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It's going to be interesting to see what the new AMD 'Rome' brings to the table when it gets into peoples hands. upto 64 Cores/128 Threads and 128 PCI express

It's going to be interesting to see what the new AMD 'Rome' brings to the table when it gets into peoples hands. upto 64 Cores/128 Threads and 128 PCI express lanes (that's on all of them irrespective of the core count) - 8 channel memory. Given AMD's insanely aggressive pricing on the Zen 2 consumer line I'm expecting a proper knockdown drag out fight.

jpalomaki 7y ago
Does AMD gain a lot by driving down prices heavily? Should make sense only if they expect Intel won’t match their price cuts. If Intel follows, then they have both just lost money. Might make sense if ruining the market drives the competitor out, but that’s not likely with Intel.
- nik736 7y ago
  In my opinion they are not driving down prices heavily. They are just pricing their chips competitively so people will buy AMD over Intel, but they are not super cheaper. The pricing of AMD chips just makes sense if you look at the lineup and compare it to Intel.
  - noir_lord 7y ago
    The number one chip on passmark right now is the 3900X which is beating intel units at nearly 4 times the cost. Now passmark isn’t 100% accurate but it’s usually pretty close. https://m.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html https://m.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html I’d call that aggressive myself.
    - atq2119 7y ago
      Yeah, but we're talking server chips in TFA.
      - noir_lord 7y ago
        True but AMD hasn’t released Rome yet, given that in Benchmarks I posted the 12 core 24 thread is out performing the Xeons and given that Rome is a zen 2 based core I think it’s safe to extrapolate that AMD have a competitive or better processor portfolio compared to intel at this point.
    - p_l 7y ago
      Intel had been considered to get insane premiums on their chips for a long, long time...
- ineedasername 7y ago
  Seems like there's only up side for AMD. They're not getting Intel-level prices now because they're not being used, so as long as they're not selling below cost, it's all upside to them. For Intel's part, they only have to follow suit if/when the strategy starts working for AMD, by which point AMD may have clawed back enough enough market share to have justified the strategy. At that point the race to the bottom probably ends, and prices might incrementally inch up somewhat, but the increased competition will still probably depress Intel's prices over what they would have been, while AMD still has gains.
  - noir_lord 7y ago
    That’s certainly my hope, AMD increasing core counts forced intel to follow suit or lose on multibench workloads to sometimes hilarious extents even when they where ahead on IPC per core. I don’t care which one wins I just want proper competition again.
    - ineedasername 7y ago
      Same. I never particularly cared whether I had an AMD or Intel proc when price and quality were comparable. I'll happily choose whichever has the better value proposition. Though Info think AMD had a particularly uphill battle in the server market dominated by clouds that are mainly standardized on Intel. But with such price benefits, I can imagine various providers experimenting with blocks of AMD based compute.
- old-gregg 7y ago
  AMD CPUs should be cheaper to manufacture, because their chips are much smaller. Xeons are built using giant monolithic dies, so the defect rate per wafer matters a lot. EPYC processors from AMD are built using 9 separate chips under one package [1]: one I/O die and several chiplets with multiple cores each, so the yields should be much higher. [1] https://images.anandtech.com/doci/13561/amd_rome-678_678x452.png https://images.anandtech.com/doci/13561/amd_rome-678_678x452...
- mtgx 7y ago
  It does work because price cuts give Intel an allergy. Intel has only recently hinted at reducing prices of some high-end CPUs "up to 15%” 2 years after zen came out and after it had already raised prices on the same CPUs by at least 15% since it started struggling with manufacturing shortages last year. AMD should go as aggressive as possible with the pricing to steal market share from Intel because it has nothing to worry about in regards Intel responding with a price war - it just won't happen. Intel couldn't even bring itself to do that with it's mobile chips - twice. First with Strong-arm and then with Atom. It lost the mobile market twice because of its insatious margin greed.
  - noir_lord 7y ago
    Since they’ve lead the market so consistently for so long I think they’ve never been in a protracted situation where aggressive price cuts where required. AMD to their credit have played everything blindingly well with nary a misstep in the last two years. It must be hard to be intel and have your seeming invincibility in the x86 market challenged by a company that nearly went bust not that long ago.
    - cosmodisk 7y ago
      If I were in charge of Intel,I'd have bought AMD when they were struggling...
      - noir_lord 7y ago
        That would invite a monopoly investigations in the EU and possibly the US pretty much instantly. Ironically intel needs AMD to prove they don’t own the whole market, it’s just blown up this time because AMD nailed it on the architecture and fab side.
        cosmodisk 7y ago
        I was thinking about but still went posting my comment.You are right on monopoly.
      - 7y ago
MuffinFlavored 7y ago
My biggest question is... what percentage of the market is really buying the latest generation of processors upon release? Gamers, sure. I'd imagine the number of "every day use" laptops sold is a lot larger than people trying to eek out the last few frames per second. Would these budget machines also have this new advanced AMD CPU? How long does it take "the kind of laptops you pick up at Walmart" to deprecate old CPUs and implement new ones?
- old-gregg 7y ago
  Majority of data center users replace their gear within 3-5 years. There are outliers, of course, who replace hardware with each generation or those who run their servers into the ground, but 3-5 years is far more common, so 4 years on average. This rough math means if AMD takes half of the new CPU orders, they should have about 10% server CPU market share within a year, consistent with some analyst estimates [1] [1] https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20190328PD200.html https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20190328PD200.html
  - noir_lord 7y ago
    AMD couldn’t have timed bringing a genuinely competitive product to market either on the backside of the Meltdown and MDS and Intel struggling on process. Will be interesting to see if intel begin pulling the same kind of shenanigans they did back the last AMD was competitive (early Opteron/Athlon days). I don’t think the market structure is the same and given they got slapped for it last time by the regulators I’m curious to see if they’ll try.
- jdietrich 7y ago
  >My biggest question is... what percentage of the market is really buying the latest generation of processors upon release? That really isn't relevant. Most consumers buy a new computer when their old one breaks or becomes unbearably slow. Most corporate buyers have a consistent 3-5 year procurement cycle. AMD don't need everyone to rush out and buy new computers, nor do they particularly want it - huge spikes in sales are detrimental to the supply chain, as we saw with the GPU mining fad. AMD want and need to consistently beat Intel on value over a protracted period, so that whenever a customer does choose to upgrade their computer they choose an AMD processor. At the moment, they're looking good in terms of both architecture and fabrication; the main problem AMD is likely to face is with partner relationships, because of Intel's historical dominance and use of anti-competitive practices.

jpalomaki 7y ago

Does AMD gain a lot by driving down prices heavily? Should make sense only if they expect Intel won’t match their price cuts. If Intel follows, then they have both just lost money. Might make sense if ruining the market drives the competitor out, but that’s not likely with Intel.

nik736 7y ago
In my opinion they are not driving down prices heavily. They are just pricing their chips competitively so people will buy AMD over Intel, but they are not super cheaper. The pricing of AMD chips just makes sense if you look at the lineup and compare it to Intel.
- noir_lord 7y ago
  The number one chip on passmark right now is the 3900X which is beating intel units at nearly 4 times the cost. Now passmark isn’t 100% accurate but it’s usually pretty close. https://m.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html https://m.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html I’d call that aggressive myself.
  - atq2119 7y ago
    Yeah, but we're talking server chips in TFA.
    - noir_lord 7y ago
      True but AMD hasn’t released Rome yet, given that in Benchmarks I posted the 12 core 24 thread is out performing the Xeons and given that Rome is a zen 2 based core I think it’s safe to extrapolate that AMD have a competitive or better processor portfolio compared to intel at this point.
  - p_l 7y ago
    Intel had been considered to get insane premiums on their chips for a long, long time...
ineedasername 7y ago
Seems like there's only up side for AMD. They're not getting Intel-level prices now because they're not being used, so as long as they're not selling below cost, it's all upside to them. For Intel's part, they only have to follow suit if/when the strategy starts working for AMD, by which point AMD may have clawed back enough enough market share to have justified the strategy. At that point the race to the bottom probably ends, and prices might incrementally inch up somewhat, but the increased competition will still probably depress Intel's prices over what they would have been, while AMD still has gains.
- noir_lord 7y ago
  That’s certainly my hope, AMD increasing core counts forced intel to follow suit or lose on multibench workloads to sometimes hilarious extents even when they where ahead on IPC per core. I don’t care which one wins I just want proper competition again.
  - ineedasername 7y ago
    Same. I never particularly cared whether I had an AMD or Intel proc when price and quality were comparable. I'll happily choose whichever has the better value proposition. Though Info think AMD had a particularly uphill battle in the server market dominated by clouds that are mainly standardized on Intel. But with such price benefits, I can imagine various providers experimenting with blocks of AMD based compute.
old-gregg 7y ago
AMD CPUs should be cheaper to manufacture, because their chips are much smaller. Xeons are built using giant monolithic dies, so the defect rate per wafer matters a lot. EPYC processors from AMD are built using 9 separate chips under one package [1]: one I/O die and several chiplets with multiple cores each, so the yields should be much higher. [1] https://images.anandtech.com/doci/13561/amd_rome-678_678x452.png https://images.anandtech.com/doci/13561/amd_rome-678_678x452...
mtgx 7y ago
It does work because price cuts give Intel an allergy. Intel has only recently hinted at reducing prices of some high-end CPUs "up to 15%” 2 years after zen came out and after it had already raised prices on the same CPUs by at least 15% since it started struggling with manufacturing shortages last year. AMD should go as aggressive as possible with the pricing to steal market share from Intel because it has nothing to worry about in regards Intel responding with a price war - it just won't happen. Intel couldn't even bring itself to do that with it's mobile chips - twice. First with Strong-arm and then with Atom. It lost the mobile market twice because of its insatious margin greed.
- noir_lord 7y ago
  Since they’ve lead the market so consistently for so long I think they’ve never been in a protracted situation where aggressive price cuts where required. AMD to their credit have played everything blindingly well with nary a misstep in the last two years. It must be hard to be intel and have your seeming invincibility in the x86 market challenged by a company that nearly went bust not that long ago.
  - cosmodisk 7y ago
    If I were in charge of Intel,I'd have bought AMD when they were struggling...
    - noir_lord 7y ago
      That would invite a monopoly investigations in the EU and possibly the US pretty much instantly. Ironically intel needs AMD to prove they don’t own the whole market, it’s just blown up this time because AMD nailed it on the architecture and fab side.
      - cosmodisk 7y ago
        I was thinking about but still went posting my comment.You are right on monopoly.
    - 7y ago

MuffinFlavored 7y ago

My biggest question is... what percentage of the market is really buying the latest generation of processors upon release? Gamers, sure. I'd imagine the number of "every day use" laptops sold is a lot larger than people trying to eek out the last few frames per second. Would these budget machines also have this new advanced AMD CPU? How long does it take "the kind of laptops you pick up at Walmart" to deprecate old CPUs and implement new ones?

old-gregg 7y ago
Majority of data center users replace their gear within 3-5 years. There are outliers, of course, who replace hardware with each generation or those who run their servers into the ground, but 3-5 years is far more common, so 4 years on average. This rough math means if AMD takes half of the new CPU orders, they should have about 10% server CPU market share within a year, consistent with some analyst estimates [1] [1] https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20190328PD200.html https://www.digitimes.com/news/a20190328PD200.html
- noir_lord 7y ago
  AMD couldn’t have timed bringing a genuinely competitive product to market either on the backside of the Meltdown and MDS and Intel struggling on process. Will be interesting to see if intel begin pulling the same kind of shenanigans they did back the last AMD was competitive (early Opteron/Athlon days). I don’t think the market structure is the same and given they got slapped for it last time by the regulators I’m curious to see if they’ll try.
jdietrich 7y ago
>My biggest question is... what percentage of the market is really buying the latest generation of processors upon release? That really isn't relevant. Most consumers buy a new computer when their old one breaks or becomes unbearably slow. Most corporate buyers have a consistent 3-5 year procurement cycle. AMD don't need everyone to rush out and buy new computers, nor do they particularly want it - huge spikes in sales are detrimental to the supply chain, as we saw with the GPU mining fad. AMD want and need to consistently beat Intel on value over a protracted period, so that whenever a customer does choose to upgrade their computer they choose an AMD processor. At the moment, they're looking good in terms of both architecture and fabrication; the main problem AMD is likely to face is with partner relationships, because of Intel's historical dominance and use of anti-competitive practices.