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AMD denies killing off big cores (Kaveri, Steamroller, and Excavator)
- indiecore 14y agofacepalm Ugh, should I grab an intel CPU now before the prices get jacked up due to monopolization?
- qznc 14y agoThere is still VIA for producing x86 chips.
- InclinedPlane 14y agoThey produce low-power x86 chips for embedded devices and such, AMD is still the only competition for Intel's high-performance x86 chips.
- aristidb 14y agoThe segment in which VIA competes seems better served by cheap ARM cores IMHO.
- venomsnake 14y agoNo. 2500K or 3750K clocked to 4.8 GHz is more than enough for now. Intel are not in a good position to be able to price gouge the market. There is a point that will be hit in the near year or two where an arm device with lots of ram will be worthy desktop environment. If intel tightens the screws it will just come faster. And although not a trivial task if the pain becomes way to much for the enterprise market we could see some massive efforts into x86 emulation on ARM.
- api 14y agoThis is bad. We now have an x86 chip monopoly.
- w1ntermute 14y agoAnd newcomers can't enter the market because they'd need a patent cross-licensing agreement with Intel, like AMD had. And a newcomer is unlikely to get such an agreement.
- roc 14y agoI'm sure AMD would be more than happy to sell their position to any would-be competitor, if it's transferable. I think the bigger problem is just that it's extremely difficult and expensive to compete with Intel on x86. And all of a sudden the x86 market has taken a turn toward lower growth and lower margins. So, really, why would anyone bother when it's cheaper to get into the mobile/low-power ARM race and those markets have so much more up-side and room to make advancements that aren't contingent on billion dollar foundry investments?
- wtallis 14y ago"I'm sure AMD would be more than happy to sell their position to any would-be competitor, if it's transferable." It's almost certainly not transferable to the extent allowed by law, given the trouble Intel caused just over AMD spinning off their fab business.
- sliverstorm 14y agoit's extremely difficult and expensive to compete with Intel on x86 Amen. Intel's process advantage alone is a big challenge.
- bryanlarsen 14y agoAMD is still developing their Atom-class processors, so technically there is still competition. It is possible that their next generation of netbook CPUs is showing such good performance that they decided that they could succeed in taking it upmarket. I doubt it, but it is possible. It's a very strange move for AMD. The A15 chips they're developing are roughly in the same performance & power markets as modern Atom-class chips. Another way to think of this move is that AMD is betting the farm on the bet that mediocre CPU + fast GPU is a more compelling play than fast CPU + mediocre GPU. That might be a good bet, but it's too bad they no longer have the resources to take both sides of the bet.
- DiabloD3 14y agoI guess this means the end of x86. Many companies still refuse to buy single vendor equipment.
- batgaijin 14y agodoesn't this guarantee an antitrust suit against intel?
- ElliotH 14y agoWhat would you say they're doing that would justify such a suit?
- freehunter 14y agoLike ElliotH mentioned, having a monopoly is not illegal. What is illegal is using your market power to drive out competitors and crush upstarts. If Intel is guilty of this[1], then they will face anti-trust hearings. If they're not, having a monopoly on x86 processors will not be enough for them to be punished. On this one, it seems to be AMD causing their own downfall by poor management decisions leading to bad engineering practices. There's a lot of talent over there that is going to waste. [1] I believe AMD successfully sued them for this in the past, but that seems to be over and settled.
- melling 14y agoMicrosoft has a desktop monopoly with their 90% desktop market share. They aren't currently being sued. It was Microsoft's illegal tactics in the 1990's that got them in trouble. These days I don't believe they are doing anything illegal.
- programminggeek 14y agoI've been thinking that Win RT and Surface are the real future of Windows - ARM based, no more backwards compatibility. This pretty much seals it. Apple and MSFT were already moving to ARM, ChromeOS and Android are obviously already there. AMD is going there now too. Many/most machines we use in 3-5 years will be ARM powered, not x86 powered. Intel of course is going to resist ARM and low power computing for one huge reason - profit. There are only so many machines sold each year and switching to ARM doesn't sell more processors for Intel. So, switching to lower perf and lower power processors like Atom means Intel can only sell them for $20-30 vs. $100-300 for a core i3/5/7. That is why Atom hasn't been pushed by Intel on mobile, it would destroy their whole business model. You can't drop billions into manufacturing if you don't have the revenue and profits to fund it. AMD's future is going to look a lot more like nVidia's current plan than Intel's.
- reitzensteinm 14y agoEven in an all ARM world, Intel would still be very much able to charge $100-300+ for desktop chips, and $1000+ for server chips. With their fabs and engineering talent, they'd still be strong leaders in terms of IPC, core counts, computing density, performance per watt, etc. The dynamics would be similar to AMD vs Intel today. Charge double for a 50% lead, 5x as much for a 100% lead, etc. When marginal performance is important, the premium is gladly paid. While they'd have countless fabless design companies competing with them for the low end, few if any companies will be able to compete toe to toe at the cutting edge. Maybe IBM - who else? While a shrinking percentage of the market is fitting in that high performance bucket, I would hazard a guess that the absolute numbers are still going up, if only because of server chips and gamers. Though I could not find any data on this and would be happy to be proven wrong.
- acgourley 14y agoI don't think it's true that gamers will always drive an appetite for faster chips. At some point the real choke point will the content production which in turn will be choked by how much gamers will pay per game. Sure you can get intro procedural stuff, and faster chips allow lazier implementations and higher level programs... but at some point price, power and portability do win over speed.
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- mtgx 14y agoNormally, this would've been the right strategy - if done 2-3 years ago. But at that point whoever was running AMD was still being dismissive about ARM and the mobile market. Now they realized they shouldn't have been, but it may be too late. This is why it pays to have a visionary CEO, one that can feel where things are moving years ahead of the others, instead of a mere "manager". Transitions to disruptive markets can literally kill your company if you're not doing it on time. By the time a "pragmatist" manager - one that looks only at present data - realizes what is going on, it's already too late. Flawless execution for the switch to ARM may not be enough. They may need a good differentiation strategy, too. If they knew they would do this, it may have even paid off to be the ones buying the MIPS architecture. The ARM market is starting to consolidate right now, and I'm not sure there will still be room for AMD's stock ARM CPU's (and probably stock GPU's too?) by 2014.
- tatsuke95 14y ago>"This is why it pays to have a visionary CEO, one that can feel where things are moving years ahead of the others" The problem is, you only ever find this out with hindsight.
- Symmetry 14y agoIIRC they did have this sort of visionary CEO, but they sacked him because he was spending too much money developing new technologies. OTOH I expect AMD will do pretty well in the lightweight thread server market. They've got server experience and infrastructure, they've got a decent low-power x86 core, and they've spent of lot of time thinking about having cores with different instruction sets living together.
- Wohlf 14y agoI've always been an AMD fan, but their recent cores have left much to be desired when compared to Intel. I'll really be looking forward to what they do with ARM servers.
- Shorel 14y agoGoodbye reasonable priced Intel chips. Welcome overpriced i9 or whatever will be the next generation.
- bryanlarsen 14y agoOne of the saddest things about this move is that they're moving into a market currently dominated by a competitor that they directly enabled. One reason that Qualcomm is doing so well is due to their purchase of the Adreno platform from AMD in 2008.
- gb 14y agoThe article has been amended: "Updated 11/19/2012@10:15am: AMD contacted us with an official denial of the story and stated that Kaveri and the big cores are still on track."
- tankbot 14y agoUgh, they should put that at the top of the article. Not that it's a long read but that comment invalidates the entire thing!
- wmf 14y agoThe whole point of SemiAccurate is to report "true rumors" before they become official, so pretty much everything they publish is officially denied. So either this article is completely wrong or it's right but AMD isn't willing to admit it yet.
- bryanlarsen 14y agoOf course they're going to deny it. Even if completely accurate, it's going to be a staged transition and they'll try and salvage as much as they can from current Steamroller R&D. I guarantee that AMD will do at least one more high end CPU. Without the high cost of R&D charged against them, AMD can much more easily make money on its chips, and it will do so as long as it can. The chip might look more like Piledriver than expected, but it will have some Steamroller bits and will probably be called Steamroller.
- 14y ago
- Jimbotron 14y agoUpdated 11/19/2012@10:15am: AMD contacted us with an official denial of the story and stated that Kaveri and the big cores are still on track.
- qwerta 14y agoMaybe 2600k@5GHz is practical and theoretical limit for silicon based chips. Scientists were talking about this nearly two decades. BTW: AMD makes low-end chips, maybe it is more perspective line for future development (power efficiency). Something like that happened with Pentium4 and Pentium3 Mobile.
- robododo 14y agoFor those not in the know, semiaccurate is not exactly reliable. They post just about any rumor, and get things wrong as much as right. Take this with a grain of salt, and file it into the "hrm, this might happen" category.
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