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Is the end imminent for AMD?
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Caporegime
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Heh, one reads the title of the thread then the latest reply is Intel finance down. It's like listening to Sky News. Sensationalism. Yet the topic goes back to October and so many know why PC's are becoming a rare breed but act like why we don't know.
Caporegime
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Interesting commentary on single thread performance:
http://preshing.com/20120208/a-look-back-at-single-threaded-cpu-performance
It seems in the last decade the performance increases,have slowed down massively even for Intel. Hence,multi-threading will become more and more important especially in the next few years,if meaningful performance jumps are to be seen, and if anything the fact that both Intel and AMD are working on things like TSX too,indicates this.
Its only that when people try to twist the downturn as affecting only one company.
Companies like Qualcomm are OTH,doing very well. They have hardly any debt compared to BOTH Intel and AMD.
http://preshing.com/20120208/a-look-back-at-single-threaded-cpu-performance
It seems in the last decade the performance increases,have slowed down massively even for Intel. Hence,multi-threading will become more and more important especially in the next few years,if meaningful performance jumps are to be seen, and if anything the fact that both Intel and AMD are working on things like TSX too,indicates this.
Its only that when people try to twist the downturn as affecting only one company.
Companies like Qualcomm are OTH,doing very well. They have hardly any debt compared to BOTH Intel and AMD.
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Caporegime
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It seems inventory has increased too last quarter:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/in...-it-made-fewer-chips-2013-01-16?siteid=yhoof2
I suspect AMD won't be doing very well either.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/in...-it-made-fewer-chips-2013-01-16?siteid=yhoof2
I suspect AMD won't be doing very well either.
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Soldato
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If it did look imminent I hope competition laws would get involved. It's a big market for one player
Why would that happen, or more acurately, what could those who enforce competition laws do that is legal and fair ?
Competition laws are there to help ensure healthy competition between competitors. If one competitor doesn't survive, well, that's their fault - no competition will exist for the remaining company(s). Yes, massive assistance was given to banks but they are rather core to a healthy/balanced world and society.
New ideas/companies always start I believe as an individual company, the competition comes later. If AMD did go to the wall, if there is a market for such processors (demand for desktops and laptops is falling), another company would rise up which is likely to be ARM who are already looking at server processors, or even nvidia. Or maybe an Asian company will step up.
Would be a shame if AMD did die but that's business, companies rise and fall.
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No one is going to step in and fill AMD's shoes, not in this climate of declining PC's
If AMD did go to the wall (which is unlikely) the only Desktop CPU supplier would be Intel.
Deleted member 61728
Deleted member 61728
If AMD do go under will I still be able to RMA my AMD gpu ?
PCs aren't becoming rare, the progress of PCs has slowed down in the main stream so much that people are finding less reason to upgrade.
A high end consumer PC from 5 years ago is still more than powerful enough now to satisfy the computing needs of the average person, with power to spare.
That only really changes when you add games in to the equation, and even then it'd just be a moderate GPU.
For example, a Q6600, that was reasonably priced even back when it was new ( I got mine about 5 years ago for £150) is still more than good enough for an average user.
It's only really people who need "cutting edge" or performance PCs that have any reason to upgrade.
I used my Q6600 for the 5 years since I've had it, and only just upgraded to something newer, simply because whilst the technology IS moving forward, there is little need for very powerful hardware for most people.
So for the average user, the hardware will have remained mainly the same or similar, with progress in things like efficiency, die size and cost.
They won't be going under any time soon for the reasons below at the very least.
Exactly, I don't think people are really acknowledging that. AMD have got 3 massive contracts to supply GPUs and CPUs for the next gen consoles, and the life span on those is going to be at least 5 years.
It also says a lot for the likes of nVidia and Intel. Companies plain don't like nVidia or working with them because of the way they are (attitude wise) and nVidia have quite a bad track record for temperature critical components as well.
Because outright performance doesn't actually matter outside of the enthusiast market.
AMD have an APU on offer, so can make custom setups with a CPU and GPU for the consoles, and AMD are generally better when it comes to lower power, temperature and power consumption critical situations.
Which is why their laptop APUs have been very well received.
Caporegime
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AMD aren't better at the moment in the lower power segment.
In that area all they have on Intel is the IGP, but Clovertrail uses a fair bit less power and produces better results than the current AMD CPU side in netbooks/tablets.
For AMD in consoles? If it's an APU, then it's no surprise.
In that area all they have on Intel is the IGP, but Clovertrail uses a fair bit less power and produces better results than the current AMD CPU side in netbooks/tablets.
For AMD in consoles? If it's an APU, then it's no surprise.
The last rumours I saw in the tech rags were reporting an AMD APU in the Playstation 4 and a IBM CPU/AMD GPU solution in the Xbox 720, although how accurate those are is up for debate.
That would certainly make more sense; having one chip as opposed to two would have significant cost savings in addition to facilitating the design of smaller and/or easier to cool console designs.
Some people seem to think AMD will beat its earnings forecast... http://www.zacks.com/stock/news/90858/will-amd-beat-estimates-in-4q
Its plausible all things concurred but i'm not that optimistic.
We will see pretty soon as earnings reports are due out today (US time)
It should be said that Sacks are a shares rating agency.
AMD shares have gone up 30 or 40% in the past 2 months, which is exalent, but took a 10% hit when Intel posted a 27% revenue loss.
Investors making assumptions that this must mean AMD will be at least as bad, in the last couple of days tho, AMD Shares have held firm.
Its plausible all things concurred but i'm not that optimistic.
We will see pretty soon as earnings reports are due out today (US time)
It should be said that Sacks are a shares rating agency.
AMD shares have gone up 30 or 40% in the past 2 months, which is exalent, but took a 10% hit when Intel posted a 27% revenue loss.
Investors making assumptions that this must mean AMD will be at least as bad, in the last couple of days tho, AMD Shares have held firm.
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I doubt AMD or Nvidia would let intel have their gpu designs as both companies would need their designs to connect them together on 1 chip. Also is well known for charging tons for their cpu's, amd and ibm will charge less.
So you are left with either and amd apu or ibm cpu + either nvidia or amd gpu. Seeing as though amd are desperate for money they would undercut nvidia so amd will definately have their gpu's in all 3 consoles. As for the cpu there was a photo of a slide showing they are using an ibm cpu, lots of talk about ibm cpu.
The reason they could do this instead of an amd apu is because ibm is likely a lot faster and possibly may use less power. The could put them on the same chip but have them as seperate dies like the wii u has.
I guess we will find out more accurate info whether ibm or amd supplies the cpu for the xbox within a few weeks.
Caporegime
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EDIT:-bah, getting used to new natural keyboard after old one broke, keep hitting wrong keys
Anyway, this simply isn't true, Clovertrail is brand new out, we can be pedantic and compare Intel's new chip to AMD's 2 year old platform, which THRASHED the previous Atom on every metric, or we can be sensible and realise people don't release chips at the same time for everything this is life, get over it. People don't compare the 7970(well I didn't and sensible people didn't) to the 580gtx as everyone with half an ounce of sense knew the 680gtx was coming and that was what you would compare it to like for like.
Clovertrail vs Temash and Kabini will be the actual fight from this year through the next couple years really, and frankly it looks like again AMD with vastly less R&D budget, a vastly smaller staff is making the better chips.
Clovertrail though was really designed for a different market, its really being pushed to phones and tablets while Temash is tablets, and seemingly WAY faster and has awesome performance/watt. Kabini is also stated by a whole crapload of people to offer a frankly ridiculous performance/watt, and in doing so this is likely to end up in a crapload of Microservers fighting for the same kind of server space that ARM is trying to get into, though with higher performance/thread vs more ARM chips, depends on your workload which will work better. Things that need higher performance and less threads will likely be awesome on Kabini while when you need very little performance but as many cores as possible(Arm will offer more cores for the same power) then things like facebook with a bajillion users, Arm should work exceptionally well.
Either way, comparing Cloverfield to AMD's old chip on a worse process is just daft. AMD's APU's in terms of gaming power, smash Intel, and when you're talking about consoles that was a clear winning, when you're talking about gaming that is mostly constrained to GPU power, and only needs "enough" CPU power rather than every ounce it can get, AMD was clearly the better choice. Intel gpu's... if they'd made a proper gaming driver in the past 5 years, even one of them, the console guys might have remotely considered them, for an all on one package situation going Intel was never an option, for cost and power going with multiple chips and working with more companies increases power usage, costs, difficulty in working, problems with the companies wanting to keep secrets, it really wasn't feasable.
The really question is how will Kabini do in real world use vs Haswell, because Haswell has decided to go SDP, or, otherwise known as when you want to pretend something is lower power than it is, lie, or pull and Nvidia.
Yeah, theres going to be a 7W SDP Haswell, it looks like its really a 13W chip that is tested under less than full load, and in Intel centric benchmarks I'm sure it will look fantastic, in real world use running a Bluray vs Kabini battery life will be a very interesting test, as will Idle, gaming at low power I think will be a non contest with AMD doing stupidly well(unless Intel pulls its running benchmark at higher power than it should to get better scores cheat, and then we go back to comparing battery life under gaming).
Intel's moving Atom down in performance while AMD was moving Bobcat up in performance, so really the only place they'll compete is for the circa 10W stuff. It already looks like Temash will kill it in tablets and Kabini should kill it from 5-10W, AMD can't go below that 3.6W barrier and Atom actually looks not bad there.
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