AMD desktop processors dying

[Ross Scott]

This is pretty bad news, regardless of what CPUs you use:

 

http://news.softpedia.com/news/AMD-Not-Competing-With-Intel-Anymore-Goes-Mobile-237103.shtml

 

If they really wind down on making desktop processors, that means Intel will have a monopoly on the market, which is never good. In fact if they really do phase out, I'm guessing you'll see Moore's Law come to a stop pretty fast for desktop CPUs if Intel has no competition.

[twipley]

For those who are wondering, that law states something akin to "chip performance doubling every eighteen months or so" -- concerning the mainstream market, of course. It is just a trend that has been going on and observed since the early sixties or something.

 

I admit not having done anything to support AMD in recent times as far as memory goes. Intel had it going. Hoping not too intense consequences to that potential lack of future competition.

[Obsidian]

That's a real shame. Personally, I've never been big on using AMD processors for my builds, but that doesn't mean I disliked their chips. I always kept track of their releases and roadmaps, and might have switched from Intel to AMD machines in a future build. Still, I guess this is just how things are going now. Maybe another company can step up and give Intel a run for progress, but I don't know of any such manufacturer in the market currently capable of doing so. Maybe the PowerPC chips will make a comeback in the desktop PC market, lol.

[Ross Scott]

For those who are wondering, that law states something akin to "chip performance doubling every eighteen months or so" -- concerning the mainstream market, of course. It is just a trend that has been going on and observed since the early sixties or something.

Actually it's that transistors in a chip would double, not necessarily performance. That's more or less been true due to the addition of more cores in CPUs over the past few years. Performance has actually started tapering off for single threaded applications (which is arguably still the majority of software) for the past few years compared to the leaps we saw in the past.

[Michael Archer]

What's the big deal? Intel makes processors that meets most people's expectations and AMD does not; therefore, Intel is an objectively superior company and it should do better than AMD. That's capitalism for ya.

 

I think at this point, people are clinging to AMD simply out of nostalgia and fanboyism. There's nothing wrong with Intel processors!

[Ross Scott]

Looks like it was a false alarm:

 

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/11/30/1510252/amd-confirms-commitment-to-x86

 

 

Michael Archer: The difference is without ANY competition it becomes a monopoly, a position Intel would almost certainly abuse given its history. Imagine in 2 years something that's 5% faster than the exact same offerings now, and at twice the cost. Whereas if AMD was around in a competitive capacity, pricing might remain similar with a 30% boost in performance from Intel.

 

Also your argument doesn't hold up so well since back in the early 00s AMD was making faster AND cheaper processors than Intel, and it took Intel YEARS to catch up again. During that time AMD gained almost NO marketshare however, due to a lot of anti-competitive and / or flat out illegal business practices on Intel's part. If Intel had actually obeyed the law, AMD might not even be in this situation today since it would have had resources to work with now. The conclusion I draw then is if you say it's objectively "the best", that means the "best" is not in fact, determined by the best product or pricing (even though I agree they make the better product today), but it means a willingness to crush your competition by any means necessary, even if it means breaking the law, instead of making a superior product yourself. Eventually, they did the latter, but not after a long campaign of suppressing their competition first.

[alphabetagamma]

Looks like it was a false alarm:

 

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/11/30/1510252/amd-confirms-commitment-to-x86

Thank god for that. I'm glad we still have a much cheaper alternative to intel.