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AMD Businesses IT

AMD's Plan To Recover From Its Perfect Storm 247

Posted by kdawson from the volatile-you-say dept.
An anonymous reader writes "TG Daily has an interesting write-up on AMD's big Q1 loss and how the company plans to get back into the black. AMD admitted that Q1 was a meltdown and not just a miss. Looks like cost cutting, including layoffs, may be on the way. But the company says it won't change its overal direction. The CEO Hector Ruiz is quoted as saying, 'We are not going to change our strategy because of one lousy quarter.'"
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AMD's Plan To Recover From Its Perfect Storm More

AMD's Plan To Recover From Its Perfect Storm

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  • ...because of one lousy quarter (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22, 2007 @08:14PM (#18835549)
    "It's to early, we are going to wait for a lousy year"

  • Recover (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22, 2007 @08:17PM (#18835569)
    tar -xvf recover.tar
  • The fact that Intel could go to the C2D architecture from low-end to dual-socket server in the space of 6 months is the killer here. Even if 65 nm Barcelonas can give AMD parity on the high-end and mid-range, it'll be 9-12 months before they're all over AMD's lineup. In graphics, it's the same story. By the time R600 gets out the door, G80 will be all over Nvidia's line-up. AMD has a lot of work to do to catch-up on the speed/specs front.

    • AMD is still winning on processor performance/price in the mid range desktop ($100-$200 for a processor), low end laptop (less than $600 for the machine), and very high end server segments (4+ sockets). That's more of the market than they currently have market share, so all they're really losing right now is the PR battle.

    • I think C2D was in process for some time and Intel repurposed it simply because they had to. Not that I'm complaining, C2D seems to be a pretty competent chip in all market segments.

      I do hope AMD does well soon. In retrospect, the ATI merger didn't seem to turn out so well.

  • Increased single-thread performance may help (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SplatMan_DK ( 1035528 ) on Sunday April 22, 2007 @08:23PM (#18835603) Homepage Journal
    Keep in mind that AMD recently greatly increased the clock frequency of their CPU's (as noted on slashdot) [slashdot.org], thereby also increasing the performace of single-thread applications and games.

    This may help them get back on track.
    • That wasn't a huge leap, 2.8GHz parts existed for a while now. It's also an extreme core, it runs a 120W which is 25W over the normal 95W rating. Basically, AMD is taking the cores that can be overclocked and, uh, overclocking them.

      Without increasing the cache though, you're going to have the same hits to memory which, are actually going to take MORE cycles (same time period) meaning that you're actually wasting more energy. Unless your application has a very high DC and IC hit rate the improvement will be marginal. Hint: this is why performance doesn't scale linearly with clock frequency.

      A 65W Opteron [that isn't a special edition] would help put them back on track. I don't recall the roadmap [been more than 6 months since I worked for AMD] but I'm sure this year is when they roll out 65nm parts [if not already]. That should definitely help both on cost and on power.

      For the most part it's not about raw MIPS anymore. It's about MIPS/Watt more than anything. Intel knows this and their desktop/server cores are addressing it.

      Tom
      • Intel has at least one 45nm fab going online now, and they are producing engineering samples. That means that while AMD will get some gains from going 65nm, they are probably not going to be worth much since Intel will be getting similar gains from a better process.

        It seems like this need a better architecture, not just a size shrink. The size shrink will just keep them at where they are now, in relation to Intel, not gain any ground.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )
      Basicly it's AMD overclocked chips and "Extreme" CPUs with the same >100W power draw. Intel already has 3GHz (well, 2.93GHz) chips which beat the pants off the A64 arch and quad-cores makes for a lot better value than dual socket, double dual-core chips right now. Hell, the QX6800 (if money is no object) has *four* cores running at 2.93GHz. Sorry, but Intel came back with a vengance and getting to 3GHz just isn't nearly enough.

  • Why don't AMD switch (Score:5, Funny)

    by LiquidCoooled ( 634315 ) on Sunday April 22, 2007 @08:24PM (#18835611) Homepage Journal
    Why don't AMD switch to using Intel for their processors?
    Look at how much good its done for Apple.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by SplatMan_DK ( 1035528 )
      They can't at the moment.

      They are too busy analyzing the benefits from switing to nVidia in their GPU division...

    • If AMD could get Apple to switch to their processors it would be a move in the right direction. Tough sell to switch now though, Intel can probably afford to just give the chips to Apple for the sake of marketing.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Goaway ( 82658 )
        Why would Apple want to switch to them in the first place? Have you ever used an iMac? It has a fan that starts up for about two seconds when you power it on, and then never again. Can you build a computer like that with an AMD chip these days?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hawkbug ( 94280 )
          Yes, you can. The latest X2 chips based on 65 nm don't even get the heatsink warm that's sitting on them. They are fantastic. Granted, it was about 6 months after Intel did such a thing...

  • I KNEW IT (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tomstdenis ( 446163 ) <tomstdenis@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Sunday April 22, 2007 @08:35PM (#18835679) Homepage
    I was at AMD during the ATI merger and I totally called layoffs in the upcoming quarter. This is what happens when MARKETING runs the company instead of the engineers. AMD makes processors, not "solutions." The moment they start to focus on the meat and potatos again and not the "whatever Intel is doing but with a green palette" the better.

    Why did AMD start to eat Intels lunch? Compare the products at the time. Athlon vs. P3. Roughly equiv but the Athlon scaled, and scaled. Intel got scared and made the P4 which tanked because it was slow, drew way too much power, etc. Now that Intel has grown up a bit and caught up, AMD's answer? a 3GHz 120W core. Quad-cores in the future, etc. Where is the power savings? Where is the cheaper process? etc.

    The core2 already pretty much beats the AMD64 in every measurable way. It's roughly the same in IPC, has a faster FPU, more cache, takes less power, runs cooler, etc. The only saving grace right now is HT which can help in certain applications.

    Where are the lower power AMD64's for desktops/mobiles? Where are the 2MB/4MB cache parts? Where's the faster FPU? (the latter bit is coming up this year iirc)...

    This isn't to say the AMD folk are bright people. The Athlon was a fairly performance driven design for the day, and the improvements in process have kept it in the running (anyone remember how hot the K7's ran?). But sadly I see AMD lagging behind Intel in both design and process for the fair length of future. Which is a shame because I've been a fanboi for a long time and would love to see AMD processors in my workstation in the future (right now it's a E6600 core2).

    Tom

    • Re:I KNEW IT (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak@ y a hoo.com> on Sunday April 22, 2007 @08:59PM (#18835815) Homepage Journal
      You seem to be correct, and I don't recall me as an observer being happy when AMD bought ATI. Too big a bite at too dangerous a time. Hell, people talk about engineers being poor managers - seems like MBA managers make the worst managers, the engineers seem vastly superior. AMD is probably not dead yet - but as with the Monty Python sketch, that is something Intel can certainly arrange by continuing on the cost-cutting.

      AMD has no hope to compete in a fair fight, and Intel are far better when it comes to unfair fights. So change the arena. AMD's only real hope is to keep producing entire new twists. Not stepwise refinements - entire new directions. That's not cheap, but neither is going bankrupt. AMD's only chance lies in keeping Intel wrong-footed. Intel can outpace AMD in a straight line and will squish it flat if that's the only direction that happens.

      • AMD's only real hope is to keep producing entire new twists. Not stepwise refinements - entire new directions.

        The ATI merger suggests one of three things to me: 1) wanting to compete with Intel in the IGP segment, 2) wanting to branch out, or 3) wanting technology that ATI has to improve their CPU product. Option 1) seems very "meh" to me, option 2) seems very badly timed, while option 3) is both ballsy and risky. If AMD rolled out a Cell-like processor with 2 or 4 improved x86-64 cores, and a handful of on

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 0123456 ( 636235 )
      "Intel got scared and made the P4 which tanked because it was slow, drew way too much power, etc."

      I'd hardly say the P4 tanked. The last of the P4s were very hot and underpowered compared to equivalent AMD chips, but I believe you'll find most PCs made in that era had Intel CPUs, not AMD; certainly when I built my current PC a few years ago the 'equivalent' Athlon chip to the P4 I ended up buying was more expensive with similar power consumption and lower performance on the benchmarks that mattered to me (e

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by billcopc ( 196330 )
      Same here. I'm grossly disappointed with AMD right now. They haven't done anything significant in the last 18 months, and I'm starting to read the pamphlet about the dark side. I still hate Intel chipsets with a passion, they just can't seem to cater to the power user with their lackluster features and underwhelming bus architecture, and I refuse to blow $300 on the ultra-high end consumer boards (with 2 of everything - including Intel royalties)... at that point I'd be better off getting all Xeon kit.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DrSkwid ( 118965 )
      > I was at AMD during the ATI merger and I totally called layoffs in the upcoming quarter.

      you must be some sort of economics genius

  • Not Technology, but Business (Score:5, Insightful)

    by vertigoCiel ( 1070374 ) on Sunday April 22, 2007 @08:40PM (#18835699)
    The big problem with AMD is not their processor lineup, it's their business process. They lost $600 mil on $1.2 billion on revenue. That means they needed almost two billion dollars *pinky finger to mouth* to break even. Sure, R&D is expensive, but not that expensive. They need to cut back on expenses to stay in the game.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Tama00 ( 967104 )
      yeah why dont they cut back on research, cut back on production of cpus and cut back on marking?

      If anything they should be spending more money!

      But screw AMD/ATI they dont support Linux so i dont support them.
      • Why not cut back on junkets, corporate events and main stream advertising.

        AMD doesn't really seem to be a corporate chip yet (At least the places here in Australia that I have seen all run Intel's) so there's no real need to break into these events with their current chips. Their marketing in Computer magazines and so forth is great, but even that doesn't really help them. My experience is that people switch to AMD when suggested by their friends. Word of mouth seems to be their biggest advertising campaig

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by fiendy ( 931228 )
      How many times do I have to say this...you can't just assume a company will continue to make the same margin on every dollar of their revenue.

      There are FIXED costs and there are VARIABLE costs. Without a more in-depth analysis, you don't know how much they will profit off a doubling of revenue.

      Did the loss come from operations? Was it one-time charges? Were R&D expenses significantly higher during the year?

      There is also the fact that AMD, realizing they were in for a bad quarter, nowhere near meeting ta

    • If they lose $600 million on $1.2 billion in revenue, then $2 billion in revenue should net them a loss of $1 billion. "Losing money on every sale, trying to make it up in volume."

      What they need is a shortcut past 65 and 40nm directly to 32. Where's John Titor when you need him?

  • 'We are not going to change our strategy because of one lousy quarter.'

    "How many lousy quarters does it take, Hector, before it becomes wrong? Hmm? A thousand, fifty thousand, a million? How many quarters does it take, Hector?"

  • actually... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by SQLz ( 564901 )
    I would change one thing. AMD should come out against DRM and refuse to make products that limit what the user can do with his/her own media.

  • Will AMD improve ATI, or will ATI ruin AMD? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Morgaine ( 4316 ) on Sunday April 22, 2007 @09:10PM (#18835861)
    >> "We are not going to change our strategy because of one lousy quarter."

    Without the benefit of insider knowledge, that statement wasn't hugely informative. There are so many changes afoot that it's almost impossible to forecast anything at all concerning the CPU companies at the present time.

    The acquisition of ATI really complicated things, not only for share speculators but from a tech standpoint too. And while it doesn't necessarily mean that Intel will hitch up with nVidia (it seems not, given that the GMA965/X3000 competes with nVidia's lower-end offering), it does mean that both of those companies will have to respond very strongly to whatever develops from the joining of AMD and ATI. This whole area will become even more hectic than usual I think, once we start to see the fruits of the acquisition.

    One of the things that will undoubtedly be on many Linux user's minds is whether the legendary disinterest of ATI in properly supporting Linux will change for the better. Once Microsoft shed nVidia in favor of ATI on going from Xbox 1 to Xbox 360, the likelihood of any such improvement plummetted drastically for obvious reasons, but the influence of AMD could of course be the exact opposite, since AMD can't afford to alienate the Linux market, one imagines.

    But while we can hope that AMD will have a positive effect on ATI's attitude towards the FOSS community, what if the opposite happens, and by being tightly coupled to GPU hardware, AMD's CPUs start to lose the openness that has been traditional among CPU manufacturers until now? It's certainly a possibility, and a matter of enormous concern.

    Which brings me back to the quote from TFA. It would really help AMD I think if the company removed some of the uncertainty or ambiguity in its position w.r.to FOSS as a result of the ATI thing. "No change" is a rather meaningless statement when their CPU and GPU divisions have diametrically opposite tendencies.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by maxume ( 22995 )
      Microsoft doesn't care about linux drivers. They might keep an eye on the situation, but compare 20 million copies of Vista sold in a couple of months to the installed base of linux on the desktop, and it is clear that they aren't hugely concerned about linux on the desktop right now(and I mean to be agnostic in that statement, it is just that there is very visible evidence that Microsoft is still doing very, very well on the desktop). They certainly aren't playing games with XBox contracts, they are just g

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DrSkwid ( 118965 )
        Intel got burned in the graphics market before anyone had even heard of nVidia, I don't think they'll chase that tiger or a while.

    • One problem (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Sunday April 22, 2007 @10:43PM (#18836447)
      Is that recently AMD's best chipsets for desktop systems have come from nVidia. AMD themselves seems to be unwilling or unable to make desktop chipsets, and thus relies on third parties. Of those, nVidia is constantly cited by AMD heads as the one to get. This is even more the case now that nVidia owns ULi and thus the market is reduced by one.

      Well, though they haven't said anything, I bet nVidia has kind of a "fuck you" attitude after the ATi buyout. This seems to be confirmed by the fact that nVidia's latest, greatest chipset is currently for Intel only, and has been for some time.

      This could screw AMD over if ATi doesn't get good chipsets out the door for them. You can make the most bitchin processor you want, if you don't have a good chipset for it to run on it isn't going to be something worth buying. This is especially true for OEMs. Hobbyists might be ok with a board that doesn't really follow specs and crashes to save some dollars, but the OEMs won't have any of it.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by coredog64 ( 1001648 )
        IMO, chipsets are what kept Intel in the game during the "craptastic" P4 era. Sure the AMD chip was better, but I had to run it on a POS Via chipset -- I've still got my P4/i850/RDRAM setup from the heady days of the Northwood 1.8->2.4 overclock and it's I/O performance is pretty damned good.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by suv4x4 ( 956391 )
        Is that recently AMD's best chipsets for desktop systems have come from nVidia. AMD themselves seems to be unwilling or unable to make desktop chipsets, and thus relies on third parties.

        In my eye this has always been the greatest problem of AMD. I've tried having AMD systems few times. The problem is the chipsets were all lemons, and caused BSODs on a bare Windows install or various other issues.

        With more knowledge on the good vendors (nVidia being one, but NForce wasn't there at that time), it's a lot more

  • Easy answer. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sam991 ( 995040 ) on Sunday April 22, 2007 @09:23PM (#18835945) Homepage
    1. Issue press release decrying DRM and refuse to support it at a hardware level.
    2. Announce and develop proper linux support for the ATI range.
    3. ???
    4. Profit!
    • Trouble is, they need to sell oodles of CPUs and the Linux market isn't going to help that much. It might give all the /.'ers a warm muzzy feeling but 90% of PCs get sold to people who have a vague idea it has to have an Intel inside because the TV tells them that and haven't even heard of non-Windows OS's, let alone Linux.
      It scares me how many support calls I deal with for people that somehow manage to use a PC based on the tiniest snippets of knowledge. They don't know what version of Windows they have (

  • I stopped buying amd because of ati (Score:5, Interesting)

    by joe_cot ( 1011355 ) on Sunday April 22, 2007 @09:24PM (#18835955) Homepage
    I'm not sure if I speak for anyone else, but the reason I stopped buying amd is because of the merger with ati.

    ATI has consistently made horrendous linux drivers. They don't keep up to date, and they completely abandon "legacy" cards. Nvidia cards, however, have excellent drivers for linux, and always have. For that reason, I buy Nvidia cards over ATI ones.

    With this new merger, however, it's become nigh-impossible to find a decent, small laptop which has an amd processor and an nvidia graphics chipset. I ran into this problem when buying my current laptop and thought "well, they're owned by amd now, they can't be /that/ bad, right?" wrong. Therefore, if AMD is going to force me to buy an ATI chipset, while still neglecting ATI support for linux, I'm going to go elsewhere.

    Intel, on the other hand, has an excellent driver for their graphics chipset, and it's even open-source. They might be the monopoly, but as far as linux is concerned, they actually seem to listen. My next laptop will be all Intel for that reason.

    AMD, I've used your processors religiously for years, but if you're going to forsake your linux guys by forcing us to use ati graphics hardware with crummy drivers, don't wonder why your market share is going down. I know I'm not the only one.

    • Re:I stopped buying amd because of ati (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Dunbal ( 464142 ) on Sunday April 22, 2007 @10:33PM (#18836367)
      ATI has consistently made horrendous linux drivers.

      Don't feel bad, the Windows drivers are pretty awful too.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sofar ( 317980 )
        NVidia's drivers are technically only a hair better really. It's still a binary blob with too many "don't ask, don't complain" hooks on it driving everyone insane (except *ubuntu users).

        Open Source 3D accelerated video drivers, that's the way to go. Guess which vendor is pushing these? Right, Intel.
    • Ditto. Recently I bought an AMD 3800 X2 processor with nVidia onboard video (6150) - DVI connection on mobo :). But I *only* chose AMD because they were
      1. cheap, AND
      2. nVidia video

      I would have settled for Intel graphics as well, but *never* for ATI crappoware. I learn my lesson back when with ATI and 7200 cards were top of the line. Linux forums advocated ATI because they were even helping some people write OSS drivers for Linux. We saw how that worked out - half baked drivers,

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by spyowl ( 838397 )

      With this new merger, however, it's become nigh-impossible to find a decent, small laptop which has an amd processor and an nvidia graphics chipset.

      Try here [hp.com].
    • What? nVidia refuses to publish spec documents that would permit OSS developers to make good drivers. Instead they foist on us very buggy binary drivers that appear to have no regard for current kernel engineering practices.

      Meanwhile ATI releases enough document for people to work with. Who cares that they don't release many drivers themselves?

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by petermgreen ( 876956 )
        you are a bit out of date, afaict while older ati cards did indeed have 3D support through open drivers written from specs the practice of releasing specs suitable for that stopped some time ago.

        so it then becomes a case of who's binary blobs are better done and the impression i get is that nvidia are doing them better than ATI.

  • "'We are not going to change our strategy because of one lousy quarter.'"

    If you have a lousy quarter, it means you might have a lousy strategy and that you failed to learn from business management 101 that if you take a loss, you have to change the strategy so next quarter you won't take a loss.

    In other words, if you take a loss, something is wrong. It is like having a 104 degree Fahrenheit temperature, and then doing nothing about it. Seriously, WTF?

    Oh I am AMD, I have a 104 fever, so I'll do nothing about

  • I sold my stock after they bought ATI (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hxnwix ( 652290 ) on Sunday April 22, 2007 @10:50PM (#18836509) Journal
    And it's been all downhill since.

    Question: if you are an underdog in a hypercompetitive industry, when a little success comes your way and you are finally climbing out of debt, do you:

    (a) Stop what you are doing and deeply indebt yourself in order to enter another cutthroat industry largely outside of your expertise?
    (b) Freaking invest in your core competencies while you have the chance?

    AMD did a lot of the former and a little of the latter. How long will it be until they spin off ATI at a multi-billion dollar loss?

    To be fair, Intel got their act together in short order. However, I have to wonder if AMD could have maintained their lead if they weren't gathering wool. For at least 25 years, the market has continually payed through the nose for leading edge general purpose computing power, and AMD was finally beginning to grab a share of that high-margin turf - from a competitor an order of magnitude larger!

    And they gave it all up for socket compatible GPUs, which, unlike the core2, are nowhere to be seen.

    *sigh*

    Time to add 0.50 SGI advantage-squandering units to AMD's tally... I hope that their accelerator gambit pays off. I hope even though I know better.

    Seriously, how did you guys plan to put 512mb of multilinked DDR3 on a die + an entire video accelerator? Did you plan on doing UMA? Please tell me this isn't the unmitigated disaster it appears to be...
  • AMD has never been entirely "on top", but as long as they were beating Intel, they were hot, and enthusiasts wanted AMD. Now that Intel's Core 2 is beating the Opteron in nearly every test, the speed freeks have jumped ship. The fact is, Intel is on top no matter what. So for AMD to have any kind of fighting chance at a share of the market, they HAVE to be better and faster than Intel. The underdog must beat the top dog or die.

    So, if AMD's planned direction doesn't involve a CPU that beats the Core 2, I
  • The company has really been doing a good job in terms of processor technology.

    Maybe a company with less than 20% market share should stop sneezing at 5%+ of the market and start aggressively supporting Linux? They could start by high quality open source support for 3D graphics. They might consider driving the adoption of Linux-ready PCs and laptops through some kind of initiative (machines with working wireless, power management, 3D with open source drivers).

  • Reinforcing your strengths (Score:5, Insightful)

    by steveoc ( 2661 ) on Sunday April 22, 2007 @11:17PM (#18836657)
    A key principle in business (and armed conflict), is to reinforce success. You direct your resources to where you are strongest, and your opponent is weakest.

    You exploit breakthroughs and follow them through. You dont waste resources by throwing them against minefields and barbed wire in some hope to wear your oppoent down over time, especially when you are out-gunned.

    Sometimes this means seeing and adapting to opportunities that arrise, which were never part of the original plan .. and being flexible enough to change the plan to suit circumstances. Unexpected opportunities usually have short timeframes before they get patched up - you have to strike whilst the iron is hot, and sink the boot in hard when your opponent is down.

    Intel is clearly the opponent of AMD in this contest. Intel's core2duo product consistently outperforms AMD's product on just every windows centric benchmark.

    However, when it comes to 64bit linux, the AMD chips are arguably better performing than the core2duo. Never mind the price - AMD already wins there - Im saying that AMD64 X2's run 64bit linux better than Intel Core2Duos. People BUY these dual core AMD CPU's because they make great linux boxes.

    Linux is AMD's unplanned, surprise strength. With a good general at the helm, they should have seen this for what it was - an unexpected weakness in the opponents line - and then followed through on it. Rather than slash the price to the bone, which is equivalent to a human wave attack to break a minefield, they should have positioned the AMD64 X2 at that point as 'The 64bit Linux CPU', and done something significant to get ATi video drivers in a state which is attractive to the OSS crowd.

    But no, like General Haig at the Somme, its 'one more charge across the wire and we should break through', reinforcing failure and leaving their actual advantage unsupported.

    Meanwhile, it appears that Intel understand whats going down, and doing something about it .. witness the Intel open source graphics chips .. winning back the hearts and minds where they know they are weakest.

    People whinge and whine about multi-core chips, claiming 'there is no software that takes advantage of it yet', which is total crap - Linux thrives on multicore chips, even as a desktop. LAMP is inherently multi threaded. Again, its Intel leading the core count here not AMD. Everything indicates that Intel is addressing it's weaknesses when it comes to being the best bang for the buck Linux platform.

    If AMD are too short sighted to recognise their real strength in the market .. and reinforce it .. then they deserve to die.

    • Re:Reinforcing your strengths (Score:4, Interesting)

      by darkwhite ( 139802 ) on Monday April 23, 2007 @12:48AM (#18837145)
      However, when it comes to 64bit linux, the AMD chips are arguably better performing than the core2duo. Never mind the price - AMD already wins there - Im saying that AMD64 X2's run 64bit linux better than Intel Core2Duos. People BUY these dual core AMD CPU's because they make great linux boxes.

      What?

      Can you please elaborate on any of these points or cite something? Are you referring to the fact that Core 2 has less of a performance delta between 32- and 64-bit than Athlon 64? Or AMD's memory architecture advantage in multi-socket boxes? Neither of those factors is Linux-specific. The ISA is identical between the two, the same binaries work, optimization support is roughly equal, there are no software incompatibilities or unsupported hardware, and Core 2 is faster, so I'm having a hard time finding a reason for why you're not talking out of your ass.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Frumious Wombat ( 845680 )
      Be careful here. When you talk "64-bit Linux-compatible CPU", you run smack into three problems; IA-64, Power, and SPARC. Admittedly, SPARC really implies Solaris, but the basic point is sound; if AMD were to focus on that market, then it runs flat into three superior and well-established architectures, where it has a toehold with entry-level systems, but only one vendor (Sun) shipping anything of any size (the 4600) involving Opterons. That's probably too small of a market to support the technical innova
  • For several years now AMD has had the lower price AND the superior product. They have always been the underdog but being both fast and cheap is a winning combination and has gained them market share. Now all the sudden Intel has turned the tides and now has the faster chip.

    All those geeks who recommended and purchased AMD have turned around and begun buying intel because intel tops the benchmarks for once. I think AMD's price cuts are an excellent move, AMD had begun to be priced like Intel and this makes t

  • Athlon 64 Architecture has mileage in it yet (Score:3, Insightful)

    by FromellaSlob ( 813394 ) on Monday April 23, 2007 @04:27AM (#18838047)
    I don't quite understand how AMD are falling so far behind in the performance race.

    They have what, on paper, should be a superior architecture. Core is excellent, but it's still an evolution of a 32-bit design and handicapped by the FSB. With a clean-sheet 64-bit design, Hypertransport and an on-die memory controller, AMD should easily be able to put out something competitive with Intel's offerings. As soon as their 65nm process was up and running they should have followed Intel's Lead and put 2 dies in one package to create a 4-core chip. The architecture is already designed to scale to at least 8-way (Opteron), and they have the advantage that they can link the cores internally via hypertransport. This would need very little R&D - it would just be a new configuration of proven technology.

    I hear that in pure 64-bit operation things are much closer anyway, and that's obviously the way of the future.
  • I think that the merger was a really stupid idea. By this move, both AMD and ATI have gained a lot more competitors.

    Nvidia used to make (the best) chip sets for AMD processors. But they are also competing with ATI, so they may concentrate on Intel chip sets.

    Intel has just started making stand alone graphics card, that you could use with an AMD CPU. But why should they make life easy for AMD customers? I guess they may change the bus or otherwise bind the cards to an Intel CPU/chip set.

    And ATI makes graphics

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