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
The most recent bout is with the 6200 opterons. Check out some reviews. Your typical intel shills are hailing it as a big of a disaster as zambezi....yet REAL review sites show it to be faster and HALF the price. LOL.
Anytime you read a review and they leave out test setup details, are mismatching parts, and hurtling insults at AMD like a school child, you know what the game is.
I viewed a fair few of the Engineering sample results and they unfortunately sucked.
I was hoping it was just the engineering sample processor, BIOS and software causing the poor results I was viewing for a 8 core processor.
As to what it means exactly, there is no statement to that effect.
They would have to push on with nearly all of the planning and designs for their 'top end' roadmap, for Opteron development. Also, to provide cpu 'modules/cores' for the APUs. They can easily EOL discreet desktop CPUs after the Piledriver release, thereby increasing manufacturing capacity for their APUs, both low power mobile and higher power desktop design paths. Doing that would probably increase their sales numbers, overall, over the long term.
That quotation above is just stating the obvious. It's marketing PR to correct the mountains of prior PR blunders.
AMD for the longest time e.g. K8 processor release have been boasting the AMD64 label.
Even though the software windows released has not been smooth in 64-bit.
About that time it was XP 64-bit.
Thus you're complaining about a trivial thing.
Ars used AMD's own results to prove that their own product was a disappointment. Nothing biased about that. The fact is BD across all platforms underperforms.
i am using bulldozer now.... bulldozer is a fast cpu.... just benchmark screw up only...
if software is built to utilize use with bulldozer... i think all benchmark belong to amd...
But unfortunately they did not.
There is no way AMD can get out of the APU market. They have been and are going to be hit sellers because they can and do compete well with Intel on price and graphics performance. However, their major desktop CPUs...that they could temporarily fold.
I don't think this is a "we quit x86 entirely," deal. This is more like, we're focusing on what we can do well. Which isn't enthusiast level CPUs. Stop worrying about us Intel, we're not secretly planning anything.
Of course what this means is...Intel will stagnate. No reason to push performance higher means they can sit around twiddling their thumbs. When you quit prodding the 800lb gorilla with a poo stick, it eventually goes back to sleep. This is the perfect chance for AMD to refocus and come back after they've gotten their house in order.
i think amd lack of good marketing..if u ask customer in here (my country indonesia,)about AMD product they will answer "what is amd?",people in here just few knows about amd,they only knew intel product line up only..because intel had alot advertising,
Of course it won't be able to hold a candle to Ivy Bridge but if you're looking for a cheap processor that's "good enough," AMD has that market pretty well cornered.This too. AMD has virtually no brand recognition because they refuse to advertise except on their website (e.g. Ruby) and games (powered by AMD). Neither are effective at reaching the masses and they must change that. AMD's decision to not advertise is the dumbest thing since square wheels.
i think amd will prepare in background something which will be better than current line
AMD has lost the competition with Intel a long time ago. You think that because of Bulldozer AMD will shutdown? 'We' computer enthusiasts will not buy Bulldozers but the 'others' do not have a clue.... They just want buy a PC... They have a budget and they don't mind whether is it says Intel or AMD.. They just want something that costs 500 Euros (less of what we spend on a cpu and mobo alone) and enables them to go on facebook...
How many of us 'overclockers', 'upgraders', 'extreme gamers' are out there? (compared with the rest of computer users)?
What kills AMD the most is the price / performance ratio. The fact that they don't lower their prices after all the negative publicity means that they are selling to the 'WOW 8 Cores!!!' consumers right now. In time they will lower their prices... and more people will be convinced to buy...
To tell you the truth do you think that any gamer who wants to play Skyrim or BF3 will notice any real difference on i5 or Bulldozer? I don't think so...
I am running BF3 multiplayer with everything on high on an overclocked (4Ghz) Core2Duo E8400 (on air) without any problems!!! (with the aid of an gtx570 of course!!!:D)......
I am waiting for Ivy Bridge you see....:D:D
AMD Fusion is the future and their gfx segment is also very alive. CPU's, quite frankly they really haven't released anything significantly bad ass to have reason for profits really. After Athlon XP and Athlon 64, they are really struggling. They have to make a massive breakthrough for high end or just forget the speed crown and build on budget and mainstream systems. Because quite frankly this is where the money is. If you sell 5000 CPU's for 600 EUR it's nothing compared to 500.000 CPU's for up to 200 EUR.
SORT YOUR EFFIN EDITORIAL NEWS out not just this site but all sites need to stop with the permanent spankin of AMD by fanwankers of intel
and regardless of BS's percieved poor benches its no where near as bad as some go on especially considering the unoptimized nature of many benches and os's imho most benches are balls anyway as in most GAME banches BS isnt so bad
This is what intel did with larrabee and that's why we got sandy bridge.
1. Amd has only 1 competitor Intel on cpu side
2. Amd is the best gpu manufacturer for now
This thread is truly fake, if amd had that low amount of profit, than no gpus at all
neither cpus.... what is more now comes ram which means amd is going high!
Also, i know from my school that companies of diesel always show up as they
don't profit or even loose, but they go on earning a lot of money.
This is made because of taxes, so nothing to do with intel.
Amd will never show up their "real" revenue.
There are even companies like coca-cola which for 12 years here in Albania shows
-500k $ of loss for each year, but if they were loosing than they would not
sell anymore coca-colas.... so it is fake
We have already seen AMD shape a lot of things in the past year ever wonder why AMD is pushing "the future is fusion" so hard? That might be the saving grace along with ATi. I am already seeing it how many intel notebooks for $299 can you play a lot of todays games on? The E-350 series chips kicks some major ass in the low budget laptop market. AMD is taking that over. Coming from my sales at BBY experience those laptops are the ones that sell 15-20 per store every Sunday. Thats just BBY, throw in newegg, amazon and other etailers. Those notebooks are damn near bestselling on every single site. Now move up to the A4 chips with integrate 65x0 graphics on them and you have a budget gamer that can play ALL of todays games with decent settings, throw in hybrid xfire with another 65x0 chip and you have all high settings for under $700. Something intel cannot touch. As drivers mature those chips keep getting better. There is no way the influx of fusion chips is by mistake. AMD is trying to take as much low end market as humanly possible. We may loose the high end with AMD's bulldozer fiasco, but if they can stake a claim in low/midrange markets that is the bulk of home computing. Word of mouth travels better than commercials if one housewife get a FUSION sticker and loves it they all go get one. The top 4 selling laptops at my Walmart right now are all AMD based and under $700. All it takes is one salesman to go hey these perform similar this ones cheaper and games play better.
btw, APU still have a future. so AMD better not leaving cpu market completely..