Intel Admits To Falling Behind AMD 244
Vicegrip writes "CNN is carrying a Fortune story covering an analyst meeting held on Thursday. There, CEO Otellini admitted Intel has fallen behind AMD with lost market share, technological leadership, and recently profitability. Intel also announced cuts to 1 Billion in spending." From the article: "Intel's market share recently slipped below 80%, and Otellini strongly emphasized the need for market share gains in all his remarks. On the other hand, he also suggested that Intel's recent market share losses (to AMD, whose name was not mentioned) were in line with historical variations which tracked to Intel's product generations."
Intel had it coming (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that it's coming back to bite them on the ass, I think it's wonderful.
Poor interpretation (Score:5, Insightful)
80% market share != Falling Behind
50% market share == Falling Behind
Re:Intel had it coming (Score:5, Insightful)
With stuff like the spying serial number, tpa, etc,
Which is why AMD implemented the exact same thing, right up to virtualization "secure" computing.
intel was holding back their own 1GHz chip to squeeze more profit.
Shame on a corporation for making a profit. AMD is so pure and virginal white, they'd never do something this dastardly.
Intel has the power... (Score:3, Insightful)
AMD on the other hand is showing steady and strong growth. It has solidified its place in the market and has shown that it not only can compete, but will continue to innovate and compete with Intel.
In the end, something like this is only good for the consumers. Intel admitting losses to AMD will raise the bar of both companies so they can continue to compete, bring us better technology, faster.
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why did Steve Jobs pick AMD? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Intel had it coming (Score:4, Insightful)
The OP didn't say there was anything wrong in making profit. The OP said it's wrong to use methods that are deemed illegal in our laws, and are typicaly not wise in a competitive market. Obviously Intel thought they still owned us all like M$ does... but AMD caught them with their pants down. That's the point of the OP. Intel had it coming to them for their arrogance. And they got exactly what they asked for.
No where in those facts... is the OP indicating that making a profit is a bad thing.
Re:Intel had it coming (Score:5, Insightful)
Shame on a corporation for making a profit. AMD is so pure and virginal white, they'd never do something this dastardly.
Any corporation causes damage to the market when they try to leverage their monopoly to maintain the monopoly. If AMD ever crushes all their competition (no that I'm worried) they will also slow innovation. Far better to have multiple competing companies, where you can buy whatever you want. Perhaps we could call it a "free market," since you can shop around.
Are they falling behind thanks to Otellini (Score:5, Insightful)
The results are just what I would have though - they lose their technical edge, but retain their strong position in the market.
My guess is that Intel's business model quickly changes from designing and building chips to buying other company's designs ---- just like the large drug companies mostly get drugs by investing in and eventually buying small drug research companies.
I think that was the plan when the put a MBA in charge, and I think this is the expected result.
Re:Intel had it coming (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate reading this kind of generic accusation on Slashdot. For whatever reason, most
While I like AMD's desktop chips more, one must be fully aware of the fact that AMD is no less of a corporation than Intel is, and want your money just as badly as everyone else. As others have mentioned and will mention, AMD's hardware tactics are no less questionable than Intel's, and thus, it becomes a moot point.
Re:Huh? (Score:2, Insightful)
Antitrust Strategy? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Are they falling behind thanks to Otellini (Score:4, Insightful)
Considering that he has been the CEO for just about a year, I would guess that Otellini is far from the only reason for Intel's current position.
Re:Speaking of Apple (Score:4, Insightful)
* I have no idea what their pricing agreement with Intel is, so this may or may not be the case.
Auto Underdog Syndrome (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it's largely a visceral dislike of a single entity having so much power. I'd prefer to have dozens of chipmakers all competing bitterly. Maybe 5 big standard architectures.
Anyway, when one powerhouse controls 90%+ of the market I get nervous. Especially when there are allegations of abuse, innovation slows, prices are high, or the situation lasts for a long time.
It seems in many industries we are headed to 1-3 (whatever the situation and antitrust law allows) Megacorps that write their own ticket.
I am flexible about most things, but tend to prefer the underdog if price and performance are comparable.
Re:Both Intel and AMD May Fall (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, that's likely to happen. Two words: Chicken, egg.
Re:Intel had it coming (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not even sure how your Matrix example applies, the only thing the Matrix franchise has a monopoly on is the Matrix series. There are plenty of movies out there, and nobody HAS to go see them. Try making your point using a monopoly controlled commodity and you'll make a better point. Some busisess/people HAD to buy PC's, and they HAD to pay Intel's inflated price. A price that was arguably illegal, and possible only through the existance of the monopoly.
Then the free market came, and AMD knocked Intel on it's proverbial ass.
I'll try a more fitting anaolgy. Take a monopoly-controlled commodity, lets say: natural gas and electricity. If you want to heat your food, or sleep warm at night, you'll have to pay what they are asking. Where else are you going to get natural gas or electricity? There is no other way to get it. So they jack up the price to 2x market value...is THAT illegal?
Now Intel wasn't considered a monopoly as far as I know. But it sure seemed like they did, and they were asses about it.
Re:Both Intel and AMD May Fall (Score:3, Insightful)
If you keep this up, you'll just get marked as a troll, and it'll be harder for you to get your message out.
How about writing a demo app instead?
Re:Both Intel and AMD May Fall (Score:5, Insightful)
You, Sir, are a crackpot. From your site
What the human brain is good at, however, is to use its crazy, complex and seamingly contradicting functions to get a "good enough" response in a crazy, complex and seamingly contradicting world. In other words : to operate in uncertain situations with uncomplete data. This includes that it (most of the time) doesnt crash when something unexpected happens. Sometimes, however, it does crash and people get things like post-traumatic stress disorders.
So, if something similar to the brain (your "silver bullet") is "good enough" in uncertain situations, why dont we use such an architecture? Well, we do, its called AI (artificial intelligence), you might have heard of it.
Your silver bullet is simply an agent-based system [wikipedia.org]. And I'm currently doing my master in artificial intelligence on such a system, VERY close to your silver bullet. And I can tell you that this system is NOT the solution. It can handle uncertainity. It probably wont crash.
But the problem is that it is impossible to debug.
With an algorithmic system, I know what it supposed to happen. I can test on the way. In an agent-based system, while I can test every agent, this isnt the problem. The working of the system emerges from the interaction of these agents. And this is something very magical. Every agent doubles the complexity, so nobody understands any more how they work exactly. A developper has to make guesses, put the entire system together and then hit run. If it works : cool, but nobody knows how. If it doesnt work : crap, because nobody knows what to change.
Also, these systems have to same problem as people : they make errors, they never work 100%. And a computer is supposed to work free from critical errors. A human might tell you : Oh, I forgot to send this letter. If your computer tells you : Oh, I forgot to send your email, most people will be shocked (or not, as they accept bugs far too easily nowaday).
Bottom line : tradional computers aim to be predictable : if they crash, they crash hard, and they need complet data to be able to work, but most of the time, they do exactly as expected.
AI (including your "silver bullet") no longer aims to be predictable. It can work under uncertainity, it might crash less often, but it results are unpredictable and instead of being as expected, they are only close to the expectation, most of the time.
And I cant believe that I spend 30 minutes on an offtopic post, just to debunk your "silver bullet".
Re:Turning Point for Intel? (Score:4, Insightful)
This statement presumes that
a) The Conroe will launch when promised.
b) That it is a real launch with the product in stores, not just a paper launch.
c) That the performance will be as great as promised.
And all that remains to be seen, right?
I'm a qualified tech professional (Score:3, Insightful)
I manage servers, with tens of thousands of users, all over California.
ALL of the servers I've deployed in the last 2 years have been AMD, with a heavy bias towards Opterons. For me, one of the key advantages AMD has over Intel is the "last resort" advantage.
If I deploy Xeon servers, and something goes terribly wrong, I can't go to a local retail outlet and buy any hardware that would work - Xeons are not binary compatible with X86. Local tech shops here in my hometown (Chico, CA) don't have Xeon anything. But they DO have Athlon/64s in droves!
So, if I deploy an Opteron server, I *know* that I can get an Athlon/64 that's binary compatible with my system images from the local l337 Gam3rz computer store with aliens and funky lights, but that's binary compatible with my rackmounted servers. No matter what, I have something I can count on in less than a single working day. I've had to fall back to this in the past, so I'm ready to in the future.
This gives me a worst-case recovery time of about 4 hours during business hours. (the only ones that really, really count)
Xeon is compatible with... Xeon. At best, in a worst-case scenario, I wait 48 hours to get some kind of support in small town, CA. Ouch!!!! No way this is acceptable.
4 hours vs 48 hours. Not a hard decision... So Opteron/Athlon/64 it is, then...
And I don't mind that it's both faster and thousands $$$$ cheaper!
Re:I'm an Intel Junkie. (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, you can get a huge boost out of a specially designed compiler. That's why Itanium is doing so well - you can write slow, shitty code but once you've fed it through that incredible Intel compiler it just runs like shit off a shovel.
Seriously, when you say that the compiler will provide an amazing boost, I assume your definition of amazing is "maybe a couple of percent on average code with architecture specific optimisations"?
Re:In other news... (Score:2, Insightful)
Ahem. Intel need a 65nm process more than AMD does because their chip technology and design is quite frankly, shite. They're having real trouble keeping up with AMD at the moment so they need to go to something new. With some tweaking and sensible higher clocks speeds they could quite easily match Conroe. It's not as if anything Intel has now, or even in the pipeline, will blow AMD away. When AMD move to a 65nm process they're going to blow Intel away performance wise, and with their much cheaper prices and the budget Sempron they're going to continue to have their double whammy.