amd cracked the market

NathanE · 5 Apr 2006 at 17:58

People are forgetting that Conroe is just a desktop chip. AMD has gained most of its ground recently in the server/workstation space. Intel won't be making a comeback in that market until it finishes developing its CSI (a HyperTransport clone) and that's not until 2008 - at least on the current road maps. Still, one step at a time. At least Intel will own one of the markets for the forseeable future with Conroe.

If AM2 can't compete (and I seriously doubt it) then AMD will simply retreat in the desktop market by lowering its prices and go into maintenance mode until its next big architecture change (i.e. K10). There is simply no point in dedicating engineering resources to a lost cause. AMD have done exactly this before - they are very much used to it in fact.

mcmad · 5 Apr 2006 at 19:27

manveruppd said:
Well, they don't really need to equal Intel's capacity though, assuming that every increase in AMD's output equals a proportionate drop in Intel's sales... So they probably only need to have about 1/2 Intel's manufacturing capacity in order to equal them in sales. They're building another fab now, but it will be years before they could ever be a significant force in the industry.

What I'm worried about is AMD's current reliance on the enthusiast market, which accounts for most of their sales. If Conroe really does turn out to be that much better than AM2, it will really put a dent in their sales, possibly forcing them to close and giving Intel a REAL monopoly on the market (which we all know would not be a good thing!). Still, I doubt AM2 will be as bad as it currently looks when it comes out. A64s also had problems on release but they got ironed out, after all.

I'm constantly hoping that AMD will take a leaf out of Ati's book and lisence their CPU designs out to other fabs. Not their top-of-the-line, obviously, but I imagine there would be a huge demand for low-cost chips such as Bartons and Tbreds in developing countries like India or China, and by lisencing out to local companies to manufacture for them AMD could make a tidy profit without the need to build more fabs.

they have signed up a foundry agreement with chartered semiconductor & 90nm products will appear the middle of this year from chartered, the new AMD fab, Fab36 has started shipping product & they are ramping over the next 2 years (65nm process), but you have to put things in perspective, Intel are in a different scale of manufacturing, the only company who come close to them in capital spend in samsung, no-one else gets close, I said 4 fabs would be needed, thats now, Intel have already announced more fabs in Ireland, Israel & the US, all will be 65nm & below.

Intel are talking 20 Billion + over the next 3years, Amd about 1 - 1.5

even with foundry support they will barely make a dent.. & note that using foundries is very very expensive for leading edge processes so that would eat into their profits big time, there simply isn't enough foundry capacity out there for AMD to use.

ATI, nvidia etc are all small fry when it comes to units sold & thats why they use foundries, even in GPU's Intel are the market leaders with > 42% market share (NV & ATI combined are roughly the same).

sOLId sPOnGe · 5 Apr 2006 at 19:29

I've always had AMD (k6, K7, Athlon 64). It's not that I'm a fanboy it's because to me they've always been the better of the two. Looking at the benchmarks on certain websites, if Conroe is as good as it looks then I can't wait! My next upgrade will definately include this!

Delvis · 5 Apr 2006 at 20:09

See now...thats why Amd is releasing the Csip platform, to get higher commercial sales

TooNice · 5 Apr 2006 at 20:21

Those who mentioned manufacturing capacity is spot on.

And I don't to be honest, I didn't think much of pre-K7 AMD chips.

Good value perhaps, but Intel beater they were not more often than not. It is a good thing the Athlon came out when it did... The CeleronA was getting competitve with the market AMD were targeting at the time.

v-zero · 5 Apr 2006 at 20:39

People seem to love to question the capacity of AMD. When Jobbs announced that Apple would move to Intel processors some of the first words murmered in forums were "Why not AMD?", and many answered "AMD don't have the capacity to supply that many chips." However, these people were and are wrong. AMD is large enough to supply chips to Apple, and would be large enough to supply chips for a games console supplier, as confirmed by Microsoft when they originally went hunting for a chip for the Xbox all those years ago, they did the same with the 360, but it came down to competetive pricing from Big Blue...
It is very likely that AMD could supply chips to Dell too, and without problems...

However this is not the main consideration when thinking about why Intel have, and will rule the market for so long; Intel have driven the CPU business since their conception all those years ago.
With their original lines, from the 386 to the Pentium class, they have been there where the consumer can see them most. They have lead the way in speed many times, and have combined their chip designing prowess with something even more powerful: Marketing! The average user doesn't know what else to consider but Intel. Intel is more than a brand, it seems, Intel has become a ideal - like Windows is the only operating system the average non-enthusiast knows about. It is not that other Operating systems are not superior, but Windows is what they know and what they understand.
When you tell the average user about your new PC you may get a response along the lines of: "What Pentium is it?", not "what processor?" but "what pentium?" - and therein lies the reason that Intel have owned the market for so long now.

AMD may have the technology, they may have the capacity, but they don't have the marketing, or the ingrained respect and low-level understanding of the general public that helps Intel win every processor war on sales alone...

AMD have won over the enthusiasts, but it is the OEMs who buy lots of chips, and if Intel is what the public wants, Intel is what the OEMs will be happy to give them. :rolleyes:

flashdjdan · 5 Apr 2006 at 21:00

v-zero said:
It is very likely that AMD could supply chips to Dell too, and without problems...

AMD could NOT supply dell without problems!!! They really don't have the capacity

Also, if AMD had pursued the "please the public" route that intel did, they too would have been in the Gigahertz race which has ultimately hurt intel in the long run. AMD did the right thing by backing out of that when they did

NathanE · 5 Apr 2006 at 21:03

v-zero said:
People seem to love to question the capacity of AMD. When Jobbs announced that Apple would move to Intel processors some of the first words murmered in forums were "Why not AMD?", and many answered "AMD don't have the capacity to supply that many chips." However, these people were and are wrong. AMD is large enough to supply chips to Apple, and would be large enough to supply chips for a games console supplier, as confirmed by Microsoft when they originally went hunting for a chip for the Xbox all those years ago, they did the same with the 360, but it came down to competetive pricing from Big Blue...
It is very likely that AMD could supply chips to Dell too, and without problems...

However this is not the main consideration when thinking about why Intel have, and will rule the market for so long; Intel have driven the CPU business since their conception all those years ago.
With their original lines, from the 386 to the Pentium class, they have been there where the consumer can see them most. They have lead the way in speed many times, and have combined their chip designing prowess with something even more powerful: Marketing! The average user doesn't know what else to consider but Intel. Intel is more than a brand, it seems, Intel has become a ideal - like Windows is the only operating system the average non-enthusiast knows about. It is not that other Operating systems are not superior, but Windows is what they know and what they understand.
When you tell the average user about your new PC you may get a response along the lines of: "What Pentium is it?", not "what processor?" but "what pentium?" - and therein lies the reason that Intel have owned the market for so long now.

AMD may have the technology, they may have the capacity, but they don't have the marketing, or the ingrained respect and low-level understanding of the general public that helps Intel win every processor war on sales alone...

AMD have won over the enthusiasts, but it is the OEMs who buy lots of chips, and if Intel is what the public wants, Intel is what the OEMs will be happy to give them.

Flawed argument. They don't have the capacity to supply Apple or Microsoft's Xbox, let alone oust Intel or begin supplying Dell. Surprise, surprise that's why they aren't chosen for any big contracts. They can barely keep the Opteron market supplied at the current level of demand.

v-zero · 5 Apr 2006 at 23:20

Michael Dell has stated himself that a lack of chips is not why Dell don't go with AMD. Microsoft said that AMD could offer enough chips for the Xbox and only made a big U-turn when Intel offered a watered down P3 that had better memory bandwidth, which the Duron 600 couldn't offer. And Apple and AMD have both said that supplying chips would not have been a problem, but Apple preffered the Intel roadmap, and any sane person can see why.
Conroe will beat out AM2 without a problem, and K8L will have to pick up the pieces for AMD...
I am right here, my argument is not flawed, would I bother to write that much if I thought I might be wrong?

v-zero · 5 Apr 2006 at 23:27

flashdjdan said:
Also, if AMD had pursued the "please the public" route that intel did, they too would have been in the Gigahertz race which has ultimately hurt intel in the long run.

They did partake in the GHz race and were the first to 1ghz, but then fell behind and decided to go the other route. Intel have been around longer, and if AMD had been around as an original chip company (they used to just make intel copies) before Intel, and had gone the "please the public" route, they would have been a far more profitable company for it. Intel have not been hurt by their long-pipelined fantasies(yea they lost the enthusiasts, who cares?), they are a massive company who have had great success in the last few years on the back of long term contratcs, marketing and a strong relationship with businesses (originally their systems were just so much more safe and stable than AMD systems, which is what you need in a business environment) and the general public.

Monstermunch · 5 Apr 2006 at 23:34

But won't a Conroe system still be a lot more money than an AMD system with regard to DDR2 ram up to 1000mhz and mobo's being nearly double the price and sod all support from a lot of good manufacturers?????

dbmzk1 · 5 Apr 2006 at 23:50

AMD can *NOT* meet the demand for the likes of Dell etc regardless of who says what. Its simply not going to happen.

AMD currently has 2 CPU fabs and once the new one, fab 36, gets up to full speed (and they cant say when that will be - could be another year yet) they will be able to make 100 million CPU's a year. Dell sell 30-50 million PC's a year depending on who's figures you believe... Considering AMD is struggling to meet demand without large OEM contracts as it is, I think its pretty clear its impossible for AMD to even think about competing with Intel.

If not, here is more. Intel has 10 fabs that can make CPU's. And another 2 currently under construction. 2 of their fabs can make 65nm products on 300mm wafers. One of these is in Ireland, the other in Arizona. The latter has only recently reopened after a year of improvement work. Intel spent $2 billion doing it up. The plant that makes the AMD Opteron and Athlon X2, fab 30, cost $1.9 to build from scratch, less than what Intel spent just doing up theirs.

AMD have a revenue of about $5 billion a year where as Intel's is more like $40 billion. Intel's net profit is more or less the same as AMDs entire revenue.

Also, considering Conroe currently kicks the crap out of anything AMD can offer, AMD cant even dream about competing with Intel. Not now or in the foreseeable future.

EDIT: By the way, I have had an AMD since the K6-2 days... k6-2/400, Duron 800, AXP 2400+ and now a A64 3200+, so no fanboy comments!

brucey034 · 5 Apr 2006 at 23:50

my thoughts and hopes go to AMD i always support the uderdog.

brucey034 · 5 Apr 2006 at 23:51

sorry underdog woops

marc2003 · 5 Apr 2006 at 23:52

Monstermunch said:
sod all support from a lot of good manufacturers?????

where do you get that idea from?

Raikiri · 5 Apr 2006 at 23:57

marc2003 said:
where do you get that idea from?

I think what he means is a lot of motherboard don't work with certain CPUs (might be wrong) and the manufactorers to little to fix it.
For AMD you have the Nforce 4 or Nforce 4 SLi theres really no others worth considering and any board based on them will just work with any cpu.

Whereas with intel theres the 865,875,915,925x,945,955x,965(for conroe although they barely work atm) 975x, Nforce SLi.

Some don't support the 6xx series,8xx series, 9xx series the 820, even most 975x don't support conroe due to missing capacitors that could have easily been fitted. Plus they generally cost more.

v-zero · 6 Apr 2006 at 00:01

I believe that if were offered contracts for several OEMs then they would make sure to have time to ramp up their FABs and maybe even outsource to other privately owned FABs... Just MHO here, AMD nearly got the Xbox contract so...

Abyway, my main point is that Intel has so much success because they are popular with *** common consumer. That's why they've built loads of FABs and keep increasing that capacity in the end...

manveruppd · 6 Apr 2006 at 02:54

v-zero said:
Michael Dell has stated himself that a lack of chips is not why Dell don't go with AMD.

Just a parenthesis, while AMD would struggle to meet the demand a Dell contract would offer, that's not why Dell and other OEMs have shunned AMD: the primary reason, rather, is due to uncompetitive practices by Intel such as offering huge undercutting discounts to OEMs who ONLY offered "Intel Inside" computers or in some cases even threatening to cut off supply completely if the OEM dared offer an AMD alternative in their lineup (exactly the same kind of thing Microsoft used to do to OEMs who wanted to offer OS/2 or Linux alternatives to their customers rather than sell Windows preinstalled on every single computer sold). And, as AMD's manufacturing capacity is small and would therefore be unable to deal with any surge in demand, OEMs were left with no choice than to exclusively offer Intel rather than risk being solely reliant on AMD. While they couldn't supply Dell, there's plenty of other smaller OEMs and yet hardly any of them offer AMD computers, and, of the major ones, only Acer are offering a mixture of Intel and AMD PCs!

This isn't relevant to the matter at hand, but it's the reason why the last thing I want is for AM2 to bomb so badly that AMD is driven out of the desktop market. They may not be major competition for Intel in real terms, but they certainly and obviously have them worried. An Intel monopoly in mainstream CPUs are not who we want computing's future to lie with.

TooNice · 6 Apr 2006 at 03:30

It is worth noting that AMD has survived when they were -not- a performance leading company. I would be very impressed indeed if AMD can turn the table (as I doubt that the AM2 is really capable to beat the Conroe - but we'll see) sooner than later. But historically, it does seem to take a while for a company to release a truely opposition crushing chip. If the Conroe is what it looks like, it is pretty close to what we've seen with Athlons. Now Intel did pretty well with the Northwood against the Athlon XPs, but it was a pretty short-lived and non conclusive victory, and I would expect that at some point AMD might pull something that'll make AMD fans happy, but I doubt we'll see a knockout blow for some time. We'll just have to see how AMD will cope withpotentially losing some enthusiast supports

[Yes at the moment I am assuming the Conroe will be what it is make out to be. If it turned out not to be the case, then... perhaps I would say "too bad". Though I just built an Opteron based system, I don't actually mind companies ramping up performance faster - it just mean that when I get a new PC 18 months from now, it'll be even better

]

WatchTower · 6 Apr 2006 at 13:10

Intresting I wonder whos winning in sales when it comes to home built PCs. I think Intel only have better sales due to a lot of pre-built setups use them. I'm sure AMD rules when it comes to people that like to build their own setups.

I've only just moved over to AMD.