[allthingsd.com] AMD getting ready for another round of Layoffs

[Phynaz]

If a processor support a set of instructions it will forcibly
have the required hardware to execute them....

Hogwash. Any modern x86 processor doesn't even speak x86 natively.

It's called microcode.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcode

Anyway, so fine, Intel compilers generate better code for Intel CPU's. So what? It's their compiler, they can do what they want with it. Want to bet IBM compilers generate better code for IBM CPU's than other compilers?

 

[anongineer]

AMD got about 65 million dollars from the Imageon division, plus whatever savings were to be had from not paying those employees. On Thursday we saw that it's easy for them to lose 157 million in three months. Maybe at the time, AMD really was less than a fiscal quarter away from bankruptcy. Certainly the rest of the world was in crisis mode.

What would people think if Sony sold their digital TV division to Samsung, and then 2 years later announced that they were going to rebuild their digital TV division, which would end up competing against Samsung and by then, Apple?

 

[anongineer]

Anyway, so fine, Intel compilers generate better code for Intel CPU's. So what? It's their compiler, they can do what they want with it. Want to bet IBM compilers generate better code for IBM CPU's than other compilers?

Their dispatcher works something like this:

def math_func(...) {
  var vendor = get_vendor();
  if (vendor == "INTEL") {
    run_hand_tuned_ssse3_math_func(...);
  }
  else {
    run_suboptimal_non_sse_math_func(...);
  }

It doesn't matter that an AMD processor might support SSSE3. It gets lower quality code by virtue of it not being made by Intel.

In the end, all this is kind of moot. A programmer can get their money's worth via several paths, all described in Agner Fog's C++ optimization manual. It is extra work, and it is annoying, but it is doable.