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'We've an Unexpected Manufacturing Advantage For the First Time Ever': Intel's Manufacturing Glitch Opens Door For AMD (theinformation.com)

Posted by msmash on from the fighting-back dept.

Over at The Information (paywalled), reporter Aaron Tilley has a splendid interview of Forrest Norrod, a senior executive who joined AMD four years ago. Mr. Norrod describes the challenge AMD has faced over the years and how, for the first time ever, it sees a real shot at making a significant dent in the desktop market. From the report: Advanced Micro Devices' battle with chip giant Intel has often seemed like a gnat fighting an elephant, with AMD struggling in recent years to gain even a tenth of the market for the chips that power PCs and data center servers. Forrest Norrod, a senior executive who joined AMD four years ago, says the company suffered from "little brother syndrome" where it tried and failed to compete with Intel on lots of different chips. Now, though, AMD may have a shot at coming out with a faster, more powerful chip than Intel for the first time. Intel in April said it was delaying the release of a more advanced chip manufacturing process until sometime in 2019. AMD has its own new, advanced chip, which it will now be able to release earlier than Intel, potentially giving it an edge in the market for high-performance chips for PCs and data center computers.

It's a market opportunity worth around $50 billion. That's what Intel makes from selling chips for PCs and data center servers, and it dominates both markets. The data center market is particularly important because of the growth of new technologies like artificial intelligence-related applications, much of which is handled in the cloud. Companies that buy chips for data centers or PCs could gravitate to AMD chips as a result of Intel's delay. "I think we have a year lead now," said Mr. Norrod, who oversees AMD's data center business. AMD now has "an unexpected [manufacturing] advantage for the first time ever," he added.

7 of 136 comments (clear)

  1. Intel lost their edge by Kohath · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is why the rumor about Apple making their own Mac CPUs is believable. Intel lost their 18 month chip fabrication lead and they are now 9-12 months behind TSMC.

    1. Re:Intel lost their edge by dfghjk · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "This is why the rumor about Apple making their own Mac CPUs is believable "

      No it isn't. Apple doesn't even bother updating its product lines with current Intel offerings so it's hard to believe that Intel lagging behind is even a small problem for Apple.

      That's not to say Apple's interest in making their own CPU's isn't believable, just that Apple wouldn't do it for this reason.

    2. Re:Intel lost their edge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They don't update their product lines because Intel isn't delivering any fucking value or performance increases with minor revisions... LPDDR4 in configurations bigger than 16GB being the biggest complaint to date which is totally an Intel problem.

  2. Intel will fight dirty. by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If I've learned anything about Intel from their past behavior then it's that they will lie, cheat and steal if that's what it takes to suppress AMD. I wouldn't be surprised if they paid off a bunch of companies to have a supply disruption occur, bad firmware updates bricking machines or creating a shell company to make purposefully shitty AMD machines.

    Honestly, the FTC should have had their boot on Intel's neck decades ago and kept it their.

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  3. Re:Pre Intel Core Chips. by ITRambo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That's correct. At one point AMD briefly passed 50% of retail desktop sales, thanks to the Athlon 64. Intel came back strong and almost crushed AMD who screwed up with the A-series and other pre-Ryzen processors.

  4. Eh, not for the first time... by Ecuador · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not for the first time. How old are you, 15? AMD's Athlon was faster than the P3, especially when the latter couldn't keep up with clock speeds (there was even a P3 that was unstable at the rated speed and had to be recalled), and then Athlon 64 was much faster than the P4 (esp. with 64 bit OSes) but most publications at the time were at Intel's pocket and were trying to pass off that absolute turd Netburst architecture as gold, while at the same time Intel was strong-arming or bribing system integrators into not using the superior AMD. So AMD has had better solutions for years in the past, but due to Intel's illegal tactics they did not gain a big enough market share. In the end, Intel was forced to pay a fine which was nothing compared to the revenue AMD lost over that time and that lost revenue when they had superior technology meant they eventually were not competitive which meant consumers lost.

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  5. Re:Pre Intel Core Chips. by epine · · Score: 3, Insightful

    But right before then, Intel was seen as the dying giant.

    No serious observer regarded Intel as a dying giant, though you'd have my vote for a Napoleonic (Itanium) psychopath (RDRAM), sleeping off a boozy bender (Prescott, Caminogate).

    One humble phone call to their Israeli design center ("maybe let's just put the engineers back in charge for a short while"), and Intel bounced right back off the matt again, big time, rocking those giant abulous fabs we all knew they were still packing under their delirious anti-competitive power-grab.

    For about a five year period, during their Hewlett Packard joint venture, that must have been one hell of dysfunctional board room, perhaps even arcing as high as 100 mFi (milli-Fiorinas).

    Itanium Sales Forecasts edit.png

    I can never review that chart without hearing Julie Andrews in my inner ear chirruping gaily away about kettles of kittens and mittens of string.