tabascosauzAt what point in time will all those who still hold a grudge for Prescott accept that it was 10 years in the past and AMD's current failures have nothing to do with Intel's bribery pre-Core?

Only if AMD magically manages to recover from current situation.
The impact of not being able to adequately profit from having superior products back then is just too big.
"oh, they failed with bulozer" - yeah. With their tiny R&D budget.

HumanSmokeWhen Intel was paying kick backs to Dell and Toshiba to keep AMD processors out of their products, AMD had Hewlett-Packard...

That somehow balances situation when Compaq didn't dare to get AMD chips for free, eh?
AMD would get bigger market share, bigger revenue and higher margins, if not Intel's misuse of dominant market position (for which it was convicted in EU), are you seriously arguing with that?

And who cares what happened back in the very early beginning, when Intel was forced by IBM to, cough, do certain things.

The thing is, Zen can be as good as a Skylake i7 (which it won't) and Intel still has the power to crush AMD like a bug, just by setting lower prices. They can afford to bleed money for 20 years from now on, and by that time AMD will be long gone.

Their only option is to come with something way too revolutionary, but then the old Intel tactics used to crush the K7 will for sure resurface.

As this looks like a fake competition, a solution would be to force Intel to provide x86 licenses to third parties. That's it, nobody needs inside technology, nobody needs implementation details, just the right to build a processor on this technology, and I'm pretty sure most big design houses will be able to come with something strong on the market. There are smart people everywhere.

medi01That somehow balances situation when Compaq didn't dare to get AMD chips for free, eh?
AMD would get bigger market share, bigger revenue and higher margins, if not Intel's misuse of dominant market position (for which it was convicted in EU), are you seriously arguing with that?
And who cares what happened back in the very early beginning, when Intel was forced by IBM to, cough, do certain things.

"Who cares what happened back in the early beginning"...yet you are harping on about Compaq ? That's rich :laugh: You dismiss AMD's misdeeds from 1991 to 1997 as the "early beginning" yet dredge up AMD's scuppered deal with Compaq where Intel price matched AMD's 386SX from 1992? That seems like very selective reasoning.

My post wasn't about mitigating what Intel has done - I've already written as much myself, it is about putting the past into perspective - not the selective memory version where AMD were some put upon angelic entity. It is historical fact that AMD could not supply the vendors it already had on board from around 1997/98 to the mid-2000's so the range of vendors they could keep happy was limited. The post I linked to had a couple of links to 2005 shortages, but if you'd like a more comprehensive listing it's no problem - how about2003? AMD sounding out TSMC in 2001 for a JV ? AMD had supply issues almost continuously with every release (K6-II and K6-III are well documented across the board shortages). If AMD was using all its resources I (and virtually every tech historian) could understand and sympathize - but the simple truth is Jerry Sanders and his puppet Ruiz steadfastly refused to second source production even though the cross-license with Intel allowed AMD to outsource up to 20% of their production to third-party foundries. Why? Because Sanders was an old school egomaniac that believed if you weren't totally vertically integrated you had no right to be a semiconductor company - you don't sell anything you don't fab yourself as AMD ex-President and COO Atiq Raza noted in an Ars Technica article:

The trouble in the entire economic model was that AMD did not have enough capital to be able to fund fabs the way they were funding fabs," Raza said. "The point at which I had my final conflict was that [Sanders] started the process of building a new fab with borrowed money prematurely. We didn't need a fab for at least another year. If we had done it a year later, we would have accumulated enough profits to afford the fab in Germany. He laid the foundation for a fundamentally inefficient capital structure that AMD never recovered from. I told him: don't do it. I put the [purchase orders] on hold. He didn't tell me and accelerated the entire process

Apologists lay the fault of AMD's predicament entirely at Intel's door, and it worked so well that the board of directors were free to run the company into the ground because blame for any bad decision could be routed through the excuse of a lack of R&D because Intel wouldn't let them sell chips. It wasn't until the old guard left and started penning their memoirs that the extent of the damage from "real men have fabs" became apparent.

Intel have been guilty of some truly heinous acts, not just against AMD but Chips & Technologies, Intergraph, Cyrix, Seeq, and their own employees among others, but to dismiss AMD's own actions in their own misdeeds and decline is at the very least short-sighted.

All those fines & penalties Intel paid to settle the lawsuits are nothing compared to how much they have made through those unfair practices.

Most people don't know that the down fall of AMD started when Hector Ruiz decided not to go on in the process of merger between AMD and nVidia because he wanted to be the CEO for the new company and JHH nVidia's boss refused that. For the people who don't know that relationship between the two was too strong and their merger was like two in boyfriend -girlfriend relationship for ten years when AMD left nVidia the both have devastated and ATi ruined in the process. The best ever chipset AMD's CPU get was the nForce and when nVidia entered Intel's CPU chipset business it became the best ever chipsets until Intel prevented nVidia from making chipset for their new CPUs . Maybe one of the best solutions for AMD's problems is to sell Radeon and merger with nVidia as what should happen ten years ago.

Perhaps Intel should stop making great products, halt R&D and increase prices out of respect for fellow engineers at AMD. Consumers would surely prefer that.

Companies exist to make money for investors. You just can't keep everyone happy doing that.
Make shit products: people hate you. Make good products: people still hate you. Might as well go all evil now because no matter what a successful company of that size does, it is going to make someone very unhappy.

GC_PaNzerFINPerhaps Intel should stop making great products, halt R&D and increase prices out of respect for fellow engineers. Consumers would surely prefer that.

Great products? They make intentionally crippled products for sure. Look at the 6700K, it beats every single AMD desktop CPU produced, yet it can't even push two 16x pci-e slots at 16x. The 5820K was intentionally crippled in the same way. Intel is here for the money and don't give a shit if the product is better worse or a flaming hunk of shit.

GC_PaNzerFINCompanies exist to make money for investors. You just can't keep everyone happy doing that.
Make shit products: people hate you. Make good products: people still hate you. Might as well go all evil now because no matter what a successful company of that size does, it is going to make someone very unhappy.

Have bad business practices and people hate you. Case in point Nvidia and Intel right now as we speak.

Well, anyone that invested in AMD at the low yesterday made some serious profit. Today AMD is up around 18%.

64KWell, anyone that invested in AMD at the low yesterday made some serious profit. Today AMD is up around 18%.

I thought about it I made some money when they went from $1.80 to 4.50 a couple years back.

cdawallGreat products? They make intentionally crippled products for sure. Look at the 6700K, it beats every single AMD desktop CPU produced, yet it can't even push two 16x pci-e slots at 16x. The 5820K was intentionally crippled in the same way. Intel is here for the money and don't give a shit if the product is better worse or a flaming hunk of shit.

You could say this about pretty much every piece of consumer goods you could possible buy. I can't get a business class Mercedes for same price as my crappy Opel. My TV is obviously worse than it could be. Someone obviously saved some money to get me a worse product at lower cost everywhere I look.

Is your grudge more against capitalism and today's object/consumer goods centric world or what? 6700K like you said, is faster than anything competition can throw at it. It also is faster than it's previous model. And you are upset that you didn't get THE best CPU you can get for same money?
Welcome to reality, sir. Life is not a fair place.

GC_PaNzerFINYou could say this about pretty much every piece of consumer goods you could possible buy. I can't get a business class Mercedes for same price as my crappy Opel. My TV is obviously worse than it could be. Someone obviously saved some money to get me a worse product at lower cost everywhere I look.

Is your grudge more against capitalism and today's object/consumer goods centric world or what? 6700K like you said, is faster than anything competition can throw at it. It also is faster than it's previous model. And you are upset that you didn't get THE best CPU you can get for same money?
Welcome to reality, sir. Life is not a fair place.

5820K and 6700K run the same price and offer the same performance. Both have crippled PCI-e buses trying to force buyers into the worse clocking worse binned 5930K. Somehow since the dawn of time AMD has offered full speed PCI-e for more than one card. It is a frustration to me because it is an intentional crippling of a product that already only shows negligible performance gains of the prior product (only good gains with the multithreading).

cdawall5820K and 6700K run the same price and offer the same performance. Both have crippled PCI-e buses trying to force buyers into the worse clocking worse binned 5930K. Somehow since the dawn of time AMD has offered full speed PCI-e for more than one card. It is a frustration to me because it is an intentional crippling of a product that already only shows negligible performance gains of the prior product (only good gains with the multithreading).

I would direct you to take a look also at AMD product portfolio too. "Crippling" stuff is business as usual in semiconductor business. Not long ago you could unlock your Radeon to a more expensive model. Meaning it was software crippled to give you worse product. My APU processor has few compute units disabled, perhaps for a good reason but I can't say for sure. Tonga was crippled down to 256-bit memory bus because it would have been too good for it's price segment. This has been heard for the horse's mouth.

I have been f'cked by both of these companies for as long as I can remember. Please don't take my direct language as offence, I understand your point. It is just that pretty much all of these companies are doing it. AMD included, so I see no reason to love or hate either one more than the other. :)

GC_PaNzerFINI would direct you to take a look also at AMD product portfolio too. "Crippling" stuff is business as usual in semiconductor business. Not long ago you could unlock your Radeon to a more expensive model. Meaning it was software crippled to give you worse product. My APU processor has few compute units disabled, perhaps for a good reason but I can't say for sure. Tonga was crippled down to 256-bit memory bus because it would have been too good for it's price segment. This has been heard for the horse's mouth.

I have been f'cked by both of these companies for as long as I can remember. Please don't take my direct language as offence, I understand your point. It is just that pretty much all of these companies are doing it. AMD included, so I see no reason to love or hate either one more than the other. :)

They both do yes. Binning damaged goods to make lower tier items is a normal thing however. There isn't currently a higher end "mainstream" intel CPU, it just frustrates me that they don't allow them to run full 2 full 16x slots. So much potential, it is what has pushed me away from the 115x sockets.

cdawallThey both do yes. Binning damaged goods to make lower tier items is a normal thing however. There isn't currently a higher end "mainstream" intel CPU, it just frustrates me that they don't allow them to run full 2 full 16x slots. So much potential, it is what has pushed me away from the 115x sockets.

Have you ever thought that there might be technical reasons behind this as well? If you doubled the PCI-E lane support (useless for most consumer socket users anyway) you would increase the die size and make it more expensive for those that do not need that.
Doubling PCI-E bandwidth might need more/faster cache memory, wider internal buses and beefier support IPs to take full use of it. In the end, it could very well look more like Haswell-E. All that for what, couple percent performance increase with SLi/Crossfire?
You can buy that product if you really need one tho, so it is not like it is not made available.

GC_PaNzerFINHave you ever thought that there might be technical reasons behind this as well? If you doubled the PCI-E lane support (useless for most consumer socket users anyway) you would increase the die size and make it more expensive for those that do not need that.
Doubling PCI-E bandwidth might need more/faster cache memory, wider internal buses and beefier support IPs to take full use of it. In the end, it could very well look more like Haswell-E. All that for what, couple percent performance increase with SLi/Crossfire?
You can buy that product if you really need one tho, so it is not like it is not made available.

I don't just use it for xfire/sli what that allows is more bandwidth for a multitude of devices. M.2 based SSD's, U2 based SSD's, raid cards, wifi and then dual GPU setups on top. It would increase die size, doubtful it would need an increase in cache (haswell-e proves this). Just a frustration I have had with intel's mainstream platform since it was conceived.

That being said they make some bad ass mini-itx rigs.

cdawallI don't just use it for xfire/sli what that allows is more bandwidth for a multitude of devices. M.2 based SSD's, U2 based SSD's, raid cards, wifi and then dual GPU setups on top.

I thought this is one of the biggest selling points of Z170. Now you can connect a lot of PCI-E 3.0 mass memory on it and still have your x16 graphics lines to CPU. Most of the traffic is between the drives, so the about 3.0 x4 bandwidth between CPU and chipset is not bottlenecking anything you would do in a normal home use like games. That said, your needs really sound like far more than a typical LGA115x user would do, so HEDT setup makes a lot sense.

Alright, enough offtopic. I have hoped AMD get better for a very long time but still has not happened. Hopefully next year we at least have AMD to talk about. :)

GC_PaNzerFINI thought this is one of the biggest selling points of Z170. Now you can connect a lot of PCI-E 3.0 mass memory on it and still have your x16 graphics lines to CPU. Most of the traffic is between the drives, so the about 3.0 x4 bandwidth between CPU and chipset is not bottlenecking anything you would do in a normal home use like games. That said, your needs really sound like far more than a typical LGA115x user would do, so HEDT setup makes a lot sense.

Alright, enough offtopic. I have hoped AMD get better for a very long time but still has not happened. Hopefully next year we at least have AMD to talk about. :)

My rig should show that lol

cdawallIt would increase die size, doubtful it would need an increase in cache

I'm calling foul on that one to some extent.
1: More PCI-E means more contacts for the CPU, you need the connections for every lane and slot you're going to have.
2: The PCI-E root complex would have to be twice as big to go from 16(20) to 40.

Example:
2600, 2600k, and 2700k have a die size of 216mm^2.
The 3820 has a die size of 294mm^2.

For doubling the PCI-E lanes, doubling the width of the memory controller, and adding 2MB more of L3 contributed to a die that was 36% bigger in relation to the 2600k. On top of that, the iGPU on the 2600s and 2700k takes up considerable die space, almost the same amount as the L3 cache or almost 2 cores, something the 3820 does not have but yet, still uses that space despite being a quad core like the others.

Sorry @cdawall but, I wouldn't call that peanuts. Your claim is spurious.

Simply put, I/O adds a whole lot more to the die than you think it does, even more since you're essentially doubling it.

Side note: The 3820 is not the same die as the 6c SB-E chips and doesn't have laser cut cores, so that's not an argument either.

I don't understand people complaining about the lack of PCI-e lanes. Most cards don't even use enough bandwidth to see a notable performance loss by running 2 cards in PCIe 3.0 8x.

Amd always seems to fail. No reason to buy their cpus or gpus at all. Plus they have terrible drivers and lack support across the board. Bring on Samsung

They are cold and blunt those numbers, but are the result of false promises that can not meet expectations.

AMD can not live life smoke.

DieinafireAmd always seems to fail. No reason to buy their cpus or gpus at all. Plus they have terrible drivers and lack support across the board. Bring on Samsung

And murderers.

HumanSmoke"Who cares what happened back in the early beginning"...yet you are harping on about Compaq ?

I'm afraid putting words out of the context you are, especially in regards to Compaq, no "matching the price" can somehow even out not taking chips for free, being afraid of Intel's retaliation.

But overall, it was an interesting read with good insights, thanks.

Regardless, Intel was convicted for abusing it's dominant market position. That happened MAINLY vs AMD.

It doesn't make AMD an angel, not at all, although, an underdog company is pretty limited in ways it could abuse its market position.
Where it matters to me, they are normally on the right side:
IA-64 vs AMD64
GSync vs FreeSync
Etc.

...to dismiss AMD's own actions in their own misdeeds and decline is at the very least short-sighted.

Yes, although not as short sighted as turning blind eye to Intel's shitty practices and putting nearly exclusive blame on AMDs management. (maybe you don't mean it, but that's impression I get from reading your posts)

What is actually behind your stance, do you have friends working @ Intel?

medi01I'm afraid putting words out of the context you are, especially in regards to Compaq, no "matching the price" can somehow even out not taking chips for free, being afraid of Intel's retaliation.

You keep talking about AMD trying to give away contract quantity chips for free to Compaq. I'd really like to see some proof of this. I do KNOW that AMD offered 386SX chips to Compaq at a discounted price. Compaq then went to Intel, and Intel price matched AMD's contract price. This is a known fact.

medi01Regardless, Intel was convicted for abusing it's dominant market position. That happened MAINLY vs AMD. It doesn't make AMD an angel, not at all, although, an underdog company is pretty limited in ways it could abuse its market position.

But you, like almost 100% of AMD's defenders NEVER point out the companies misdeeds, regardless of breadth or impact. Where have you (for example) ever pointed out that AMD isn't squeaky clean? A single post of yours would suffice.

medi01Yes, although not as short sighted as turning blind eye to Intel's shitty practices and putting nearly exclusive blame on AMDs management. (maybe you don't mean it, but that's impression I get from reading your posts)

You mean like when I said?...

HumanSmokeIntel have been guilty of some truly heinous acts, not just against AMD but Chips & Technologies, Intergraph, Cyrix, Seeq, and their own employees among others

medi01What is actually behind your stance, do you have friends working @ Intel?

My stance?
My stance is regarding history as a whole. People here seem to be reasonably well aware that I write historical-based tech articles. Obviously you don't, or you would see that I treat the dealings of the companies with equanimity - unlike some here hell bent on highlighting the bad behavior of some companies while completely glossing over the bad behaviour of their favoured brand.
Here are some examples from an article on the microprocessor and its effects on personal computing I wrote a little over a year ago- and I might add they have a readership orders of magnitude above what is posted in these threads:

Lawsuits became object lessons to those employed at Intel, as a means of protecting its IP (which Fairchild had failed miserably at) and a method of tying up a competitor's financial resources while delaying its time to market for products. - Andy Grove's strategy of using lawsuits and IP as economic weapons

More importantly for Intel, it stalled AMD's growth during a boom period of microprocessor growth and personal computing in particular. At a time when AMD was looking to take the next step to higher echelons of semiconductor companies -- albeit still relying heavily on licensed production -- the company's expansion was severely curtailed - On Intel's decision to withhold a 386 license from AMD after giving indications that a license would be forthcoming

The campaign was designed more to marginalize the 286 licensees (Harris, AMD, IBM, Fujitsu, and Siemens) as it was to sell Intel's 386s, and it quickly established in the consumer's mind that companies pushing the 286 (including Intel's own OEM partners) were selling obsolete technology while elevating Intel's brand as market leader...[ ]...
The Red X campaign presented obvious proof that Intel had little need for second source partners and belatedly spurred the x86 chip producers into making their own 386-class chips. The mark of AMD's design and manufacturing prowess was shown with the first 18 six-inch wafers, which were ready by August 1990 and yielded only a single defective Am386 die - Intel's "Red X" campaign to elevate the Intel brand and marginalize their 80286 licensees

And from a history of AMD article I wrote back in late 2012 ( well before some other sites churned out their own articles on the subject):

This period represented a huge growth of the fledgling PC market. Noting that AMD had offered the Am286 with a significant speed boost over the 80286, Intel attempted to stop AMD in its tracks by excluding them from the next generation 386 processors. Arbitration took four and a half years to complete, and while the judgment found that Intel was not obligated to transfer every new product to AMD, it was determined that the larger chipmaker had breached an implied covenant of good faith.- Intel's about face in denying AMD a 386 licence

No review of this era in AMD's history would be complete without taking into consideration Intel's nefarious deeds. At this juncture, AMD was not only fighting Intel's chips, but also the company's monopolistic activities, which included paying OEMs large sums of money -- billions in total -- to actively keep AMD CPUs out of new computers.In the first quarter of 2007, Intel paid Dell $723 million to remain the sole provider of its processors and chipsets (accounting for 76% of the system builder's total operating income of $949 million). AMD would later win a $1.25 billion settlement in the matter, which is surprisingly low on the surface, but probably exacerbated by the fact that at the time of Intel's shenanigans, AMD itself couldn't supply enough CPUs to its existing customers.

I've lost count of the number I times I've commented on Intel's misdeeds. Waging economic warfare against AMD, Seeq, NEC ( the V20/V40 case), Intergraph, Chips and Technologies, crushing Cyrix (with IBM's help), the long running battle with DEC (both sides guilty) etc., the strong-arming and intimidation of their own workforce (and the ostracization of Bob Graham the 3rd employee at Intel because Grove wanted all the marbles) etc... But the one thing that comes across is that nobody overlooks Intel's practices. The same is definitely not true of AMD. The common refrain is that is always someone else's fault that they are in predicament they are in. I would almost guarantee that you probably had no idea that AMD faked benchmarks for Barcelona until I linked to a story. I'm also pretty sure you don't have much idea about their earlier suspect marketing under Jerry Sanders and Hector Ruiz. I'm also pretty sure that you will never bring up the subject again just as many before you have buried selective parts of semiconductor history when it doesn't fit the narrative required.

Anyhow, feel free to demonize me because I take a measured view of the industry (Thirty-five years being around semiconductor topics will do that) rather than play cheerleader and reduce everything down to a simplistic good versus evil struggle.

I'll await your evidence that AMD offered free processors to Compaq. If this is indeed true then I am missing a part of semiconductor history - along with every contemporary writer and publication I've ever read.

HumanSmokeYou keep talking about AMD trying to give away contract quantity chips for free to Compaq. I'd really like to see some proof of this.

Very surprised I am you missed this:

europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-09-745_en.htm?locale=en
For example, rival chip manufacturer AMD offered one million free CPUs to one particular computer manufacturer. If the computer manufacturer had accepted all of these, it would have lost Intel's rebate on its many millions of remaining CPU purchases, and would have been worse off overall simply for having accepted this highly competitive offer. In the end, the computer manufacturer took only 160,000 CPUs for free.

It was compaq.

PS
Will respond to the rest of your post a bit later.