The rise and fall of AMD

[mrmt]

I'm just unsure where one should draw the line here. Because from my point of view AMD did plenty of innovations. They forced their competition to do a 180 and throw hundreds of millions of spent development costs on Netburst away.

Did they? Netburst was the longest living Intel architecture, they spent 6 years tweaking the thing. And Intel stubbornly pursued it, even when it was clear that tualatin was a better approach. Only after Intel hit a thermal barrier they stopped. And it wasn't clearly a process issue, because the same 65nm that crashed Prescott gave us Conroe.

And their cheap x86 server chips (the original Athlon MPs and Opterons) forced Intel to push their own x86 solutions over Itanium.

Same here. 64 bit wasn't really a differential until much further in the race. The opteron chips were good because of the good old efficiency, where they beat hands down whatever Intel could throw at them with Netburst.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Christ, you people will do anything to avoid giving Intel credit for anything.

What do you mean by "you people"? ^_^

 

[Abwx]

Face what that P4 sold more units than Athlon because it was more innovative or Intel had tons of cash to bribe OEM's ?

Heck , bribing in the X86 market was quite an innovation ,
we can at least give them some deserved credit for this one....

 

[Exophase]

Did they? Netburst was the longest living Intel architecture, they spent 6 years tweaking the thing. And Intel stubbornly pursued it, even when it was clear that tualatin was a better approach. Only after Intel hit a thermal barrier they stopped. And it wasn't clearly a process issue, because the same 65nm that crashed Prescott gave us Conroe.

So at what point does something become a brand new uarch? I posit that the difference from Northwood to Prescott is on a similar level to some of the largest differences between successive generations after P6. Therefore by your criteria I would call P6 the longest living Intel uarch (architecture is the wrong word).

 

[AnandThenMan]

Heck , bribing in the X86 market was quite an innovation ,
we can at least give them some deserved credit for this one....

I can't believe Intel got away with that. Dirk Meyer was a moron for settling for such a low number, the case should have gone to trial and the damages would have probably been 10 fold, and PR hit for Intel would have been really bad.

But it's not all downside, AMD is now free to make x86 based devices in any factory they want, not just ones owned by themselves. If they didn't get that concession from Intel we would be looking at a true monopoly situation. Can you imagine that? We'd all have a gun to our heads and couldn't do anything about it. Try building a home computer without an x86/64 processor.

 

[R0H1T]

What do you mean by "you people"? ^_^

Us outcasts I presume, for anyone supporting AMD(in whatever way) its either ~ you're a troll, boo, just go away OR

Don't get me wrong I love AMD because they bring competition to Intel for innovating new stuff but hey guess what they're cr@p, an order of magnitude slower on the most popular platform on earth win7, even though linux is better in many ways, but hey who cares you're not in the 99% that counts & btw metro blows so I'm jumping the ship next round with steam & linux err steambox

Is it just me or is the world still flat for some :whiste:

 

[AtenRa]

I find it interesting that how you chose to pick and choose from those articles. Such as in the first one:



So yes, Intel was first. Should we continue to pick apart your agenda?

Seymour Cray's CDC 6600 from 1965 is often mentioned as the first superscalar design. The Intel i960CA (1988) and the AMD 29000-series 29050 (1990) microprocessors were the first commercial single-chip superscalar microprocessors.

Nor Intel or AMD invented Superscalar, they both Intel and AMD have used it[FONT=&quot] (copied as [FONT=&quot]Charles Kozierok put it earlier[/FONT][FONT=&quot]) [/FONT][/FONT]for their CPU designs. Now back off, Intel has a lot of innovations but saying that AMD hasn’t done anything for the x86 is plain lie.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

What do you mean by "you people"? ^_^

People who hate Intel so much that they start a 5-page flamewar because someone (correctly) points out that Intel has been the single biggest source of key technical innovations in the PC world over the last 30 years.

AMD has done some good things. They are not in Intel's league. Those are the facts. Sorry if they bother you.

 

[AnandThenMan]

It's funny because AMD had the label of a company that only copies many, many years ago. I guess some stigmas never die.

On Linux, I will jump to it the second it becomes a good gaming platform. Linux is FAST, craps all over Windows. The networking stack is especially great in Linux, and it loves cores.

People who hate Intel so much that they start a 5-page flamewar because someone (correctly) points out that Intel has been the single biggest source of key technical innovations in the PC world over the last 30 years.

There's no need to keep repeating yourself, we understand this is your opinion.

 

[Abwx]

I can't believe Intel got away with that. Dirk Meyer was a moron for settling for such a low number, the case should have gone to trial and the damages would have probably been 10 fold, and PR hit for Intel would have been really bad.

That s what happen when you have techies running corporates ,
they have no clues of the financial sides of things and indeed
he got ousted for this and for selling the MediaGX IP....

But it's not all downside, AMD is now free to make x86 based devices in any factory they want, not just ones owned by themselves. If they didn't get that concession from Intel we would be looking at a true monopoly situation.

That concession was automatic once it was proved that they
kept them from funding facilities thanks to thoses illegal practices.

 

[AnandThenMan]

That concession was automatic once it was proved that they
kept them from funding facilities thanks to thoses illegal practices.

The crazy thing is, having your own fabs is not the end all be all that I once thought it was. "Real men have fabs" sure doesn't matter to Apple now does it? And Apple could very easily build their own, but they choose not to.

I don't see how Intel is going to continue to fund their fabrication plants, margins on the rapidly expanding markets are so much smaller than Intel relies on. The next 5 years will be very interesting.

 

[Phynaz]

Now back off, Intel has a lot of innovations but saying that AMD hasn’t done anything for the x86 is plain lie.

Wow, did I get under your skin or something?

Where did I say AMD hasn't done anything?

Anyway, as to what you posted, Intel invented the first superscalar microprocessor. I'm assuming you can comprehend english well enough to distinguish the difference between a design and a microprocessor?

 

[AtenRa]

Where did I say AMD hasn't done anything?

I wasn’t talking about you, it was meant for the discussion here.

 

[SiliconWars]

People who hate Intel so much that they start a 5-page flamewar because someone (correctly) points out that Intel has been the single biggest source of key technical innovations in the PC world over the last 30 years.

AMD has done some good things. They are not in Intel's league. Those are the facts. Sorry if they bother you.

This is similar to what happens in every other thread except normally it's the people who hate AMD so much causing it.

The same people in every thread by the way.

 

[AtenRa]

Anyway, as to what you posted, Intel invented the first superscalar microprocessor. I'm assuming you can comprehend english well enough to distinguish the difference between a design and a microprocessor?

They(Intel) used the design of someone else and incorporated in to their own CPU design. Yes that’s also innovation for the x86 and nobody here have said that Intel didn’t Innovate all those years. But there are people here tried illustrate AMD as a non innovated company that only copies from others.

As intel innovated by using superscalar design for their CPUs the same Innovation made by AMD and their Integrated Memory Controller in to the x86 CPU family.

 

[Phynaz]

They(Intel) used the design of someone else and incorporated in to their own CPU design.

Please link to proof of this statement.

 

[galego]

Pro-Intel statement:

Intel invented the microprocessor.

Anti-AMD statement:

AMD does something akin to EA. Both acquires smaller companies need funding, get good first generation products with the acquired R&D and then screw up when they have to develop something by themselves.

TIME:

Most business texts credit engineer Ted Hoff at Intel Corp., based in Santa Clara, Calif., with having fathered the microprocessor between 1969 and 1971. But Hyatt asserts that he put together the requisite technology a year earlier at his short-lived company, Micro Computer Inc., whose major investors included Intel's founders, Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore. Micro Computer invented a digital computer that controlled machine tools, then fell apart in 1971 after a dispute between Hyatt and his venture-capital partners over sharing his rights to that invention. Noyce and Moore went on to develop Intel into one of the world's largest chip manufacturers. "This will set history straight," proclaimed Hyatt. "And this will encourage inventors to stick to their inventions when they're up against the big companies."

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,155487,00.html

 

[CHADBOGA]

Face what that P4 sold more units than Athlon because it was more innovative or Intel had tons of cash to bribe OEM's ?

You should come to understand what the term capacity constraint means.

AMD sold every CPU it could make, so your imagined bribes had no impact on the number of units sold.

 

[CHADBOGA]

I can't believe Intel got away with that. Dirk Meyer was a moron for settling for such a low number, the case should have gone to trial and the damages would have probably been 10 fold, and PR hit for Intel would have been really bad.

Just goes to show that people who knew all the details at AMD(as opposed to uninformed forum members), knew how weak their case really was, so took the breadcrumbs Intel offered and slinked away.

Had it gone to court, it would have been AMD who would have been taking the PR hit, as their case unraveled.

 

[AnandThenMan]

AMD sold every CPU it could make, so your imagined bribes had no impact on the number of units sold.

That would make Intel an extremely stupid company to spend billions in bribes for nothing. And the bribes were not imagined.

 

[galego]

From the arstechnica article (part two):

In the mid-2000s, AMD came to believe that Intel was unfairly out to sabotage it in the marketplace once more, using money and clout to beat back AMD's technological superiority. Ruiz describes the company's view in his book:

Toshiba had accepted a hefty payment from Intel in 2001 on the promise that it wouldn’t use AMD processors. The “market development funds” totaled between $25 million and $30 million per quarter—a sum Toshiba executives likened to “cocaine” because it was a deal they just couldn’t quit.
Intel had bought Hitachi’s exclusivity as well. Whereas AMD had been shipping 50,000 Athlon chips to Hitachi in the first and second quarters of 2002, by the third quarter AMD’s shipments suddenly fell to zero.
NEC’s stance was especially disappointing. By the third quarter of 2002, AMD had won 84 percent of NEC’s Japanese consumer desktop business—a substantial achievement given our historical position as number two in the global semiconductor market. Looking at notebooks and desktops together, we supplied 40 percent of the company’s microprocessor needs. That would end shortly after Intel agreed to pay NEC more than ¥3 billion per quarter, as long as NEC would give 90 percent of its business to Intel and strictly limit its dealings with AMD. By 2003, AMD’s share of NEC’s consumer desktop business had slid to nearly zero too.
NEC went so far as to tell us firsthand about its agreement with Intel, which dictated that AMD’s share of NEC’s Japanese market had to be held to single digits. Globally, AMD’s share of NEC business would fall from 40 percent to 15 percent.
Amid all this activity, it seemed that whenever we took one step forward, we stumbled two steps back. This was particularly frustrating because AMD had become the market leader in technology; we had been expecting advances, so the sudden retreats seemed undeserved. I knew from the start that AMD’s fight for market share was going to be an uphill battle. But I held faith that the market would right itself in time.
​

AMD had already filed a similar complaint with the European Commission back in 2000, and Japan’s Fair Trade Commission found that Intel violated antitrust rules there.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

Too bad AMD can't find a way to make money off of people whining.

Whatever Intel did, it did before AMD peaked in terms of market share and influence. So why has the company collapsed over the last five years? How has that led to AMD's utter self-destruction in the server market?

 

[AnandThenMan]

Too bad AMD can't find a way to make money off of people whining.

If they did, Intel would just steal the idea and take credit for it. :hmm:

 

[Enigmoid]

I think the argument is not that intel made all of the innovations and that amd made none but that intel has made more than amd. The question is, "Of the two, is amd or intel more innovative?"

 

[frozentundra123456]

I think the argument is not that intel made all of the innovations and that amd made none but that intel has made more than amd. The question is, "Of the two, is amd or intel more innovative?"

Personally, it seems like a pointless argument. I dont really care who invented what. All I really care about is the performance of the current processors. Who invented what, or who took who's idea doesnt change what the cpu landscape is today. I suppose that it could be important because innovation will affect the future path of both companies, but even then simply because one company was more inventive is the past does not mean that it will continue to be so.