Zarathustra[H]
Extremely [H]
- Joined
- Oct 29, 2000
- Messages
- 37,358
...I am worried.
First off, let me be excruciatingly clear.
I have been a long time AMD fan. Some of my favorite times in this computer hobby for me came when I started college, which perfectly coincided with the 1999 Athlon launch. Having been a long time PC builder (since I was 11 and had a 286) I finally had part time work and a budget to build a real system, and I had a long string of AMD systems.
Ever since 2006, I've been excited about the prospect that AMD would come back and once again be competitive per core with Intel.
- Phenom was a disappointment with its TLB bug
- Phenom II couldn't quite keep up.
- Bulldozer was an utter disaster, and none of the follow-on designs helped much.
- The first two Ryzen releases almost got us there.
- 7nm may finally seal the deal.
Depending on which rumor you believe, 7nm Ryzen will either catch up, just barely miss, or just barely beat beat Intel's current offerings on a per core performance basis. This is great! it's finally happening! But...
There is an elephant in the room no one is talking about
Why is it AMD needs a 7nm process in order to be competitive with Intel's 14nm chips? By all accounts all else being equal, a 7nm chip should be crushing a 14nm chip. Smaller process size means less heat and power, which means you can crank things up more. The fact that AMD is only catching up to Intel's 14nm chips on per core performance on a 7nm process strongly suggests that all things are not equal.
AMD's current architecture may be better than the highly flawed Bulldozer architecture, but the above means that the architecture itself is still WELL behind Intel's, and that they are competitive solely because they currently have the process advantage.
Lets take a historical perspective
Last time AMD was successful with the Athlon launch it was through a combination of great efforts on AMD's part, some key acquisitions (NexGen), Technology Licenses (DEC Alpha EV6 bus) and strategic hires (layoffs from DEC), but also in HUGE part due to Intel's spectacular failure with Netburst and the Pentium 4.
This gave AMD a limited opportunity to break in, and try to cement themselves in the industry, before Intel came roaring back from the Netburst mistake. Through a combination of mismanagement on AMD's part, different priorities and a ton of unfair (and illegal) business practices on Intel's part including exclusivity bribes to OEM's and the Intel compiler intentionally sabotaging AMD performance (later resulting in a $1B settlement paid by Intel to AMD) they were not successful in this regard. It was a desperate and damned near insolvent AMD that finally accepted a lowball $1B settlement from Intel because they didn't have any other choice. When they received it, acquiring ATi and entering the GPU market took money away from R&D resulting in a string of disappointing CPU releases over the next decade.
History Repeats Itself
Similarly, this time around a combination of an internal effort (Zen development under Jim Keller) and Intel screwup (the spectacular failure of Intel's 10nm process) have given AMD an opportunity to break in and cement themselves once again. Unless something drastic changes - however - they look set to fail this time as well.
The fact that AMD is only competitive with Intel's 14nm chips because they are at 7nm means that once Intel fixes their process (and they will eventually, probably skipping 10nm and moving on to the next smaller one at this point, I'm guessing in 2021) Intel will come roaring back and crush AMD.
AMD really needs to not rest on their laurels with 7nm Ryzen, and not spread themselves too thin with acquisitions and adventures in other tech and really focus on improving the core Zen architecture to the point where it is competitive with Intel AT THE SAME PROCESS NODE. They have ~2 years to get there. If they don't, they are toast.
I'd like to hear your thoughts.
First off, let me be excruciatingly clear.
I have been a long time AMD fan. Some of my favorite times in this computer hobby for me came when I started college, which perfectly coincided with the 1999 Athlon launch. Having been a long time PC builder (since I was 11 and had a 286) I finally had part time work and a budget to build a real system, and I had a long string of AMD systems.
Ever since 2006, I've been excited about the prospect that AMD would come back and once again be competitive per core with Intel.
- Phenom was a disappointment with its TLB bug
- Phenom II couldn't quite keep up.
- Bulldozer was an utter disaster, and none of the follow-on designs helped much.
- The first two Ryzen releases almost got us there.
- 7nm may finally seal the deal.
Depending on which rumor you believe, 7nm Ryzen will either catch up, just barely miss, or just barely beat beat Intel's current offerings on a per core performance basis. This is great! it's finally happening! But...
There is an elephant in the room no one is talking about
Why is it AMD needs a 7nm process in order to be competitive with Intel's 14nm chips? By all accounts all else being equal, a 7nm chip should be crushing a 14nm chip. Smaller process size means less heat and power, which means you can crank things up more. The fact that AMD is only catching up to Intel's 14nm chips on per core performance on a 7nm process strongly suggests that all things are not equal.
AMD's current architecture may be better than the highly flawed Bulldozer architecture, but the above means that the architecture itself is still WELL behind Intel's, and that they are competitive solely because they currently have the process advantage.
Lets take a historical perspective
Last time AMD was successful with the Athlon launch it was through a combination of great efforts on AMD's part, some key acquisitions (NexGen), Technology Licenses (DEC Alpha EV6 bus) and strategic hires (layoffs from DEC), but also in HUGE part due to Intel's spectacular failure with Netburst and the Pentium 4.
This gave AMD a limited opportunity to break in, and try to cement themselves in the industry, before Intel came roaring back from the Netburst mistake. Through a combination of mismanagement on AMD's part, different priorities and a ton of unfair (and illegal) business practices on Intel's part including exclusivity bribes to OEM's and the Intel compiler intentionally sabotaging AMD performance (later resulting in a $1B settlement paid by Intel to AMD) they were not successful in this regard. It was a desperate and damned near insolvent AMD that finally accepted a lowball $1B settlement from Intel because they didn't have any other choice. When they received it, acquiring ATi and entering the GPU market took money away from R&D resulting in a string of disappointing CPU releases over the next decade.
History Repeats Itself
Similarly, this time around a combination of an internal effort (Zen development under Jim Keller) and Intel screwup (the spectacular failure of Intel's 10nm process) have given AMD an opportunity to break in and cement themselves once again. Unless something drastic changes - however - they look set to fail this time as well.
The fact that AMD is only competitive with Intel's 14nm chips because they are at 7nm means that once Intel fixes their process (and they will eventually, probably skipping 10nm and moving on to the next smaller one at this point, I'm guessing in 2021) Intel will come roaring back and crush AMD.
AMD really needs to not rest on their laurels with 7nm Ryzen, and not spread themselves too thin with acquisitions and adventures in other tech and really focus on improving the core Zen architecture to the point where it is competitive with Intel AT THE SAME PROCESS NODE. They have ~2 years to get there. If they don't, they are toast.
I'd like to hear your thoughts.
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