Have been with Intel for almost two decades, I finally moved to AMD for the very first time recently and I'm glad I did. Intel is being called "Toothpaste Company" for a reason. It has deliberately slowed down its innovation since gained performance advantage over AMD with CORE, for over a decade now. Between each iteration, there was not many changes but kept adding fancy instruction sets such as AVX512 useless to most if not all ordinary users. It's a shame that I bought it actually. But over time I gradually realized that the only occasions I used those fancy stuffs were benching marking new systems. So those fancy things mean nothing to me other than showing off to friends.
Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide
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Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide
#42Intel needs better (especially with less energy consumption) chips not lower price. If Intel will lower the price they will have less cash for R&D and this is the trouble for intel now: not much competitive chips. And where are again at the beginning of the circle. I hope they will make an internal review of their offices/laboratories/whatever, is not a price issue with the chips, is a performance and technical issue…
The US taxpayer will backstop Intel no matter what, purely because of the fab business.
Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide
#43Intel is NOT competing against AMD only. In the past couple of years, we’ve seen a number of big tech companies developing their own chips. Focusing on AMD would be quite myopic from a strategic pov. This market is only getting more competitive. Either you compete on performance or price.
Intel IS competing against AMD mainly in the server space now. Of course at some point ARM and RISC-V servers will become mainstream, but it will take years. Intel is taking action now and it's aimed directly at AMD.
ARM is already there in the cloud, cf AWS Graviton.
With Apple's M1 in the laptop/desktop (mac mini) space, ARM and its superior power/performance ratio is a significant contender for mainstream compute now.
Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide
#44Intel is NOT competing against AMD only. In the past couple of years, we’ve seen a number of big tech companies developing their own chips. Focusing on AMD would be quite myopic from a strategic pov. This market is only getting more competitive. Either you compete on performance or price.
After purchasing an M1, i'm starting to realize how viable ARM is as a main platform. Nearly everything I want to run on it has a natively built version, and runs great on it. I could easily move anything I've built to a server running ARM with little frustration. I think that may be a bigger part of the coming future.
Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well... I find that a bit of a stretch. I'd rather say we happen to be lucky. What if TSMC was a company that was about as good as Intel on specs and price. Would the market be "working" then? A new player might come along. That new player would need to have 20 billion dollars of money to play along though.
>That new player would need to have 20 billion dollars of money to play along though. From what I understand, quite a few national governments are at least looking into setting up their own local chip plants since semiconductors have become a critical industry. On that scale, $20b is not a huge speed hump.
All of these projects AFAIK involve enticing a company like TSMC to build new plants, not building their own competitor in the market. I don't think there's any appetite in Europe to invest tens of billions in building their own chip industry.
Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide
#46In anti-trust terms would this not be "dumping"
No. Dumping is selling below the cost of production, with the intent of driving someone else out of a market. This is just normal price competition. It's a good thing.
Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide
#47This is exactly the purpose of competition, it shouldn’t be news.
I disagree. This should be news because it's as close as an official declaration that Intel acknowledges it's time as the world's leading chip manufacturer is over, and that the crown is nowadays firmly on AMD's head. Also, Intel's long history of using unethical tricks to preserve their market share while avoidig competing on price also makes this a historical turn of events.
I am sure Intel and AMD relize that being x86 is no longer the advantage it used to be.
Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide
#48They are also doubling down on fab tech to catch up with TSMC. Markets working as intended.
Well... I find that a bit of a stretch. I'd rather say we happen to be lucky. What if TSMC was a company that was about as good as Intel on specs and price. Would the market be "working" then? A new player might come along. That new player would need to have 20 billion dollars of money to play along though.
> That new player would need to have 20 billion dollars of money to play along though.
In 2020 Uber's net income rose to losing only 7 about billion dollars. And they are competing for a market far less interesting and defensible than advanced semiconductors.
Competition would arise.
Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Intel drank the management consultant kool-aid like many large pharmaceuticals corps, relying more on financial engineering than their research pipeline to compete. The flip side is that they have lots of money to splash around. Companies like Pfizer for example.
Did they? I thought they made a heavy bet that hasn’t paid off (and maybe never will).
So if Intel drops $0.8B on a risktaker learning from what I. B. M. did to make Watson and not make those mistakes. What new thing could come from that? A new category product is what Intel should look for around the corner(s).
Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide
#50At this time where there are shortage of chips across the globe, isn't it a good idea to increase production and diversify the verticals? Any experts here who can put in some thoughts?