What if hammer flops?

[sean2002]

What would happen to AMD if their hammer line is a flop, like being unable to scale clock speeds very well, or poor performance, wht would happen to AMD

 

[dullard]

They will temporarilly join all the other processors that cannot scale well but have great performance per clock. Think Power4, SPARK, Itanium, etc. All processors but the P4 are scaleling poorly. AMD would then have to rethink things. Maybe lengthen the pipeline a bit or something to get a processor that can scale better. AMD's stock will plummet once again (even more than it has) but AMD won't be out for long. They will keep making comebacks.

 

[MasterHoss]

The world would blow up...

Seriously, what would you think would happen? It's just common sense economics. If the processor sucks, they'll feel it in $$$$ revenue--if AMD wants to stay a company and if the processor sucks, they'll do more R&D and produce a better chip after the bad one.

 

[sean2002]

Originally posted by: dullard
They will temporarilly join all the other processors that cannot scale well but have great performance per clock. Think Power4, SPARK, Itanium, etc. All processors but the P4 are scaleling poorly. AMD would then have to rethink things. Maybe lengthen the pipeline a bit or something to get a processor that can scale better. AMD's stock will plummet once again (even more than it has) but AMD won't be out for long. They will keep making comebacks.

I remember reading somewhere that AMD did not increase the pipeline by that much

 

[Jhill]

If the hammer flops and AMD goes out of business Intel would double their prices because they would have the market cornered. We would be paying 500.00-600.00 for top of the line or near top of the line processors.

 

[sean2002]

Originally posted by: MasterHoss
The world would blow up...

Seriously, what would you think would happen? It's just common sense economics. If the processor sucks, they'll feel it in $$$$ revenue--if AMD wants to stay a company and if the processor sucks, they'll do more R&D and produce a better chip after the bad one.

Do you think they would have to file for chapter 11?

 

[MasterHoss]

No, no Chapter 11 for them... think about it. I could swear that AMD released their 486 processor first... AMD basically fell off the face of the earth when Intel came back with the Pentium processor. It really wasn't until the Athlon came up that people started to take AMD seriously again.

 

[Ben50]

If you want to know what would happen, you need to look at the history. Specifically before the Athlon was released. The K6 and its follow-ups were mostly bargain processors for very cheap computers. AMD would be forced to do the same with their current processors if they could not keep up with Intel. Throughout most of the Pentium and Pentium II generation, Intel commanded almost all cpu sales while AMD struggled to stay alive. Many other cpu manufacturers were put out of business during that period. It is really simple, if you have nothing to sell, you can't stay in business.

 

[rahvin]

Originally posted by: Jhill
If the hammer flops and AMD goes out of business Intel would double their prices because they would have the market cornered. We would be paying 500.00-600.00 for top of the line or near top of the line processors.

Think again buddy, before the Athlon the top end intel chips were $1000, the lowest priced ones were typically around $350 for bottom. AMD goes away and those prices come back.

 

[dullard]

Think again buddy, before the Athlon the top end intel chips were $1000, the lowest priced ones were typically around $350 for bottom. AMD goes away and those prices come back.

Yep just 2 short years ago the Athlon itself cost $1299 from AMD (in lots of 1000).

 

[nortexoid]

if it flops who cares...their current thoroughbreds should scale a little more and be able to hold it down for a while until they come out w/ a new processor capable of scaling...

essentially, although an xp 2400+ is not the fastest thing in comparison to a 3ghz+ p4 chip, AMD could certainly market them toward midstream and lower end segments no problem...in fact, i'd say these procs are still good for quite some time (over a year) in anything but the cutting-edge high performance market...

and then they could always just drop more cache onto their dies...

 

[Pariah]

AMD is betting the company on Hammer. If it flops the company goes with it.

 

[imgod2u]

Well, going for the "budget" thing is basically what AMD is doing now. It's not doing them a lotta good. Among the Joe Sixpack market, Intel reigns supreme due to its OEM ties. AMD's thriving market has been the enthusiaste market. If they release a poor processor that isn't capable of scaling and at its top scale can't match a P4 at the relatively lower end of its scale, then they'll loose the enthusiaste market. Even if Intel's prices are overinflated, people will still buy the lower end and overclock it. More than likely AMD will drop back to its flash memory business (the fab in Texas is still there I think). But I think the hype of 64-bit for Hammer will be more than just the desktop market. The workstation market could prove to be very lucridous indeed for AMD's Hammer. And I think Hammer has the potential to woops all of the Xeons out there since the workstation market can indeed utilize 64-bit integers and larger flat memory addresses.

 

[Ben50]

Luckily we can already infer from AMD's marketing that Hammer will not flop. They would have gone back to the drawing board long before now if hammer was not already doing well. It takes years to design a cpu so don't think that they can just drop this and make something new by next week. AMD already knows approximately how Hammer will perform so they know they have a competitive product.

 

[Athlon4all]

It really depends on what you mean by "flop". If it "flops" in that it doesn't perform up to par with Intel's 3GHz Northwood, then I still expect it would do well as what the Athlon XP is right now, in that it would compete very nicely with the Celeron's and the lower end P4's. Things wold prolly just continue on as they are now, except hopefully more OEM support. We shall see. Thats about the worst can happen, is that it will just continue being a "mainstream" processor, just like the Athlon XP is now, winning all up to the $250 market segment in the CPU market.

 

[dullard]

Originally posted by: Athlon4all
It really depends on what you mean by "flop". If it "flops" in that it doesn't perform up to par with Intel's 3GHz Northwood, then I still expect it would do well as what the Athlon XP is right now, in that it would compete very nicely with the Celeron's and the lower end P4's. Things wold prolly just continue on as they are now, except hopefully more OEM support. We shall see. Thats about the worst can happen, is that it will just continue being a "mainstream" processor, just like the Athlon XP is now, winning all up to the $250 market segment in the CPU market.

Your worst case senerio is quite rosy for AMD (a 64 bit processor that performs at their 32 bit processor speed and doesn't cost any more). Lets look at a more realistic worse case:

The worst that can happen is if it can't scale past Hammers currenly reviewed 800 MHz, performs about the same as a 1 GHz Athlon, and costs as much as a 3.06 GHz P4. Of course I don't believe my worst case will ever happen - but it is possible. If Hammer doesn't work out (a poor price/performance is likely) then AMD will have to rely on Barton. Barton will do quite well in the performance sector until mid 2003, then it will do quite well as a value processor until roughly mid 2004. Thus if Hammer really flops, they have 2 years to get something that can replace Barton. Two years isn't enough to get a whole new processor from start to finish. But maybe a 0.09 micron Barton replacement will be possible or maybe this hypothetical Hammer problem could be solved by then.

 

[WarCon]

You know one thing that would really help AMD with the OEM market is if it runs cooler than the latest XP's. It is very hard to make a quiet and fast AMD (not impossible, so turn the flamethrower down). The top end systems compete very well with the fastest P4's, but tend to be louder. Unless you can keep the noise down your average consumer is probably not going to be happy with it (compared to lets say a nearly silent DELL running a P4).

If AMD can get this generation of processor to cool using less noise or adopt a better mounting so you can put a heavy massive (lots of surface area) heatsink like the P4's on it then they should be able to land some more OEM business (which is what they need).

And for Pete's sake, put some thermal protection on die (don't trust the mobo manufacturers to protect your processor).

 

[BDawg]

Originally posted by: sean2002
What would happen to AMD if their hammer line is a flop, like being unable to scale clock speeds very well, or poor performance, wht would happen to AMD

Hammer CAN'T flop. It has a 512-bit GPU, 256-bit memory bus, support for 3 monitors and 10-bit color. There is no way anything will touch it!

I mean, for the love of God man, surround gaming!

 

[WarCon]

Originally posted by: BDawg

Originally posted by: sean2002
What would happen to AMD if their hammer line is a flop, like being unable to scale clock speeds very well, or poor performance, wht would happen to AMD

Hammer CAN'T flop. It has a 512-bit GPU, 256-bit memory bus, support for 3 monitors and 10-bit color. There is no way anything will touch it!

I mean, for the love of God man, surround gaming!

What????

 

[Ben50]

Yes but AMD doesn't suck like Matrox

 

[NTB]

Originally posted by: imgod2u
Well, going for the "budget" thing is basically what AMD is doing now. It's not doing them a lotta good. Among the Joe Sixpack market, Intel reigns supreme due to its OEM ties. AMD's thriving market has been the enthusiaste market. If they release a poor processor that isn't capable of scaling and at its top scale can't match a P4 at the relatively lower end of its scale, then they'll loose the enthusiaste market. Even if Intel's prices are overinflated, people will still buy the lower end and overclock it. More than likely AMD will drop back to its flash memory business (the fab in Texas is still there I think). But I think the hype of 64-bit for Hammer will be more than just the desktop market. The workstation market could prove to be very lucridous indeed for AMD's Hammer. And I think Hammer has the potential to woops all of the Xeons out there since the workstation market can indeed utilize 64-bit integers and larger flat memory addresses.

I think the word you're looking for is lucrative

As for the original question, it would seem to me that AMD is betting alot on the hammer; but even if it flops I doubt that the company will go the way of the dodo. They still have their Flash buisness to fall back on, along with future revisions of their current processors (ie Barton). If the chip does flop, as has been said before, they can probably drag the Barton chip's lifespan out a little to buy themselves some time. Quite honestly though, I doubt that the Hammer will flop, baring some major disaster like a scaling problem. There's too much going for it, not the least of which is the ability to run legacy 32bit code natively - something Intel's itanium seems to have problems with.

just my 2 cents.

Nate

 

[Wingznut]

The only way the Hammer will be a major flop is if they can't execute on the manufacturing end... If they can't get the yields and speeds up due to fabrication issues.

The design is long since completed. Like Ben50 said, it takes years to design a cpu.

As I said, if it doesn't scale well, it's going to be because of manufacturing. AMD is fully aware of what the design is capable of. Now it's just a matter of getting it on silicon.

 

[microAmp]

Originally posted by: WarCon

Originally posted by: BDawg

Originally posted by: sean2002
What would happen to AMD if their hammer line is a flop, like being unable to scale clock speeds very well, or poor performance, wht would happen to AMD

Hammer CAN'T flop. It has a 512-bit GPU, 256-bit memory bus, support for 3 monitors and 10-bit color. There is no way anything will touch it!

I mean, for the love of God man, surround gaming!

What????

HUH?!

I remember reading somewhere that AMD did not increase the pipeline by that much

Wasn't it by 2 or 3 from 10?

 

[SaintGeorge]

It won't flop, or at least they won't release it if it does. Still the company won't die out, they always make comebacks (most of the time.) AMD is still selling enough XP's to keep the company alive for quite a while. You gotta realise that 97% of people don't buy top of the range pcs, just cus Intel has the fastest chip doesn't mean AMD won't make any money.

Still it has been know to happen. Industries that rely constantly on new research and development can be very volatile, if they don't make the right breakthrough the thing may never get into production.

I don't think it will though, hopefully, it'll knock the pants of the P4.

Course all the Intel zealots will be hoping otherwise but that just silly. These aren't football team we're talking about, only companies, and if AMD reduce a fast ass Hammer it only means Intel will lower their prices and work harder to develop their new core.

Monopolies are NOT A GOOD THING for the consumer.

Also it was nice to see the guy that works for Intel saying positive things bout the chips, there are some people that can barely say AMD without having a heart attack, nice to see some open mindedness.

Can't wait to see how it performs to be honest, and because of all the new technology and changes in the Hammers core it might have some strange effect, likes being very fast at some things but slower at others, kinda like Apples G4 Proccessor. Please now tell me I am wrong.

Btw I just bought a 1.8a, so im not an AMD only trooper ok

Just a few, Mark

 

[NeilPeart]

AMD is placing all their eggs in the Hammer basket. They have done so without regard for the present state of computing, as Intel has gained a lot of their fallen market back. I hope they will release the Barton-based AthlonXP (with the 512KB L2 cache and 166MHz DDR FSB) soon. This will satisfy many users while AMD puts the finishing touches on their new baby. I sincerely hope that the Hammer is successful, as AMD fortunes are riding on the success/failure of the new chip. If the Hammer does indeed fail, then AMD will recede; I don't think they will fold completely, but their clout and recognition will severely decrease. This will allow Intel to dominate most of the market and we will see the days of the "Genuine Intel Pentium xxx" and the "Clone." This will indeed raise the prices on chips as Intel will have no true competitors. For the sake of us all (even you Intel zealots), the Hammer had better kick ass.