AMD gives up?
William Muriithi
william.muriithi-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org
Fri Mar 23 16:57:35 UTC 2012
Hugh,
Top posting as I am not responding to any particular paragraph.
That was a very good update on what has been happening with AMD. Wish
I read last month, I picked up an Intel netbook, I should have shopped
around for an AMD netbook.
Hope they will stay in the market, else Intel plan for Itanium will be
fulfilled, which would be a sad thing.
That being said, I think they would not get too comfortable either way
because of ARM effect. That company actually seem to be what is
influencing their strategies these days
Regards,
William
>
> [Note: I have no inside knowledge. This is guesswork on my part.]
>
> If they didn't price their chips so low, nobody would buy them. But they
> price them so low that they don't make money. Not a game that can be
> played forever.
>
> They tried to "pivot" with fusion: OK processors fused with decent video.
> Good idea. It just hasn't been enough. And it came after too long a
> delay.
>
> - for Linux users, there have been annoying driver problems.
>
> + It took a year before the open driver code could handle sound over
> HDMI. It took reverse engineering rather than the promised AMD
> disclosure.
>
> + the closed source driver has not been updated to match kernel
> changes in a timely way.
>
> + on Ubuntu, my go to distro for closed source driver support, some
> Ubuntu bug has prevented loading the AMD driver on my HTPC box
> for many months (six?).
>
> - There is a reasonable HTPC niche that Atom + ION filled but the
> E-350 could have replaced with ease. Didn't happen. Is it because
> that niche is more apparent than real? Even the Atom + ION
> offerings seem to have shrunk.
>
> - Ditto for the netbook world: the C-60 is a great chip and isn't
> hobbled by restrictions placed by Intel to protect the market for
> their higher-end chips.
>
> But the netbook market seems to be disappearing. I don't understand
> why. Perhaps because regular notebooks have become so inexpensive.
> Maybe they never sold well but vendors pushed them as the next big
> thing. Perhaps because the mindshare has been taken over by
> tablets. This one is a real puzzle to me.
>
> You really had to look for a C-50 or C-60 based netbook. I bought
> one last summer. It only cost $229 because the mainline stores
> (Best Buy / Future Shop, Staples) didn't realize that this was
> actually a premium device and could not wait to drop it (unlike
> ordinary netbooks, this had 1280x720 screen, HDMI-out, decent video
> chip).
>
>
> - One success: a lot of low-end notebooks have E-350 or even E-300
> processors. This surprises me since I don't think that they are
> powerful enough for what I expect of a notebook.
>
> - Most scary: Intel's built-in graphics HD-3000 seems quite powerful
> enough for most ordinary tasks. In a couple of months Intel will
> introduce new chips with much improved built-in graphics. So AMD's
> particular edge is going to be diminished.
>
> - apparently AMD has had a lot of trouble with the chip foundries.
> Global Foundries, spun out from AMD years ago, hasn't delivered chip
> volumes in a timely fashion nor with decent yields. TSMC has had
> troubles too. AMD just spent a small fortune totally cutting the
> cord with GF. Intel has their own fabs and is considered to be the
> industry leader.
>
> I feel that we really need an x86 source other than Intel. I think
> that x86's success is due to how AMD and Intel have pushed each other
> to greater and greater performance.
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