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CEOs Of The Motherboard Market Talk Shop 116

Posted by timothy from the fatherboard-makers-abscond dept.
k-hell writes "An interesting piece from AnandTech: 'What do you get when you gather 13 of the most influential CEOs in the motherboard market? An excellent avenue to understand where this industry is headed. Find out what the heads of the motherboard industry think about everything from AMD's Opteron to the future of the worldwide economy in our first quarterly CEO Forum.'"
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CEOs Of The Motherboard Market Talk Shop More

CEOs Of The Motherboard Market Talk Shop

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  • What would be really interesting (Score:5, Interesting)

    by seizer ( 16950 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @05:34AM (#6489197) Homepage
    CEOs are not the visionaries, generally - what would be far more interesting would be to gather some of the leading engineers from these companies, and ask them how they thought the market would progress over the next few years.

    • Re:What would be really interesting (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Graelin ( 309958 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @05:54AM (#6489244)
      CEOs are not the visionaries, generally - what would be far more interesting would be to gather some of the leading engineers from these companies, and ask them how they thought the market would progress over the next few years.

      That may sound good and all, but the engineers have very little to do with the future. That is not their job. The CEO is a very good choice since it is their direction that R&D follows and eventually, the engineers build.

      Better still, would be the CEOs of the real drivers in the industry. Intel, AMD, IBM - where the innovation really takes place. The motherboard companies more or less follow suit to whatever these guys do.

    • Re:What would be really interesting (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jkrise ( 535370 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @06:39AM (#6489341) Journal
      gather some of the leading engineers from these companies, and ask them how they thought the market would progress over the next few years.

      A totally redundant exercise. Engineers normally have a choice - their pet project, or pay-check - they normally choose the latter.

      The way to find out about market directions is to ask the big bosses. BillyBoy would be a nice choice to ask, but he wouldn't speak his mind. You can't ask RMS or Linus - one is a philosopher and the other is just an Engineer - so you go back to Step 1 !

      You can't ask AnandTech or THG - they're paid to report numbers, not analyse and predict. You can't ask Gartner or Aberdeen - they've been bought over severally. That leaves just 2 people - you can ask Slashdot, or just yourself.

      If you asked Slashdot, the noise would drown the signal by a factor of 1000000. The best person to ask this question would be - yourself!!

      I did it (I mean myself) and this is what I came up with. There's a lot of consolidation going on now in the commodity desktop market. There's more than 1 CPU mfr, more than 1 RAM mfr, more than 1 hard disk mfr. , BIOS, video card etc. Controlling all these guys isn't an easy task.

      Both Intel and MS seem to be gunning for a sizable section of the mobo pie. Intel plays it with chipsets, MS plays it with Palladium. Neither is likely to succeed, IMO. The mobo and the tech market stays a commodity market. Windows CANNOT be a commodity OS, hence Linux is the only candidate for the people's OS. Next question please...

      -

  • Geek fight!!!! (Score:4, Funny)

    by BabyDave ( 575083 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @05:35AM (#6489199)
    'What do you get when you gather 13 of the most influential CEOs in the motherboard market?

    A geek Royal Rumble?

  • Where's Linux??? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by advocate_one ( 662832 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @05:37AM (#6489204)
    all those questions and they didn't ask them whether they were going to be more Linux friendly with their motherboards...

    What we really want is proper manufacturers' drivers for all the chipsets on the board, included on the CD that comes with the motherboard.
    • No... we want it open-sourced and put into the kernel. Didn't you forget that binary-drivers are evil and we should boycott any company that releases them?
      • for this and all the others who jumped to conclusions about binary drivers... where did I mention closed source??? I said "proper manufacturers' drivers for all the chipsets on the board"

        nota bene... "proper"... complete with scripts/info files to make adding them to a distro painless for ordinary people, not just "kernel jocks". I've been running Linux for some 4 years now and still haven't compiled a kernel. I haven't had to and can't see the need either.

    • Re:Where's Linux??? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by intermodal ( 534361 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @06:28AM (#6489318) Homepage Journal
      What we really want is proper manufacturers' drivers for all the chipsets on the board, included on the CD that comes with the motherboard.

      No it isn't. What I want are drivers in my kernel, that I can compile with the rest of my kernel, and that I don't have to go to every component's manufacturer's site to get. And in case you haven't noticed, Soyo has been making their boards linux-compliant for a long time now. It's OEM companies that need to be more linux-compliant, and less troublesome with their drivers.

      Even reinstalling Windows on a computer which came with a restore partition without using said restore partition to do it is a hassle due to drivers...
    • What we really want is proper manufacturers' drivers for all the chipsets on the board, included on the CD that comes with the motherboard.

      Exactly! And you can bet your last penny that they'd never ask anyone that question. Not a single CEO would have answered it anyway - they are only too aware that Bill Almighty and Intel Godfather wouldn't like it one bit!

      In fact, the entire meeting simply Ignores Linux - prolly they are in Step 2 of the Ghandicon. I'm inclined to think mobo mfrs could be subsidised b
    • I'm not sure what your complaint is, and I'm sure I'll get deluged with a bunch of singular, "well I had a problem with X" responses...

      But I've had no trouble with motherboards and linux. Just about every OTHER component in my systems, yeah, I've had issues, but not the mobo's. Soyo, Asus, Abit, ECS. I've tried a few of each of these boards, and maybe I'm not a "first-adopter" type, but I've never had issues...

      • Re:Where's Linux??? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by jonadab ( 583620 )
        The only issue I've had with motherboards is getting any OS (not just
        Linux, but Windows too) to use the slipshot onboard junk (onboard
        sound and video mostly; the onboard LAN has only given me trouble
        a couple of times). I've basically concluded that when you buy
        a motherboard you should assume if you don't know otherwise that
        you will have to buy separate sound and video cards even if they
        are supposedly included onboard, so you shouldn't consider a board
        that lacks these onboard components to be inferior in an

  • Motherboard as a commodity... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MosesJones ( 55544 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @05:37AM (#6489205) Homepage

    The problem with assuming that the motherboard CEOs are going to be driving the market is that it misses the fact that there are so many. This happens in commodity markets which become well understood and have a relatively low R&D expense. Higher levels of R&D (for instance graphics cards) mean less competition and higher turnover of companies. The motherboard people provide a required commodity in a computer that is a bit more complex that the power supply, but it is not what will drive the industry forwards.

    These are followers, not leaders, of the industry. Just because they plug-in other peoples processors to specs created by those other people does not mean that they innovate the market. Its an interesting read from people who can see their part of the market, but it doesn't give a roadmap for the longer term.

    Now what I'd like to see would be a closed room discussion with CCTV cameras between, Jobs, Ellison, Gates and McNeally.... with knives. THAT would tell you which way the market was going :-)

    • Perhaps, though, the great deal of manufacturers is more of a blessing. Admittedly, this is a blessing that is not yet being harvested. A mindset change--as hard as it is--might allow these manufacturers to work together towards things users (if only the elite users who understand mainboards) want. This, instead of "Standards are good. Let's make one."

    • Re:Motherboard as a commodity... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jkrise ( 535370 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @06:11AM (#6489281) Journal
      The problem ...motherboard CEOs are going to be driving the market ... there are so many. This happens in commodity markets

      This is actually a good thing. In fact it's the redeeming aspect when Intel makes chipsets that make running Linux a tough experience. A large no. of mobo mfrs means more slaves for MS/Intel to buy out / contain. The market stays a commodity market this way.

      which become well understood and have a relatively low R&D expense

      Actually, we 'think' that the mobo business is a well-understood one. How many of us know the role of mobos in the Palladium effort? How many u'stand the compulsions of BIOS writers like AMI who act as poodles to gorillas? And lastly, 5 mobos with the same chipset give 5 different benchmark results. How does this happen? In a truly commodity market, the only differentiator is price, not performance or quality.

      Just because they plug-in other peoples processors to specs created by those other people does not mean that they innovate the market.

      Processor alone does not a mobo make. In fact, a cheap mobo can screw the performance figures of a top CPU. Mobo mfrs innovate by NOT adopting Palladium, designing own chipsets, etc. It's the rest of the folks - CPU makers, video card makers, s/w writers, etc. that don't innovate.

      "what I'd like to see would be a closed room discussion with CCTV cameras between, Jobs, Ellison, Gates and McNeally.... with knives."

      Actually all 4 of them have enuff money for 100s of lifetimes, and are unlikely to care two hoots about where the tech world is heading. You'd get better results with Bill Gates, RMS, Linus Torvalds, Slashdot Jack and Joe ServicePack - no knives, no censorship, no ducking questions - in full public view. That should be interesting.

      -
      • Actually, we 'think' that the mobo business is a well-understood one. How many of us know the role of mobos in the Palladium effort? How many u'stand the compulsions of BIOS writers like AMI who act as poodles to gorillas? And lastly, 5 mobos with the same chipset give 5 different benchmark results. How does this happen? In a truly commodity market, the only differentiator is price, not performance or quality.

        How many truly look at benchmark results for Motherboards? I know I don't. I look at features.
      • ...Bride wants to marry IBM and screw Linux. Brother MS willing to pay any dowry. Sad to say, it all comes down to money. With the generation of hypocrites and morons, I really wish there should be someone up there who knows the balance between money and realm of technology.
    • IMHO it is you, the people who ultimately drive the market any direction - take these two exaples.

      Gamers choice
      For years gamers bought fast intel based machines until one day AMD came on the scene - i thinks is now fair to say that a good percentage of the serious gaming commutity have now swapped their intel-based pc to the slightly faster, slightly cheaper AMD architecture. There was nothing intel could do except try and match AMDs performace. It is WE who chose AMD over intel for highspeed gaming

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @05:43AM (#6489221)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • The Xbox is the only console that's as PC-like as you seem to think the PS2 and GC are. The PS2 is _nothing_ like a PC, and the GC is no mini-apple at all.
    • Is this insightful? The reason why mobos are cheap commodity items is bcos of the fragmentation. The more a few players like nVidia, Intel etc. dominate - the more the market aggregates and users lose out.

      15 years ago, MS DOS (which can do everything that XP does BTW) was $50 retail.
      8 years ago, Win95 (which can do everything that XP does, except the Active Directory and Kerberos crap) was $50 retail.
      Now, XP Home is $200 retail, and XP-PRo is $300 retail.

      Now look at the h/w market:
      15 years ago the Intel 8
      • DOS and Win95 can do everything WinXP can??? What planet are you on? Hating MS is fine with me, but saying something like that just makes you look like an idiot.

        And where are you finding that P4 2GHz? Pricewatch's [pricewatch.com] cheapest is $112.
        • DOS and Win95 can do everything WinXP can???

          Okay, tell me something you can do with XP, but not with Win95. Don't spout all that Active Directory, Disk Fragmenting, AutoUpdate and other crap. Any useful app that runs on XP, but not on 95?

          BTW, 95 can support USB as well, only MS doesn't promote it.

          -
          • Any kind of *nix-style services. For that matter, running something as a service at all.

            And there LOTS of apps that will run on XP or 2000, but not on 95. Not necessarily because of incompatability, but because 95 simply cannot handle the hardware required for them. Try playing any current games on 95.

            If you're trying to bait me into conceding that most win32 apps will run on both, you're right. However, that's a disengenous argument. Windows 95 would not be able to run my current hardware, nor handle the
            • > I still want to hear you defend your DOS statement.
              > That should be good for a few laughs.

              Oooh, oooh, let me do it... There are actually two ways to
              support his statement that DOS can do anything WinXP can do.

              The first way is to talk about Turing Equivalence. This is the
              same argument used to say that C (or for that matter BASIC) is
              just as powerful as a VHLL (e.g., Perl). It is technically true
              that the one can do anything the other can do; it's just a question
              of how well and how easily and how qu
          • "Okay, tell me something you can do with XP, but not with Win95. Don't spout all that Active Directory, Disk Fragmenting, AutoUpdate and other crap. Any useful app that runs on XP, but not on 95?"

            So basically you want to know something that xp does that 95 doesn't EXCEPT for everything that you don't like. You can't just make a blanket statement like you did and then say, "Oh wait, except for, this, this, and this just because."

            Native support of hyperthreaded processors, actually use more than 128 (or is
          • BTW, 95 can support USB as well, only MS doesn't promote it.

            Only Win95-C as I recall, not the original Win95, Win95-A or Win95-B. Microsoft doesn't exactly advertise it, but it does mention USB support on the CD itself. By the way, there is no upgrade path from an earlier version of Win95 to Win95-C. Somebody correct me if I remember incorrectly? It's been awhile.
          • Journaling File System. Real support for multiple users. You obviously dont understand what active directory is if you throw it in with system utilities (Active Directory has completely changed the way windows networks are run for the better). 95's USB support is total crap. Take on of those keychain usb drives and try walking up to a win95 machines, plugging it in, and be using it 10 seconds later like you can on any win2k or XP system. You sir are just a troll or so blinded by your irrational hatred
    • Wow..

      It's getting to the point that having everything on-board on the MoBo is actually a good idea. They are cheap, and despensible.

      And mostly very low quality.

      If something goes wrong, you simply swap out the board and you end up getting an upgrade to the rest of the components in the processes. Not to mention how wasteful this is, I've yet to see a motherboard manufacturer do a decent job with any of the on-board crap they stick in. On-board sound? Decent, but what if you want surround? Let's sa

    • We've got a LONG way to go in terms of ease of computer assembly before I'll agree that swapping out motherboards is a "good idea".

  • The question they didn't ask (Score:5, Funny)

    by Zog The Undeniable ( 632031 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @05:51AM (#6489237)
    Will you continue to save 2 cents per board by using cheap electrolytic capacitors that leak after 12 months' use?
  • Nothing about mini-itx? What the heck.

    This article said little to nothing. The only part of interest was what the ceo's thought the effect 9/11 were.

  • Attack of the clones (Score:5, Insightful)

    by XNormal ( 8617 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @06:08AM (#6489278) Homepage
    I find it interesting that CEO#5 on question 1 refers to "clone market". This term used to be popular when the "real" PC was IBM and the cheap Taiwanese compatibles were "clones" but it's been a long time since I last heard anyone refer to a generic PC as a "clone".

  • What do you get... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 21, 2003 @06:11AM (#6489286)
    "What do you get when you gather 13 of the most influential CEOs in the motherboard market? "

    A cartel?

    Bet you any money they still won't be able to produce laptop-sized motherboards for sale to the general public - presumably to ensure that you can't get a decent laptop for less than £1300.
    • There are real technical issues to laptop motherboards. It's not all 'Cartel effect' no matter how much people might like to invent a conspiracy.

      Two of the biggest issues that come to mind:

      1: Laptops have much tighter motherboard/peripheral/case integration than desktops. Desktops practically have none at all, just wrap plastic or metal around standard-sized components and make sure you have enough air packaged in there that it can flow. Clearances inside a standard case can be measured in substantial fra
    • Bet you any money they still won't be able to produce laptop-sized motherboards for sale to the general public

      You could, if you wanted a POS Kiwi or something like that. I really doubt you can get too much cheaper. Stuff that goes into a laptop is expensive due to the size difference, mini hard drives, mini optical drives, LiOn batteries, mini power supplies, etc.

      When you have lots of space like in the ATX case, it's easy to standardize on pretty much one size, vs. the rediculous number of size form fa

  • questionable value (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ReallyQuietGuy ( 683431 ) on Monday July 21, 2003 @06:14AM (#6489292)
    (a) all of these vendors are ultimately competitors. surely the things they will publicly agree on as "good/bad/whatever" will be agreed on because it is the lowest common denominator, blindingly obvious, or otherwise something that does not give away internal development hints nor affect the bottom line (b) all of these vendors are ultimately in thrall to the one big kahuna of the motherboard industry, Intel. By this I don't mean in terms of motherboards shipped (even though Intel does ship a whole lot) - I mean in terms of the CPUs used and the chipsets supplied. Which one of these CEOs is going to give the skinny on strong-arm-elbow-twisting, e.g. anti-VIA action, etc.? The CEO that is shorting his own stock, that's who. So they DO talk some about Intel (Nvidia's interactions etc.) - what's it really worth? Are they REALLy telling you the inside news? (c) historically industry predictions have always been fucked up. One big reason why Moore's "law" is repeatedly cited is because it's one of the few predictions that came out more-or-less true: where are our flying cars, robot helpers, etc? nowhere, that's where. "motherboards will get smaller". Excellent prediction, Sherlock. Let me predict another: the model numbers will increment. This kind of "news" is the kind of pap that rubbish news/journos push out, like how all those articles trumpeting the impact of the dotcoms right up until the bubble burst.

    • OK Fine... It was modded up, good for you, but (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 21, 2003 @07:33AM (#6489449)
      FOR THE LOVE OF GOD LEARN TO USE PARAGRAPHS



      blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

    • Exactly!

      This isn't popular to say I'm sure, but when it comes to pushing new technologies out the door into motherboard design, Intel is the clear frontrunner. Let's go through some of the items we now take for granted that Intel brought to us:

      • ACPI
      • ATX form factor (a godsend, IMHO)
      • integrated USB
      • AGP
      • the first PC IO-APIC
      • CPU ZIF-socket design (I remember soldered chips as late as 1991)
      • Integrated hardware monitoring chipsets
      • Northbridge/Southbridge chip architecture

      And I'm sure I've left out quite a

  • Interesting how AnandTech has no qualms about putting words into the mouths of their interviewees, even when they are captains of industry. Anybody try to click on the orange links embedded in the text? Don't! They all go to an advertisement for Microsoft Business Solutions.

    It is also not clear whether the replies from CEO#1 refers to the first CEO in the list at the top of the article, or if the order has purposely been scrambled to limit the fallout at a given company. When I clicked on the a link (the

    • When I clicked on the a link (the word "business" in CEO#2's reply, I thought I would find out what company he was from, instead it sends you to a big popup window for Microsoft. You must be running some funky addin because there was not any "business" link on my webpage
    • Sounds like you may have Ezula [i4net.tv] spyware installed.
    • It is also not clear whether the replies from CEO#1 refers to the first CEO in the list at the top of the article, or if the order has purposely been scrambled to limit the fallout at a given company.

      "We presented the CEOs with a selection of 10 questions, the answers to which you will find in the coming pages. Our format has made it so that CEO #1 for question 1 is not the same CEO #1 for question 2 and so on. Comments made by each CEO have not been attributed to them and have been purposely jumbled arou

  • Interresting (at least for me) is that most of the CEO's see a emerging market in barebone desktops and servers.
    This means that they see Linux et al. taking a more substansial part of the market.

  • Quick Summary (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mattr ( 78516 ) <mattr.telebody@com> on Monday July 21, 2003 @07:27AM (#6489428) Homepage Journal
    Well I slammed Anandtech for selling Microsoft a link to every time the word "business", "technology", or "applications" shows up even when it is in a direct quote from the CEOs they are interviewing. Let's get a quick recap!

    • 4 questions about the economy (it's getting a little better but not stellar)
    • 2 questions about future goals (market consolidation and cost pressures will continue, so we'll play it smart)
    • 1 question on China (it's cheaper there)
    • 2 questions blindsided by simultaneous press releases
    • 1 interesting (but not earthshattering) question about predominance of graphics chipset manufacturers. Unfortunately they all answered differently so no followup except a note about ATI's deal with Intel.
    On second thought Anandtech's problem with ethical advertising is perhaps moot since they hardly made the success this article is portrayed to be. Lukewarm answers with little relevance to most Slashdot readers.

    Think of the questions they could have asked! I thought maybe they would pull a fast one by getting grassroots support for NVIDIA onboard but nope. Sony (who have just announced they will use their own chips in the future) has experimented with manufacturing based on user requests. And there ought to be quite a lot of competition if 20 companies are involved. How come there is no attempt to laser in on how to make use of this competition by announcing plans for exciting technology, modularity, form factors, even information most people don't know about, like how many motherboards you have to buy before you can ask them for custom designs? Are we just reading about cloneheads or are we reading about the killers of the Onyx? Come on!

    Here is an example. I recently saw the Grape supercomputer chip which was built in Japan for astronomical calculations being used for simulation of molecules (van der waals and other forces) for bioinformatics. The thing ran off a linux box. Now these chips are maybe a bit hairy and custom, certainly only a handful around. But Apple's Altivec vector processor has proven to be one of the reasons people are using their machines in the bioinfo industry (one of the few growing ones right now).

    I mean geez, not even any information about on-board digital video encoding support or things which might even have some impact on say linux pvrs or consumer demand. What about onboard support for high speed communications like GB ethernet, 802.11g, 3G/4G, firewire?

    How about some information about motherboard manufacturers offering some juicy performance or (shudder) some words on maybe reversing the trend toward planned obsolescense? Would you not pay a little more for a motherboard that could stick with the next generation of chips without having to be thrown in the closet?

    • Hello! You've already got replies telling you this, but try running AdAware and getting rid of the spyware thats putting those links there for you. The rest of us don't see them.
  • I found the reaction of CEO #1 to the question of bigger companies getting bigger and small companies getting smaller rather odd.

    CEO #1: ...wasn't IBM the biggest computer company 20 years ago? We believe a company with creative mindset and innovation tradition can always find a way to differentiate products.

    IBM may have taken a backseat to more visible companies like Microsoft, Intel, AMD, Apple, etc, but I wouldn't say they've gotten smaller. In my mind, IBM is the 900 pound gorilla that you shouldn
  • Perhaps someone could clear this question up for me. Who would ever buy a motherboard branded 'Albatron'?
  • 8% is 'low' growth? For one thing people need to readjust their expectations, it's all relative (just like 'fast' is relative to something). When your growth rates are 25-30% and then normalcy returns, 12% growth is 'doom, gloom and disaster'. However when your savings are getting 1.5%, then 12% is fantastic. The period of everybody going from no pc to having a pc and then upgrading every 3 years are largely over and not likely to return, just like the Japan boom in the 80's when the US went from no vcr's a
  • Really is that so hard. Should I be forced to use a PCI card if I want to dual head it w/o buying a dual head card - what if I want to quad head it, shouldn't I be able to use 2 AGP ports.
    • having two AGP slots kinda negates the benifits of having an AGP slot, no?
      • I guess I don't understand AGP slot theory. I thought it was just faster than PCI. I'll go read up on it, thanks.
        • Look what I found [aceshardware.com]

          I guess AGP 3.0 Spec allows this. Although the next reply seems to disagree, but the one after that agrees. hmm.

          Also, the Alpha Server has 2 AGP slots as an option, but that's not a typical gamer machine.

          Here [lostcircuits.com], is further proof that AGP 3.0 allows 2 AGP slots:

          The general layout of the A7N8X Deluxe shows one AGP Pro slot and five PCI slots. This is different from the A7N266(-E) and also different from the preproduction boards that were circulated courtesy of AMD and that featured the a

  • Warning Don't read science fiction and slashdot at the same time..
  • I agree, two major PC buying groups (1) Gamers heavy, and (2) SOHO light, but I think there is another (3) Specialty/Hobby weird, wired, and wireless.

    For the other group I provide my dream future (3-5 years from now):~o
    (1) less than $5K, (2) multi-RISC-processors (maybe transmeta) 7 GHz 64bit instructions per cycle (3) any and all OS(multiple, Vmware, Linux&BSD&Microsoft&...) with any all Applications (including Apple-X & Active-X [just a point ... not a want]) (4) 40 to 80GB SSD for the ex
  • What do you get when you gather 13 of the most influential CEOs in the motherboard market?

    The mother of all motherboards?

    Well sheesh, somebody had to say it.

  • ... how many of these guys are planning to jump on board with TCPA?

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