AMD: Moore's Law's end is near

[mrmt]

So let me get this straight, someone from a socialist country, tells me that less competition will lower prices, and *I* am the one that is missing an education on capitalism?

Yes, that can happen.

 

[Dark Shroud]

Yes, that can happen.

Intel likes their 60% margin so its not going to happen. Nvidia also likes their higher margins so top tier cards would go back to at least $600.

Intel (Silvermont) & AMD (Kabini & Temash) both have chips that will work in tablet form factors and even phones.

Android works on x86 and Intel also has a partnership with the Tizen mobile OS formally Meego.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Intel likes their 60% margin so its not going to happen. Nvidia also likes their higher margins so top tier cards would go back to at least $600.

Intel & AMD (Kabini & Temash) both have chips that will work in tablet form factors and even phones.

Android works on x86 and Intel also has a partnership with the Tizen mobile OS formally Meego.

Yet Intel sells 20$ x86 CPUs. Not to mention 40$ IB CPUs. And thats just the retail list price.

 

[Hacp]

Never mind the historical fact that AMD can't correctly predict when Christmas will get here, let alone their own products or the performance characteristics of them...these guys have no business telling the rest of the adult world how business is going to look 10yrs from now.

And can you prove this? I'm sure all those PHD engineers working at AMD know when Christmas is.

 

[Dark Shroud]

Yet Intel sells 20$ x86 CPUs. Not to mention 40$ IB CPUs. And thats just the retail list price.

What $20 are you talking about?

Celerons are still usable failed chips being sold to prevent an outright loss.

 

[Sleepingforest]

Well, to be fair, so are the A4 and A6 APUs. As are many graphics cards. There's nothing wrong with a "failed" chip other than the fact that it won't perform at the level expected for an i5/A10/whatever.

 

[FalseChristian]

Amd is fine. Their FX line-up is quite impressive and costs much less then the competing Ivy Bridge CPUs from Intel. If AMD can improve on the FX line to near-equal Haswell than AMD will be a viable alternative to Intel. Let's pray that it does.

 

[lakedude]

And can you prove this? I'm sure all those PHD engineers working at AMD know when Christmas is.

Woooosh!

 

[Charles Kozierok]

Their FX line-up is quite impressive and costs much less then the competing Ivy Bridge CPUs from Intel.

What are you impressed with? Just curious, as they don't seem to really have much going for them that I can see, unless you don't care at all about power consumption and you're on a strict budget.

 

[frozentundra123456]

And can you prove this? I'm sure all those PHD engineers working at AMD know when Christmas is.

Checked your sense of humor at the door I see.

 

[sequoia464]

Intel (Silvermont) & AMD (Kabini & Temash) both have chips that will work in tablet form factors and even phones.

I usually just lurk around here, don't have any insight or wisdom to share in this forum but I'd like to ask about Temash.

Does the industry as a whole have the same negative view of AMD as seems to prevail on some of the forums and in the market, and as a consequence - will they, tablet manufacturers, avoid using Temash simply because of that and wait for whatever Intel's clovertrail replacement is?

I have only seen one or two Hondo based tablets that were actually released, just wondering if Temash is also going to be essentially DOA also.

 

[Pilum]

Amd is fine. Their FX line-up is quite impressive and costs much less then the competing Ivy Bridge CPUs from Intel.

AMDs chips which compete with Intels are at the same price points. That's how competition in a free market economy works. You're overestimating the actual value of AMDs products.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yes, that can happen.

Standard Oil was so good for everyone, then?

Edit: Why aren't Diamonds as cheap as rocks then? Surely, with the lack of competition, DeBeers should be giving away diamonds by now. At least, if capitalism works the way you and ShintaiDK seem to think it does.

 

[Homeles]

Standard Oil was so good for everyone, then?

Theoretically speaking, monopolies are the most efficient. Controlling the entire market leads to higher economies of scale, reducing the cost of goods.

 

[jpiniero]

Still think it's ending at 14. That doesn't mean that less than 14 won't happen, it's just that the node progression is going to start slowing down.

Does the industry as a whole have the same negative view of AMD as seems to prevail on some of the forums and in the market, and as a consequence - will they, tablet manufacturers, avoid using Temash simply because of that and wait for whatever Intel's clovertrail replacement is?

AMD at this point has no non-windows strategy; and considering how much of a disaster Windows 8 is, Temash is a non-starter.

 

[Idontcare]

90 nm or so seems to be about what I've found in my research as well. 350 nm takes us back, what, 20 years? I'd be surprised if they started tinkering with the node definitions that early, but I'm not a process engineer.

It was 0.35um, after that the node label became just a label.

At 90nm you could have a gate length that was 90nm, or one that was much smaller. Gate length is a range, it can be any size between a minimum length and a maximum length.

Prior to 0.35um the minimum value allowed for the gate length was defined to be the process node. At 0.42um (a half-node) the minimum allowed gate length was 0.42um. If it had been 0.41um or 0.43um then the 0.42um node would have been labeled as either 0.41um or 0.43um respectively.

That all changed at 0.35um when the minimum gate length broke with tradition and was 0.30um. Of course you could still use 0.35um gate lengths on the 0.35um node, but the node label was not 0.30um, it was called 0.35um and that was that.

And that is how it has been ever since.

Kinda like how you could buy a 2014 Mazda in the year 2012. The label, "2014", on the car model has little bearing to the calendar year despite the fact that at one point in time it use to. But not anymore. It is just a label of convenience to denote a successive sequence of models, with the numerology implying ranking and thus superiority.

A 2014 mazda is presumed to be newer than a 2013 mazda, even if you are looking at buying either in the year 2012. And a 16nm process node a TSMC will be presumed to be superior to its 20nm node.

 

[sequoia464]

AMD at this point has no non-windows strategy; and considering how much of a disaster Windows 8 is, Temash is a non-starter.

It seems that I'm usually going against the flow, but I actually have a windows8 tablet that I prefer to the Android and Apple tablets that we have around here. Not so sure that I'm comfortable yet with W8 on my desktop, but on a tablet it makes sense - at least for me with my requirements.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Theoretically speaking, monopolies are the most efficient. Controlling the entire market leads to higher economies of scale, reducing the cost of goods.

In a market with efficient competition, prices for goods are self-regulating. When there is only one monopoly supplier of said goods, then there are no self-regulating forces at work, and then it becomes a question of gov't regulation on the monoply, to regulate prices. Without regulation in a market (whether self-regulation due to competition, or gov't regulation due to monopolies), then prices will increase unchecked due to desire for increased profit. (Well, I guess elasticity of the market might matter as well.)

 

[Idontcare]

Still think it's ending at 14. That doesn't mean that less than 14 won't happen, it's just that the node progression is going to start slowing down.



AMD at this point has no non-windows strategy; and considering how much of a disaster Windows 8 is, Temash is a non-starter.

That's rather pessimistic; the big boys (Intel, Samsung, and TSMC) have all talked about scaling to at least 5nm. Samsung talked about seeing scaling down to 1.2nm before they have to deal with the limits of physics.

The real issue with scaling is economic and I don't mean the expense of developing the nodes. The expense of developing the chips to be manufactured on the nodes is silly expensive.

If you can't make billions of revenue on your 14nm chip then you'll never recover the development costs you sunk into designing, validating, and verifying your 14nm IC.

This is the part of Moore's Law that has AMD saying its dead to them. Its dead to them the same as its dead to Via because Via also cannot afford to pay to shrink their chips at the same pace as the new nodes come available.

 

[mrmt]

Standard Oil was so good for everyone, then?

Nobody is arguing for competition in water distribution, or sewage. In those industries a second player would mean just waste. Also if you have two competitors but one is very inefficient, and loses a lot of money and the other is too far away in the price curve from their most efficient price, then yes, consumer will be better with a given monopoly operating at maximum efficiency.

The point is that some times monopoly is the most efficient organization you can have, and some times it's even desirable. That's not to say that the situation is desirable in Intel's case, but it's not just ignorance to think that monopoly can yield lower prices to consumers.

 

[Idontcare]

Nobody is arguing for competition in water distribution, or sewage. In those industries a second player would mean just waste. Also if you have two competitors but one is very inefficient, and loses a lot of money and the other is too far away in the price curve from their most efficient price, then yes, consumer will be better with a given monopoly operating at maximum efficiency.

The point is that some times monopoly is the most efficient organization you can have, and some times it's even desirable. That's not to say that the situation is desirable in Intel's case, but it's not just ignorance to think that monopoly can yield lower prices to consumers.

Many pillars of government tend to fall into this category of "the good monopoly".

The military for example, I am absolutely ok with there just being a single unified military (with branches of course) and not a competitive situation in the USA.

On the contrary, it is the government sanctioned monopoly-like businesses such as cable providers or electricity distributors that I wish would lose their immunity idols and be pushed to stop being allowed to have price collusion and areas where they intentionally don't compete with one another.

 

[jaqie]

. . . . it's not just ignorance to think that monopoly can yield lower prices to consumers.

Yes, it is. Ignorance to innumerable historically proven cases in innumerable environments.
Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.

 

[Idontcare]

. . . . it's not just ignorance to think that monopoly can yield lower prices to consumers.

Yes, it is. Ignorance to innumerable historically proven cases in innumerable environments.
Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.

You are picking cases where a given monopoly did not yield lower prices as your basis for arguing that no monopoly ever can or will...do you not see the logical fallacy in that?

mrmt is not saying that a monopoly will always yield to lower prices, he is merely pointing out the mathematical possibility that it can because the cost structure itself is lower in a non-competitive situation. SG&A can be lower, for example, making a lower break-even pricepoint for selling the goods versus the cost structure that exists when huge marketing budgets are involved.

That doesn't mean the product will cost the consumer less, if greed gets in the way and prices increase. But it is not a certainty, not unless you can see the future and report back that it will never happen.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Nobody is arguing for competition in water distribution, or sewage. In those industries a second player would mean just waste. Also if you have two competitors but one is very inefficient, and loses a lot of money and the other is too far away in the price curve from their most efficient price, then yes, consumer will be better with a given monopoly operating at maximum efficiency.

The point is that some times monopoly is the most efficient organization you can have, and some times it's even desirable. That's not to say that the situation is desirable in Intel's case, but it's not just ignorance to think that monopoly can yield lower prices to consumers.

See my comment about regulated monopolies. Not market monopolies that are unregulated, with unchecked prices.

Unregulated monopolies are bad for consumers, in every case.

Edit: This is the reasoning that the gov't breaks up unregulated market monopolies, or decides to regulate them.

 

[Maxima1]

Why is Mexico doing worse than its neighbors to the south, yet Carlos Slim is the richest man? :awe: