AMD to 'reset' goals: servers, embedded, ultra-low power After his company announced a $157m loss and its plans to lay off 15 per cent of its global workforce on Tuesday, AMD president and CEO Rory Read explained how he and his brain trust plan to pull Intel's only x86 competitor out of its spiral. First, AMD will "reset and restructure" its business model to reduce expenses by 25 …
Read want's to catch the potable electronic craze while it's on the upswing. While this is admirable, the odds are stacked against AMD as a late starter.
Personally I understand the fads and know how fickle they can be and I had hoped that AMD would do a better job of marketing their current X86 products which are actually quite good and very affordable. Considering that Intel is having a difficult time buying Ultrabook and enterprise sales in a brutal economic recession, maybe AMD will get lucky and create some new revenue streams via tablets/phones and other trash without compromising their X86 sales and development?
If not Mr. Read will be removed and replaced within 12 months.
" their current X86 products which are actually quite good and very affordable" -- Whilst affordable, their Bulldozer range is basically tripe. I recently was looking to buy a new gaming rig and after reading several reviews on the 8 core bulldozers I decided I would be either buying a Phenom X4 or an Intel I5. They really have mucked up with this bulldozer line and that really pushed me away from them.
Actually Bulldozer/Zambezi is a perfectly fine upgrade for any older PCs other than for people with a high end Deneb and Thuban CPU. Zambezi is particulalrly good on multi-threaded apps including some games.
Vishera which is in the channel now and officially available on Monday Oct. 23rd, is ~15% better than Zambezi and a good performance vs. cost CPU. AMD's Trinity laptop and desktop are superior in performance to Intel's cost equivalent offerings. Most PC review sites are now recommending AMD Trinity APUs as the better choice.
Only a small segment of consumers buy the high priced top of the line model CPUs. Intel's equal performance offerings typically cost $100-$200 more than AMDs and Trinity, Zambezi and Vishera will all run any software quite well for a lot less than Intel CPUs or APUs.
This post has been deleted by its author
and in any case, it's been superceded by Piledriver, which sorts out most of the issues.
There may be some milage in AMD making a larrabee-type unit but the whole industry is up shit creek at the moment with only tablet sales giving 'em a paddle. Gamers are a bit like ferrari owners - not at all representative of the other 99.9% of the market.
While there's nothing wrong with going where the money is, Intel will continue to add new features to the x86 architecture to increase performance. Without a continued effort to do the same, in time AMD could be locked out of a new generation of chips through a lack of equivalent patents.
However, as servers are included among their new goals, perhaps high-end Opterons will continue to be around for a while, and I needn't worry.
No where did AMD say they were abandoning their X86 development. They are expanding their product offering, not ending X86 products. Trinity, Vishera, Steamroller, Excavator, Kaveri, etc. are all on track so not to worry about AMD's X86 development. AMD won't be locked out on patents as they have rights to all X86 patents.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/computers/what-amds-new-roadmap-means-for-users/7540
I think AMD fails to understand the mind share they get by having a fast x86 desktop CPU. I also think they are stupidly following sun's path with their CPU's, which can be summarized as failing to focus on single threaded performance. For general purpose systems Its far easier to bolt a bunch of individually fast CPU's with a good memory system together than to build a high performance system using a bunch of subpar ones.
I think intel understands this, and its a large part of why they are doing so well. Not everyone buys the best i7 intel offers, but it gives them the mind share to sell a boatload of i5s. AMD can very well compete with the midrange, but they don't offer some stupidly power hungry (well ok...), stupidly expensive device that no one buys and it hurts them.
And so, it goes with the servers, where I work, its a total uphill battle to even acquire a test rig with AMD, because everyone is like "AMD makes slow CPU's why would we get an opteron".
Now the ARM argument is different of course.
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