Wednesday, November 30th 2011
AMD Still Committed To x86 - But Not In High End Desktop
Further to our article yesterday, that AMD was to give up competing with Intel, they have now made a statement which semi-clarifies their future strategy. AMD told The Verge, that they are still committed to x86, but have decided to concentrate on low power, emerging markets and the cloud:
AMD is a leader in x86 microprocessor design, and we remain committed to the x86 market. Our strategy is to accelerate our growth by taking advantage of our design capabilities to deliver a breadth of products that best align with broader industry shifts toward low power, emerging markets and the cloud.This sounds very much like they are giving up competing with Intel in the high-end x86 CPU market, but will instead compete with the likes of ARM, NVIDIA, TI and Intel in the low power market. It doesn't seem like a good strategy however, not least because getting the power use levels of an x86 CPU right down to ARM levels and still have some semblance of performance seems to be an unachievable aim, as Intel has already found out. The problem is that the ancient and complex x86 instruction set dating from the late 1970s, requires complex decode logic and a bigger chip (more transistors) to implement. It also isn't very fast, which is why all the various "turbocharging" technologies and enhancements have had to be applied to it over the years to bring us the fast CPUs we see today. These are all very expensive on transistor budget, power and require a high clock speed. The fact that all modern x86 CPUs are actually hybrid x86 (32-bit) & x64 (64-bit) machines adds an order of magnitude to the problem, as they're almost two CPUs in one. Time will tell whether AMD were right to go down this road.
87 Comments on AMD Still Committed To x86 - But Not In High End Desktop
Going to spend as much on the Intel upgrade for myself as I will for the AMD Trinity machines for my little users.
It's time to make money before the ship sinks. :(
Now, AMD CPUs will no longer be able to be put to all the same uses, as they're gonna have the comparable performance of an Atom, therefore, there's gonna be no competition at all from Intel and they'll have that monopoly that they've so long lusted after. This is bad, really bad.
Low power doesn't necessarily means "tablets". For all we know, AMD is referring to their APUs.
And, as I stated in the previous thread, this just means that AMD will concede the upper midrange and high end to Intel. AMD's top offerings hover between Core i3 and Core i5 performance anyway, so they aren't really leaving anything at the table. Instead of
investingwasting resources trying to trounce Intel in the high end they will concentrate on their core market and expand to the ones they have started to develop.This has to be one of the dumbest things I've ever read.
And forget opteron? You mean forget the CPU that powers a lot of the most powerful supercomputers on the planet at a fraction of the price of intel (same applies for regular servers)?
I think you need to get out of intel shill boot camp. It's Fing with your mind severely.
On a side note: I wonder how much I can get a phase change set up for that will make intel apologists wet their bed.