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I had already read that Hexus statement and got a chuckle out of it. It kind of reminds me of the old joke about the gorilla and the guy being locked in a room with the gorilla wearing a sign about his neck saying "If I catch you ...." However, in this case it looks like the guy (AMD) is wearing the sign.
Anyway, I hope your schedule pans out. AMD's roadmap still has Toledo as the only DC consumer product available and only in H2. Whenever I see H anything I think the very last date possible. However, in this case, given that the infrastructure is already in place it does seem likely that AMD could easily bring up the release date. If so it should be "Good Eats" and not the Alton Brown variety.
What I find totally incongruous is that INTC/DELL plans to market Smithfield as a gaming machine. Talk about not being in the right church, they're not even in the right county. But then those INTC marketing $s seem to be able to sell ice blocks to Innuits, so who knows? I have a very hard time figuring out just what the Smithfield market is. Smithfield kind of gives me Itanium de-ja vu all over again. Again INTC is trying to drive the market where it doesn't want to go with products that have no programming support. Things are a little different this time, as eventually the consumer DC market will evolve, but it's going to be a slow uptake.
INTC may call Smithfield a DC, but it isn't even remotely in the same league with DC Opterons. However, INTC marketing did its' job again fooling Joe Sixpack and probably a lot of people that shouldn't be fooled so easily. Let's see how many of these Frankenstein monsters INTC sells in the next six months. Hopefully, they will do well enough that AMD is encouraged to release the real thing into the consumer market.
Actually, while I don't think the market for consumer DCs will be very large for awhile there should be some demand at very high prices for a few. Given that it would cost next to nothing for AMD to come up with a consumer Opteron derivative it might not be a bad idea. In any case I would love to read what AnandTech would have to say about the comparison with Smithfield.
Well, as far as I know Samsung doesn't produce NOR flash, and is a sometime customer of AMD for that product, so perhaps Samsung might have some incentive to become a full service flash provider? A better reason would be if OrNand/mirrorbit was a possible threat to Samsung's NAND business or some combination of NAND, NOR, DRAM or whatever was a better solution than the stacked chips they're currently producing for the cell phone market? Lots of questions and very few answers.
Still I have a hard time seeing Samsung being interested at anything but a fire sale.
Inflection points;
are by definition places where no one knows what's going on. Today seems to fit that description with the battle raging between the "Same old Same old" crowd and the "It's different this time crowd". So far the "Shoot first and ask questions later" crowd seems to be holding the high ground.
I, for one, would like more information about how Rivet plans to pull off this Houdini, Spansion escape act? Right now all I've got is lots of questions and few answers. I sure hope some thought went into this and it wasn't some sort of a knee-jerk reaction to a lousy quarter.
I would certainly like to know what thinking went into the decision. How's OrNand coming, what's wrong with mirror bit, who's going to buy the shares and why? Just lots of questions and no answers.
My gut reaction is to support Hector, but I'm very concerned.
Well, I'm more than a little confused.
To me it sounded like AMD wants it both ways. They want to retain control of Spansion while at the same time getting it off AMD's books. I have no idea just how this will work out, but it didn't sound like AMD has given up on flash yet.
To me this sounds like a slight of hand move to get Wall Street off AMD's back, but it's really too soon to say. For sure there are going to be big costs associated with the IPO, probably over a couple more quarters. It kind of sounds like earnings are going to be a race between ongoing Spansions losses and CPG's gains for awhile. No doubt about which won in q1.
What happened to mirror-bit? Sales of mirror-bit appear to be going nowhere even though unit sales increased 10% on lower ASPs.
Itanium feels heat from below. From Saxman.
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2005/04/07/fujitsu_itanium_kit/
One can't help the feeling that Itanium is doing a Lilly Tomlin routine (Incredible shrinking something) as the pressure continues to build from X86-64 below. The only apparent reason for keeping this nightmare on Elm Street going is face-saving?
That's what I thought also.
Well, Chevyman used to work for AMD and he has been posting off and on on Yahoo for at least 7 years so I wouldn't discount what he is saying off hand. Any ideas about which product he may be talking about?
Thanks, that fits pretty well with my understanding of the current state of gaming programming, but of course in more detail.
On the subject of multi-threading how long do you suppose it will be before AMD goes to hyper-threading, if ever? I know decisions were made at AMD a few years ago not to go the SMT route because it was more work than it was worth, but INTC seems to be making headway lately in that area. In the long run will multi-cell machines reduce the need for hyper-threading or will it finally prove itself? The question is; will the added complexity of HT ever be worth the gain as opposed to just adding more processors?
As I say I only know what I read.
Most of the reviews I've read about multi-threaded games have indicated that there is a long way to go. If there were games that were truly multi-threaded I would expect them to show improvement running on INTC's HT P4s. Everything I read seems to indicate that the A64's(fx55) are the fastest machines for games. Maybe someone else would like to comment?
Well with 85% of the market and a huge marketing budget I would expect INTC to have a much easier time of it, but it will still be slow going for INTC. I expect acceptance to be slower than the EMT64/Nocona/Xeon offerings, a market AMD greased, but who knows? This time there won't be an AMD out there breaking the wind for them so it should be a little slower going. Not only that but it's going to have to compete with A64's on a value basis. If your big on encoding then you might want a Smithfield, but for most other applications a single core Athlon will probably be a more cost effective and better solution. As far as gaming goes there doesn't seem to be much reason for buying anything but an Athlon.
As I said though, if dualies take off I'm sure AMD will be happy to divert some of its' dual servers to the consumer market. I'm sure comparisons between dual A64s and Smithfields would be quite favorable toward AMD's product. That is if they have any to sell, and not because of any production problems? As you say, we'll see.
New Gateway machines coming
http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20050408_130053.html
I seem to remember reading something about this awhile ago? Every little bit helps.
For sure each company is trying to maximize the use of the resources it has at hand. And your right about someone needing to get things going. To me it looks like INTC is going to be in a similar position with Smithfield as AMD was with the A64. Namely, that the demand won't happen until the infrastructure catches up. Which means a slow ramp for dual processors. As you also point out this helps AMD which I still think is going to have problems starting in q3/a4 meeting demand.
Dual core will have its' day, but getting from here to there is going to take awhile. The interesting thing, from an AMD point of view, is that should consumer dual processors take off all AMD would have to do is ramp up production of its' server models whereas if AMD's dual servers takes off INTC still won't have a response for some time. Of course AMD would price the dualies accordingly, but given Smithfield's rumored pricing that wouldn't be much of a problem. Or AMD could disable some function and price the duals for the mass consumer market.
Dual core mainstream processors are products whose time has not come yet. The driving force in that area will probably be games. Until games start appearing that can take advantage of multiple processors, dual cores processors running games at slower speeds will be slower than single processors running at faster speeds. See the Anandtech Smithfield review.
A better case can be made for 64bitness, but for most consumers the main advantage here is future proofing your machine.
It looks like 64 bit games will appear in volume way before they're multi threaded. As far as machine costs go; another year+ or so, and all processors, except the very low-end, will be 64 bits. By that time the high-end consumer machines will be 64 bit, dual processor machines with multi-threaded software following later as the number of dual core machines in the market place increases.
Generalized dual core machines running 64bit/threaded game programs should be able to give even the most specialized game machine a run. How much longer is it going to be before games are limited by the people running them rather than hardware, even at HD and better graphics?
Finally, a big volume day.
Looks like some short covering is starting to kick in. If earnings cooperate and meet market expectations then perhaps all the good news of late might be able to keep the stock moving again.
Really a battle going on between the "Same old, same old" crowd and the "This time it's different" crowd. Should make for a very volatile market.
Well, a technology lead will only take you so far.
From my point of view AMD has gone about tackling the problem correctly. They took the technical high ground with the k8 architecture, and are now solving the production problems with fab36 and the IBM technology alliance. Sales are a trailing indicator happening only when all the precursors are in place. In that vein, AMD is closer to getting its' ducks in order than it has ever been.
INTC can't be underestimated, it still has all that money and inertia, plus a marketing group that's second to no one. However, even a company like INTC can only live off its' past history for so long. Eventually every dog must hunt and so far INTC hasn't shown that it can produce anything but Chihuahuas.
Again, from my point of view, one of the biggest things to happen on the sales front was the Addition of Sun as an AMD only customer. Not so much because I expect SUN to sell tons of Opterons, but because, just by their commitment, they forced the other big players to take AMD seriously. Up until the Sun announcement IBM's and HP's commitments to AMD were at best lukewarm. Since Sun though we have seen a much broader commitment by both IBM and HP, and clearly DELL is very worried that it didn't get an invite to the party. Remember, these are very big companies that do things at a snails pace. The real results of the change of heart by HP/IBM are still a ways off.
As far as general acceptance of A64, that’s an evolution problem that WXP64 professional will help. While A64 sales may have not taken off the way we would have liked, that picture is going to improve a lot going forward just because INTC is now on board.
When looking at AMD a 6-month view is a lot more appropriate than the day to day view that dominates much of what is posted on the boards. AMD is doing just fine, if not great, as yet. Better still, with everything falling in place the future is looking more assured all the time.
Open source on Opterons. Good read from Yahoo.
http://www.techworld.com/networking/features/index.cfm?featureid=1321
Your right, it appears that INTC will be first to introduce some sort of hardware virtualization, but the point I was trying to make is that this is another area in which AMD refused to play follow the leader. Evidently, there were good reasons to not do so based on AMD's already existing HT and onboard memory controller:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22212
Them...
The biggest addition to Pacifica is the memory controller. On the K8 based chips, the memory controller is on board where as on Intel platforms, it is on the north bridge. This allows AMD to add virtualisation features to the memory controller in a way that would be hard for Intel to duplicate. While the details are not out, it would really surprise me if AMD did not add a much stronger level of memory protection to each VM, and lessen the memory related overhead on a VM entry or exit. Latency reduction has benefits in a lot of ways.
Me...
There's more stuff in the article on the differences in technology, which appear to be considerable.
We'll have to see, but the FSB looks as if it will be more and more a liability for ever more reasons.
I want to find out more about the IBM chipset before I pass judgement. A review from Anandtech would be nice.
Then there's the AMD duals which should be out soon and a few other things like XP64 pro etc..
VanderPool vs Pacifica
Interesting, now that AMD has stolen X86 from INTC with AMD-64, AMD is now stealing another page from the INTC playbook. It looks more and more like AMD is hell-bent on differentiating itself from anything INTC. INTC, of course, tried the same thing with the Itanium, but in that case they went about 5 bridges too far. AMD's pace of creating differentiation where it's appropriate and needed will undoubtedly pay off in the long run. Too bad INTC is still tied to that FSB and has nothing like HT. INTC is going to be playing catch up for a very long time, something that is going to become more and more obvious.
For me the two biggest items to have happened this year were the SUN conversion to AMDism and the rather pathetic dithering DELL went through when it had really no place else to go. The SUN conversion has undoubtedly given AMD a cachet that it didn't have before and forced the other non-DELL players into closer relationships with AMD than probably would have occurred otherwise. Remember the INTC products being sported now by the OEMs were most likely decided on 2/3 or more years ago. These guys work in glacial time. The DELL whining also was beneficial to AMD as it also legitimized AMD's offerings. By DELL going through their very public angst they as much as said that DELL was losing business because INTC had fallen behind AMD's technology. I'm sure that message came through loud and clear to a whole lot of people.
Everyone strapped in?
Here we go again; you can hear the clicking of the chain on the gear as the market struggles to get the coaster car up to the top of the first drop. Let's see if the buyers have the wherewithal to keep the car on track today?
Walking the dog
Looks like AMD is being taken for another walk today. Talk about a stock that's in play. Given the general low volume it looks like most owners are just holding on so a determined seller or buyer can move the price at will.
On another subject a post from the Saxman on Yahoo.
http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?url=http%3A%2F%2Fpc.watch.impress.co.jp%2...
High end prices are falling in JP along with big dip in Geode pricing. I take this as more annecdotal evidence that the move to 90nm is going well though the Geode is something else completely. Speaking of which it seems like AMD is devoting a lot of attention to the Geodes. It kind of looks like AMD has plans fo that line.
I've made my point; I'm not sure what yours is?
No one is denying that INTC is still a monopoly and controls the processor market. AMD has always been a long shot, but from my point of view you’re miscalculating the odds. If say back in 1998 AMD was a 100 to 1 underdog today the odds are probably closer to 5 to 1.
I think you mistake me for someone with some sort of attachment to AMD. My motivations are plain and simple; I want to make money. If, in the unlikely case, AMD were to start showing sings of regressing from the progress it has been making I would be out of the stock in a heartbeat.
If you read my posts you would find that I'm as critical of AMD as I am of INTC where the situation justifies. If I seem to criticize INTC more than AMD, particularly INTC's management, it's because they deserve it.
Yes, INTC inertia is probably the biggest problem AMD has to overcome. Inertia in this case is a whole lot of things including 30+ years of INTC success in the market place.
Also, INTC has proven repeatedly that once they get everyone heading in the same direction they are capable of amazing things. So yes we'll have to keep an eye out for any sign that INTC is doing anything more than catching up. However, I don't expect AMD is sitting around doing nothing. They still have a significant lead to build on as far as I can tell. I've heard zip about KA/K10.
Yes, I've always had a hard time figuring out just what discount AMD really sells at to INTC. Any reduction in the difference would of course fall to the bottom line.
Nice post.
From my point of view your after table says it all:
After:
1. Dell (INTEL)
2. HP (INTEL+AMD)
3. Lenovo (INTEL+AMD)
4. Acer (INTEL+AMD)
5. Fujitsu-Siemens (INTEL+AMD)
When I started investing in AMD there was only a glimmer of hope that AMD would be able to come up with a competitive processor design and only in the desktop/single server area. In the processing/manufacturing/distribution areas AMD was hopelessly outclassed, and in the business/marketing areas AMD was operating in some alternate universe.
Today, AMD has/or soon will have competitive or better products than INTC across the entire processor spectrum. In the manufacturing area 90nm is helping, but fab36 will be needed to really make AMD competitive. Distribution still needs work, and despite the seeming improvements in processing lately I would say the jury is still out (too much very bad processing history to get excited here, but IBM relationship has seemingly done wonders). Business/marketing is the area that still concerns me the most, though as you point out, things seem to be getting better and better.
I think you're right in regards to AMD giving up on DELL. The thing I found most interesting about that whole farce was the apparent angst DELL went through getting to the decision to stay with INTC only. Now if someone with as sweet a deal as DELL has with INTC could even contemplate adding AMD you have to wonder about the rest of the guys out there. As I said in my previous post the incentives to cheat seem to be overwhelming the risks. In short, INTC's ability to discipline truant troops seems to be a lot less obvious than it was, say 6 months ago.
As far as Lenovo going with AMD to distinguish itself from DELL. Frankly, I expected this course of action from HP. Though it does now appear that HP is now warming up to AMD, by now I had expected the relationship to be torrid. In the end I think this was Carly's biggest mistake.
IBM seems even worse than HP. Their furtive steps have belied their outward messages of support. Further decision making at IBM seems to be one of the most convoluted and arduous processes imaginable.
I'm not really surprised at the convulsions big companies go through in making decisions, but it's no wonder the little guys can run circles around them.
Again, I think your right about INTC eyeing IBM's Power business, which should be driving IBM into AMD’s open arms. But as I've said, I expect this corner of the market to come under increasing pressure from below over time. The Opterons seem to be evolving into a platform that can compete in everything from the single server, to the enterprise, to the super computer markets.
Finally, your estimates of market share gains seem reasonable. Realistically, at present, there is no way AMD can gain more than 1 to 1.5% of market per quarter. But even at that pace it would do wonders for AMD's largely fixed cost business.
Good point, I didn't consider the need to maintain cultural as well as business relationships.
I thought I read that Hector talked to the people at TSMC and UMC. Maybe it was just about chipsets? Anyway something is afoot. Maybe we'll hear about it in the CC?
Good points. I think AMD would be much more inclined to have IBM creating high-end chips than anyone else. I still have some problems though seeing IBM producing chips for AMD that will compete with IBM's high-end line-up. By this time next year there will be a lot fewer high-end machines that can compete with Opteron systems on almost any basis. The high-end RISC/EPIC server market is on the verge of being relegated to history. Maybe the Cell processor will change things but right now big iron seams to be on the way to the graveyard.
Still what was Hector's Orient trip all about?
I've been wondering a lot about that also. Hector's trip to the orient was obviously a shopping trip, but for what? I don't think it's high-end gear he wants produced by TSMC or UMC or even Chartered for that matter. If AMD chose to ramp up fab36 it could easily supply half the total world market for high-end processors and I include Semprons in that classification.
I don't know, maybe it's that redundancy thing again, or maybe it's something related to 50X15? For sure something is afoot.
Now you’re talking. I like your ideas.
It does seem like there is a market for high-end equipment. The wife and I know at least 4 couples that have spent, I'm guessing, at least 20k on AV systems. One of the couples has basically converted their family room into a theater.
Everything seems to point to a very powerful computer being required in the home of the future. Why have black boxes, gaming machines, TIVO devices, DVD/CD/machines and CDs/DVDs/games scattered all around the house when you can put it all on that computer located in the closet upstairs? Makes sense to me, but then most ideas don't burst into fruition, baby steps are required.
INTC marketing. Warning another long post.
As far as I’m concerned this subject gets way to little attention on the boards since it is at the heart of why AMD has remained in sales purgatory for so long.
We constantly get numbers about market share from sources such as IDC, Gartner, etc. As far as I’m concerned the numbers are bullshit, particularly when the get into tenths of a percent. However, the numbers are probably in the ballpark. Personally, I tend to believe INTC has traditionally had about 85% of the market by volume and about 90% by sales $. Even when the K7 was at its prime AMD was only able to get a little over 20% of the volume and never really hurt INTC sales $s. These figures haven’t change much over the years, which incidentally is the basis of our own Mr. Fudds trading pattern.
A good question to ask is; just how has INTC managed to keep a monopolists share of the market through thick and thin? Well from my point of view there are 4 things that epitomize the stranglehold on the market INTC enjoys. Reason 1 is that INTC has traditionally had the best product, except for a few notable momentary lapses. 2nd, they have always had the superior infrastructure. By that I mean they have always been able to manufacture more than the market needed (artificial shortages aside) and that they were able to get the product to the purchaser in a timely manner. Anyone that has followed AMD knows that these 2 problems continue to plague AMD to this day. 3rd, INTC has been the consummate marketer. Through the deft use of advertising they have been able to make the company name “INTEL” recognizable to almost everyone and the logo “INTEL INSIDE” sought out as an almost revered mark of reliability and trust. 4th, largely because of the previous 3 reasons INTC has been able to charge more for its’ products which in a perverse sort of way has furthered the idea of INTC as a bastion of stability with both the public and Wall Street.
Ok, now having listed INTC’s strengths where are the chinks that AMD can exploit? Well the first thing one has to recognize is that the monopoly exists today is because it has worked in the past. Everyone got their back scratched and little matters of ethics (INTC’s monopoly) were no impediment to getting rich. What has been happening lately though is that the game has been changing in not so subtle ways. After the K7 debacle (from INTC’s point of view) INTC tightened up on the users in an attempt to guarantee that nothing like AMD’s market grab would ever happen again. What happened in JP undoubtedly happened worldwide. Of course INTC was abetted in this policy by the total incompetence of AMD in the manufacturing area, but that’s another story.
Anyway, it wasn’t until the superior K8 and the breach in the wall provided by the total insanity of INTC’s management ignoring X86-64 that AMD had another shot at taking market share. However, due to the strengthening of INTC’s market controls AMD found increasing market share a lot tougher than with the K7. On the plus side, this time around though things were different in that INTC didn’t have a P4 waiting in the wings. Because of the absolutely astonishing stupidity of INTC’s management in ignoring X86-64 they had provided AMD with a golden opportunity, but because of the market restrictions AMD found its’ path to greater market share blocked. Where AMD had expected a super highway to greater market share they found a sheep path.
Well Sunset Blvd. in Los Angeles was once a sheep path and over time it grew. I don’t think it was an accident that the JTFC investigation started about the same time the Opteron was introduced. The thing that screwed up INTC’s plans was that suddenly AMD had a superior product that INTC had no response to. As expected INTC’s response was to tighten the screws on the market and promise competitive product soon. So far that policy has worked fairly well. It really is ridiculous that given the clear superiority of Opterons they should only have 6% of the server market 2 years after being introduced. Clearly INTC has been playing for time while it has desperately tried to come up with a response to the K8s.
As I said before, a monopoly only exists with collusion. Every one has to be happy with the game even if they’re being led to the abattoir. With the intro of the Opterons suddenly cracks started to appear in what had previously been this seamless façade of impregnability. Suddenly the tier 2 and 3 guys had product that was in demand and the rest of the market was losing out on sales. INTC undoubtedly responded by limiting the availability of product that was available to these guys and in doing so effectively forced them further into AMD’s open arms. Also, as it became further apparent that Opterons weren’t just a shot in the dark and it became painfully obvious that INTC had no response there was suddenly an incentive to cheat that could easily be rationalized.
There were a few other things happening at the same time that affected the situation. Through the establishment of the Hyper Transport Consortium AMD gained a lot of respect as an industry leader and visionary while INTC’s steadfast backing of the Itanium was having the opposite effect. Slowly at first, but with increasing momentum, AMD has started gathering partners that are willing to risk incurring INTC’s wrath. Mostly these are little guys with the balls to ignore INTC or companies that were having their existence threatened by the voracious black hole from which none ever escaped.
Enough with history, what’s happening now? Well as far as I can tell the commitment to the K8 line up by third parties has never been stronger. There’s hardly a day that goes by without some sort of blurb about someone getting into bed with AMD about something. Further while INTC has attempted to respond to AMD, so far the reply has been woefully inadequate. Further INTC seems to be continuing their marketing support for the bifurcated policy of Itanium at the top and Xeon at the bottom leaving the rich underbelly of the middle of the server market to Opteron. From my point of view cracks are appearing all over the dam and it’s only a matter of time until the whole thing explodes.
But having said that it is obviously imperative that AMD keep ahead of INTC with superior technology. All INTC has to do is appear to catch up for the wall to magically recompose.
Concerning the other INTC advantages listed above. Well they’re mostly chicken and egg things. With more sales comes better infrastructure. Fab36 will do a lot to alleviate the supply problems, but getting the product to the purchaser in a timely manner will still be a problem that will again be relieved by greater sales. AMD is basically an unknown to most consumers; something increases in advertising will help, as funds become available. And as far as prices go, while it appears that AMD is continuing its’ long established policy of pricing 25% below INTC I doubt that it really is that much when INTC kickbacks are taken into account. Superior products will eventually lead to superior pricing.
In case anyone is wondering why I write these tomes, it’s primarily for my own edification as I find it very helpful in organizing my disparted thoughts. If anyone else finds value so much the better.
Sounds good.
Now how about including a non-operative spare or 2 and have the system automatically bring up the new drive, recover and let you know which drive to replace later. I agree, right now striped Raid does look like the best plan and considering how cavernous the drives are becomming there's a lot of room for all the stuff I'm dying to store on my PC.
Just catching up
I found the Sun/AMD presentation very interesting, particularly page 27 which shows a 22watt saving for Opterons over Xeons with Opterons memory controller built into the chip. When you look at the cost savings, both at purchase and over the life of the chip, you have to wonder why anyone would be buying Xeons? The savings listed are annual for a 500 2processor Opteron farm, but don't include floor space costs which could be even more than just energy costs.
http://de.sun.com/solutions/industries/edu/info-center/pdf/AMD64_Technology.pdf
I'm not so sure about the schedules mapped out though. Considering the way AMD was able to push up the Turion schedule, and the advances we've seen lately in the process area, I would guess that a lot of the dates are subject whatever pressure INTC can produce.
Bring it on
I did some goggling and found this:
http://www.cradle.com/downloads/CT3600-PB.pdf
which may have been what you found? I seem to have read something about the 3400 line awhile ago, maybe one of your posts? Anyway, I'll be looking for 3600 products in the next year. Someone needs to commit to doing MM right. So far everything from TIVO to black boxes to game boxes and MC PCs have only been furtive efforts.
My son seems to think that Google will be the answer to everything, and he may be right for a lot of people, but I'm sure there will be a large group of people that won't like having their collections of music, films, correspondence etc. stored on a public medium. This would be especially true if the failure rate of home mass storage could be improved.
Ok it’s my turn. Warning long post.
When talking about AMD Vs INTC as investments most of the arguments revolve around three things, production, design, and marketing.
In the production area, the once invincible INTC processing might, seems to finally be getting some competition from AMD. The combination of SOI and DSL technology starting with the “E” stepping appears to be reaping large rewards not only in greater speed, but lower heat also. So far INTC seems unable to respond with anything that has the equivalent effects. This not only applies to the P4, but also to Dotham where speed increases seem capped. Perhaps Yonah and 65nm will solve some of the problems, but for now AMD’s combination of design and process seems superior. The only AMD question remaining concerns the bin/yields of the process? From the increasing availability of 90nm parts it seems like any problems are being handled, but we’ll have to wait for the CC to find out how well AMD is meetings its’ goal of near total 90nm production by the start of H2. One other thing, there have been rumors, form more than one source, that AMD is reducing the stepping gap. That is that AMD will reduce the normal stepping lag of a year or so that INTC normally enjoys before AMD catches up. If so, given the apparent more than competitive ability of AMD’s 90nm process, this could be the thing that finally levels the process playing field.
On the design front as long as INTC remains attached to the FSB they will be limited to increasing cache with ever reduced bang for the buck. From the reviews I’ve read true/usable bandwidth also is a problem that faster memory won’t help either. Not having something like HT and an on-board memory controller also seems to be keeping INTC from keeping up with AMD. With OEMs now able to produce fan-less AMD products and the apparent large energy advantage the latest 90nm products are displaying it appears that the 90nm process will be more than able to compete with anything INTC can come up with, even at 65nm. Then there’s the matter of Yonah not having 64 bit capabilities and the Frankenstein nature of bolting 2 processors together to create Smithfield. These products hardly sound like the products INTC used to come out with. Worse, all INTC seems to be able to do is follow AMD’s lead. For the time being INTC seems more brain dead than Terri Schiavo. I don’t know, but I’m wondering just how many more design efficiencies can be incorporated into Yonah without some sort of process changes to compensate for the increased number of transistors? Anyway, the power advantages of Dotham seem ephemeral with Turion being more than a match in processing power and competitive in battery life. We should know more in the next month. Again, the combination of design and manufacturing prowess seem to be tilting the playing field AMD’s way.
As far as marketing goes, this is where the biggest chinks are showing up in the INTC armor. The regulatory events in JP and EUROland are just the expression of a greater reality. Namely, that being an INTC only shop is not the best way to run your business anymore. As usual these regulatory things trail the market place and only happen when someone starts complaining about the situation. With more demand for AMD products INTC only shops are starting to feel the heat of lost sales, or worse, lost customers. When you have a monopolist with an inferior product and better products are available, the tendency on the part of the buyers is to cheat. This has happened even with such INTC stalwarts as DELL, which has sold AMD products to demanding customers to avoid losing their business. Now take this to the screwdriver shop level where INTC compliance is less monitored and the tendency to cheat is irresistible. What’s been happening over the last couple of years is that as the mom/pops and tier2/3 manufacturers have sold more AMD stuff, less INTC stuff has been sold by the large OEMs. I know the INTC goons are going to ask for proof, and I don’t have any, but to think otherwise is to go against human nature. The result of this shift has been the increasing willingness of the big OEMs to defy INTC and take on more and more AMD projects. As far as I can tell the only things limiting this process have been the inability of AMD to guarantee sufficient product, something ameliorated by 90nm but not fixed until fab36, and the time for the snowballing of the defection process to get going. The next year should be a real trial for Otellini and the marketing dragoons.
In order to compensate for the changes resulting from the above INTC has decided that the answer is to create a more insular, vertically integrated company that can produce ever more standardized products at ever-reduced costs. Not a bad plan, but for platformization to work in the low-end of the market INTC must have the lowest costs, and in the high-end it must have the best products also. While I could see INTC having the lowest costs, though it’s getting harder to do so, I have a very hard time imagining INTC having the best products. This isn’t a hit against INTC in particular, but more a description of how mammoth companies operate. Basically any new idea is a threat to someone, and the number of someone’s threatened increases tremendously in a company with the number of levels of management INTC has. So really thought provoking/mind bending/structure changing innovation in-house is sort of frowned upon as it makes waves. A killer idea will either be ignored or maybe even get you in trouble. Not too much incentive there. At best introducing a new idea is beyond arduous and the introducer can expect all sorts of reasons to be tossed about as to why it won’t work. Look at INTC’s attempts at creating an onboard memory controller for example, it can’t be done, three teams said so.
Well if INTC isn’t going to create in-house, what about out-house. The best indication of how that might go is to look at how deworsification has worked. Need I say more?
To me it comes down to whether 100 or more mice who are having their existence threatened by an elephant can combine and defeat the beast. In that sort of environment I would expect the creative juices to be flowing non-stop, something we’re beginning to see more of in products from NVDA, SUN, ATI and a host of smaller companies now creating AMD specific products. Even 2 years ago this level of commitment/coordination was all but unthinkable, but times and pressures are forcing more and more of the mice to choose between picking between the elephants dung for morsels or partnering with AMD and getting the whole enchilada. To me that seems like a no brainer.
Googling along
http://www.cnet.com/4520-6033_1-5759958-1.html?tag=nl.e501
It's gonna take a whole lot of Opterons to support the old dumb-terminal/thin client type of processing the article talks about.
There's a lot more to such a system besides just accessing the data.
Chartered 65nm process.
http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=60405253
Analysts have said Chartered's Fab 7 is key to IBM's foundry customers, which have concerns that IBM's chip-manufacturing capacity will be absorbed by the computer giant's internal chip needs.
Me...
Same goes for AMD, in spades. Personally, I like the redundancy. It definitely makes me feel warmer knowing there are back ups to AMD's own manufacturing processes which have a rather checkered past. I've got this feeling that embedded processors are going to be a lot bigger part of AMD's business in the future. Especially if China/India/2nd,3rd world etc., are going to be big markets for AMD. For sure Hector has something in mind with all the shopping he is doing.
That's probably it.
more on INTC JP problems from the Saxman.
http://www.linuxbusinessweek.com/story/48583.htm
AMD, who'll doubtlessly file a private antitrust suit against Intel eventually, was ready with a statement of its own calling Intel's behavior "anti-consumer and anti-competitive."
Bad hair day.
AMD continues to go down on relatively low volume. Not a whole lot of selling, just no buyers. The SOXX was down 2.86%, AMD down 3.88% and INTC down 2.62%. INTC has definitely been out performing AMD for awhile now.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=5d&s=%5ESOXX&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=AMD+INTC
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=%5ESOXX&t=3m&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=AMD,INTC
In any case the INTC mid quarter briefing looks to have been neutral to down effect wise on both AMD and INTC. Both the DJIA and NASDAQ were down less than 1% on really rotten macro economic news. So again, as it has been wont , AMD outperformed its' peers and the general market to the downside, mainly due to indifference.