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Intel's "cripple AMD" function

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Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function

#41

Post by drewcrawford »

jimbokun wrote: post #36
drewcrawford wrote: post #20

I was an intern for AMD a few years ago (these are my views and not AMD's). I was pretty skeptical about AMD's antitrust claims against Intel until I went to work there. I'm as free market as they day is long, but there's a whole untold story of the evil things that go on in the back meeting rooms, even outside of sales, where most of the public lawsuit claims are/were. The thing to remember is that AMD is a small fr…

"Even while I was there, we had what I suspect (but have no proof) were incidents of people leaking product plans, roadmaps, etc. (but no IP) to Intel." I can't imagine Steve Jobs allowing this to happen at Apple. They have definitely caught people leaking things, and the consequences were swift and unpleasant for the leaker. Why can't AMD catch these people? Is there something preventing them from implementing the s…

There was one guy who was strung up as a leaker ten years ago. Don't remember his name, but it was a big deal.

AMD's culture is just different than Apple's. For one, there are no "secret teams" like iPhone, iTablet, etc. (well, at least none that I knew about). For another, developers have real autonomy to make business decisions, something that would never happen at Apple. For instance, I, a lowly intern, redeployed software to the production line during an emergency. If something went wrong, chips would actually stop rolling out of the factory. I would imagine normal (non-senior) Apple engineers don't have that kind of autonomy.

The other major difference, which perhaps you caught above, is that AMD actually manufactures their own stuff. So, not only are there US engineers, but engineers overseas in the plants that AMD owns, engineers in Dresden, etc. Not to say that foreign engineers are somehow bad, but it is a lot harder to control leaks when you have engineers working literally 24/7 all around the world. And at the scale that you're making your own stuff, there are just more people than there are at Apple, and things are way harder to control. It's like herding cats.

Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function

#42

Post by netcan »

brk wrote: post #38
drewcrawford wrote: post #20

I was an intern for AMD a few years ago (these are my views and not AMD's). I was pretty skeptical about AMD's antitrust claims against Intel until I went to work there. I'm as free market as they day is long, but there's a whole untold story of the evil things that go on in the back meeting rooms, even outside of sales, where most of the public lawsuit claims are/were. The thing to remember is that AMD is a small fr…

The thing to remember is that AMD is a small fraction of the size of Intel, and they have to cover the same market segments. Not sure what you mean by this statement. Should AMD get some sort of special consideration because they are smaller than Intel?

The point does not stand alone, you are right. drewcrawford said "If they try to specialize (say, servers, or notebooks), Intel will just sell that segment at a loss"

That's the point & that is arguably anticompetitive. IE, they are small and they have to spread wide to avoid being open to predatory pricing.

Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function

#43

Post by jedbrown »

daeken wrote: post #35
wmf wrote: post #33

Has anyone tried the Sun Studio compilers? They're free and supposed to be as good as Intel, but I've seen virtually no discussion of them.

For x86, they fall behind a bit. For x64, they're faster than ICC in general. Definitely worth a look if you don't mind going to OSol.

My experience on x64 has been that Sun is usually competitive with GCC/ICC, but not clearly better. Sun's C99 compiler does really atrocious things with SSE intrinsics, strange since their C++ compiler handles intrinsics almost as well as GCC/ICC. Note that they also work fine on Linux.

Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function

#44

Post by brk »

netcan wrote: post #42
brk wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing to remember is that AMD is a small fraction of the size of Intel, and they have to cover the same market segments. Not sure what you mean by this statement. Should AMD get some sort of special consideration because they are smaller than Intel?

The point does not stand alone, you are right. drewcrawford said "If they try to specialize (say, servers, or notebooks), Intel will just sell that segment at a loss" That's the point & that is arguably anticompetitive. IE, they are small and they have to spread wide to avoid being open to predatory pricing.

Yes, but they voluntarily entered in to their business.

What is AMD's competitive advantage? The best I've ever seen is that they are cheaper than Intel for a given processor class/speed. However that doesn't seem to have gotten them much traction. Competing on price alone rarely makes for a successful company.

Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function

#45

Post by netcan »

brk wrote: post #44
netcan wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point does not stand alone, you are right. drewcrawford said "If they try to specialize (say, servers, or notebooks), Intel will just sell that segment at a loss" That's the point & that is arguably anticompetitive. IE, they are small and they have to spread wide to avoid being open to predatory pricing.

Yes, but they voluntarily entered in to their business. What is AMD's competitive advantage? The best I've ever seen is that they are cheaper than Intel for a given processor class/speed. However that doesn't seem to have gotten them much traction. Competing on price alone rarely makes for a successful company.

" Competing on price alone rarely makes for a successful company"

You sure?

Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function

#46

Post by krakensden »

brk wrote: post #44
netcan wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point does not stand alone, you are right. drewcrawford said "If they try to specialize (say, servers, or notebooks), Intel will just sell that segment at a loss" That's the point & that is arguably anticompetitive. IE, they are small and they have to spread wide to avoid being open to predatory pricing.

Yes, but they voluntarily entered in to their business. What is AMD's competitive advantage? The best I've ever seen is that they are cheaper than Intel for a given processor class/speed. However that doesn't seem to have gotten them much traction. Competing on price alone rarely makes for a successful company.

Back when the opteron and amd64 instruction sets came out, they were pretty convincingly beating intel in performance, and for quite a long time, and after that they made a big advertising push about their processing power/watt.

Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function

#47

Post by dangrossman »

pwmanagerdied wrote: post #34
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be passing off / trademark infringement FWIW.

No it wouldn't. All else aside, if this were the case every browser for the past decade would have been sued for including "Mozillla" and/or "MSIE" in their user-agent strings.

Chrome identifies itself as Safari, and we know how protective Apple is of its trademarks.

Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function

#48

Post by sfg »

I do not know much about processor benchmarking, but is it not a little weird that the bench markers use software that is not independent of the hardware they are testing? It seems like they are asking to be manipulated: why do they do this?

Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function

#49

Post by Andys »

praptak wrote: post #29
Andys wrote: post #25

Sensational headline: this article is only about the Intel C Compiler, which as far as I can see, is only used for benchmarketing and research purposes.

"Only" benchmarketing? If any published benchmarks are affected by this misfeature, it's pitchforks and torches for Intel.

Does it really come as news to anyone that if Intel wants to show their CPU in best light, they'll use their own compiler?

Caveat emptor.

The bulk of the x86 world uses Microsoft C++ or GCC - end of story.

Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function

#50

Post by brk »

netcan wrote: post #45
brk wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but they voluntarily entered in to their business. What is AMD's competitive advantage? The best I've ever seen is that they are cheaper than Intel for a given processor class/speed. However that doesn't seem to have gotten them much traction. Competing on price alone rarely makes for a successful company.

" Competing on price alone rarely makes for a successful company" You sure?

Yes. It's fairly established that chasing down the lowest-price path usually doesn't make for a very stable business model in the manufacturing businesses.

This is even more significant when the competitive options are significantly limited (eg: processors). In larger markets (eg: automobiles) there is more room for low-cost competitors to make some money, but they are not often powerhouses of the industry.

If you have data to the contrary please post (and by data I mean more than just 1-off examples).

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