What’s happened to AMD?
Catch up on the AMD/Intel fight, including AMD's next big hope, in this 5 minute summary by Nathan Taylor.
As someone contemplating getting a new PC, but not really wanting to fork out scads of money for one, I was looking forward to the first availability of the tri-core Phenom processors from AMD a few weeks ago. Mostly, my anticipation was based on the expectation that the tri-core would be cheap – as cheap or cheaper than dual cores. Turns out I was dead wrong.
The expectation was based on the knowledge that tri-cores are effectively factory second quad-core processors. After it’s manufactured, a quad-core Phenom is tested, and if a core is found to be faulty, then that core is disabled and the processor is designated a tri-core. That’s fine – it increases AMD’s yield (that’s the proportion of processors manufactured that actually work) and makes use of chips that would otherwise be thrown out. All good. I thought it might even be a way to turn around AMDs flagging fortunes.
But it turns out, however, that the tri-cores aren’t that cheap – they’re about the same as the other Phenom processors on a per-core basis. In fact, I can see little reason not to spend a very small amount extra to purchase a quad core Phenom. Or spend a few dollars extra over that to buy an Intel Core 2 processor, since Core 2 runs rings around the Phenom in terms of performance right now.
Of course, there’s the rub for AMD. The performance disparity forces it to compete solely on price, and a race to the bottom it not going to help AMD’s prospects.
Historically, it has been swings and roundabouts between Intel and AMD: one takes the performance lead, then the other introduces a new core and trumps them. But the thing is, this time, as far as we know, AMD has nothing on the horizon to trump the Core 2. It has started talking about performance per watt, as if power consumption were a major factor in purchasing decisions (it has become more important, certainly, but it’s far from decisive; MHz per dollar remains the key factor in processor purchasing decisions). And unless AMD can pull something out of its hat I’m seriously worried about its future prospects. If AMD goes down, then Intel will have no reason to continue to innovate and you’ll certainly see processor prices go up.
I suspect AMD’s best hope is its upcoming “Fusion” processor, which should appear late next year. AMD has one advantage over Intel – its purchase of graphics chip maker ATI gives it access to graphics technology that Intel just doesn’t have right now. Intel’s own graphics processor technology is well behind the curve.
The Fusion architecture integrates the graphics chip onto the CPU, replacing one or more cores. Effectively Fusion will be a CPU/GPU combo – so a PC using one of these will require no graphics card.
Now I don’t know where AMD is going with this, whether Fusion will be an entry-level or enthusiast part. My hope is that they make a kickin’ processor that takes full advantage of the close proximity of the GPU and CPU and that rivals the leading graphics cards for performance.
It’s probably AMDs best shot at taking the “most desirable” title back from Intel in the consumer space. If they produce a chip that’s no more compelling than integrated motherboard graphics, however, I can’t see it selling in huge volumes, or where else an AMD resurgence might come from.
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