Former Intel Fellow: AMD Struggling to Remain Competitive

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In a speech at the Primary Global Research Technology conference, former Intel Fellow Fred Pollack said he doesn’t see AMD returning to profitability anytime soon. Pollack also said that AMD would be on “life support” right now had it not been for the GlobalFoundries deal.

"Traditionally, AMD has been profitable when it has a CPU advantage against Intel," Pollack said. "That is not currently the case. AMD is more than one generation behind Intel in CPU architecture and one-plus year away in 32-nm process technology."
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Dear Intel the more you talk smack about your ONLY Competition the MORE i go towards them. its the smack trash talking sh*t that makes ME go always to the OTHER side. and besides PRICE for Performance im saving over 400 bucks by using AMD on my next build with the same specs intel wise it would be over 1,000 you do the math..my money not yours so keep talking your smack intel you'll NEVER get my business your scared intel you cant compete on AMD's level :D here i come AMD\ATI :D
 
ok how is this news worthy its a former employee talking trash its like a judge that prosecuting a death case .....
 
wow so Intel admits that there was a time when AMD CPUs were better than what Intel had to offer... wonder if they would clarify for us when that was... I'm guessing it was about the time when they had to bribe and threaten PC makers into not buying AMD. :)
 
Two you two AMD fanboys who've posted already, here is your dictionary word for today: Former.

Go look it up.
 
it's news worthy cause Intel (former intel) perp has admitted to AMD having better CPUs than Intel in the past. Care to wager when that was?

I'm sure its the same time frame where Korea, Japan and EU found Intel guilty of illegal practices against their competition.

There was a time when AMD and Intel was neck in neck... now AMD is a year or more behind AMD... one can argue that the reason for that now is due, in no small part, to Intel and their incentives/threats to PC makers.
 
Maybe this former Intel Fellow can state other groundbreaking and unknown facts.

Former Intel Fellow: AMD Struggling to Remain Competitive
Former Intel Fellow: The sky is Blue
Former Intel Fellow: Water is wet
Former Intel Fellow: The Earth is round

I sense a whole new series coming out of this.
 
care to look up cpu reviews from a while back... and see which CPU was better?

This isnt a case of being a fan of anyone... its about screwing over your smaller competition with illegal means to get ahead when you end up as second place while being the industry giant.

If I were buying a new CPU it'll be an i7. Does that still make me an amd fanboy? get over yourself.

As a consumer I'll buy the best product available with the best price regardless of merchant or brand.

It sucks when cheaters get ahead. Business is cut throat but that doesnt mean you can use illegal means to get ahead.

I will never understand folks who swear up and down to labels and brands like they can do no wrong and must always be the best and their competition being garbage.
 
Everything Fred Pollack stated is true but Intel plays way to dirty for my taste. I wouldn't be surprised if some vendors admitted to getting payola from Intel to keep their Anti-competitive practice strong. No one likes a bully.
 
AMD is pretty far behind technically speaking. They blame it on intel saying that they would't be so far behind if they had a chance to grow in the market back when Athlon 64 was the best CPU. I dunno if that is true or not that's a question of number crunching.
 
Intel's got a tricky balancing act to perform. On the one hand, they don't want to go back to the Athlon / Athlon 64 days of losing market share. On the other, if AMD never recovers they'll be viewed increasingly as a monopoly and subject to more lawsuits and regulation. Not that I'd rather be in AMD's shoes than Intel's, mind you.
 
brom42 said:
Former Intel Fellow: The sky is Blue
Former Intel Fellow: Water is wet
Former Intel Fellow: The Earth is round

I sense a whole new series coming out of this.
Click to expand...

Now is not the time for rational thinking
 
As much as it would be awesome for AMD to die and all these AMD haters forced to pay for monopoly tech it's not worth it. Ignorant trash talkers are their own worst enemy.

AMD's problems are probably not caused 100% by Intel, but Intel hasn't played fair and contributed a fair amount just like Micro$oft attempts to hold onto its thrown, Intel tries to snuff out its competition by any means necessary. (Gotta love monetary based society's)
 
arthur_tuxedo said:
Intel's got a tricky balancing act to perform. On the one hand, they don't want to go back to the Athlon / Athlon 64 days of losing market share. On the other, if AMD never recovers they'll be viewed increasingly as a monopoly and subject to more lawsuits and regulation. Not that I'd rather be in AMD's shoes than Intel's, mind you.
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lets just say, that if intel had not bribed their competitors, what is right now a 70-30 market share for intel would've been a 50-50 share, with AMD most PROBABLY having much better hardware available for consumers, and intel releasing core i7 atleast 1 year earlier.
 
Sadly it's true on the CPU front. I really wish they were more competative in the desktop market; because when intel and AMD are duking it out it usually means good deals as they attempt to undercut one another.
 
niconx said:
AMD is pretty far behind technically speaking. They blame it on intel saying that they would't be so far behind if they had a chance to grow in the market back when Athlon 64 was the best CPU. I dunno if that is true or not that's a question of number crunching.
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They're probably talking about the Athlon XP to early Athlon 64 era. Not only that but their chips were cheaper then Intels. So why the hell was everyone selling Pentium 4's in their PCs?
 
It's sad, and bad for the competition, that they're technically behind nowadays. Intel has always got the edge in manufacturing processes, but AMD is not lagging behind only because that. It feels like AMD has given up competing in the high end, and only focusing on the low-mid range. Hopefully that will not be the case also in gpu's and graphics.
 
Look,what's done is done. Did Intel play dirty in the past? Sure,most big corporations do. But they're being watched pretty closely now,so it's unlikely they'll be able to get away with much. Dwelling on the past isn't going to keep AMD afloat. In the end,their survival is up to them,if they don't start catching up soon,it's over. The bottom line is,whoever puts out the best CPU's is going to get my business.
 
michael.pa2 said:
Look,what's done is done. Did Intel play dirty in the past? Sure,most big corporations do. But they're being watched pretty closely now,so it's unlikely they'll be able to get away with much. Dwelling on the past isn't going to keep AMD afloat. In the end,their survival is up to them,if they don't start catching up soon,it's over. The bottom line is,whoever puts out the best CPU's is going to get my business.
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That's like saying, I'm sorry about shooting off you leg and all, but lets not dwell in the past. What's done is done. Now lets continue running down this track, and whoever is ahead gets the gold prize.
 
michael.pa2 said:
Look,what's done is done. Did Intel play dirty in the past? Sure,most big corporations do. But they're being watched pretty closely now,so it's unlikely they'll be able to get away with much. Dwelling on the past isn't going to keep AMD afloat. In the end,their survival is up to them,if they don't start catching up soon,it's over. The bottom line is,whoever puts out the best CPU's is going to get my business.
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Intel's scumbag business practices may have caused irreparable damage to AMD. Apologies aren't going to make much of a difference now. Admittedly, AMD should expect blame too because they had their boot heals on the necks of Intel and they let them off the canvas. Consumers minds have been conditioned to think that AMD doesn't make great processors anymore when in fact, they're excellent. Now consumers suffer from the "Intel Lemming affect"
 
Who really gives a shit about CPU performance when making a gaming system since the video card is really the determining factor, especially of physx or other video acceleration takes off. This basically means going with the cheaper guy, i.e. AMD isn't a big loss for most people unless you plan on doing heavily CPU dependent tasks. If you build yourself a new system instead of upgrading, then buying AMD is an even better option.
 
BettiePage said:
wow so Intel admits that there was a time when AMD CPUs were better than what Intel had to offer... wonder if they would clarify for us when that was... I'm guessing it was about the time when they had to bribe and threaten PC makers into not buying AMD. :)
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That is extremely easy. It was when the Pentium 4 chip was out, it was a very badly designed chip. When the P4 first hit the market, the 1.4ghz P4 was out performed in games by the 800mhz PIII. It was due to the P4's ridiculously long data bus between the CPU and the memory bus. So AMD has a easy lead back then with the AMD64 the first 64bit chips and Intel was doddling around with 32bit. Intel kept ramping up their P4 chips but AMD easily stayed in the lead with 1ghz slower MHZ clocked AMD64 chips.

Once Intel introduced the Intel Core 2 Duo, AMD lost the lead and has since never caught back up.
 
He's mostly right about AMD. They just moved to the 45nm process while Intel is getting ready to transition to 32nm. They are still playing catch up with the Core 2 line, against CPUs that were released years ago by now. Still, AMD has been executing really well for the past 9 months or so. They should at least stop losing money soon...

Once Intel introduced the Intel Core 2 Duo, AMD lost the lead and has since never caught back up.
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That's how it has always worked. In the Netburst vs K8 days, AMD had a superior architecture. Currently, Intel has a superior architecture. The Core execution engine is wider and the scheduling is less restrictive than K10. The integrated memory controller, shared L3 cache etc. allows the K10 to make up for some of it, but the fact that the Core micro architecture is about 20% faster clock for clock can't be changed.

K10 is simply too similar to K8. AMD made some good changes (K10 has nearly caught up with Core 2 in SIMD performance), but in the end, too few changes. Rumors have it AMD went through several more radical designs that were later scrapped, before finally deciding on going with a tweaked K8 design in order to get something out the door. This would explain the stagnation of the K8 series and the early problems with the Phenom.

AMD's next chance will be when they introduce their next micro architecture in a few years. After all, Intel can't always release a product like the Core 2. Revolutionary products like that are pretty rare (K7, R300 and maybe G80 being the only other recent examples that really count IMO.). If the next Intel CPU is as evolutionary as Nehalem (which is still very much a Core 2 inside), while AMDs is a significant improvement over K8/K10, AMD has a chance of catching up.
 
the Phenom core is still a K8 or K8L.... its not a true new core like the Core is.

The K9 was scrapped

AMD's next GEN to battle INTEL is the K11 or Bulldozer... totally new core

AMD is so fund limited its been slow to get the K11 out the door to meet INTEL on the High End.
The deal will to form GLOBAL...should free up alot of money to push the K11 out ... but who knows when
Until then..its more of the K8 derivatives until then
 
imzjustplayin said:
Who really gives a shit about CPU performance when making a gaming system since the video card is really the determining factor, especially of physx or other video acceleration takes off. This basically means going with the cheaper guy, i.e. AMD isn't a big loss for most people unless you plan on doing heavily CPU dependent tasks. If you build yourself a new system instead of upgrading, then buying AMD is an even better option.
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yeah... if u are building a gaming machine.. with a high end GPU... you wont see a lack of difference between AMD or Intel in Games
 
DukenukemX said:
They're probably talking about the Athlon XP to early Athlon 64 era. Not only that but their chips were cheaper then Intels. So why the hell was everyone selling Pentium 4's in their PCs?
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The Slot-A Athlons were when AMD started to pull ahead of Intel. Especially the last couple which were Slot-A T-birds.

I am very happy to say that I have only ever purchased one Intel Processor. And that was a used 486DX2-66.

The processor in my sig was given to me. The sad truth is, if it had not been given to me, I probably eould have bought one anyhow as the Core2 wiped the floor with AMD stuff at that time.

Even now as AMD is finally starting to catch up again I am still waiting for them to release a better product than what is currently available.

But.. AMD has been ahead of Intel for years in terms of "elegance in design" The Athlon 64 had on-die memory controller and they were first with a monolithic dual core.

And before the Core2, AMD wiped the floor with anything Intel had to offer.

I did always wonder why I NEVER saw a single commercial for AMD products on television. Did Intel pay off the tv stations or did AMD just drop the ball in advertising on that front?
 
AMD probably didn't/doesn't have the funds to push a wide advertising campaign and had to rely on word of mouth through the enthusiast community to advertise their processors. Remember the pressure Dell got from the community in the Athlon XP and A64 days to start putting AMD procs in their desktops?

Before my q6600, the last Intel proc I bought was a PII-450..The thunderbirds were really good price/performance wise and AMD held that crown up until the Core2's. I'd love for AMD to catch up so we have some true competition like we finally have again in the GPU arena.

Right now, AMD still seems like they're in a hole they can't get out of as Intel is really raising the bar with every release. It's almost like AMD has to wait for Intel to falter to have a chance to catch up

I could care less about branding, I just want the best price/performance..
 
GunzofNavarone said:
the Phenom core is still a K8 or K8L.... its not a true new core like the Core is.

The K9 was scrapped

AMD's next GEN to battle INTEL is the K11 or Bulldozer... totally new core

AMD is so fund limited its been slow to get the K11 out the door to meet INTEL on the High End.
The deal will to form GLOBAL...should free up alot of money to push the K11 out ... but who knows when
Until then..its more of the K8 derivatives until then
Click to expand...

what crack are you on the phenom is the 1st true quad core chip it is not a k8
 
AMD is, and allways be competitive to Intel, they had more innovative solutions than company with 10x more resources and untrusted tactics to harm other companies and market. If there were no AMD, today we should read forums on 1GHz Itanium rigs.
 
DukenukemX said:
They're probably talking about the Athlon XP to early Athlon 64 era. Not only that but their chips were cheaper then Intels. So why the hell was everyone selling Pentium 4's in their PCs?
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Simple: however good AMD's processors were/are, their achilles heel has always been chipsets. Even in the K8 days, there were two choices: very crappy (VIA KT) or mostly crappy (NFORCE). It wasn't until AMD bought ATI and started spinning their own chipsets that they finally got a good platform. OEM computer makers didn't want to push out systems that had chipsets with a consistently bad stability/longevity track record. However bad Netburst was, the 875 and 915 chipsets were rock solid, and we've still got systems in my group that use that chipset.
Posted via [H] Mobile Device
 
I have been building / using AMD systems since the K5 days. I have never built an Intel system, nor do I ever intend to. I'm not here to say AMD is better. I'm just fiercely loyal to the brand.
 
maxius said:
hell all the phenoms are k10 not bastard offspring of the k8
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Yes, but the K10 architecture is quite similar to K8. It's no wider, it doesn't feature better scheduling etc. There are some improvements, like a 128-bit SSE unit (vs 64-bit on K8), but there just aren't enough improvements.

The progressive changes Intel made from the original Pentium-M to the Core 2 added up are huge compared to the changes AMD made from K8 to K10.
 
Taxi said:
Two you two AMD fanboys who've posted already, here is your dictionary word for today: Former.

Go look it up.
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Normally I don't do spelling or grammar Nazi posts, but you did invoke the dictionary....

Here are your dictionary words for today: TWO, TO & TOO

Back on topic, I cannot wait for AMD to return to profitability and specifically hold the crown for a while. Intel does it's best work just after AMD kicks their ass a little. A market solely dominated by one company benefits nobody but that company.
 
JimmiG said:
Yes, but the K10 architecture is quite similar to K8. It's no wider, it doesn't feature better scheduling etc. There are some improvements, like a 128-bit SSE unit (vs 64-bit on K8), but there just aren't enough improvements.

The progressive changes Intel made from the original Pentium-M to the Core 2 added up are huge compared to the changes AMD made from K8 to K10.
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this does not mean it is the chip as a k8 your logic is flawed
 
DocFaustus said:
Normally I don't do spelling or grammar Nazi posts, but you did invoke the dictionary....

Here are your dictionary words for today: TWO, TO & TOO

Back on topic, I cannot wait for AMD to return to profitability and specifically hold the crown for a while. Intel does it's best work just after AMD kicks their ass a little. A market solely dominated by one company benefits nobody but that company.
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I can't believe it took that long for someone to grill the troll on invoking the grammar clause;) I've gotta say, I have no strong bias one way or another with Intel v AMD. I'm a fan of competition. I would say there's pretty good historical evidence that when one company has a commanding lead in marketshare, we'll be force-fed a garbage product in return(Netburst, Voodoo 4 graphics cards, Geforce FX, etc.). Thankfully for every junk product, there will be a T-Bird, Geforce2, Radeon 9700, etc. to knock our socks off as a reward for not being a zealot for a corporation.

I've had chips from both groups over the years, and both companies have done me well.I will say, as previously mentioned, it's absolutely true that the K7 and K8 were hamstrung by their chipset options.
 
maxius said:
this does not mean it is the chip as a k8 your logic is flawed
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Why? What matters is the changes done to the actual chip, not what AMD decides to call it. If you look at the actual chip, the execution engine, schedulers, front end etc., it's very similar to the K8. Calling it "K10" or even "K15" won't change that. This is the reason why even the Phenom II can't keep up with Core 2. The micro architecture just isn't capable of that because it's not improved enough over K8.
 
oscrogo said:
I could care less about branding, I just want the best price/performance..
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Words of wisdom.
dkev said:
I have been building / using AMD systems since the K5 days. I have never built an Intel system, nor do I ever intend to. I'm not here to say AMD is better. I'm just fiercely loyal to the brand.
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Words of a foolishness.

StryderxX said:
Everything Fred Pollack stated is true but Intel plays way to dirty for my taste. I wouldn't be surprised if some vendors admitted to getting payola from Intel to keep their Anti-competitive practice strong. No one likes a bully.
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BettiePage said:
It sucks when cheaters get ahead. Business is cut throat but that doesnt mean you can use illegal means to get ahead.
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Even if the laws that Intel *might* have violated are morally bankrupt and violate the property rights of both Intel and their system integrators?

Intel rightfully created their wealth through knowledge and labor, by using their knowledge and resource they created CPU's which are their rightfully owned property. It should be their choice, and their choice alone to choose if they are going to sell it, and if they are going to sell it at what price, and to who for whatever reasons and conditions they want to. If the distributor agrees to Intel's terms, that is a legal contract between two private entities and should have zero government intervention.
 
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