AMD's three new low-power chips pose potent challenge to Intel AMD is showing off its latest round of APUs – accelerated processing units that combine compute and graphics cores on the same slice o' silicon – that it hopes will be reinforcements in its battle for the consumer market against its main competitor, Intel, especially at the low-power end of the market. "We're working to …
> If it weren't for AMD, Intel would still be selling 233mhz Pentiums for $1000 per.
If it weren't for AMD there would be no x86 market place let. The Itanium wouldn't have struck the iceberg (or rather the ClawHammer ). There were no plans to do a 64bit x86, moving to 64bit was Itanium's job.
"Not Moore's Law then, but AMD's Law has been driving chip development?"
Moore's Law describes the tendency of technological and engineering advances, which do not take place unless money is invested in the first place. Moore's Law could not operate in an resource-poor and investment-starved environment. AMD's competition caused Intel to invest more resources than they might have otherwise done and so contributed to a situation in which Moore's Law could manifest itself.
Clear now?
The absence of direct competition even with a monopoly doesn't automatically halt innovation or development. Yes, direct competition will force a faster pace of development, but to suggest that without AMD we'd be stuck with low power Pentiums shows a complete lack of understanding of market forces.
Hence my slightly sarcastic post suggesting we call it AMD's Law and not Moore's Law. I apologise for not liberally dotting the post with smiley faces or "<sarcasm>...</sarcasm>" and so confusing those on the other side of the pond or those who've had a sarcasm/sense of humour by-pass.
Clear now?
"The absence of direct competition even with a monopoly doesn't automatically halt innovation or development. Yes, direct competition will force a faster pace of development, but to suggest that without AMD we'd be stuck with low power Pentiums shows a complete lack of understanding of market forces."
Since even you admit that direct competition "will force a faster pace of development", and since that direct competition is supplied by AMD, it should be pretty obvious that AMD's competition with Intel is what spurs Intel to invest the resources that "force [that] faster pace of development". Do you think that Moore's Law would be observed absent that "faster pace of development"? (Not that it's necessary for my position, as I did not mention Moore's Law in the first place.)
"... to suggest that without AMD we'd be stuck with low power Pentiums shows a complete lack of understanding of market forces."
It's like this: If AMD did not exist, then the only way that market forces could operate here is by providing an opportunity for other entities to enter the market (i.e. that pool of potential buyers for more advanced chips) and compete with Intel. So, i.e. if AMD did not exist, then the market would "cause" (or, better, create an opportunity for) an entity like AMD to come into existence, and supply the direct competition to Intel (along with its consequent effects) that AMD now supplies. (It is not the case, however, that the new AMD-like entity must be successful. It is also not the case that AMD must be successful.) The more successful the competitor is, the more resources will be invested into R&D. (Pro Tip: try to know something about "market forces" before appealing to them.)
As for your original post: "Not Moore's Law then, but AMD's Law has been driving chip development?"
The idea that Moore's Law "drives" anything shows a profound misunderstanding of the word "law" as used in this case: Moore's Law describes the outcome of investing resources (financial, engineering, etc); it does not cause that outcome, or anything else, in fact. The competition that AMD directs at Intel is, however, an actual *cause* with real-world effects. Moore's Law however does not cause resources to be invested or advances to be made. Moore's Law merely describes the outcome of the investments that won the advances, and, basically, postulates that the trend will continue.
Incidentally, I did recognize your first post as being sarcastic. And not only "sarcastic" but stupid - an attribute of that post that, possibly, you yourself did not notice!
(It is also unfortunate that you were not able to recognize my original post as a bit of hyperbole; some people are, sadly, too literal-minded for their own good.)
Has anyone gone to AMD's (or indeed Intel's) web site to choose a processor and actually found it useful? It is an appalling 'experience' and you lose the will to live trying to work out what CPUs offer what features and how they may (or may not) rank compared to others.
Please AMD, start by offering prospective customers a selection matrix of manageable proportions (say 5-10) of your current CPU/APU choices covering low to high cost+performance, and links to compatible motherboards from a few well known suppliers.
Make buying your stuff easy!
Why would they do that though? The company aims its processors at OEMs, not end users. The site provides specs and the like for those who want or need to know about it, but 99% of their end users neither care nor know what anything they say on the site means - all they know is what the salesperson or website they bought their PC/Laptop/Tablet from told them.
They don't do direct sales. They don't care about what motherboards are a good match - that's the job of the motherboard makers, and realistically, the OEMs who use them.
http://regmedia.co.uk/2013/05/23/temash_v_clovertrail_large.jpg
i find this graph very sad on part of AMD, comparing their 15watt part vs an intel cpu that uses only 2-3watts and is designed to compete against arm. Lets step back and use something in proper ball park, Core i3 part which is 15-16watt range. AMD cpu is a quad core and i3 is dual core but still i3 in a podcast i watched earlier tonight that had new amd cpu and tested it was still slower.
The first gen notebook fusion is so superior to Atom it is not even funny. It has always been core i3 territory or thereabouts not Atom. I have had 2 1.6 GHz Atom netbooks and a Fusion 11" 1.3GHz subnotebook. The performance difference is ~ 3x on compute, raising to 6x once graphics come to play. This is fair and square core territory, not atom. The new one looks even better. Applause.
AMD biggest problem at the moment is that their best products - the notebook fusion APUs destroy the status Quo in the market same way netbooks did before MSFT and Intel extinguished them. Everyone is trying to stuff down the consumer's throat an overpriced, underpowered piece of crap with stinky low res graphics and a weird shell design - aka Ultrabook. So here comes AMD with a component selection which allows to build a decent ultra-thin laptop for half of the price. Lots of ports? My god, we have been telling the consumer for two years that he needs no stinking ports, but touchscreen, Windows 8 and something that sucks at both being a netbook and a tablet. High res graphics? Where did all the marketing that 1366x768 is enough for everyone go? And so on.
Of course AMD will have problems with design wins around that. If it is successful where would all the OEM/ODM margins from the overpriced crap go? This is besides the fact that I can bet that Intel has not abandoned any of its ways from the 2000-es. A billion fine here and there, a few hundred millions settlement elsewhere. Cost of doing business ya know. Especially when you cannot innovate for sh*** except for silicon process improvements.
Interesting, it's funny how things changed. My experience was always that intel had the edge in mobile but AMD had some interesting high end desktop parts that on a bang per buck basis matched or beat intel BUT also added more features. AMD mobile chips were relatively powerful but basically nut roasters in laptops. I hadn't actually used any of the modern lower end mobile amd's so it's great to hear they are doing well. The atom always did seem like a half hearted effort from intel. I did have an earlier acer aspire netbook and it was woeful at anything beyond email and basic word processing. I think they missed the importance of youtube etc and the earlier atoms just couldn't do h264, hell even flash adverts on webpages could slow it down.
AMD has been overpromising and failing miserably to deliver for years so we'll see if the live products do give Intel a run for its money or not.
Boasting about support drivers is a little rich from AMD it could learn a few thousand lessons from nvidia, especially on laptops. Catalyst leans more towards mastercrap than masterpiece.
If these are as good as they are saying it will be powering my build for a media /gaming PC for under the TV. These look like they could plow through simple games e.g L4D, Counter Strike etc. While remaining cool & quiet enough to be the perfect media center.
Cant wait for them to give Intel a boot up the arse.
If it isn't marketing hype then this is great news for everyone. AMD really shook things up when it caught intel napping many years ago. I was starting to give up hope for AMD ever recovering as things went from bad to worse, not because I love AMD but because I recognise the value of competition. A healthy AMD means a vaguely competitive market. Intel has massive resources both financial and intellectual and they most definately brought them to bear. From the early P4's to the start of the core i3/4/7 range we saw a surge in performance. As AMD's fortunes declined in recent years and they fell behind in the 'arms race' it seems like Intel slowed down as well. Yearly updates seemed to result in a modest 10% bump in speeds which isn't a great motivator to upgrade. It will be interesting to see what the next generation of fx chips can do, hopefully the 14nm Broadwell's will maybe go to 6 cores and a faster clock. I know power is important in mobile but it is less so in a workstation so a sanely priced powerhouse would be welcome!
I guess I can dream :-)
Because when Joe Average walks into PC World, he'll buy the Intel powered laptop.
After all he's heard of Intel (jingle), 'they make all the processors don't they? Never heard of AMD, they can't be any good can they?'
I still do not understand why AMD continually fail to market and advertise their wares when the average Joe is who they are largely targeting these days. They have next to zero brand awareness. Brand is what it's all about these days.
I would love to see an interview with the AMD Marketing team...well that's if they even exist.
Intel is having as bad a time as Microsoft (possibly no coincidence!). Assailed in mobiles and losing to ARM, beaten in the Android tablet space, under serious threat now from AMD in the Windows tablet/netbook/laptop space, seeing NVidia and AMD getting top press in the super-server class with GPUs...It's enough to make you cry!
And any kick from Windows Blue looks like it could benefit AMD more. That's real irony!
Intel needs to take a hard look at its strategic direction and its leadership team. They've stopped creating meaningful innovations and they are hurting because of it.
AMD is doing good things and that's good for the industry.
It's great to see AMD revving up with new products and preparing to move into the fast lane once again. They have consistantly delivered a better performance value proposition for years. Their latest APUs look to be a nice bump in performance and with other goodies on the way, PC enthusiasts have a lot to be excited about.
I want an android tablet with a fusion gpu/cpu. Rumours say AMD is not interested in android and is all behind win8. IMHO a terrible mistake: win8 on netbook/tablet is sinking like titanic. AMD have sacked all their linux developers. And Why not a Fusion APU in some of the 150mill smartphones that ship with Android each quarter. So they are effectively abandoning the by far largest growing market where they may have a superior product. Something is fishy, either M$ has done some behind the scene investments into the empty koffers of AMD or its just incompetent management.
Currently my Asus T300 arm quad 1.2GHz A9 with tegra3 is ok on the graphics but the cpu performance is terrible. I hate using it for browsing, heavy javascript sites you can just forget. my two year old Asus Atom1.6Ghz Netbook is around 2X faster. The battery time on both around 8hours.
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