AMD Not Competing with Intel Anymore, Goes Mobile

[Lexcyn]

Yes this is.

Not that they are completely gonna stop making new processors, just a little less attention

I read the original article they quoted from Mercury, and it just sounds like they are going to broaden their portfolio rather than drop desktop processors. Softpedia just made it seem a bit too sensational to get more page views, IMO.

[remixedcat]

Nvidia desktop computer CPUs anyone????

[Nerd Rage]

Nvidia desktop computer CPUs anyone????

I hope someone else steps up to keep Intel in check. I bet Intel is having an office party right now......with cake!

[BetaAddict]

Nvidia desktop computer CPUs anyone????

Nvidia is the best shot at keeping Intel in check. Their great success with Tegra SoC line on the mobile front continues to dominate and keep enthusiasts drooling for new devices. Translate that success towards putting together an SoC for desktops with a decent CPU and hardcore Nvidia GPU, they could manage comparable performance as an Intel CPU and dedicated GPU combo. Of course, it is easier said than done.

I firmly believe the future is more on the graphics side these days than CPU given that devs are adding graphics acceleration for almost everything these days and there are very few daily end-user programs that will actually utilize a quad-core, let alone a six-core or eight-core setup that are a couple of years away from mainstream use.

[Syanide]

I read the original article they quoted from Mercury, and it just sounds like they are going to broaden their portfolio rather than drop desktop processors. Softpedia just made it seem a bit too sensational to get more page views, IMO.

This.

I hardly doubt they'll exit the desktop market, still a lot of money in it.

[funkydude]

Yay, next generation CPU's from Intel to sky rocket in price.

Not only that, when there's no competition there's no innovation. Look at smartphones, quad core already, whilst the PC CPU market gets more and more stale every day.

As usual it's up to AMD to try and innovate, and they did that by pushing 8 cores. Unfortunately the fact that they suck means we're still here sitting on 4 cores and Intel don't need to do bugger all to change things.

Intel is going to return to what it what before AMD came and stole it's thunder ~10 years ago, it will be like what IE was when there was no competition. A pain in the behind.

[Praetor]

a sad news, indeed. been a AMD fan for so long (hello Duron) for their low cost, high performance. and this means low / no competition on the x86-x64 market? sad.

[remixedcat]

Nvidia is the best shot at keeping Intel in check. Their great success with Tegra SoC line on the mobile front continues to dominate and keep enthusiasts drooling for new devices. Translate that success towards putting together an SoC for desktops with a decent CPU and hardcore Nvidia GPU, they could manage comparable performance as an Intel CPU and dedicated GPU combo. Of course, it is easier said than done.

I firmly believe the future is more on the graphics side these days than CPU given that devs are adding graphics acceleration for almost everything these days and there are very few daily end-user programs that will actually utilize a quad-core, let alone a six-core or eight-core setup that are a couple of years away from mainstream use.

agreed but media encoding uses multicores... specially the programs I use called DBPowerAmp and Handbrake. I love how DBPA uses one core per song to encode. does it at 56x speed typically. if I had more CPU cores it would be better (I got 4 core Phenom) and HB is freakin quick as well!!!

[MistaT40]

Always been an Intel guy - but I did give AMD a chance with their Ahtlons - didnt give me anything but headaches. But staying in the PC market, they would still be relevant at least, going into mobile is suicidal unless they can come out with processors that are better than ARM. Even Intel with their deep pockets is having a tough time fighting ARM - who's to say AMD will have any more success?

[+DDG3595 Subscriber²]

I'm probably going to get flamed for this but I don't think AMD is going to last much longer. Bulldozer is, by all reports, a failure and the graphics division can't sustain them forever. Nvidia will get their CPU division with Intel taking the graphics portion; thus will be AMD's end.

[ryoohki]

Not only that, when there's no competition there's no innovation. Look at smartphones, quad core already, whilst the PC CPU market gets more and more stale every day.

As usual it's up to AMD to try and innovate, and they did that by pushing 8 cores. Unfortunately the fact that they suck means we're still here sitting on 4 cores and Intel don't need to do bugger all to change things.

Intel is going to return to what it what before AMD came and stole it's thunder ~10 years ago, it will be like what IE was when there was no competition. A pain in the behind.

Innovate for what reason? There's NO NEED for that in the PC Market. The only multi CPU apps are Compiling, Video Editing and Server, witch is a very very small section of the Consummer Electronic section. Most people that buy higher end CPU are gamers and because of console, 99% of game use 2 CORES, 3 at TOP! So there's no real need for more cores. Cores are not the anwser as we've seen with AMD vs INTEL 1155 platform.

Mobile are getting to 4 core because of gaming ,there's no other use right now for that market since people use them, but not as complete computers

[ryoohki]

Lately ATI/AMD is killing themselve with their drivers. The autumn was a big fail for their driver team et even more for people that have CrossFire. There's tons of complaning on hardware forums about it right now. Yes, they are complains for Nvidia too, but it's wayyyy less aggravating. Even Saint's Row 3, a AMD backed game, doesn't even work correctly right now because of drivers issue, some Nvidia people experience problems too but the thread is only 3 pages long vs 10+ pages on the ATI thread.

This is going to hurt them, as a lot of their customer, unhappy, are waiting for Kepler Release in Feb/March 2012.

[Circaflex]

really this is a shame, this means intel can charge whatever high prices they want for their chips now. this is really bad for the consumer and really upset me. I really wanted to go AMD next round but with BD being less than what was expected, it wasnt an option for right now.

[Kreuger]

Misleading title. They're going to focus their efforts on mobile but still create desktop too.

[AltecXP]

I used to love AMD. Intact its all I've ever built, and some of what I've bought pre-built and in laptops. Lately though they have been lacking. When a stock Core i3 is trouncing a Phenom II 965 OC'd to 3.7GHz in a few applications then it's just not looking good.

Even if AMD could do i5 performance, or low i7 when OC'd at i3 or entry i5 costs I'd still get them, but it's just not that impressive now. AMD is now here they should have been 2-3 years ago. Maybe my next home build will be AMD, maybe it won't. it will really comp down to cost and what I want to do with it, but Intel is now looking very appealing.

[+Zlip792 MVC]

Bad for us though, without AMD there is no competition in the market which means Intel doesnt have to innovate or be competitive price wise.

Yes, I agree with you that no competition, so Intel monopoly as a result current 1000$ processor in 1500$ processor.

I must say they should further develop their Llano series, it is damn awesome, if it will be available in my country (here you have to do some real efforts to get AMD system), I will sure recommend it to my relatives and friends building new system.

Focusing on one thing much better will lead them to master it. I am lately highly impressed by AMD GPUs but due to demand constrain even these are costly in here (except few stores).

[majortom1981]

The problem with AMD focusing on mobile is that intel is inbed with apple. Intels mobile chips are now catering to apples needs . So intel will get great low power performance because apples needs them too.

Then add arm to the mix and amd is in trouble.

I really think amd should split the graphics and cpu company back into two seperate companies.

[Yusuf M. Veteran]

I remember when AMD released their Athlon 64 CPUs back in late-2003. It forced Intel to drop the prices on their CPUs significantly. I was hoping their Bulldozer microarchitecture would put them in a good position against Intel but unfortunately, that didn't happen.

I really hope AMD doesn't take too much away from their desktop CPU side. Less innovation from them would likely result in less innovation from Intel (and possibly even higher prices).

[TruckWEB]

Anyway, Intel will have to fight against nVidia, Samsung, TI, .... in the ARM race when Windows8 launch.

Same goes for AMD.... They don't have any experience in the mobile market except for their embedded Geode CPU....

[watchthisspace]

Innovate for what reason? There's NO NEED for that in the PC Market. The only multi CPU apps are Compiling, Video Editing and Server, witch is a very very small section of the Consummer Electronic section. Most people that buy higher end CPU are gamers and because of console, 99% of game use 2 CORES, 3 at TOP! So there's no real need for more cores. Cores are not the anwser as we've seen with AMD vs INTEL 1155 platform.

Mobile are getting to 4 core because of gaming ,there's no other use right now for that market since people use them, but not as complete computers

I'm sorry, can you please go look up how a CPU works? Because you're wrong. More cores = more efficiency.. A CPU can only process ONE thread at ONE time, while the other threads wait and the taskmon assigns processing time for the. A dual core CPU now has TWO threads, therefore it can process TWO threads at ONE time.

It's not that having more cores is the problem, the problem is that programmers are lazy arrogant jerks who would do not choose to programme for multicore CPU's, which negates the purpose of a multicore CPU.. and yes, games are a perfect example to show where innovation in programmig is actually starting to exploit the benefits of multicore CPU's.

Go email Microsoft and ask them why in Windows Vista and 7 that they optimised their OS to benefit from multicore CPU's? And Apple too.

Why don't you go use a single core AMD Athlon 64 3500 or intel P4 and tell us how great a single core cpu is?

Its people like you who would keep us back in the stone age with you "we don't need it" thinking..

AMD's bulldozer CPU's are very multithreaded optimised and this is where they fail. AMD jumped the gun a little too far in the consumer market and should of made their CPUs be better at single threading and not so great at multithreading.

[chrisj1968]

look as posted before; in the article AND by the post above. re-read the article.. it says they will still create pc hardware but they are focusing on mobile as well

[Draconian Guppy]

yeah, agreed, BUT what does exactly "not focusing" on pc hardware mean? Less R & D and what is that equals to? Their pc hardware side eventually dying out.

[spaceelf]

And here I just got an A8-3850.

Long time AMD fan. Bulldozer certainly would kill my enthusiasm for their high end, but I've got an i7. The likelihood of me needing an upgrade anytime in the next two years is low.

I do obviously need a quieter machine for general use, so I got one.

[Tekkerson]

I'm sorry, can you please go look up how a CPU works? Because you're wrong.

You're actually the one that's wrong. It's not that the programmers are lazy. Making programs costs money, a lot of money, it's not always possible due to budget constraints on whoever is developing the software.

Now that's just the economical side of it.

As for the technical side, there's also programs (internally) that don't scale well with different cores.

If the processor is working with different sets of unrelated data, the program will have high parallelization and take advantage of multiple CPUs.

But sometimes when you have one large set of data or algorithm and depending on the program, there is a common limitation that you can't use more than one CPU because it has to wait for the first CPU to finish what it's doing before continuing to process the data. Which in case, makes parallelization and multiple cores useless.

For example the Fibonacci sequence F(k + 2) = F(k + 1) + F(k) is strictly sequential and cannot take advantage of multiple CPUs

[devHead]

This is sad for me; I've only ever bought and used AMD CPUs because Intel chips were always more expensive primarily because of their name (and likely all the advertising they do). Now I'll have to save up a couple extra hundred dollars before I upgrade just to buy an Intel chip.