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Brainstorming to fix the sad situation with GPUs

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Having watched Intel have no competition for many years, due to AMD's decision to replace Phenom with Bulldozer/Piledriver, and now seeing "no competition" in the form of consumers having to pay through the nose because there are only two foundries — both of which are trying to produce all sorts of chips that have nothing to do with GPUs (and CPUs for personal computing/"console" products), it seems like we should do a bit more on our end to help ourselves.

Waiting around for adequate competition to happen hasn't worked. Now that AMD finally has competitive parts we can't buy them at sane prices. Two players in any market isn't enough. That is clearly demonstrated with the foundry situation and with the way AMD and Intel have not been able to provide us with enough choice for many many many years.

Here are a few off-the-cuff ideas:

1. Use the chiplet design strategy to make a GPU that's big, in terms of the die, but affordable to produce on cheaper foundry nodes (like GF's 12nm). When I say use, I mean a company other than Intel, AMD, and "Intel". (I put Intel in quotes because the company still isn't competing seriously in the GPU space and hasn't for forever).

2. Crowdsource a GPU company. If we can put crazy money into Star Citizen and lots of money into recycleware like the Civilization series, why can't we fund a company that will give us an affordable GPU?

3. Lobby to have anti-trust laws work properly. Duopoly isn't working, at all, for the consumer. (That includes Google, which (with Microsoft's help) owns Internet search. DDG is no real alternative, either.)

If we don't help ourselves no one is going to help us with anything other than the faster emptying of our wallets.
 

trickson

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Yep Big Tech rules the world and they will destroy it too.
It's an ambitious plan and the work would be at the very least decades to do as that is what the big tech guys would do with you once you get a foot in they will cut it off.
Only way to win is to NOT play the game and that would mean giving up EVERYTHING! EVERYTHING! Become a hermit and live off the grid.
Big Tech won the war and every battle there ever was!
 
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Yep Big Tech rules the world and they will destroy it too.
It's an ambitious plan and the work would be at the very least decades to do as that is what the big tech guys would do with you once you get a foot in they will cut it off.
Only way to win is to NOT play the game and that would mean giving up EVERYTHING! EVERYTHING! Become a hermit and live off the grid.
Big Tech won the war and every battle there ever was!
Well, we used to have Voodoo cards. And Matrox almost succeeded with Parhelia but botched it with some decisions that could have been avoided.
 

trickson

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Well, we used to have Voodoo cards. And Matrox almost succeeded with Parhelia but botched it with some decisions that could have been avoided.
LOL "WE" WE did not have shit!
Big tech Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuck are the ones that own us now!
Enjoy it!

If you think that you would have a chance in HELL building any tech company in this day and age you are dreaming and living in a pipe!
The way that big tech censors and the things that China does it's just incredible that we even have tech!
 
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LOL "WE" WE did not have shit!
Big tech Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuck are the ones that own us now!
Enjoy it!
We had three companies to choose from when Voodoo cards were on the market. We also would have had three companies to choose from had Matrox done a bit better job with Parhelia.

Parhelia, for example, could have done these things right, instead of getting them wrong:

1. Not using the industry standard pipeline design. By being too clever Matrox earned worse performance in games because they were being optimized for ATI and Nvidia.

2. Not using an adequate cooler.

3. Not doing color compression/Z culling and trying, instead, to rely on a giant bus for bandwidth. That's an obvious bad decision.

4. Baking in a lot of unnecessary stuff, like font smoothing, tessellation, 3 monitor surround gaming, and 10-bit color — while not providing the basics: DX 9 support with the updated lighting model. Due to the decision, ATI was able to come up with the 9700 and make the Parhelia completely obsolete. The Parhelia wasn't even able to run The Sims 2.

Some things Matrox didn't have the money to control, like the fact that it had to rely on a bigger older less-efficient foundry node. But, that's where doing things like a giant bus is probably not a great move (along with using a non-standard pipeline and not bothering to have good culling).

The chiplet design seems to be a way to get around a lot of the drawbacks of having to rely on cheaper nodes, like GF12. Yes, the power consumption will be higher in the end but gamers are willing to put up with that if the price-to-performance is good.
 

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Well good luck with that.
If you had some real cash 10-30 million you "might" be able to get a new video card company going but man you would be pissing up a rope IMHO.
 
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Well good luck with that.
I you had some real cash 10-30 million you "might" be able to get a new video card company going but man you would be pissing up a rope IMHO.
One of the fun things about being old is that it doesn't seem very long ago that companies like Google, Facebook, Ebay, Twitter, Reddit, and the like did not exist.

Want to search the Internet? Metacrawler, AltaVista, Lycos. Yahoo for categorical search.

That's just one example.

Prior to the changes in terms of Internet business you had IBM that was the 1000 pound gorilla of tech. Where is IBM today? Not even on the margins for consumer tech.

Things can change, and a lot easier than most people think. I remember when Facebook was just a hook-up site for college students, where people put "anything I can get" in their profiles without worrying much about how it would affect their job opportunities.

When we're paying $2200 for 3090s there is money to crowdsource a GPU company.
 

trickson

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One of the fun things about being old is that it doesn't seem very long ago that companies like Google, Facebook, Ebay, Twitter, Reddit, and the like did not exist.

Want to search the Internet? Metacrawler, AltaVista, Lycos. Yahoo for categorical search.

That's just one example.

Prior to the changes in terms of Internet business you had IBM that was the 1000 pound gorilla of tech. Where is IBM today? Not even on the margins for consumer tech.

Things can change, and a lot easier than most people think. I remember when Facebook was just a hook-up site for college students, where people put "anything I can get" in their profiles without worrying much about how it would affect their job opportunities.

When we're paying $2200 for 3090s there is money to crowdsource a GPU company.
Yes I agree 100%.
But things have changed way to left for any real change to take place now.
You literally just said it. You can not even get a job without a social media page now! He is THAT powerful?
One reason why I have NO Facebook or Twit ACCOUNT!
And the first thing I would tell any Employer of mine "If you take ONE THING from my personal life and use it to quantify my employment with you we will be talking at YOUR HOUSE FOR SURE!".
But lets stay off that road. One reason why I think Big Tech has to be broken up! The Monopoly must end and mark suckaburge and jack dorcey need to see this!
 
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But things have changed way to left for any real change to take place now.
That's not what the history of business shows. It shows that business is constantly changing.

Google Chrome didn't exist not long ago at all. Now, almost everyone uses it. Go a little further back and there was no Google. Many people seemed perfectly satisfied with all the search engines that existed. There was no Bing and certainly no DDG. Apple nearly went out of business in the late 90s.

Want to do social media? Remember GlobalChat? MySpace? GeoCities?

Things are always changing. It doesn't seem all that long ago to me when Voodoo cards were very strong competitors in the marketplace.

If anything, the chiplet design creates more opportunity than there was before to compete with AMD and Nvidia, particularly given the foundry duopoly-caused shortage situation.
 

trickson

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That's not what the history of business shows. It shows that business is constantly changing.

Google Chrome didn't exist not long ago at all. Now, almost everyone uses it. Go a little further back and there was no Google. Many people seemed perfectly satisfied with all the search engines that existed. There was no Bing and certainly no DDG.

Want to do social media? Remember GlobalChat? MySpace? GeoCities?

Things are always changing. It doesn't seem all that long ago to me when Voodoo cards were very strong competitors in the marketplace.

If anything, the chiplet design creates more opportunity than there was before to compete with AMD and Nvidia.
Yeah but the way things have changed leaves me thinking things will stay the same and or get worse!
Big Tech has the entire ball we all just bounce around in it.
Hell I have been cancelled and banned. It's what they do!
Good luck TPU is still around but hell even this place has the thinned skinned human that gets your voice canceled!
It's about power money and whom is in control and unless you have a SHIT TON of cash 10-30 Million at the least it just wont happen.
For your dream to come to life 100% it would take 100 Million US Dollars.
 
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Yeah but the way things have changed leaves me thinking things will stay the same and or get worse!
Big Tech has the entire ball we all just bounce around in it.
Hell I have been cancelled and banned. It's what they do!
Good luck TPU is still around but hell even this place has the thinned skinned human that gets your voice canceled!
It's about power money and whom is in control and unless you have a SHIT TON of cash 10-30 Million at the least it just wont happen.
For your dream to come to life 100% it would take 100 Million US Dollars.
Big tech is where another GPU company would exist. It's not a separate matter. All companies get their money from us. Crowdsourcing one is just another way of getting the money there.

And, the figures you've quoted are a lot less than what Star Citizen has been taking in, and that's just one video game.
 
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3. Lobby to have anti-trust laws work properly. Duopoly isn't working, at all, for the consumer. (That includes Google, which (with Microsoft's help) owns Internet search. DDG is no real alternative, either.)

What does that even mean? Would you break up AMD into AMD (CPUs) and ATI (GPUs) again? That'd just have ATI go bankrupt as AMD's CPU-department is where the money is right now.

How exactly would you break up NVidia? I guess NVidia shouldn't buy ARM, but I'm not entirely sure how NVidia's purchase of ARM hurts the GPU market.
 
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What does that even mean? Would you break up AMD into AMD (CPUs) and ATI (GPUs) again? That'd just have ATI go bankrupt as AMD's CPU-department is where the money is right now.

How exactly would you break up NVidia? I guess NVidia shouldn't buy ARM, but I'm not entirely sure how NVidia's purchase of ARM hurts the GPU market.
It means making it possible for more competitors to establish themselves and compete. That's what anti-trust is all about. It's about making it possible to have competition.

The trouble with monopolization is that it artificially increases prices to consumers.
 

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What does that even mean? Would you break up AMD into AMD (CPUs) and ATI (GPUs) again? That'd just have ATI go bankrupt as AMD's CPU-department is where the money is right now.

How exactly would you break up NVidia? I guess NVidia shouldn't buy ARM, but I'm not entirely sure how NVidia's purchase of ARM hurts the GPU market.
Exactly. Big Tech rules us.
 
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It means making it possible for more competitors to establish themselves and compete. That's what anti-trust is all about. It's about making it possible to have competition.

Anti-trust is a bludgeon to break up big companies into smaller ones. It works in some cases, but I'm not sure how it works in this instance.

I mean, what. Are you going to break up NVidia's driver team from its GPU hardware team? So that new players can write new NVidia drivers? How does that improve anything? You gotta tell me who gets split off, and why, and how that benefits the market.
 

trickson

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It means making it possible for more competitors to establish themselves and compete. That's what anti-trust is all about. It's about making it possible to have competition.
Good luck with that! Look what Robihood did look what facebook has done and twit! They have BLOCKED/ killed and canceled any and ALL comp! 100%!

DO you think for one second that nVidia or AMD/ATI wouldn't stop your ass from cutting into there pocketbook or bottom line, Well then you are just Naïve and gullible.
 
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Anti-trust is a bludgeon to break up big companies into smaller ones. It works in some cases, but I'm not sure how it works in this instance.
What is irrefutable is that monopolization raises prices artificially. Most consumers don't want to pay more than they should.

It's difficult to imagine paying more than $2200 for a GPU. I know some folks don't mind that but there really is another way.
 
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What is irrefutable is that monopolization raises prices artificially. Most consumers don't want to pay more than they should.

Yeah, but Anti-trust is just one tool to combat monopolies. A common, alternative approach, is regulation (especially in the utility business). You accept that the monopoly is unavoidable (ex: utility power-lines are a so called "natural monopoly", a system that will always tend towards centralized companies). As such, you tightly regulate those companies, because the monopoly is inevitable.

It's difficult to imagine paying more than $2200 for a GPU. I know some folks don't mind that but there really is another way.

How does your proposal drop the price of GPUs?
 
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Yeah, but Anti-trust is just one tool to combat monopolies. A common, alternative approach, is regulation (especially in the utility business). You accept that the monopoly is unavoidable (ex: utility power-lines are a so called "natural monopoly", a system that will always tend towards centralized companies). As such, you tightly regulate those companies, because the monopoly is inevitable.
So, your solution to the situation we're in with GPUs and foundries is to increase monopolization?
 

trickson

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Yeah, but Anti-trust is just one tool to combat monopolies. A common, alternative approach, is regulation (especially in the utility business). You accept that the monopoly is unavoidable (ex: utility power-lines are a so called "natural monopoly", a system that will always tend towards centralized companies). As such, you tightly regulate those companies, because the monopoly is inevitable.



How does your proposal drop the price of GPUs?
And yet we still have Facebook and Twitter and Google 3 tech giants running the show! Go figure!
 
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So, your solution to the situation we're in with GPUs and foundries is to increase monopolization?

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The US at least, is flush with money. People have been saving tons of money since their trips / etc. etc. have been cancelled for the past year. In my opinion, this is a situation where the demand of GPUs has outstripped supply. I don't believe that we're in a situation where AMD or NVidia are purposefully reducing the supply of GPUs.

It takes years to build out foundries / factories. Any actual solution would have had to be started in 2016 or 2017 to have an effect today. I can empathize with your cries of GPU-prices, but you're going to have to step back and prove to me that we're even in a monopoly / reduced supply situation to begin with.
 
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Your argument, though, is that monopolization should be increased. That means getting rid of AMD from the GPU space so that Nvidia can rule it alone.

I'm really not seeing how that's going to benefit consumers.

Similarly, Samsung would be shut out of the foundry business so that only TSMC would rule. Again, not seeing the consumer value with that move.
 
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@ OP, many MANY companies make there own Chips or have foundries. Example APPLE makes there own now, I worked for a company we made clean room pumps. These things were being shipped all over the world, not just a few either hundreds if not thousands.
 
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It's not a strawman at all. You claimed that monopolization is inevitable and mean to codify them legally. That increases monopolization by embedding it even more strongly in the system via official codification.

If you're going to make the "monopolization is inevitable" argument you must see it through to its logical conclusion. Duopoly is only partial monopolization. So, if it's inevitable to have monopolization that means the duopoly must go away and the one company, the monopoly, must be regulated (codified, officially sanctioned and kept in power).
 
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