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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

#321
post #103

I've never had time for Intel creating 400 different CPUs just to create artificial market segmentation and force people into a more expensive CPU. Why is there an i3, i5, i7, i9 - ahh, right, because then you can try to justify charging incrementally more for each additional feature. Oh you want turbo boost? Sorry that's an i5! Oh you want hyperthreading/SMT? Nope, next model up. Oh you want ECC? That's a "workstati…

Just to note, AMD does every single thing you blame Intel for. AMD recently dicked b350/x370 chipset owners by sending motherboard manufacturers a memo telling them not to support Zen 3 (5000 series) Ryzen CPUs on their older chipsets.[1] This was after AsRock sent out a beta BIOS which proved that 5000 series CPUs worked fine on b350 chipsets. Today, AsRock's beta BIOS still isn't on their website and it's nearly a…

For RDIMM, it's fair that they don't "implement" it on memory controller because they don't sell chips made from same silicon that need support RDIMM .

Intel's "disabling" ECC is different situation. They implements ECC for the silicon, enable for Xeon, disable for Core i.

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XMG (a gaming laptop brand) even publicly announced that AMD would not meet their request for validation samples of Ryzen 5800 and 5900 CPUs. CPUs that have been launched and are shipping to other customers already. https://www.reddit.com/r/XMG_gg/comments/n4i3x2/update_threa...

If AMD at at 100% production capacity, why would they want to increase demand? Surely supplying validation samples could only hurt AMD in that situation (technical costs, disappointing the customer when the customer want to shift to production).

> why would they want to increase demand?

1. It's not mostly about the demand, but about maintaining good working relations with systems manufacturers.

2. Increased demand is not a daily thing. Positive reviews and manufacturer interests would likely hold for a while, effecting the next production planning cycle or what-not.

3. Counteract effects quelling demand.

4. They could theoretically avoid letting prices drop if demand is strong.

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#323
post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> electrical delivery system for the cars and trucks that use it, so they can recharge their batteries without even stopping. > and we can pair the electrified road sections with cheap solar power I don't know. More cars on the road in general is just a bad idea IMO. Traffic, noise, accidents, parking lots, Fast and the Furious movies... Alternatively we can use a system of transport that can carry a whole neighbourh…

More trains would be good. In the U.S. that's a hard sell, though. People do road trips in their cars for vacation in part because it's so convenient to be able to bring a whole carload of food, luggage, and camping gear with you. And there's a lot of places trains don't go. How many national parks have rail service? Replacing trucks for long-haul would be good, but you'd have to accept slower deliveries. (I wonder i…

> People do road trips in their cars for vacation in part because it's so convenient to be able to bring a whole carload of food, luggage, and camping gear with you.

On a decent rail infrastructure you can run car-carriers like in the Euro Tunnel between UK and Continental Europe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurotunnel_Shuttle). These things are big enough to accomodate cars and even buses, with people being able to walk around outside of their car.

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing how backwards we went from a sustainability perspective when you consider likely no one had this issue front and center as they did in the early industrial days. We used reusable metals and glasses much more. Now everything is plastic.

On the other side, just take a "Tragerl" of beer (German beer crate with 20x0.5l): - It weighs much more than a crate of 20x0.5l aluminium cans or plastic bottles - it is more voluminous: glass bottles have way thicker walls and they need plastic spacers to prevent the bottles from crashing each other, whereas cans and bottles can be shrinkwrapped just fine) - the return logistics are simpler: glass bottles and the c…

> the return logistics are simpler

Umm, explain to me exactly how it is simpler to recycle a set of PET bottles than to transport a crate of glass bottles? It is infinitely more costly and complex, and involves multiple industries.

As for aluminum cans, it's perhaps less of an ordeal, but still you only recycle between 1/3 and 2/3 of the material:

https://www.container-recycling.org/index.php/calculating-al...

I believe you are only thinking about the logistics directly experienced by the end consumer... which is part of the problem with disposable consumption goods.

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can confirm that 5000 desktop ryzen series has issues with turbo boost, basically if you disable turbo and stay on base clock then everthing is fine, but with turbo (CPB) enabled you get crashes and BSOD. I had this problem at work at my new workstation with ryzen 5900x. We RMAed it and new cpu works fine. From what i read it's pretty common problem, but it's strange that no on talks about it.

Can the turbo boost maximum frequency value be lowered a little in the BIOS to try and alleviate the problem?

I think yes, but if you buy cpu, you look at advertised speeds and you expect get them in your machine. From what i researched, to achive advertised clock frequencies you need to increase voltage to make it more stable. Some people reported silicon degradation after increasing voltages (it worked fine for week and then problems returned).

You can read more info on this forum post: https://community.amd.com/t5/processors/ryzen-5900x-system-c...

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#326
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Custom ARM / RISC-V chips or even ASIC/FPGAs could start threatening x86/AMD64 for datacenters and "clouds" sooner than we think.

ARM maybe. But I'm not convinced that the ARM-alliance (Fujitsu, Apple, Ampere, Neoverse) is quite as unified as you might think. Apple has no apparent goals for cloud/servers, Fujitsu seems entirely focused on the Japanese market, and Ampere Altra isn't reaching critical mass (Amazon prefers a Neoverse rather than joining forces with Ampere / using Altra). As long as the ARM-community is fragmented, their research/i…

> As long as the ARM-community is fragmented

Why does this matter? If popular OS distributions consistently target ARM-based CPUs, with a sufficient number of packages (esp. development-support-related) working on them, then who cares about fragmentation? An organization could buy systems with ARM chips and software will basically "just work".

Same argument for consumer PCs, although there you have the MS Windows issue I guess.

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#327

Intel 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…

Intel's profit is double AMD's revenue. Cash flow is not their problem.

Can you elaborate on what exactly their problem is then?

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#328
post #80

It's amazing how far Intel has fallen. The 10nm debacle exposed how far they've fallen behind on fabs to the point that they're outsourcing to TSMC. Like, how humiliating must that be? Intel completely missed the mobile revolution. They had a stake in that race but sold it (ie XScale). Intel's product segmentation is bewildering. They've also kept features "enterprise" only to prop up high server chip prices to the d…

I read an interview a few years ago when the CEO at that time was boasting "Intel chips are so well known, even college students know them very well". What the article writer added was "Intel is losing experience engineers, replacing them with cheap students". Not sure how true is that, but if it is true then it explains the past 5-8 years.

I saw it happen with a former large company (top dog in manufacturing solutions area) where in a the middle of a project all experienced people in USA were replaced with dozens of new hires in India. Half of the people in USA were fired, they were competent but considered too expensive. Talking to them, I found it was the norm for many years, now only some sales and management people are in USA, everyone else is in India. This causes companies to lose the competitive edge in engineering, cost was not really a problem and competing only on cost is meaningless, you lose to India and China on that ground alone.

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can the turbo boost maximum frequency value be lowered a little in the BIOS to try and alleviate the problem?

I think yes, but if you buy cpu, you look at advertised speeds and you expect get them in your machine. From what i researched, to achive advertised clock frequencies you need to increase voltage to make it more stable. Some people reported silicon degradation after increasing voltages (it worked fine for week and then problems returned). You can read more info on this forum post: https://community.amd.com/t5/process…

I am very interested in AMD's latest lineup (and bought a 5500U laptop that performs super well so far) but I am aware that on the PC front things can be a bit rockier and not always stable so such comments and articles help a lot.

Thank you.

Re: Intel is reducing server chip pricing in attempt to stem the AMD tide

#330
post #283
post #80

It's amazing how far Intel has fallen. The 10nm debacle exposed how far they've fallen behind on fabs to the point that they're outsourcing to TSMC. Like, how humiliating must that be? Intel completely missed the mobile revolution. They had a stake in that race but sold it (ie XScale). Intel's product segmentation is bewildering. They've also kept features "enterprise" only to prop up high server chip prices to the d…

>The 10nm debacle exposed how far they've fallen behind on fabs to the point that they're outsourcing to TSMC. Like, how humiliating must that be? Every chip Intel buys from TSMC is a chip not made by its competitors. Doing this is extremely useful for Intel to the point I wonder why TSMC agreed in the first place. After all, eventually Intel will improve their fabs, and then it's the non-Intel players that will orde…

>I wonder why TSMC agreed in the first place.

Right now we dont have confirmation as what and when and volume of TSMC usage. Intel is making GPU on TSMC makes lots of sense. After all their GPU team are vastly more familiar with TSMC ecosystem.

Other than that most of it are just rumours.

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