Did anyone catch the news about AMD bailing on high-density server business line?

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2911158/servers/amd-withdraws-from-high-density-server-business.html

I wonder if it led to Rory's leaving last year -- after all, the SeaMicro deal was his.

Might I forcast something is up with ARM/AMD/POET?

Consider the landscape.

Eight-core 64-bit ARM chips with inbuilt GPU are fairly common and 10-core chips already announced (Mediatek), with 48-core coming for servers by other vendors, like Cavium (cavium.com) who are putting out 48-core ThunderX (ARMv8) chips.

So if AMD plan on entering the ARM processor market they'd better get something special (like POET) out and fast, and be prepared to stick at it and upgrade it and feed it enough to gain market. Because they're unlikely to win companies over first time; not until customers are confident that AMD are in it for the long run and won't leave them hanging without a supplier.

On the other hand, they could focus on a battle over x86-style chips where Intel is already deep discounting at the low end, and likely will have to do that all the way up the range to compete.

AMD face a tough time either way.

AMD has played a losing strategy for as long as I have can remember. People bought AMD on principle, and because they were price/performance leaders. I think, however, that the whole Sledgehammer/Clawhammer phase may have posed a risk of ultimately ruining them, unless of course they devilishly pull a POET out of their hat.

Obviously, those processors were horizons ahead of the Intel offerings at the time, but it was always a long term losing strategy, in particular if they were depending on selling CPUs to make money. Their obsession with OEM deals also hurt them.

What can they do to re-invent themselves?

AMD was obsessed with being a mini Intel, which was never going to work out for them.

They were even outright leaders for a while, but failed to capitalise on that (understatement of the century!).

While AMD had a far superior product for several years, Intel threw money (and threats - as was proved) to every retailer/integrator/etc out there to not carry AMD (and did other "interesting" things such as rig their industry standard compilers etc).

Intel was allowed to use strong-arm tactics that "scream" anti-trust and after many years, an almost bankrupt AMD was allowed to accept a small payment and Intel went scot-free.

If you have a product that is far ahead of the competition, you should be allowed to capitalize on that. If you are illegally not allowed by the powerful players, there should be some sort of protection for that, before it is too late. But I guess US-DoJ was sleeping at the wheel.

Today? That greatest industrial robbery of all time has been largely forgotten. After all, Justin Bieber is too fascinating!

You have to remember, the Athlon was getting a firm lead on the P3 and Intel got out the P4 as a "response". The P4, the processor now universally known as the biggest "dog" by virtually everyone (even in its final and much, much improved incarnations), eventually abandoned even by Intel to go back to a saner P3-derived architecture, was actually welcomed with laurels, both by (most of) the press and the integrators.

AMD put all this R&D effort and they got nothing out of it, instead they were bleeding money for years, while Intel was making money. This led us to the current situation, being a very weak AMD next to a behemoth.

It is too bad, because the single, sole reason Intel CPUs are affordable at all?

Is AMD.

I won't remind you how much Intel charged per-CPU before there was competition. The sole reason Intel CPUs are as fast as they are? Or even that their consumer products are 64-bit?

Is AMD.

I only hope in some POET-ic stealthy miracle for AMD to survive and get some competition going, otherwise there will be no-one left to keep Intel in check and consumers will pay for it.

We need AMD.

Because if AMD goes away, Intel has zero competitors in the x86/64 market.

Most people probably aren't old enough to remember that CPUs used to cost an arm-and-a-leg in margins, and then when a bunch of hot shots like the 6502 came out, prices dropped literally overnight.

How could they drop so much? Because it was nothing but margin to begin with.

If AMD goes the way of the dodo bird, so do cheap processors.

Moreover, we'll likely also lose a great deal of software freedom since -- as long as they still matter -- "what Intel says" typically becomes law across the whole board. The Clipper chip was just a practice run at control.

Today, UEFI and TPM are nothing, compared to what locked-in BIOS "think of the children!" hidden spyware Intel can demand on behalf of NSA under the guise of "security" from every future computer.

Beware Geoff's EC statement about Intel ("Not if we have any pride!")

GLAL,

R.