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- Zaetha, on 10/11/2007, -27/+132Digg me down, please...
- phase, on 10/11/2007, -1/+79It's only because of pressure from AMD that Intel's processors have improved so drastically in terms of power consumption and performance, and gone down in price.
- rudy23, on 10/11/2007, -3/+67had it not been for the X2 processors I think we wouldnt have seen core 2 duo today. we probably would be running $500 Pentium D 820 processors.
- tgunner, on 10/11/2007, -2/+58Whatever it takes to stay in the market. I like intel's latest efforts, but I am honestly scared of a tech world dominated by them. (VIA as competion? meh)
- Lane, on 10/11/2007, -4/+53IF amd goes bust it ruins the whole computing industry. That means no competition for the processing crown and strictly Nvidia Graphics cards. I dont even want to think of what kind of pricing hike that would lead to.
- shableep, on 10/11/2007, -14/+56you know, i just can't. you asked too nicely.
- adrianmonk, on 10/11/2007, -1/+41@phase:
Around 1998, I worked (as a Unix admin) at the Somerset Design Center, which was a consortium funded by Motorola, IBM, and Apple to design PowerPC chips that all three companies could then use. Around 1994-1995, the PowerPC had gathered a lot of industry momentum, and some people believed a PowerPC platform (such as PReP or CHRP) might finally unseat the obsolete PC platform. (Microsoft even released an edition of Windows NT that ran on PowerPC.) By the time I worked there, IBM had pulled out of the partnership to do POWER chips on its own, and that pretty much spelled the end of the consortium.
All that is to provide background for this: I had a conversation there with one of the true believers in the PowerPC. After it became clear the consortium would end, he got somewhat introspective. He basically said he was disappointed that they'd failed in their attempt to unseat x86 and replace it with a modern, open architecture. But overall, he felt they could claim some kind of victory: they had scared the pants off Intel and spurred Intel to actually make some progress. For a while in the early 90's, performance of Intel chips totally stagnated. Coincidence or not, Intel started making huge leaps after PowerPC came out.
Anyway, the point is, since PowerPC has faded from view, I have always that though AMD has taken over the role of keeping Intel accountable. Even if you never buy a chip from AMD, you should be grateful for this. Without a little fire under their butts, most companies (Intel is no exception) will just coast. - inactive, on 10/11/2007, -8/+45That is what I was thinking, I really would rather see a marketplace with serious competitors than Intel gaining a monopoly on Desktop CPU fab.
- mygrayarea, on 10/11/2007, -7/+44Yeah, the way they act you'd think they invented the cpu.
- crackah, on 10/11/2007, -6/+29*****. not good news.
Really not good if its true - MegaHyster, on 10/11/2007, -2/+23Even the intel fanboys should be concerned. Do you really want to see the Intel prices jump, and new technology take even longer to emerge?
Yeah, didn't think so... - moofer, on 10/11/2007, -2/+21CEO Hector Ruiz's nickname at Motorola when I was there:
Hector the Sector Wrecker
The guy is business kryptonite. The best thing AMD can do for themselves is to send that choad packing. It was amazing the way that man could take a business that never lost a dime in its history, and drill it into the dirt. - ikrit2006, on 10/11/2007, -5/+24I don't think you really understand... if AMD starts selling their chip designs to other companies to produce, you get 10 companies trying to compete with eachother for the lowest price on AMD-designed chips which will make the cost of those lower than they currently are... this is good for people who like Intel (like me) because it will keep prices on newer Intel chips down. Why would someone buy a $1000 processor from Intel when you can get a $100 processor from company ABC that has 80% of the processing power?
- phase, on 10/11/2007, -2/+19@ryansmith
AMD recently bought ATI.
check out the ATI website ;)
though still. AMD won't go bust. they'll be bought out well before that happens. - gmason08, on 10/11/2007, -13/+29Screw intel.
That said, this has me concerned(very). - Kier, on 10/11/2007, -2/+16"Only real men have fabs"
--Jerry Sanders, AMD founder & former CEO - Redemption289, on 10/11/2007, -1/+13Not fanboys, just smarter than you. If there is no competition, where is the motivation to innovate?
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -3/+15AMD can be just as competitive using an external fab. Even Intel uses TSMC for some of it's communication chips. Note, TSMC is also already the fab for ATI, Broadcom, Marvell, Nvidia, and Via. Start up costs for 45nm are just too large and the market can't support more than a few companies making the same massive investment.
- geminitojanus, on 10/11/2007, -0/+9"if AMD starts selling their chip designs to other companies to produce,"
They're not going to start selling their designs to anyone. AMD will continue to design the chips, and have a different company manufacture them (such as Chartered, IBM, TSMC, UMC, etc). What we're talking about is AMD selling off their Fabrication plants, the labs where they put the wafers through the machines, print them, dice them, etc. This is an _extremely_ expensive operation ($2 billion is about the bargain basement for a Fab and AMD's running two of them). Being fabless could make AMD more money per chip by cutting the costs of running them through their factories (at the expensive of giving up complete end-to-end solutions manufacturing). The biggest downside is that they might lose some chip-making integrity as a big part of semi's engineering is figuring out how to make your designs work best on whatever semiconductor process you've chosen. - Uranium118, on 10/11/2007, -1/+10More competition is good, I would hate to see a monopole. More = good, (only if there's a standard.)
- geminitojanus, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7"The thing the article really did not go over strongly enough, however, is that the competitive advantage in the current market of CPUs is definitely toward running your own fabs."
Everything else I'd agree with except for this statement. Fabbing is an expensive, tough business. If you're a company like Intel, you end up building a $8 billion dollar Fab to print $6 billion dollars worth of chips before you have to build the next fab to keep up with your process generations or volume demands (that's a fab at least every 2 years now, and that margin's coming down fast). While the huge advantage of running your own fab is actually designing the transistors and doing pure from-the-ground-up chip design, there's an enormous advantage to _not_ doing this (mainly that enormous down payment on a fab that won't pay itself off for years to come; AMD can't afford to keep making huge down payments on fabs that are a generation behind Intel's). - kitchung, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8 Just because the land is cleared doesn't mean they can't stop. There's nothing stopping them from pulling the plug right now.
- geminitojanus, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7"The land is already being cleared and its official that the plant is going up."
Yes it's going up. Will AMD retain ownership of it? Who knows, it'd be extremely easy for AMD to sell the plant to IBM (or even just spin off that part of their company into a different company, which could make chips for anyone). - phase, on 10/11/2007, -0/+7It should be noted that this isn't necessarily a bad thing. nvidia is a fabless company as well.
They've been held up by TSMC in the past, but they've fared well without a fab plant. - geminitojanus, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8"That said, this has me concerned(very)."
Why are you so concerned about them becoming a Fabless semi's company? They're still designing the chips, they're just not building them. Quite frankly, as an AMD stockholder, I'd be more than welcome to see them ditch their Fabs if they can make better chips because of it. They still have a very long standing relationship with IBM and Chartered for manufacturing, and apparently someone in the company knows how to operate fablessly (ATi's been doing it since conception).
Quite frankly it's a good idea from my point of view. - drlha, on 10/11/2007, -1/+7No, that would be a dipole.
- KibibyteBrain, on 10/11/2007, -4/+10@DesignEX There are lots of companies involved in desktop CPU fab. AMD and occasionally even Intel have farmed out work to them. Also, companies like IBM make many desktop class CPUs that go into other devices, like PPC processors in consoles and printers. The thing the article really did not go over strongly enough, however, is that the competitive advantage in the current market of CPUs is definitely toward running your own fabs. 45nm process is amazing and was previously thought to be impossible, but is not just "we made the transistors smaller". Some extra restrictions come into play. Also, fabricated electronics do not act like the electronics EE students play with in labs, so there are even more restrictions due to your transistor not really acting very much like a transistor, or the fact that your capacators are actually just transistors and have Q points and what not.
- houndeyex, on 10/11/2007, -4/+9A monopole? Is two monopoles a stereopole?
- Mosatii, on 10/11/2007, -6/+10No kidding. Competition is horrible.
- ynggrsshppr, on 10/11/2007, -6/+10Not necessarily. Shedding excess weight will enable AMD to move quickly and respond to a fast moving market.
What's bad is the current situation, this move is a change that will hopefully get AMD profitable again. So this is GOOD news. - kdubbz6688, on 10/11/2007, -4/+8I live 15 minutes from the chip fab plant AMD is building in saratoga NY, so this cant be true. The land is already being cleared and its official that the plant is going up.
- Arramol, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4Helping the underdog is essentially sacrificing some processing power for the sake of promoting healthy competition. Think of it as an investment in the future - buying an inferior (but still very good) product now in the hopes that it'll help keep prices low for the next system build. He's actually still benefiting from the competition - that AMD processor would've cost much more if Intel weren't around. He's just sacrificing a portion of the benefit in order to increase the odds of having that benefit in the future.
- JorgeGT, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3phase and adranmonk speak the truth. I have never owned an AMD processor (I've just used an intel PII and a PIV). Not because I have preferences, but because they were what my father gave me. And now, I expect my next processor to be an Intel core 2 duo, because I think they are the best I can get with my money.
However, I am grateful of AMD existance because it's what scared Intel to progress. I fear a world with one ruler without competence, because I have known this in other markets (Telefonica was once the only mobile/internet provider here in Spain) and it's terrible for customers. - rudy23, on 10/11/2007, -3/+6you mean nm . . . .
- rarson, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4@spartan777:
"this isn't saying that AMD is going bust. They are going to stop fabricating their own chips- which is EXACTLY what Nvidia does now. This isn't a huge deal. It would be weird though. Its like "what AMD did u get?" "oh, I got the BFG oc'ed one." "sweet! mine is that crappy leadtek one.""
Um, no. Needless to say, making PCB's is totally different from making chips. - samdu, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2I see this as a smart move. AMD doesn't actually make any end-user complete device, so it's not like they're protecting their ability to meet demand for such a thing. And the REAL value at AMD is in the engineers and designers. The fabrication side of things is incidental. Plus it's got to cost a ton of money to keep the fab operation both running smoothly and up to date for capacity purposes. There are plenty of chip fab companies that would jump at the chance to take on the job. They could probably do the job more cheaply, too. Which would give AMD a leg up on Intel in one department (they're still lagging behind the Core2Duos in the tech arena).
- Drgn547, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3I live near Saratoga, NY ... The "Saratogian" newspaper says:
"The groundbreaking for the county's $67 million water project, which the plant requires, took place recently."
Source:
http://www.saratogian.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18421806&BRD=1169&PAG=461&dept_id=602469&rfi=6 - kgninpo, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2I've said it before here and elsewhere, and I'll say it again: AMD needs to ditch Hector Ruiz. The sheer number of executives in that place is stifling. It's run like some 80's corporate movie with Hector walking around followed by a bunch of yes-men. They have more executive team members than Intel does, and they're a smaller company. Meanwhile, there are employees walking around with 4- and 5-year old computers praying that those antiquities don't give out on them. It's sad when the people who made AMD64 and X2 processors aren't even using them. Under Hector's leadership, AMD, a company that really had significant potential, has floundered. Time for a regime change.
- stoppedcode12, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2IBM and SUN have never gotten into the x86 business for a reason. The x86 business is extremely competitive, and the profit margins are low compared to IBM and SUN's main business of enterprise class severs, where they not only sell their processors, but they also sell their own severs and services too. (POWER and SPARC)
If IBM wants to buy AMD, they'd probably have to team up with SUN to do it, because AMD is in the industry's most competitive businesses, (x86 CPUs, and consumer class GPU) and every missteps they take will cost them heavily. - da_dude, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2It worked for Qualcomm.
- geminitojanus, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Intel wouldn't buy an AMD fab for fear of future litigation. But IBM, any number of private equity groups, and a few European pure-play fabs wouldn't mind at all picking up a 300mm wafer, 90nm fab. There isn't a lot of volume for these chips outside of the huge players, but there will be fairly soon as people transition their product lines to smaller processes. TI on the other hand is already stopping further process development because there's not a lot of money to be made here anymore for them. They can cut more costs by moving fabrication overseas.
- maninblac1, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Absolutely, IBM itself would likely never start on x86, but it would hugely advantageous to, gather an ally with the same interests, dethroning Intel from market dominance. Both intel and AMD are competitors in the server business as well. And the enemy of your bigger enemy is your friend.
- spartan777, on 10/11/2007, -5/+6this isn't saying that AMD is going bust. They are going to stop fabricating their own chips- which is EXACTLY what Nvidia does now. This isn't a huge deal. It would be weird though. Its like "what AMD did u get?" "oh, I got the BFG oc'ed one." "sweet! mine is that crappy leadtek one."
- Tabris, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1You forgot "/sarcasm" and are thus dugg down.
Unless you were being serious, but I am a just god and give you the benefit of the doubt. - maninblac1, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1I'm not sure that adding cores can be compared to increasing frequency. Since, for years we've been taking advantage of multi core systems anyway. 2S and 4S server boards have been around awhile. But your matter opinion comes from the fact that don't believe that adding cores improves performance. And, unfortunately, you're dead wrong, not only due the benchmarks show it, but common sense tells us the same as well. The fact of the matter is simple, on any modern system, call it windows or whatever, there a multiple processes running. On my machine right now, there are 44 processes. Every single one of them needs to be scheduled a time to run on my single processor system. If i had 44 processors in my system, every process could run on it's own processors, all the time, until another process needed to run, a 45th process. Until systems have more cores than processes to run, there will always be a performance advantage.
Not only this, but increasing the cores requires huge advances in other computer technologies like Memory and File I/O to match the necessary throughput that the cores may require. This is in the general interest to everyone. I hardly think that intel is squatting on this idea. Since guess who's joining them.......AMD. - V1be, on 10/11/2007, -2/+3Lying...fabrication...lying....fabrication....
...never mind. - maninblac1, on 10/11/2007, -2/+3There is something to be said about intel in fabrication (process size).
Intel moves first.......always. - maninblac1, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2Sadly, intel will likely have them beat on that regard, nehalem should have on-die memory and on-die graphics, on some versions. Not to mention being 45nm, up to 8 cores, 24MB of cache on some models??? and the second itteration of HT.
- keitarofujiwara, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1I remember when they had this chip-ring on their site where the AMD chip was waiting for the Intel chip. That was stunningly arrogant and stupid! Instead of PR they should have concentrated on improving their fabs... rookie mistake.
Now Intel will play with prices and will start the good ol' strategy of yogurt technology (it used to be increasing MHz, now it is increasing the number of cores per die) and so, we'll be stuck with this ***** for 10 years until IBM, or somebody, else comes up with something revolutionary. - bloodrain, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1hmm they should have not bought ati then.
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