"? Enjoy your black boxes suckers, Apple is showing the future there, locked down black boxes where you can't add shit, upgrade shit, and you throw it in the trash and buy another every couple of years because you can't even add fricking storage space to the damned things. don't think android will save you either, there are already several locked down Android devices out there, remember Android is based on GPL V2 and NO GPL V3 is allowed, that is so they can "TiVo trick" your ass.
Frankly I look at the future and i don't know whether to be sad or fucking disgusted, because it looks like we are gonna go back to the 80s, with everything proprietary, and damned if consumers don't line up to get screwed with a smile on their stupid faces...damn, just...damn.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Actually they DO innovate AC, you're just not allowed to have any of their innovative designs thanks to the IP minefield that is the USA. Look up the Loongson Dragon chips, here you have a MIPS chip with hardware accelerated X86 which is currently at around 75% native speed. Now imagine what all those ARM devices would be like if you could run any X86 programs on it, thanks to hardware emulation of X86? be pretty sweet huh?
but sadly you can't have it as Intel won't license X86 under FRAND so its only for Asia, they can't sell them in the west. i have a feeling as our minefield gets worse so too will we see more cool things that can't be sold here for fear of being sued out of existence.`
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.