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"AMD Moves Away From PCs Amid Steep Losses"

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pelov said:
Imo, it's Intel's most catastrophic failure since Netburst or Larrabee.

Ultrabooks are a fantastic idea in revitalizing that once vibrant netbook area. People can replace their desktop with a very sleek, pretty looking laptop that can do everything their desktop did. Why buy a tablet if you can get the same and more with an Ultrabook for only $100/$150 more?

Instead, Intel approached it like Apple, thinking people would pay the extra money for the "Inspired by Intel" sticker... and no f**ks were given.

For the price of an i7 ULV you can buy 1.5 Google Nexus tablets and do almost everything the Ultrabook can do. You even get a more vibrant ecosystem along with it! Better battery life, a better display, lighter weight too. So what's the point of an Ultrabook?

So instead of attacking the ARM problem head on with actual competition and attractive products at close-enough-to-matter prices, Intel instead decided that they'll take their 35-45W chips (which won't even fit properly), stick them in a metallic shell and charge an arm and a leg for them.

I hope AMD can learn from the above. In fact, if they wish to remain alive then they should. Intel was lazy with their Atom development, letting it lag behind, and then responded to the ARM surge by using a product that doesn't fit with a price tag that doesn't make sense.
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You really seem to have some issues. 😵

This is also an ultrabook CPU.
http://ark.intel.com/products/69361/Intel-Celeron-Processor-887-2M-Cache-1_50-Cache
 
ShintaiDK said:
You really seem to have some issues. 😵

This is also an ultrabook CPU.
http://ark.intel.com/products/69361/Intel-Celeron-Processor-887-2M-Cache-1_50-Cache
Click to expand...

$86 compared to the $20 SoC. Add the larger battery that's required, the larger size, the RAM, chipset, WiFi, etc., and what's the cost difference? Is it still $60? That $60 is now ~$100, if not more.

That's what I mean by not having the right processor for the job. It's far easier to sell someone a device and tell them that next year's version is twice as fast and only costs $300 than it is to sell someone a hunkier piece of plastic for $600 that they have little reason to upgrade. The $300 tablet is going to make them, and the OEMs more money than the $600 laptop.

If AMD wants to stay in the game, they can't make the same Ultrabook mistakes. If they want to compete in mobile, they better have their cards straight. #1 is price.
 
pelov said:
$86 compared to the $20 SoC. Add the larger battery that's required, the larger size, the RAM, chipset, WiFi, etc., and what's the cost difference? Is it still $60? That $60 is now ~$100, if not more.

That's what I mean by not having the right processor for the job. It's far easier to sell someone a device and tell them that next year's version is twice as fast and only costs $300 than it is to sell someone a hunkier piece of plastic for $600 that they have little reason to upgrade. The $300 tablet is going to make them, and the OEMs more money than the $600 laptop.

If AMD wants to stay in the game, they can't make the same Ultrabook mistakes. If they want to compete in mobile, they better have their cards straight. #1 is price.
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Like before you completely disregard performance to try make ARM look better against the evil devil called Intel.

And where did you get the 20$ from? The iPads A5X is 28$ for example. Yet it can still be sold for above 600$. Oh the evil!

86$ is a listprice that nobody pays either. Just like how MC is selling a 235$ CPU for 189.99$.
 
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pelov said:
If AMD wants to stay in the game, they can't make the same Ultrabook mistakes. If they want to compete in mobile, they better have their cards straight. #1 is price.
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What do you think that AMD options are?

Trinity is not an option, and Jaguar will be very late to the game. So, what's left?
 
ShintaiDK said:
Like before you completely disregard performance to try make ARM look better against the evil devil called Intel.
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I am, but so is everyone else buying a tablet.

mrmt said:
What do you think that AMD options are?

Trinity is not an option, and Jaguar will be very late to the game. So, what's left?
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It depends on how low they can get their Jaguar and Radeon cores in TDP. Their Hondo line is 4.5W, but you've got to add another .5W for the FCH, so it's 5W together. AMD doesn't have a very low TDP design to offer whereas Intel has a Medfield SoC that's at least viable for a tablet, but it isn't for average desktop use where it's going to perform like your average netbook (remember that in x86 the CPU is running a whole different set of programs that aren't as forgiving)

I'm not sure what AMD can do, but I do know it's going to depend on the OEMs and what they can manage to to offer with their chips. Intel at least caught on to that and tried to inspire something themselves. Although it has failed pretty atrociously thus far, they at least got the memo that they have to drive through design ideas. AMD isn't in a position to do that, I'm afraid.
 
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pelov said:
$86 compared to the $20 SoC. Add the larger battery that's required, the larger size, the RAM, chipset, WiFi, etc., and what's the cost difference? Is it still $60? That $60 is now ~$100, if not more.
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you forgot the one big thing.... the OS!
If intel wanna try to compete with ARM they will be forced to go away from M$...
 
pelov said:
I am, but so is everyone else buying a tablet.
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Few people buy tablets as laptop replacements, and pretty much no one buys them as desktop replacements. They are great for what they are and based on your post history and love affair with ARM, I don't think you actually know where they excel and where they fall short.
 
2is said:
Few people buy tablets as laptop replacements, and pretty much no one buys them as desktop replacements. They are great for what they are and based on your post history and love affair with ARM, I don't think you actually know where they excel and where they fall short.
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I'm more than aware. You're never going to be doing serious number crunching in Excel or Photoshop or any sort of serious content creation software. They're also never going to be doing enthusiast-level gaming either. Yet they're still selling well. People at least have incentive to upgrade a two-year old tablet but not a 2-year old desktop or laptop that still does everything it's asked to do just as well as it did when they first bought it.

Intel and AMD need to introduce products that sell like hotcakes, not products that have more processing power than the people buying them actually need. Benchmarks sell processors, but they don't move an entire product.
 
Writes Rasgon, “We have no further confidence that any aspect of our prior structural thesis (margin accretion, cash flow, and balance sheet deleveraging) will play out in the foreseeable future.”
“Indeed, we now see the prospect for structurally lower margins, as well as cash burn [...] Frankly, the most common adjective that comes up when we discuss the company with clients is, simply, ‘un-investable.’ We are now believers.”
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http://blogs.barrons.com/techtrader...ls-16-fbr-bernstein-cut-to-hold-uninvestable/


Shares down 16%, market cap is less than half of the money nVidia has in their pocket...
 
mrmt said:
Not gonna happen. When AMD fans see a monopoly, Intel sees ARM around the corner. Intel has been shrinking x86 cores and investing in very power efficient chips thinking on this clash.

Not gonna happen, for the same reason stated above. Intel is simply accelerating their road maps.
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I could see ARM competing with Intel's Atom, Celeron, and Pentium lines, but not with higher end CPU's like the Core i7's and Xeon's. Intel doesn't have any competition there anymore.
 
pelov said:
It depends on how low they can get their Jaguar and Radeon cores in TDP
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I don't think Hondo is really up to the task. Hondo is going to be sandwiched between quad-core A15 and Atom on the bottom and Haswell on the top.
 
mrmt said:
I don't think Hondo is really up to the task. Hondo is going to be sandwiched between quad-core A15 and Atom on the bottom and Haswell on the top.
Click to expand...

Hondo isn't based on their new Jaguar cores. Hondo is a Z-60 40nm TSMC APU. AMD's Jaguar cores should be out some time next year, and the earlier the better for them.
 
pelov said:
Hondo isn't based on their new Jaguar cores. Hondo is a Z-60 40nm TSMC APU. AMD's Jaguar cores should be out some time next year, and the earlier the better for them.
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Same analysis apply.

They don't have the node advantage that Intel has, and are developing a chip in a more inefficient architecture.
 
pelov said:
They may not be for you and me, but many people have already begun replacing their laptops and desktops with tablets. Because people are also inclined to spend more money on tablets/smartphones and replace them more often than PCs, that means Intel/AMD have to offer something else, and preferably in the same price range, to compete. It's the first time PC sales have slipped since 2001 and most analysts believe they are going to lose more and more ground going forward.

Think about it,

Can you really make a convincing argument for the average user to buy the new Haswell chip if they've already bought a PC in the last 4-5 years? What about a shiny new tablet/smartphone?
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I would not say for Haswell specifically, but I will give you my personal experience. My 6 year old core 2 duo machine was having power supply problems and the graphics card was going out. The computer did not merit any repairs to me, since no matter what I did to it, it was becoming marginal for gaming anyway.

I bought a Dell XPS i5 2320, with more ram and running Win 7 and added a HD7770 for playing games. I expected gaming to improve, but I was amazed at how much more responsive the new computer was in everyday use such as simple web browsing.

So yes, if you want the best experience, there is a good reason to upgrade to a new computer. If you only want an adequate experience with some slowdowns and frustrations at times, not so much.

Edit: Car analogy. Most 5 or 6 year old used cars still get you from point A to point B adequately. Yet many people still upgrade every few years because they want something faster, quiter, with new features, etc. And a new computer costs only a few hundred dollars compared to many thousands for a new car.
 
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2is said:
Android has to not suck before that happens.
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Bingo, I totally agree.

A tablet has its place to supplement a desktop or laptop for content consumption, but is far, far away from replacing real computers for doing anything productive. Not to mention the server and enterprise markets where x86 if firmly entrenched.
 
frozentundra123456 said:
Edit: Car analogy. Most 5 or 6 year old used cars still get you from point A to point B adequately. Yet many people still upgrade every few years because they want something faster, quiter, with new features, etc. And a new computer costs only a few hundred dollars compared to many thousands for a new car.
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Cars are also sexy and sleek and people like to look at them. How many desktops are sold for the same reason? What about repairs? At least Intel got the hint and tried that with Ultrabooks, but they weren't willing to compete on price and now they're paying for it with sluggish sales.

PCs face saturation and incentive issues. Intel and AMD make most of their PC sales outside of the US now because in emerging markets, people need PCs; whether desktops or laptops. That's not going to last forever either, as the problems they face here they'll face there too, and that's saturation and incentive. Why upgrade a 3-4 year old PC if you don't have to? If all that's being offered is a 20-40% performance bump and you really don't need it, why spend the money? Can't you just buy a cheaper mobile gadget instead? At least buying a tablet every year or two you'll actually notice the difference and there's incentive there. It's also an emerging market so there's no issue with saturation

At the turn of the century, we were getting 50-150% performance increases each generation. Now? We might get 15% if we're lucky. To combat that, they need to offer an attractive product that's going to turn that ship around or there has to be an x86-tied application that's the new must-have. Because the latter doesn't look likely, they need to introduce products that provide a potential buyer with an incentive to spend money every year or every other year. Right now, PCs just aren't it. If they can make them look better and make them more mobile as well as cheaper, then that would be a good start.
 
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