AMD Bulldozer and Llano going to be delayed? GF 32nm troubles?

[jvroig]

I doubt it. It's AMD failing to make competing products. In most lines of business, such companies just go out of business, and nothing is ever heard of them. You can't compare it with AT&T, where there was no way for competitors to enter the market, since AT&T owned the entire phone infrastructure.

Sure. There are so many things here that are debatable, but despite them it all boils down to: with AMD gone or even just dying, who's going to enter to fight Intel? Who can do so? Intel owns the industry. Nobody can just setup an R&D center, put up three mega fabs, then expect to turn a profit in 3 years. Intel would be laughing all the way to the bank. They'd be in an even bigger disadvantage than AMD is now.

And a few years later they'll realize what they've done, when they can no longer find decent affordable processors for their servers, supercomputers etc, because all the small Intels aren't capable of delivering what the big Intel once could, they're too busy fighting over budget products.

All debatable again. Do you agree that if AMD and Intel were competitive (they aren't today), desktop AND server chips probably would be priced cheaper? Prices could be cheaper, and competition could certainly be better. For all we know, better competition could have meant getting i7 at better clocks. Maybe at better clocks AND better prices. And no, this is not just wholly AMD's fault for being a dud. AMD did make a good product before, didn't take off, no dent in market share, Intel had a stranglehold on the distributors (but only Dell got caught, or something like that, like I said it all magically went away once AMD settled) that made sure of that.

"Small Intels" aren't ideal, but neither is having a monopoly (even if just virtual) where no one really has a realistic chance of putting up a fight. Right now, based on facts on the ground, the best way (for consumers) would be AMD and Intel having a more balanced market share, but even when AMD did make a product that might have made that possible, Intel made sure it won't happen (since what was good for us wasn't necessarily good for them). I don't dislike Intel, but saying everything is AMD's fault is not completely honest either. If they played fair from the get go, that might have given AMD a bigger share now, and the CPU landscape might be better off - in the eyes of consumers and the government, maybe. We'll never know now, since Intel didn't play fair. And if the government's break-up hammer falls, it's also partly Intel's fault for playing dirty to cling to their high profit margins (as demanded by the board), resulting in a no-compete landscape that we have now.

If AMD does pull a surprise move, or some of their plans pan out as expected despite the David and Goliath scenario, then good for us. If not, whether we get stuck with one giant Intel or "small Intels", it just can't get better than what we have now and what we have now is not even close to being great.

 

[Scali]

Look your comparison does not work at all because cola is super easy to produce.

That wasn't the point, which is why you don't get the comparison.
What about the logistics for a worldwide operation on such a scale? What about the marketing required to make your product a household name like Pepsi and Coca Cola are? It's pretty much impossible.

 

[evolucion8]

There are plenty of companies producing CPUs aswell...
But it's the scale at which they operate, and the marketshare they manage to acquire.
Nobody is anywhere near the scale that Pepsi/Coca Cola or Intel/AMD are.

In other words, it's just not realistic to expect to be able to compete with companies of this magnitude. As AMD continues slipping, this goes for them more and more aswell.

With your posts and pesimism, it would seems that you want AMD to go away, I don't. I owned lots of Intel processors (Actually all my 3 CPU's are Intel) and its hard to pay $425 for a Pentium 4 3.40GHz Northwood and even at that time, AMD was putting pressure. If AMD goes away, we will pay $300 for a Dual Core Celeron.

The goverment will split Intel in half, don't know what will happen afterwards. As much as you may state that K10.5 is old and outdated etc, its pretty competitive as it is, even faster with older architectures as Penryn, but Penryn, K10.5 are fast performers, more than most people around here needs, remember, enthusiasts are only a niche in the market, and the money goes in servers where AMD is doing very well with their latest Opteron 6000 series.

I think that in the end, what will be an issue is manufacturing process, it's moving at a slower pace causing issues, I think that we are reaching the limits of Si, even Intel knows about that, I'm pretty sure they have something under hands.

It isn't like "Lets hope that AMD goes well" like an ill patient, if their products suck, they simply suck and period, but they don't. Competition is what keeps innovation.

 

[Scali]

Sure. There are so many things here that are debatable, but despite them it all boils down to: with AMD gone or even just dying, who's going to enter to fight Intel? Who can do so? Intel owns the industry. Nobody can just setup an R&D center, put up three mega fabs, then expect to turn a profit in 3 years. Intel would be laughing all the way to the bank. They'd be in an even bigger disadvantage than AMD is now.

Yea, that's just a fact of life.
But why punish Intel for pretty much inventing the microprocessor and making such a huge and successful business out of it?
Back when Intel started with the 4004, they were a minor player, and were up against giants such as HP and IBM. The shoe is on the other foot now, because the rest have failed. That's business.

I wonder though... They haven't split up Microsoft either, and Microsoft REALLY doesn't have any competition, and completely controls the market.
I think it's better that way. Leave the company the way it is, but make sure they don't take advantage of the situation... sadly that can become rather arbitrary, such as the ruling that Microsoft needs to market versions of Windows without Media Player or IE. Something that doesn't benefit customers.

 

[Scali]

With your posts and pesimism, it would seems that you want AMD to go away, I don't.

I don't see the point of AMD's existence as far as the x86 market goes.
They haven't made a good product in years, and it doesn't look like they will be making a good product in the next few years either.
So we won't miss anything if AMD goes out of the x86 market.

AMD needs to come up with decent products, whatever they are. x86 processors apparently aren't a possibility.
The only time AMD really had a purpose was with the Athlon XP/64/X2 products, where they actually had something that offered value over Intel's products.
But today they're still peddling pretty much the same technology, just at lower prices. What's the point?
As long as Intel's prices remain under control, nobody is going to miss AMD.

 

[jvroig]

That wasn't the point, which is why you don't get the comparison. What about the logistics for a worldwide operation on such a scale? What about the marketing required to make your product a household name like Pepsi and Coca Cola are? It's pretty much impossible.

Part of why your comparison doesn't work because Coke vs Pepsi is much healthier than Intel vs AMD. I could only browse 2006 figures, but their domestic shares where only 11% apart: Coke had ~42%, and Pepsi had ~31%. That's so far off from Intel and AMD ratio - what is it now, 80% vs 20%?

The rivalry between Coke and Pepsi is healthy. No one among them can just relax, put their foot up on the table, and delay their next tick or tock. So it doesn't matter if no one else can join the worldwide cola wars (but that would still be more realistic than CPU R&D and megafabs), because between Coke and Pepsi, things are already healthy and competitive. Coke isn't just keeping Pepsi alive to drive away the FTC.

Contrast that to Intel and AMD.

Now, in the Intel and AMD landscape of today, what is it more reminiscent of: AT&T monopoly of Ye Olde Ages, or Coke vs Pepsi today?

 

[jvroig]

Yea, that's just a fact of life. But why punish Intel for pretty much inventing the microprocessor and making such a huge and successful business out of it? Back when Intel started with the 4004, they were a minor player, and were up against giants such as HP and IBM. The shoe is on the other foot now, because the rest have failed. That's business.

I agree with you here, let's get that straight.

But when any industry stagnates (as determined by regulators like the FTC I suppose; not us enthusiasts), it becomes their job to "revitalize" it. I am not part of the government, and I am not saying I like it or want these regulators to do their thing. It is just, as you have said, a fact of life.

That's why the best thing to happen is not for AMD to disappear. The best thing to happen for us now is for AMD vs Intel to be more like Pepsi vs Coke. When equilibrium like that happens, that's when we get to win as consumers big time. All other scenarios (AMD continually on life support while Intel delays tech, or Intel gets broken up into small intels) are just far worse off in comparison.

Also:

But why punish Intel for pretty much inventing the microprocessor and making such a huge and successful business out of it?

As I've said earlier, Intel might not have made as much money had they played fairly, but if it turned out that AMD gained 10-15% more market share during the Athlon heydays, none of that distributor bribery business, the resulting AMD vs Intel landscape may have reached a "good enough" equilibrium such that AMD need not be on life-support courtesy of Intel's charity. If that did happen, government regulators wouldn't even be on the horizon. In a way, if the breakup hammer does fall, it's hard not to say Intel got it coming with their antics.

 

[taltamir]

I doubt it. It's AMD failing to make competing products. In most lines of business, such companies just go out of business, and nothing is ever heard of them. You can't compare it with AT&T, where there was no way for competitors to enter the market, since AT&T owned the entire phone infrastructure.

you seem to forget the PATENTS that make it ILLEGAL for anyone to enter the market.

 

[evolucion8]

I don't see the point of AMD's existence as far as the x86 market goes.
They haven't made a good product in years, and it doesn't look like they will be making a good product in the next few years either.
So we won't miss anything if AMD goes out of the x86 market.

AMD needs to come up with decent products, whatever they are. x86 processors apparently aren't a possibility.
The only time AMD really had a purpose was with the Athlon XP/64/X2 products, where they actually had something that offered value over Intel's products.
But today they're still peddling pretty much the same technology, just at lower prices. What's the point?
As long as Intel's prices remain under control, nobody is going to miss AMD.

If it wasn't because of the Athlon 64 being faster than Pentium 4, for sure we would be stuck in the Netburst era, why Intel would feel the urge to make a much faster Core 2 processor? If there's no competition, but I can smell your bias here which is more pointless than your opinion of AMD purpose in the x86 market. It's pityful because you are smart, but your BIAS doesn't make any sense, its well below human reasoning.

I can say for sure, the $99.00 Athlon II X4 635 runs nice in my GF computer, and I don't mean Global Foundries computer , is faster than any Intel processor close in the same price bracket, the Thuban processor works like a champ, beating Intel processors of the same price and even more expensive one in heavily multi threading. Intel owns the high end, period.

 

[taltamir]

And a few years later they'll realize what they've done, when they can no longer find decent affordable processors for their servers, supercomputers etc, because all the small Intels aren't capable of delivering what the big Intel once could, they're too busy fighting over budget products.

yes, I agree... it would be exceedingly stupid... what they need to do is revoke the x86 patents (and all other CPU patents... and all software patents while they are at it). but not split intel, nor should they force them to release their technology (a patent is not a design document... it is only a vague idea of how something is to be done... a patent can be "a machine to make sandwiches automatically", etc)

 

[Scali]

Now, in the Intel and AMD landscape of today, what is it more reminiscent of: AT&T monopoly of Ye Olde Ages, or Coke vs Pepsi today?

Coke vs Pepsi, obviously. Else I wouldn't have made the comparison and argued that AT&T is not a good analogy.

 

[taltamir]

If it wasn't because of the Athlon 64 being faster than Pentium 4, for sure we would be stuck in the Netburst era, why Intel would feel the urge to make a much faster Core 2 processor? If there's no competition, but I can smell your bias here which is more pointless than your opinion of AMD purpose in the x86 market. It's pityful because you are smart, but your BIAS doesn't make any sense, its well below human reasoning.

I totally agree... the netburst was designed to be a marketing gimmick first and a CPU second. without AMD intel would still be shoveling this sort of crap our way.

 

[Scali]

I agree with you here, let's get that straight.

Then you will also agree that HP and IBM managed to deal with the situation just fine. They gave up CPU development and production for the most part (okay, IBM is still producing chips, just not aiming for the x86/PC market anymore). They changed direction and became successful in a slightly different way.
That might just be what AMD needs to do.

 

[taltamir]

you CAN'T say that intel and AMD are like pepsi and coka cola... intel is like the AT&T of yore... their patent stranglehold makes market penetration impossible.

 

[Martimus]

As long as Intel's prices remain under control, nobody is going to miss AMD.

It amazes me that you actually believe this. Many of your comments so far are along this vein, which seems to be based on the notion that Intel would continue to innovate at the same rate without any competition.

Microsoft sure doesn't innovate now that they have no competition, and neither did AT&T. That doesn't mean they didn't try, but without any recourse for failure, they often didn't get much accomplished. Just look at how far phones have advanced since AT&T broke up, and that is with far fewer R&D dollars than AT&T was spending before the breakup.

 

[Scali]

If it wasn't because of the Athlon 64 being faster than Pentium 4, for sure we would be stuck in the Netburst era, why Intel would feel the urge to make a much faster Core 2 processor?

Pentium 4 is actually the longest-running architecture in the history of Intel.
To say that AMD had anything to do with Intel's move from Netburst to Core2 is incredibly hard to believe because of that fact. Despite AMD offering faster CPUs, the Pentium 4 was by no means a failure in the marketplace. They outsold Athlons by a significant margins, and Intel made a healthy profit throughout that period.
Without AMD, Intel would still have had to abandon Pentium 4. After all, the problem was that the architecture wouldn't scale further.
This would mean that there would no longer be an upgrade path for existing Intel customers (which grossly outnumbered the AMD customers anyway, so their relevance in all this is not that big). That would greatly impact Intel's sales, as the market has been quite saturated for years now, and a lot of sales come from people upgrading their 3-4 year old systems... not because they're broken or useless, but because there's newer and better stuff available.

A similar thing is happening with the car market in the US now. A lot of people would buy a new car every 2-3 years... Not because they had to, the cars could last much longer... they just wanted the latest model.
Because of the crisis, people no longer bought new cars, and the US car industry fell apart almost immediately.

 

[jvroig]

Coke vs Pepsi, obviously.

Coke vs Pepsi: 11% market share difference. Healthy competition.
Intel vs AMD : 60% market share difference. Intel keeping AMD alive and, according to you, AMD has no hope of realistically catching up.

I don't see it, really. I don't want Intel broken up of course, I've repeatedly said it's a bad idea where we will all be worse off, but I'm not going to pretend AMD vs Intel is like Pepsi vs Coke just because I don't want the FTC to bring out the breakup hammer

 

[bryanW1995]

AMD used to be about 18 months behind, and then decided they wanted to decrease the gap to only 12 months.

It seems that ironically the more they try to close the gap, the more problems they run into, and the more they get delayed.
Although technically AMD has been able to get to the production phase on a new process in about 12 months after Intel... the production didn't really reach maturity until about 6 months later. Often when AMD releases products on a new process, initially they aren't even better than the old process in terms of power consumption, clock speed etc.

With Intel on the other hand, as soon as they release products on a new process, it generally results in significant power savings out of the box, and although Intel hasn't really scaled up clockspeed in years, the overclockability of their parts have reached almost legendary status.
Their 32 nm process was another tour-de-force, debuting a 6-core CPU at 3.33 GHz.

the past few years != every time. intel has had great execution and amd poor execution since summer 06, but from 03-06 everyone seemed to think that amd was the greatest and intel sucked. intel has been far ahead with a superior architecture for the past few years so they've had the luxury of waiting until all their i's were dotted and t's crossed, while amd has consistently been behind the 8 ball and rushed out a flawed product. I seem to recall that when amd was ascendant intel had some serious snafus as well, and look at nvidia with fermi. If bulldozer is very strong and released in a timely manner then that will put more pressure on intel to release sooner than they would like; if bulldozer is weak and/or very late then intel's manufacturing will again look great.

 

[Scali]

you CAN'T say that intel and AMD are like pepsi and coka cola... intel is like the AT&T of yore... their patent stranglehold makes market penetration impossible.

Only if you insist on x86 hardware. Intel's grip on other types of processors is MUCH smaller. Especially if you operate fabless. Companies like TSMC already have the required licenses.

 

[Scali]

It amazes me that you actually believe this.

I am giving a condition, how has that anything to with belief?

 

[Scali]

but from 03-06 everyone seemed to think that amd was the greatest and intel sucked.

Yea, and everyone was wrong... except me.
Back in those days I kept pointing out that although the Netburst architecture wasn't working out, Intel still had a technological lead in many areas, including things like caching, hyperthreading, manufacturing process etc.
The architecture was the ONLY missing link, and even for that they already had something promising in the works: Pentium M/Core.
I'm surprised that Core2 was such a shock to most, to be honest. I recall that when early previews showed that they were about 40% faster than AMD's best offerings, that most people simply couldn't believe it, and thought Intel was lying.

 

[jvroig]

As long as Intel's prices remain under control, nobody is going to miss AMD.

Right. They aren't keeping prices under control now since AMD is a threat only in budget sector. Without competition, they will raise prices up even in the budget sector as long as the bean counters tell them their gross margins will shoot up. If the magical balance between price and volume ends up where unit price goes a little higher but volume remains negligibly affected, then higher prices for everyone.

There is no monopoly that would be benevolent, otherwise the board will fire the CEO. If the gross margins will shoot up by 5%, then they will take the necessary action to do it, even if it means that in a no-compete landscape the budget line will cost as much as our midrange of today.

 

[bryanW1995]

I think AMD needs to focus on something if they are to survive long term. I mean when you look at the x86 market today vs 10 years ago you see that it has evolved into different segments that require completely different products to fill.

You need high performance and reliability on the enterprise side. Desktop pc market has sort of split into cheap systems and high end performance(both always existed but now its no longer a question of using higher/lower clocked versions of the same chips or just a chip with less cache, etc.) and in the laptop market you have regular notebooks and the ultra low power atom kind of segment.

Really AMD is just spread too thin to cover everything well. They can't seem to break into the enterprise market and their mobile lineup is by far the weakest part of their offerings. Unfortunately those are the two most important segments in terms of revenue going forward.

Ontario seems to be targeting a market somewhere between atom and ULV cpus and that might be a great product for AMD if they can capitalize on the opportunity. Right now the only edge AMD has is massively superior graphics tech and they need to find a way to use this to differentiate their products from intel in a good way.

their mobile units aren't great certainly, but in gaming they have a significant advantage over intel because they can get away with integrated 4250 graphics in many cases. Intel's integrated graphics continue to just plain suck, requiring a costly discrete mobile gpu. Heck, I can play civ IV on my mobile athlon with integrated graphics, but my newer and faster c2d laptop is a slideshow at even the lowest settings.

 

[Scali]

They aren't keeping prices under control now since AMD is a threat only in budget sector.

Without AMD, it will be the government's responsibility. I thought everyone understood that, but apparently not, so I'll mention it explicitly.

 

[Martimus]

I am giving a condition, how has that anything to with belief?

As long as Intel's prices remain under control, nobody is going to miss AMD.

I'll let you read that again. It is an opinion, made by you. You may have been stating something that you did not believe, but I was giving you the benefit of the doubt that you aren't willfully lying in your arguments.