Tuesday, November 29th 2011
AMD To Give Up Competing With Intel On x86? CPU Prices Already Shooting Up
It looks like the Bulldozer disaster might have been too much of a setback for AMD to recover from. After 30 years of competing with Intel in the x86 processor market, AMD is about to give up, even with the 2009 1.25bn antitrust settlement they extracted from them. Mike Silverman, AMD company spokesman said, "We're at an inflection point. We will all need to let go of the old 'AMD versus Intel' mind-set, because it won't be about that anymore." He was vague on the exact strategy that AMD intends to pursue from now on, though. However, the company is widely expected to make a concerted effort to break into the smartphones and tablets market. The big problem with this strategy unfortunately, is that this arena is currently dominated by many other competitors. On top of that, their arch enemy Intel is also trying to muscle in on this space, hence AMD could find themselves back at square one, or likely even further back. AMD's graphics cards are doing well at the moment though and are quite competitive, so it looks like their expensive purchase of ATI back in 2006, might yet save the company from extinction. If they become primarily a graphics card company, they will inevitably end up a lot smaller than they are now though and that's a lot of lost jobs and personal hardship, along with a monopoly x86 market remaining and all of its negative effects on the market.
The current predicament that AMD find themselves in can only be due to bad management, especially with that massive injection of over a billion dollars. Surely they must have seen the way Bulldozer performance was going years ago? Ultimately, it doesn't matter if they would have scrapped Bulldozer as a bad job and tweaked up the reasonable Phenom 2 instead and called it Phenom 3. It doesn't matter a jot what's actually under the hood, what clock speed it runs at and what you call it. Ultimately, it's comparative real-world performance and price that matters, nothing else. Nothing at all. Back in October, we reported on AMD's projection of a 50% CPU performance improvement by 2014. It was clear as day that this was a non-starter against the high performance competition from Intel, who's products are already 50% faster and more right now, so today's announcement that AMD is giving up isn't really all that surprising, although depressing.
AMD's move is bad news for PC enthusiasts everywhere as Intel will now be left with no competition in the x86 market and be an effective monopoly. We're already seeing the effects of this with Intel processors trending upwards in price and Intel's Sandy Bridge replacements, Sandy Bridge-E and Ivy Bridge, which essentially give the same per core performance as SB, with just a few tweaks to make them "new" products. With more and more computing power being crammed into an ever smaller space, could it be that high powered PCs will become a very small niche market, having been replaced by laptops, very small form factor, low power computers - and games consoles? And what will happen to AMD and NVIDIA when they can't sell high-powered graphics cards in sufficient quantities to be profitable any more? Doesn't bear thinking about, does it?
There's more info, analysis and quotes on this grim situation over at Mercury News.
AMD's move is bad news for PC enthusiasts everywhere as Intel will now be left with no competition in the x86 market and be an effective monopoly. We're already seeing the effects of this with Intel processors trending upwards in price and Intel's Sandy Bridge replacements, Sandy Bridge-E and Ivy Bridge, which essentially give the same per core performance as SB, with just a few tweaks to make them "new" products. With more and more computing power being crammed into an ever smaller space, could it be that high powered PCs will become a very small niche market, having been replaced by laptops, very small form factor, low power computers - and games consoles? And what will happen to AMD and NVIDIA when they can't sell high-powered graphics cards in sufficient quantities to be profitable any more? Doesn't bear thinking about, does it?
There's more info, analysis and quotes on this grim situation over at Mercury News.
156 Comments on AMD To Give Up Competing With Intel On x86? CPU Prices Already Shooting Up
However, I don't think this is accurate at all.
"Intel wouldn't be what it is today if AMD never stepped in."
AMD got ahead because intel screwed up and was trying to push megahurtz as king until physics slapped them in the face.
Intel always has been and always will be bigger than AMD, and they recovered from the P4 with conroe. When you have deep pockets you can screw up and recover with ease AMD on the other hand doesn't have this luxury. I'd give them credit for fighting this David vs Goliath battle we have enjoyed for this many years but they were always fighting a the war they could never win! AMD just won a single battle with A64.
There would be no AMD without intel not the other way around.
AMD is not leaving the market.
On the flip side of that, Intel could have been much more if AMD hadn't stepped in :)
Intel had a ~5 year top-down plan for introducing IA64 to the industry, from specialty applications to mobile. But after the first phase, who comes in and c-blocks them? AMD with x86-64. We got short-term gratification, but at what expense? Could theorize over several paragraphs, but I'll sum it up that could be have been driving flying cars by now.
Nothing will really change.
About the article, the "We're at an inflection point. We will all need to let go of the old 'AMD versus Intel' mind-set, because it won't be about that anymore." quote doesn't mean that AMD will throw the towel with x86 CPUs. They're just saying "Don't expect out next CPU to be a Sandy Bridge killer".
and if this is also part of their marketing, showing that they even 'throw the towel with x86 CPUs' and next time, they come up with something not so bad, the market trust may change again in their favor.At least they'll gain the share they had before the SB era.
AMD will only change there strategy and compete on Price/Performance until they can get something competative out that blows Intel out of the water :D
I'm not saying that an Intel monopoly is automatically a good thing though, but rather it's not that worse as some (many?) are wont to paint it out.
Very well could been a move away from there current bulldozer/piledriver strategy. Leaving the desktop sector would be crazy.
Push out what is left.
Cutting power consumption and price for piledriver.
Keep up the good work with the graphics cards.
Perhaps dabble in the smartphone/tablet sector. (Now I know Intel are meant to enter the smartphone market in 2012 but AMD could grab a sizeable share depending on price).
Down the line with a new architecture, Intel didnt see it coming because of the smartphone battle "BANG" AMD is back.
More what im saying is a move away from what AMD are doing right now is obvious, someone said if the marketing of the FX had been different this might not have happened, that is on the money.
Its the same mistake Intel made with the believe in GHz, AMD are just piling on the cores.
AMD could move away from the cores and look for something a little more refined.
N tell u truth AMD has been a better choice for price/performance ratio. Yes the i series CPus are good from intel but in long run they will fall flat as software developers start releasing more threaded programs. AMD may not be the fastest in town but they are looking into the future of software development. FX isnt a disaster to say the least because many who have bought the product are actually very satisfied and happy with their purchase.
Well I doubt this will happen, I mean the gov would probably break up Intel for being a monopoly so Intel would probably even bail them out, who knows.
"And no is gonna buy sandbridge 3 if its only 100mhz faster than the last and with no IPC improvement."
From someones comment, well if AMD did say screw it and pulled out of the market, and 4 years down the road your mobo craps out and the sandy3 has diff pin config and its only 100mhz faster you are going to buy it cause you have no choice. And the Prescott sucked and people still bought them over the superior A64 at the time.
It would be the same thing if GM was the only car maker on the planet and after they got their monopoly they only made cavalier's, well the other option would be walk.
I just wish ATI didn't get bought out, as for the cpu I run a AMD 955BE and most of the time it idles, and I have no reason whatsoever to upgrade it. My wife's zacate E-350 1.6Ghz dual core laptop runs 'typical everyday' things smoothly.
As for the majority of people they don't know or care, as long as the pc starts when they push the button so they can check their email and watch youtube thats all that matters to them.