AMD vs Intel; no more ?

Saw this article today: AMD shifting competitive focus away from Intel in 2012 | The Verge
AMD Not Competing with Intel Anymore, Goes Mobile - Softpedia

Looks like Intel might have won this fight....

 

We'll see what the future holds, but that would be bad news, Intel already had an advantage large enough and priced their CPUs accordingly, if they have no competition, i'm not certain i want to see what CPU prices will look like in the future. For that matter, competition also encourages innovation in the sense that you have to stay ahead of your competitors to have something that sells. Let's hope that if they have dominion over the computer CPU market, they won't slow down in the R&D department, sure there will always be demand for better processing performance, but having no competitor is an incentive gone.

 

Unless AMD fixes Bulldozer, I don't think they'll have much of a change against Intel in the mid- to high-end segment of CPUs for at least the next year or two. It's kind of sad to see that AMD can't even compete with itself (Bulldozer v Phenom II X4 and X6).

I've been a huge fan of AMD for years (all my desktops have AMD in them, and the only Intel CPUs in the house are inside the two laptops I've owned, due to AMD's heating and power issues in the laptop market in past CPUs). I hope they make a comeback and whoop Intel with Bulldozer v2.

 

A Llano type direction for AMD makes sense in a few markets.

 

AMD used to be the king in the Athlon XP days or soo. But when the Core 2 Duo came out I switched to Intel. I hope one day AMD will catch up or else they'll just be a cheap CPU option.

 

Intel can pretty much do whatever they like from now on in the high end market which again affects 90% of all NBR users. Take whatever price they want, use whatever time they`d like to make and sell new, improved CPUs, etc etc. And by "improvement", they can pretty much improve whatever they like how little they want. Nobody is there to push them.

That Bulldozer "accident" must have been the final drop for AMD. So many years in progress with tons of money involved in making it, crushed by a quad core and *almost* equal to a dual core. Bulldozer was reviewed by "everyone" and they all doomed the CPUs and AMD. People laughed, AMD fans shoke their heads in dissappointment partly because AMD praised the bulldozer WAY out of its real performance but also because they were hoping this CPU could bring back the glory days. Even Intel fans were thrilled and excited because this could mean a chance to try a 8-core or just change "side" for a change. And of course, a success would mean further battle between those two and prices would stay competetive etc.

It is a sad day indeed

 

Bad news. In fact very bad...

We know what will happen if Intel is left alone. You all know the Atom CPUs... It was sold for several years without any improvement.


--

 

I'd wait out on the bulldozer revision. There may be hope yet.

 

Or maybe...someone else will step up and challenge intel?

Mr. Mysterious

 

Who? And with what CPU architecture?

 

ARM will step up. The future is with smartphones and tablets and in that arena Intel is severely behind. Powerful desktops and notebooks will become boutique items. You reach a point where a sandy bridge class processor with it's power and cost are not needed for everyday tasks for most people.

Hopefully Microsoft and others start supporting the ARM architecture heavily so we don't have to rely on Intel any longer. I'm surprised Intel hasn't been broken up for having had a monopoly for so long.

Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk

 

Very sad news.

I was hoping by mobile they meant laptops, but apparently not, they're out of the x86 market altogether. Intel has no reason to advance now. This really sucks. nVidia needs to buy AMD (how ironic, right?) and perhaps enter the mobile and x86 market. Imagine nvidia with AMD and ATI tech all together. If they had the brains they could really make things work.

 

This is a bit depressing but I think AMD may have to rethink its entire processor design blueprints and try to establish something unseen and interesting, if they want to get back into the game. Intel has a clear dominance in the game right now and well, prices aren't probably going to look good.

 

Well this is very depressing. Should have known something was up with AMD when they lost a couple of their top GPU guys during the layoffs. They're just a complete mess now and I cringe to think I might have to buy an Intel or even nvidia in the future. With that said, I still have a bit of optimism for improved performance from Bulldozer with Win8.

 

Intel is NOT a monopoly. IBM is having a near "monopoly" in CPU, lol. Of course, that is more of server/HPC market, which Intel is barely making dents in (and mostly as a CPU to support nVidia Tesla arrays).

Consumer, it's Intel's desktop game, AMD has some foothold in certain APU markets (luckily, forced Intel to wake up about lackluster Atom performance).

Intel's biggest advantage is their fab process, and complementing that, their design teams. Atom will sync upto primary development schedule in 2014, so if/when ARM does get close, Intel's traditional fab advantage (hell, they are still on Bulk process...purely to save money and dev time, not even on SOI yet - they will be forced to make the change due to materials, unless if Intel develops yet another breakthrough), will help Intel out until they start steamrolling in pure performance again.

IMO, of course.

 

Then there's this:

AMD still committed to x86 | The Verge

" A report on AMD's future strategy made the rounds yesterday with speculation that the company might exit the x86 market, but that won't be the case anytime soon — AMD just told us that it "remains committed to the x86 market," but will be realigning around industry trends toward low-power devices and the cloud. That sounds like smartphones, tablets, and servers to us, but we'll see what the company has in store at its February strategy update — and what "committed" actually means as AMD figures out what's next. AMD's full statement is below:

AMD is a leader in x86 microprocessor design, and we remain committed to the x86 market. Our strategy is to accelerate our growth by taking advantage of our design capabilities to deliver a breadth of products that best align with broader industry shifts toward low power, emerging markets and the cloud."

So what does this all mean? I'm confused?

 

Right, Intel has a monopoly in the consumer space thus the DOJ should have looked into that. Just like IBM should be investigated for dominating servers. No single company should ever be allowed to dominate a market.

They have an awesome fab process but their Atom isn't up to snuff and even if the roadmap calls for it to be updated at some point, as of now Intel's share in the mobile space is next to nothing. The industry won't suddenly shift to Intel just because Intel would like them to or offers more power (if even possible). Companies like Samsung, Qualcomm, nVidia aren't about to bend over and let Intel dominate them like they did in the desktop world and ARM aren't morons either.

Translation: We want to honor our current OEM contracts and keep people buying our processors until we transition over to the lower power CPU/tablet space and abandon high performance x86. AMD should consider partnering with nVidia in the mobile space, the could probably compliment one another well.

 

Or... They know they can't compete with Intel on the high end CPUs so they're focusing on the lower end.

 

You don't have to trust me that I know someone inside of Intel, but I'm not going to say anything surprising anyway. Intel is highly committed to taking on the mobile market right now itself. Even with Intel not being prominent yet, using Intel's 3D transistor tech, it can bring a lot of processing power efficiently into the mobile market. They could move mobile devices into using x86 architecture even (Android has official x86 support coming very soon, Windows 8 is focusing on its touch based experience). IVY Bridge will dominate the consumer processor market with a much more powerful GPU and CPU contained on their APU while consuming much less energy when it is released next quarter that will take away that advantage likely from AMD, so the move makes sense I think.

Mobile devices will be the new battle grounds for the two companies. It adds credit to the theory that consumers will move into using mobile devices for general tasks in the home.

 

You might as well read the source of those original articles : AMD struggling to reinvent itself - San Jose Mercury News

They AREN'T leaving the X86 market, they are just focusing on the mobile market more.

 

Nvidia pertnering with AMD isn't going to happen any time soon, they hate nvidia almost as much as intel.

If AMD does drop out of the x86 market for good, we may still be able to hope for some new releases from ARM or IBM. Both are good companies which have the tech to give it a good shot. There's also the fact that AMD might make some ground breaking transistor discovery while working on graphics, which could easily be applied to processors, that might push them back in.

 

When intel's dual cores outperform amd's quad cores, you know something is up.

 

I was about to post the same thing here. Them saying they're out of the running was just a clip from the entire article explaining their stance and where they plan to go.

 

I think Joker hit the nail on the head. AMD is leaving the high performance market. They will concentrate on low end CPUs and competing in the ipad, smartphone market instead.
Hence the

 

Don't expect AMD to be fighting in the high-end server block. I expect they're focusing on the sub-500 market where Intel is currently somewhat weak. First generation A-series APUs are severely nerfed, overclocking the mobile chips easily demonstrates this. So they have pre-existant room to expand Llano while ramping Trinity, but I don't think anyone can dispute they've completely lost the desktop war.

They need to focus hard on OpenCL support, lower power envelopes and fast-booting chipsets.

 

On one hand, I really look forward to seeing what AMD can bring to the table in terms of smartphones and tablets.

On the other hand, I have a feeling that this will end up just like Fusion did. Fusion was an amazing concept when it was first announced in 2006, but the almost 5 year delay between announcement and release meant that Intel ultimately beat AMD to market.

Heck, even that's being generous considering how with Fusion both companies started on equal footing whereas with mobile Intel already has Moorestown while AMD has nothing.

And to top it all off, this is a best case scenario which assumes that AMD and/or Intel can somehow make x86 important in the mobile world - otherwise, ARM and their partners like Samsung and Qualcomm are light years ahead of both companies.

 

Is AMD loosing money of the desktop segment? If not then why are they pulling out of it? It doesn't make sense!

 

Yes, they are, big time. And nobody said they are "pulling out" of desktops.

 

Well when they say their focus will now be on the mobile market, that is writing on the wall. It's corporate speak for "we're done with x86".

 

Technically its dual core being about equal to octo-cores. Bulldozer isn't a bad chip. Its a bad desktop chip.

Its pretty fine on server. Slightly worse perf/watt but not enough to make a difference in a lot of tasks unless you intend on using the same servers for 5+ years. Sure it lacks RAS, and per-core licensed software will be really expensive since it has double the cores compared to Intel at the same performance, but its a workable server chip.

AMD is pretty big in HPC also. FMA4/[insert instruction that Intel doesn't like but AMD has here] will actually be used since HPC is more friendly toward compiling for a specific machine than server.

Piledriver/Trinity will hopefully fix the obvious problems with Bulldozer (horrible cache speed).

I don't think AMD is leaving x86. Being like one of the 3 people in the world with an x86 license helps. Zacate/Ontario has lots of potential, it was a runaway success that became supply limited, but it seems like its successor Wichita/Krishna has been cancelled due to GloFo not being able to get 28nm working in time.

I think what they mean by focusing on mobile is really pushing FSAIL and partnering with ARM though.

 

Well, a while back AMD was talking about how you can put any mix of chips into an APU as long as they meet basic I/O requirements. I don't think the company has enough R&D to deliver(...?) but like two dozen ultra-simple ARM cores and a small x86 core to control them, some of their big dreams were reminiscent of trying to build an IBM-style hybrid package like Blue Gene. More likely at this point, they'd be focusing on power efficiency for upcoming GPU designs. If they can improve efficiency in each tiny, modular core, then improve the mesh between cores...OpenCL would be much more useful outside the lab.

 

I am kind of curious how they are planning to pull this off. In x86 land, they have a much more powerful competitor, but there is only one and said competitor is not trying to finish them off because AMD's existence is the price Intel pays for keeping anti-monopoly regulators at bay. If they move to tablets and smartphones, they're still competing with Intel (which is trying to do the same thing), but on top of that, the 800lb gorilla of that market is ARM. Furthermore, as I remember it, AMD sold off their really low power technology when they were tight for cash so now they're probably going to have to push Bobcat to the point where it fits. The path they've chosen looks even tougher than what they had before.