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
And I agree on the whole "Intel monopoly not being as bad as we all dread" thing. In Britain, we loved our monopolies, and we got some of the lowest prices and best products/service around. But, because everybody is terrified of them, they'll forceably break up Intel if AMD pulls out of the desktop scene which is a big shame. Same would happen to Microsoft if Apple went under.
wasnt the whole point in AMD getting out new RAM to rival intel's XMP profiles?
Even if this is true, i think AMD is going to put all development into the FM1 socket. Something tells me that we will get competetive CPUs, with integrated GPUs on core
AMD still holds an 18% market share and Intel 80%. Thats commonly available knowledge. Without AMD competing with Intel we will see processor markups again. Competition is good in every way it brings out the best product, best price and more options. Think if there was no AMD when the P4 was released? Who is to say Intel would have gotten there collective heads out of their asses and fixed that to release Conroe? As long as AMD holds its current marketshare through the quarter they could always bounce back. As far as intel's way of doing business yea right thats why AMD won that 1.45 billion antitrust. The only business plan Intel follows is when in doubt cheat, lie and steal. Hell the old P4 commercial specifically quote needing a P4 to use XP...I mean really?
AMD should think of itself as a technology "group" and incubate a portfolio of excellence in different fields. And have different product lines targeted to those markets.
AMD CPU, ATI, MAD (Memory acceleration devices), Spinner (mobile devices), etc. There is, IMO, a ball and chain effect by over "incorporating" diverse product lines and R&D.
- I was thinking buying a laptop, a cheap laptop with the CPU virtualization and I wanted an Intel (I was recommended by I friend who I trust about these things), the problem was that the Pentium mobiles don't have virtualization, while even the cheapest model of any AMD CPU has it. This rises a question "Why would I buy an Intel???" :laugh:
So here you have my opinion and logical reasons why I support AMD. Now I own a 8-core AMD beast and it does the job damn good!AMD just feels a lot faster somehow.
You know historically AMD started making Intel cpu copies? It was licensed to manufacture Intel cpu then it won a lawsuit against Intel and started to make its own processors.
You realise monopolies do the opposite right?
They sell cheap initially to weaken/destroy competition and then their prices go up as soon as there's no one to compete with.
That's why people are terrified of them.
Companies like Tesco pretty much wiped out the butcher/baker industry as well, in my town their used be like 10 butchers, now there's one permanent and another guy who comes in a lorry :laugh: ( so cheap! Love that dude)
Monopolies are the worst thing people can allow :laugh: They take away choice and the monopoly has no need to compete as it's the only one providing the service/product so can charge what it likes and people have to pay that.
Law of Supply and Demand would still be at work, generally speaking.
What would happen in an Intel monopoly is not the complete breakdown of the law of supply and demand (where they are able to peg their products at high prices right off the bat) but rather an "inflexibility" of the interaction between supply and demand. Specifically, prices are less susceptible to market forces, but are actually still a bit similar to the situation that we have right now. You could say it's monopolistic competition, but Intel can't really "dictate" prices because it is also essentially competing against itself, which is primarily caused by progress in science and technology.
So you're saying that if someone said "Something A is not as bad as you think", that someone meant "Something A is the best thing in the world!"?
:laugh::laugh::laugh:
Those 3 things are run by several different companies not one by it's self.
Royal mail is expensive as HELL lol ( fine for anything under a kilo and not expensive though I guess)
I'm shipping a tv soon, royal mail it would of cost me £30 and I'd have to go to the post office, to get a courier it costs me £10 including £500 insurance and they pick it up from my house, I don't even need to write the address on the parcel as they come with stickers! :D