AMD Cancels 10-Core, 20-Core Server Processors

[formulav8]

AMD are beginning the long slow march to becoming the next VIA.

That would make you as happy as that guy in your avatar :hmm: (I hope thats not a pic of you )

 

[Maximilian]

What a shame.
I want the glory days of Sledgehammer back. :\

They were far more interesting days :thumbsup:

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Hold on and wait for someone to mention that Intel competes with itself which keeps prices down.

We saw how well that worked when it came to AMD with the 7950 and 7970 pricing.

 

[Smartazz]

We saw how well that worked when it came to AMD with the 7950 and 7970 pricing.

In all fairness, the demand for enthusiast GPUs is rather inelastic, much more so than the demand for Intel CPUs.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

In all fairness, the demand for enthusiast GPUs is rather inelastic, much more so than the demand for Intel CPUs.

Fair enough. I also wasn't insinuating that the 7950/70 pricing is unfair in terms of how much performance you get relative to existing products, just that we are not getting more perf / $, which is bad enough.

Imagine if the next Intel CPU offered 1.5x the performance, but at >= 1.5x the price. Fair enough, but sucks when we're used to getting that 1.5x performance increase for <<< 1.5x the price.

 

[Concillian]

Not sure if you'd be willing to listen to him since you seem rather cynical from the outset, but here is what Intel's own Mark Bohr had to say:


(He is obviously referring to Intel's customers as the OEM's who buy their chips and then resell them to the end-user, we are not Intel customers, we are Newegg customers, DELL customers, etc...but he pretty much says it there in black and white)

And this means they'll give just enough each generation to make it worthwhile for some people to upgrade... then hold something in their back pocket for next gen or in case of sudden actual competition (Like some miracle happens...repeat of K7)

 

[Ferzerp]

And this means they'll give just enough each generation to make it worthwhile for some people to upgrade... then hold something in their back pocket for next gen or in case of sudden actual competition (Like some miracle happens...repeat of K7)

You mean exactly like AMD has done with 79xx despite competition existing in the video card market?

 

[Acanthus]

Intels next threat in the server space is ARM.

ARM doesn't have the raw power, but the performance per watt is impressive. Highly threaded servers will likely see a large benefit from ARM implementations.

Intel seems to be having a hell of a time in the sub 3w space.

 

[Torquemada]

Why is Ivy Bridge going to slot into Sandy Bridge's pricing, after the dud that is Bulldozer got exposed?

Because it's too early by several months to hike up every price bracket where AMD isn't really present any more. Which every Intel shareholder should expect to happen if the management has any prudence.

The interesting Q is, is AMD going to ditch the use(r)less C2012 socket and go for G2012 only, to simplify the server lineup?

I'd guess they (AMD) realized that 16-core per socket is about as far as the market on average wants to go. Many want acceptable per-core perf in the face of software license costs, not so many (even if potentially big) want cores cores cores.

Thoughts?

 

[Phynaz]

Of course.

But Intel doesn't do it for the purpose of keeping prices down which is some insane garbage I read on here from time to time.

Intel has had all the pricing power since Conroe came out. I'm unaware of Intel responding to AMD at all.

 

[CHADBOGA]

So people actually upgrade? Believe it or not, you do compete with yourself when you bring out a new product. You have to give people enough value so that they want to upgrade from what they already have. Sure prices are probably going to go up without competition, but a 1200 dollar quad core will not fly in the market.

I agree completely. :thumbsup:

That would make you as happy as that guy in your avatar :hmm: (I hope thats not a pic of you )

No it wouldn't.

Whilst I could draw some comfort from the suffering the worst of the AMD fanboys would experience, there is no reason why I want to see a lessening of competition.

Now because I don't want to see a lessening of competition, that doesn't mean I am supposed to abandon rational thinking and not recognise that unfortunately, that is where things are going to end up.

 

[MisterMac]

The money, as you say, is in all the various market areas. Small margins just mean you have to sell more volume, which is a legitimate business strategy. Besides, it really did not make much difference whether they wanted to "give up" or not. My feeling is that they know that Intel's R&D and fab lead was only going to widen the gap over time, so why keep fighting for a market you are fairly confident you cannot maintain?

Besides, we don't know that Intel will continue to have dominance in the server markets of the future. It appears to be the case today, but disruptive technologies are right around the corner and you never know what may happen.

And further, AMD may be able to move into custom IP arenas that Intel cannot do (yet). Say google wants to order 100,000 servers and decided it wants custom cores with a few Piledriver cores, a few ARM cores, and a few custom cores for security and encryption. If Google has to buy servers with all of that right now, it can get pretty pricey, especially if not all of those things are necessary all of the time. Instead, AMD could offer all of that on one CPU package and sell it at a nice markup..making them money and saving Google money at the same time. This is just an example, and that is just one company, so you never know. Have to remember, only Intel and AMD have potent x86 cores ATM and that could be a huge selling point for AMD in the custom IP market!

I don't buy that.

Compute is compute.


We've only had 1 ISA option for "most" of the last twenty years, bar ARM's entry to ULV form factors and GPU/GPGPU/vector type science loads.

How many SPARC and PowerPC chips are in the wild comparing to intel in the server market? Pretty much ONLY those that tested it out 20 years ago more or less.


So there'd be NO reason for MIXED IP's in a enterprise/large setup.
We have voltage control down to a decent science, if the unit isn't required.


If you needed 20000 servers for Google or Facebook, and you were writing a NEW platform, there's noway in hell you'd sector things up into this is x86 and this is ARM.


Atleast i don't buy it one bit.
If ARM could provide compute horsepower for performance/watt/price in a dense enough enviroment it will compete by itself, but never mixed.

But assuming ARM goes on collision course with Intel(they kinde are, already but still), who do you think will win?
The ARM OEM manufacturers? really?
Unless Samsung really enters the race instead of just having it a side division for profit, or IBM decides to jump in.
Intel will sit on the throne imho.

Intel will set the bar which everyone will get measured by.
I have trouble seeing it any other way.

 

[Lonbjerg]

Which means get ready for $1200 quad cores :thumbsdown:

Not since Intel's Tick-tock...forget the part about Intel competing with it self?
Or did the word "investors" not come to mind?

 

[sandorski]

Trinity is going to further entrench AMD into the Portable/Laptop Markets. They are not going to die and they will continue to stay on the Desktop which will also see them becoming more competitive.

 

[JimmiG]

AMD hasn't competed directly with Intel in performance since Conroe released.

Despite the feeling from many AMD users that Intel is the Lord Satan, they've continued to innovate, produce more performance per MHz, more MHz, and more performance per watt all the while keeping the exact same pricing structure they've had since before Conroe.

The sad thing about all of this is the simple fact that AMD is the problem. Their awful showing for the last seven years has done nothing to innovate the market and their consistent overpricing of new products has done little to nothing to affect Intels yearly price price structure.

Except for a few special-case scenarios, I would even say that Intel provides better value for you money than AMD at this time. If I was going to buy a <$200 CPU today, it would sadly not be one from AMD.

It's amazing how long AMD has struggled to compete in the CPU market. The performance of Conroe took everyone by surprise, but that was in 2006... In the GPU market, both companies have suffered failures, like the GeForce 5800 Ultra and the Radeon 2900XT, but they've always recovered and returned to competition.

 

[nerp]

People have been predicting the demise of AMD for 10 years now and they're still in the game. AMD isn't going anywhere. They offer great value. And they have the best integrated graphics options on the planet.

 

[Nemesis 1]

Intels next threat in the server space is ARM.

ARM doesn't have the raw power, but the performance per watt is impressive. Highly threaded servers will likely see a large benefit from ARM implementations.

Intel seems to be having a hell of a time in the sub 3w space.

I take it you didn't read ATs medfield article . Intel has nothing to fear from AMD let alone ARM

 

[Nemesis 1]

People have been predicting the demise of AMD for 10 years now and they're still in the game. AMD isn't going anywhere. They offer great value. And they have the best integrated graphics options on the planet.

Yes llano has best graphics But befor llano who had best ondie graphics? Intel. I love how you people think that AMD can keep improving graphics yet Intel can't. So what happens win intel beats up llano in a month+ . AMD trinity . I don't care who wins that battle as neither will be good enough. But suddenly even tho IVB beats llano which AMD people praise. Ivb will be junk graphics . Driver bla! bla! Bla!

 

[Olikan]

Ivb will be junk graphics . Driver bla! bla! Bla!

dude, i had to buy a discret gpu, just because intel igps can't render the textures right in solid works.
I actually bought a decent driver, because the gpu itself i don't need

 

[Chiropteran]

Yes llano has best graphics But befor llano who had best ondie graphics? Intel.

Best? More like, only. It's not even just about performance. Intel graphic drivers are utter garbage. I had an old dell netbook with an atom CPU and some intel branded graphics. The "windows 7" official drivers were actually beta vista drivers, if you read the details in the readme.txt included. And of course, they never updated through the life of the product.

Llano performs better, yes, but even if intel was close or slightly ahead I'd still prefer an AMD laptop, simply because I know the GPU side is going to get updates every month, and it'll continue working with future games.

 

[exar333]

Best? More like, only. It's not even just about performance. Intel graphic drivers are utter garbage. I had an old dell netbook with an atom CPU and some intel branded graphics. The "windows 7" official drivers were actually beta vista drivers, if you read the details in the readme.txt included. And of course, they never updated through the life of the product.

Llano performs better, yes, but even if intel was close or slightly ahead I'd still prefer an AMD laptop, simply because I know the GPU side is going to get updates every month, and it'll continue working with future games.

You obviously either do not know what you are talking about, or are stuck in many years past. Intel graphics are not fast, but driver quality has been very good lately.

 

[Nemesis 1]

So what . I use intels Igp all the time I also have an NV560Ti on same setup . If I wanted to play a game using NV phys.X I had to.
AMD can't do that , Is it drivers? NO!

 

[Nemesis 1]

Best? More like, only. It's not even just about performance. Intel graphic drivers are utter garbage. I had an old dell netbook with an atom CPU and some intel branded graphics. The "windows 7" official drivers were actually beta vista drivers, if you read the details in the readme.txt included. And of course, they never updated through the life of the product.

Llano performs better, yes, but even if intel was close or slightly ahead I'd still prefer an AMD laptop, simply because I know the GPU side is going to get updates every month, and it'll continue working with future games.

Thats not what Anand is saying. We all know intel drivers are lagging , But intel didn't go out a buy a 5 billion dollar graphics house either. AMD hasn't did anything but bought a headstart . That will disappear.

 

[piesquared]

You obviously either do not know what you are talking about, or are stuck in many years past. Intel graphics are not fast, but driver quality has been very good lately.

Not only is their software utter trash, so is the hardware. It's the software combined with the hardware that makes intel's 'graphics' the worst in the industry, by far. To even attempt to defend their junk shows complete bias. If it were possible to compare graphics performance at the same quality, intel's solution would look even worse than it already does. But since that's impossible, we get reviewers comparing apples to oranges and coming up with intel only being 30%-50% behind the industry when in reality they would be close to a 2X or more performance deficit. And on top of that, they don't support the latest capabilities and standards, much like when they screwed over consumers by buying lower Vista capable specifications because they don't have the ability to make the parts like others do. I hope MS has learned it's lesson, because it took a shit kicking pounding because of it, while intel walked away smirking and grinning. Seeing the collaboration on C++ AMP with AMD and NV though, they may very well have realized how big of a mistake it was to cowtoe to intel. Mind you the damage may have already been done to MS but we'll see.

 

[Chiropteran]

You obviously either do not know what you are talking about, or are stuck in many years past. Intel graphics are not fast, but driver quality has been very good lately.

Don't you have a radeon 5870? How are you any sort of authority on the subject?


http://communities.intel.com/message/147536 Yeah, looks like excellent driver quality. LOL.