I doubt Dresden is substantially closer to Santa Clara than Taipei. Not that it matters, of course.
The AMD Execution Thread [2007 - 2017]
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I doubt Dresden is substantially closer to Santa Clara than Taipei. Not that it matters, of course.
I still think AMD would sell off part of ATI before it sold off a fab.
If it did sell a plant in Germany, though, why not sell it to Infineon or whoever makes RAM there?
If it did sell a plant in Germany, though, why not sell it to Infineon or whoever makes RAM there?
Ah yeah this question dawned in my limited brain the other day.
Assuming there's a limit on the fraction of x86 CPU manufacturing capacity that AMD can legally out-source, couldn't they choose which fraction of their product line-up that might be? For example, say that they're still keen to keep their hard-earned foot in the server market, could they choose to shift their production of their server chips to X third-party who can keep up with Intel, whilst taking it in the neck in other markets with their own less-than-competitive-but-still-passable fabs?
I mean I'm making up specific examples there, my basic question is about the principle.
Assuming there's a limit on the fraction of x86 CPU manufacturing capacity that AMD can legally out-source, couldn't they choose which fraction of their product line-up that might be? For example, say that they're still keen to keep their hard-earned foot in the server market, could they choose to shift their production of their server chips to X third-party who can keep up with Intel, whilst taking it in the neck in other markets with their own less-than-competitive-but-still-passable fabs?
I mean I'm making up specific examples there, my basic question is about the principle.
Good question in principle.
The only issue is, how AMD has setup the FABs over the course of the previous couple of years.
They were trying to run several lines, AFAIK, in their newer FABs as a way to be more efficient.
If they were to pursue something akin to your example, they would have to spend more capital in converting the fabs over some more, IIRC.
I don't know if they have any of their FABs curently running for dedicated processes.
I suppose it could, though how hard up is Samsung for capacity these days?
In the DRAM markets at least, the talk is of reducing production.
Not that DRAM necessarily has any bearing on logic products.
The limit was on overall x86 production, and it wasn't based on product line.
The agreement has possibly been renegotiated, but the terms are not fully disclosed.
AMD execs in the last conference call refused to answer questions about what percentage the cap may be at.
The question or related questions were asked about 4 times.
The closest answer was Ruiz saying they were "nearly infinite" in their flexibility.
Assuming he's not spouting BS, that may mean the cap was higher or there was a loophole.
Richard was explicit in saying he wouldn't answer that question.
I believe AMD is required to outsource no more than 20% of its x86 production. If it wasn't for that, I could see AMD going fabless or near fabless.
Outsourcing will be only gpus and chipsets, not cpus. In fact, it will pretty much stay the same jsut as it is now...but hopefully chartered can pull some muscle to gether and take some of the chip-load away from TSMC. 
For 3 generations ATI has been plauged by leaky chips...all from TSMC.
For 3 generations ATI has been plauged by leaky chips...all from TSMC.
If other companies are able to use TSMC without problem and ATI is the only one that seems to have trouble, maybe the problem is not TSMC?
So the open letter is asking AMD to not make mistakes, not have limited resources, and spend money that it doesn't have?
I think Hector will get right down to it.
I don't know anything about the retail channel in Israel. I know Intel has a sizeable R&D presence there, since we wouldn't have had Pentium M were it not for the design team there.
edit:
Not that I don't agree that the old AMD's marketing is rather lackluster.
I think Hector will get right down to it.
I don't know anything about the retail channel in Israel. I know Intel has a sizeable R&D presence there, since we wouldn't have had Pentium M were it not for the design team there.
edit:
Not that I don't agree that the old AMD's marketing is rather lackluster.
overclocked_enthusiasm
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http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/070629/20070629005111.html?.v=1
Somebody please tell me how this is anything but awful news? 2.0 GHz on the highend? How do you spell DOA?
Somebody please tell me how this is anything but awful news? 2.0 GHz on the highend? How do you spell DOA?
overclocked_enthusiasm
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p.s. Wouldn't this qualify as another paper launch?
Thats for the server market, 2.0 ghz is fine as long as the TDU is low and priced competitively. Right now AMD is fine with their upcoming CPU's, as long as they scale with Penryn performance per watt nothing much to worry about.
I'll just copy-paste what I said at RWT ( http://realworldtech.com/forums/index.cfm?action=detail&id=80594&threadid=80573&roomid=2 - I figured it was a good excuse for a first post there) so here goes...
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While it is hard to estimate the impact of this on AMD's positioning in the server market (as it depends a lot on a number of factors that cannot be properly estimated before real third-party benchmarks are available), it should be fairly clear that this will be catastrophic from a financial point of view, should it be accurate.
Why? Because this indicates that AMD's products in the desktop market will not be competitive in terms of raw performance, and also not desirable from a margins and/or performance-per-dollar point of view. Some of the intrinsic advantages of Barcelona may indeed matter a lot for the server market, but most of them aren't quite as crucial for desktops.
Unless IPC is significantly above what everyone has been expecting, this indicates that AMD's margins in the desktop space will take another hit with the Barcelona family, rather than recover. And they simply cannot sustain that business (or the overall company, for that matter) at 20% margins...
Considering that desktops were a majority of AMD's gross profits, at least last time I checked (see: http://www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/32/2 ), the implications of these clockspeeds are truly much deeper than most seem to realize.
---
While it is hard to estimate the impact of this on AMD's positioning in the server market (as it depends a lot on a number of factors that cannot be properly estimated before real third-party benchmarks are available), it should be fairly clear that this will be catastrophic from a financial point of view, should it be accurate.
Why? Because this indicates that AMD's products in the desktop market will not be competitive in terms of raw performance, and also not desirable from a margins and/or performance-per-dollar point of view. Some of the intrinsic advantages of Barcelona may indeed matter a lot for the server market, but most of them aren't quite as crucial for desktops.
Unless IPC is significantly above what everyone has been expecting, this indicates that AMD's margins in the desktop space will take another hit with the Barcelona family, rather than recover. And they simply cannot sustain that business (or the overall company, for that matter) at 20% margins...
Considering that desktops were a majority of AMD's gross profits, at least last time I checked (see: http://www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/32/2 ), the implications of these clockspeeds are truly much deeper than most seem to realize.
Aerows
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Damn, reading this thread has begun to be like watching a train wreck and hearing commentary on it at the same time - "Oh look, another passenger tragically injured by debris - and wait, it's about to hit that mother with the stroller crossing the tracks!"
Yet somehow, I find myself unable to stop following it.
Yet somehow, I find myself unable to stop following it.
I don't see too much of a problem with just 2Ghz processors coming out at the start for servers as AMD have promised that higher performing ones will come out the quarter afterwards and this still fits in well with what they have been saying all along, first servers and then desktops.
The only people who will be unhappy are server folk who wanted the top speed processors at the start, but I would imagine there are a lot more who are happy to wait ( server people being fairly conservative ) or get the low power versions of the K10 when they are released.
The importatant thing is for the more speedy K10's to come out in Q4, be at least 2.4GHz and not be delayed again.
The only people who will be unhappy are server folk who wanted the top speed processors at the start, but I would imagine there are a lot more who are happy to wait ( server people being fairly conservative ) or get the low power versions of the K10 when they are released.
The importatant thing is for the more speedy K10's to come out in Q4, be at least 2.4GHz and not be delayed again.
I don't think the "important" thing is clockspeed here, I think the real importance is AMD being able to clearly define what makes them a viable option.
2Ghz wouldn't be an issue if they could outperform Intel's offerings. Chances are, however, that they cannot. 2Ghz wouldn't be an issue if they could provide a better price-to-performance ratio than Intel. But again, chances are that they cannot.
So, if you can't provide better performance and you can't provide a viable cost vs benefit for your product versus the competitor -- then what do you have?
2Ghz wouldn't be an issue if they could outperform Intel's offerings. Chances are, however, that they cannot. 2Ghz wouldn't be an issue if they could provide a better price-to-performance ratio than Intel. But again, chances are that they cannot.
So, if you can't provide better performance and you can't provide a viable cost vs benefit for your product versus the competitor -- then what do you have?
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