rtb001 t1_iwgntj1 wrote
Reply to comment by Mowensworld in AMD Now Powers 101 of the World's Fastest Supercomputers by Avieshek
It is super impressive that Intel is a much bigger company that until recently only did CPUs, and nVidia is a much bigger company that mostly does GPUs, while AMD does BOTH yet has survived all this time.
frostnxn t1_iwgo5kz wrote
Yes, but amd builds the consoles exclusively which helped them stay afloat for sure.
rtb001 t1_iwgov0f wrote
Also I think in hindsight, AMD spinning off global foundries was a really good move. Maybe at the time it was because AMD didn't have to money to keep and maintain their own fab, so they had to become a contract manufacturer. However in later years we would see that not having their own fab meant AMD could be agile about the design of their next gen PC and server chips. So long as TSMC or Samsung could make it, then AMD can design it. But Intel was forced to only make chip designs that can be made to a good yield in their own fabs.
sultry_eyes t1_iy5dvg4 wrote
This is because of the two emerging markets.
NAND Flash
Mobile Phones
and Tablets/Phablets
The tablet is somewhat like a phone and a laptop but not either.
Intel and NVIDIA were already in their own respective markets. CPU and GPU.
AMD was in between CPU&GPU and IBM no longer made great Console chips. See Sony Cell Processor (poor performing difficult to program) and Xbox 360 red ring of death issues.
There suddenly needed to be a fab that could fill the gap for the emerging mobile phone sector. Intel failed and failed HARD in this market. They could not pivot to mobile phones.
Samsung and TSMC however did not fail. And NAND Flash is necessary in order for mobile phones to store the amount of data that they store.
This new market heavily funded both Samsung and TSMC to the point where TSMC is able encroach on Intel's heavy data center customers. Before this those customers were mostly Intel as they were the most reliable as opposed to 2010s AMD. Back then you would be laughed out of the room if you remotely mentioned going with an AMD system.
They had a very tiny laptop (mobile) segment.
Desktops, Servers, and Laptops were all Intel. And that made sense for them to stick to just that and not pivot into the new and emerging mobile phone market/segments.
And yeah hindsight is 20/20 and all that. Now it is Samsung and TSMC with heavy mobile segment growth. And because they are capital rich, they are encroaching into Intel's territory faster than Intel can pivot to theirs.
Intel Foundry won't fire up until 2025. And even then, we will see how many customers they can win back. (Just Qualcomm and Apple pretty much).
I can see Apple wanting to diversify their suppliers from TSMC. Apple makes most of what Intel and TSMC can sell. Smartphone, watches, iPad/Tablets, laptop and desktop chips.
Qualcomm just sells many many mobile phone CPU/GPUs so they may go with Intel if priced correctly.
I don't see anyone dethroning Samsung from their NAND flash memory business. They are pretty good at that. And the is demand for that type of storage.
HDD manufacturers appear content with pumping out 10TB+ drives forever. No change and no one clamoring for big changes there.
Halvus_I t1_iwh5igk wrote
Steam Deck too. Switch is Nvidia though.
mule_roany_mare t1_iwgp1l4 wrote
I’m honestly surprised Intel didn’t try to launch their GPUs with a console.
There’s no better environment to prove your hardware while devs optimize to it.
The whole Dx12 vs older APIs would have been a non issue & given them another year or two to work things out.
SpicyMintCake t1_iwgtz6s wrote
A lot harder to convince Sony or Microsoft to leave the established AMD platform for a new and untested at scale platform. Especially when consoles are thin margin items, any hardware issue is going to cut deep.
frostnxn t1_iwgu9su wrote
Also intel did not have the patenofor gpus, which expired in 2020 I believe.
mule_roany_mare t1_iwguwll wrote
..Intel has been making GPUs for a few decades. Just not discrete GPUs
thad137 t1_iwh0fpk wrote
The patent for what exactly? There's any number of GPU manufacturers. I don't believe any of them all have a common patent.
Justhe3guy t1_iwgvetu wrote
They do work on very thin margins for that though so they don’t earn massively from consoles, still worthwhile
DatTF2 t1_iwgos0d wrote
Part of that reason why Intel had so much more market share, at least in the late 90s and early 00s is that Intel was bribing companies like DELL to only use Intel processors. Most computers you went to buy in a store only had Intel processors and it's why they dominated the home computing space. While I try Not to fanboy and have used both Intel and AMD systems I am really glad for AMD.
WormRabbit t1_iwgyixd wrote
Their compiler also produced very inefficient code for AMD chips. Not because they didn't implement the optimizations, but because they detected at runtime your CPU model and used the suboptimal code paths.
pterofactyl t1_iwin5v6 wrote
That’s not a bribe, that’s literally just how business deals work. It’s a bribe when the money is used to influence the decision of a person when money should not be an influence.
qualverse t1_iwiymmx wrote
A regular business deal would be Intel saying "we'll give you a 30% discount if you buy a million Intel processors".
A bribe would be Intel saying "we'll give you a 30% discount if you don't buy any AMD processors" which is what they actually did.
pterofactyl t1_iwjbz5l wrote
Ok so again… that’s a business deal. Do you understand that me paying you to exclusively use my product is completely legal and not even immoral unless it causes harm on a person? If a company bribes a doctor to use only their brand of medicine, that’s immoral. If a company pays a sports team to only use their products and avoid all others, that’s literally the basis of sports sponsorships. Amd presented the best case for dell to only use their chips. Is your workplace bribing you by paying you a set fee with the understanding that you only work for them and no one else? Come on man
Earthborn92 t1_iwpvteo wrote
Read about Antitrust law.
pterofactyl t1_iwq1ls0 wrote
https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/09/antitrust-law.asp
I think you should. Anti trust laws prevent buyers from preventing suppliers from supplying to other businesses, but if a supplier pays for themselves to be your supplier, that is not anti trust.
Is Nike in violation because they pay teams to use only their shoes and clothes? Literally think about this. Are restaurants in violation for agreeing to stock only Pepsi products?
AsleepNinja t1_iwhq6mm wrote
Intel has been making graphics for decades.
They're just mostly integrated GPUs in CPUs. They're in an enormous amount of things.
They're also low performance and power so not for gaming.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_graphics_processing_units
More recently Intel's launching the Arc discrete GPUs in the Arc series.
No idea how good they are.
Dry-Purchase-3022 t1_iwj0qll wrote
AMD doesn’t make their own chips, making bearing Intel much easier. The fact Intel is even close to AMD while having a significantly worse manufacturing line is a testament to how great their designs are.
Mowensworld t1_iwiv895 wrote
AMD originally only made CPUs. They bought ATi who at the time were nvidias main competitor for 5 billion dollars. This was only back in 2006.
Coincedence t1_iwjtwk7 wrote
With upcoming platforms, AmD is shaping up to be a powerhouse. Majority of the performance for a fraction of the price compared to the corresponding nvidia is very tempting. Not to mention 3-D vcache coming up soon to further dominate the gaming cpu market
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