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Intel's "cripple AMD" function

agner.org

71–80 of 83 posts

Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function

#71
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, first you said companies not just manufacturing companies so I would have pointed to Wal Mart. But since you have limited the range it's more difficult because manufacturing companies are not as high profile as retailers. I will point to China as a whole as a contemporary example. Chinese companies have consistently beaten the previous generation's manufacturers by achieving lower costs. Anyway, since you say "…

what about Honda vs.... I dont know.. Detroit ? That is a good example of manufacturing companies winning on cost.

Honda, Toyota, et al got a leg up on the US Automakers by delivering a higher quality and more efficient product. They also managed to do it cheaper, but their competitive advantage was NOT primarily price.

Car companies that tried to deliver a low-cost product without the quality behind it (eg Yugo) ultimately failed.

Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function

#72
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what about Honda vs.... I dont know.. Detroit ? That is a good example of manufacturing companies winning on cost.

Honda, Toyota, et al got a leg up on the US Automakers by delivering a higher quality and more efficient product. They also managed to do it cheaper , but their competitive advantage was NOT primarily price. Car companies that tried to deliver a low-cost product without the quality behind it (eg Yugo) ultimately failed.

Honda / Toyota advantage was cost. They produced a better product for slightly less money because they had lower production costs. If you look at early Toyota cars they where all low end and cheap because that's all they could make. Just look a the size of the Accord when it was introduced vs the Civic vs the Fit. It's all about starting at the low end of the market and working your way up to the less price focused customer.

PS: Don't forget the market decides price, you can only really control cost if you want to be more than a nitch player.

Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function

#73
post #49
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

I disagree. ICC is often use to optimize heavy computation code. As it have a reputation of producing faster code.

Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function

#74
post #69

Not only should they fix it, they should open source the code, so AMD can contribute. Intel often makes noises about open source, so they should put their money where there mouth is.

Compiler discussion to one side for a minute... Intel does more than just make noises about open source. Their wifi and graphics chip set support has been excellent over the years. Prior to the recent changes at ATI they were pretty much the only company doing that.

Agreed and it's good that they do that since I use their graphics and Wifi drivers on my Ubuntu Laptop.

My point was if they are truly committed to open source they would do this too, they are after all a hardware company and should compete by making the best hardware.

Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function

#75
post #72
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honda, Toyota, et al got a leg up on the US Automakers by delivering a higher quality and more efficient product. They also managed to do it cheaper , but their competitive advantage was NOT primarily price. Car companies that tried to deliver a low-cost product without the quality behind it (eg Yugo) ultimately failed.

Honda / Toyota advantage was cost. They produced a better product for slightly less money because they had lower production costs. If you look at early Toyota cars they where all low end and cheap because that's all they could make. Just look a the size of the Accord when it was introduced vs the Civic vs the Fit. It's all about starting at the low end of the market and working your way up to the less price focused c…

Yes but the Japanese strategy was not "sell at the lowest possible price". It was "we have good control over our costs, let's pick a price and see what we can deliver at that price". At that point in time, US automakers didn't even know what making a car cost them, they were so focussed on revenue they lost sight of the bottom line.

Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Culture is part of it. How many people there had worked for Intel in the past and how many leave AMD to go to Intel in the future? I'd expect that's part of it too.

Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function

#77
post #67
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the parent was talking more about third parties doing benchmarks. If someone (not Intel) uses benchmarking software compiled with ICC, it might report erroneously bad results on an AMD system.

Yup, that was my point. Also, 'caveat emptor' has limits - Intel should at least state that their compiler produces suboptimal code for their competitors' CPUs.

Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function

#78

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…

"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."

Indeed, you don't wanna mess with Apple: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10291701-37.html

Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function

#79
post #59
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.

AMD voluntarily entered the desktop processor business, IIRC, at a time the US government required a second source before they could buy x86 chips. How does that make anti-competitive behaviour from a company many times their size nice?

It is anti-competitive to sell anything at a loss.

Re: Intel's "cripple AMD" function

#80

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.

The important point is whether the mark is being abused as a false indication of the origin of the goods. In the case of UA strings this is plainly not the case (now). Vendor IDs are still considered to be indicative of the vendor - such an objection could be avoided by a disclaimer but this may yet not be enough if vendor-id were the common method to determine origin.

Of course their are rules against using as a TM something that is not indicative of origin (generic names of products &c.) and so if a name were needed for interoperability purposes then it could well be argued for free use.

I perhaps trolled slightly. Mea culpa.

As for Chrome browser identifying as Safari, I think not, what does Help > About say.

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