AMD Confirms Commitment To x86 163
MrSeb writes with an excerpt from an Extreme Tech story on the recent wild speculation about AMD abandoning x86: "Recent subpar CPU launches and product cancellations have left AMD in an ugly position, but reports that the company is preparing to jettison its x86 business are greatly exaggerated and wildly off base. Yesterday, Mercury News ran a report on AMD's struggles to reinvent itself and included this quote from company spokesperson Mike Silverman: 'We're at an inflection point. We will all need to let go of the old 'AMD versus Intel' mind-set, because it won't be about that anymore.' When we contacted Silverman, he confirmed that the original statement has been taken somewhat out of context and provided additional clarification. 'AMD is a leader in x86 microprocessor design, and we remain committed to the x86 market. Our strategy is to accelerate our growth by taking advantage of our design capabilities to deliver a breadth of products that best align with broader industry shifts toward low power, emerging markets and the cloud.' The larger truth behind Silverman's statement is that no matter what AMD does, it's not going to be 'AMD versus Intel' anymore — it's going to be AMD vs. Qualcomm, TI, Nvidia, and Intel."
Considering Bulldozer ... (Score:5, Interesting)
The larger truth behind Silverman's statement is that no matter what AMD does, it's not going to be 'AMD versus Intel' anymore — it's going to be AMD vs. Qualcomm, TI, Nvidia, and Intel."
Considering the execution of Bulldozer, you could possibly add AMD to the vs. list.
Translation (Score:5, Interesting)
"Our strategy is to accelerate our growth by taking advantage of our design capabilities to deliver a breadth of products that best align with broader industry shifts toward low power, emerging markets and the cloud."
We will continue to make chips for servers, and low end crap. We can't compete with Intel for the consumer market in the short to medium term, however we are still relevant in business circles.
Consumers prepared to be gouged by Intel as soon as they figure this out. Also other than to just "say it" this has been the truth for some time, years in fact. I don't know if it is AMD stumbling or Intel just continuing to hit home runs, but there hasn't exactly been a whole lot of competition since the days of the ye old Athlon 64 series of processors. Ever since Intel came out with the Core 2 Duo, AMD has been unable to come up with an answer. Perhaps it had something to do with diversifying by buying up ATI, diverting capitol or focus away from core business. Ironically the AMD/ATI brand of video cards has a better reputation than the AMD CPU division, if only my opinion...
Re:Am I the onlyone... (Score:2, Interesting)
He just read, "The Innovator's Dilemma," by Clayton Christensen. He sees new innovation in x86 chipmaking as having diminishing returns, making the entire architecture susceptible to other architectures and competitors where new innovation still provides increasing returns.
Re:Radeon may save them... (Score:3, Interesting)
Linux has had better support for ATI than Nvidia cards for at least a generation now.
Re:What's he gonna say? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd be willing to bet that one of AMD's investors is Intel, and while AMD may want to get rid of the x86 business, Intel won't let it.
Intel needs AMD. And AMD's weakened state is ideal for Intel. However, if AMD dies, Intel also suffers (think anti-trust). But with AMD alive, Intel's scrutiny is lowered and they can sell more chips easily.
Heck, I'm willing to bet Intel has next-gen chips ready, but they want to keep AMD viable and are holding off the release. There's no benefit to Intel other than a few percent marketshare if AMD dies, and there's a huge downside of EU regulators, US regulators and very close scrutiny.