AMD, ATI, nVidia, Intel and The Dark Horse
I am not a specialist on this subject, but the current change in IT manufacturing and design landscape does fascinate me. Probably because now more than ever, I am exposed to office politics. but i digress.
The topic, or rather my concern is the death of ATI discrete graphics cards.
Lets make a simple and logical assumption: AMD needs to effectively compete in all spheres of Intel’s domain to become wealthy. That’s where ATI comes in: a designer of wonderful graphics cards. Now buying that talent allows AMD to enter the the integrated graphics sector, and with it’s recently announced Fusion program, things could get really really difficult for Intel. Sure, AMD cant compete toe_to_toe against Intel in the CPU sector, but the Athlon64 is not ineffective wrt to the needs of the end-user. It all boils down to how fast you really need your CPU to be to cost-effectively run office productivity software. This is what the OEMs want. High power at low cost. Bigtin always wants this, with the added criteria of Power usage.
Some might say that Core 2 Duo does all this better than the AMD. True, but there are things such as investment cycles. AMD didnt just suddenly face a shortage of manufacturing capability to keep up with a true upsurge in demand. Most of it’s chips went to the OEMs. It needed to saturate that market to grab as big a chunk as possible of that market’s investment cycle.
Make no mistake, C2D is a mouthwater prospect, but is it really needed right this minute? Simple answer: No.
This could mean that if AMD keeps winning OEM wins, and there are many battles like this, and worse still, they are cyclic, then Intel’s voice will be loudest in the gaming sector only . Rather niche isn’t it? There is a gap here for more revenues. Losing bread & Butter markets like OEM wins requires the investors be kept happy another way, and thats the discrete graphics card market. This is probably AMD’s Achilles heal. Sure, Intel could try and make a better integrated solution that matches AMD’s offering, but at this stage, they would be pretty even keel in terms of offering, but AMD’s is the more ‘interesting’ prospect. I do believe brand loyalty has gone the way of the Dodo, if you get my drift. Nothing like a couple thousand subpoena’s to rock that boat abit.
So can Intel on it’s own develop a worthy competitor to the GPU market traditionally dominated by the Red and Green teams? Of course they could, but it could be difficult. Very difficult indeed. Unless they get help bootstrapping them into instant competitiveness. Rumors were floating around about an nVidia buyout. Somehow, I dont quite see that happening just yet. The nvidia CEO once stated that he wants nVidia to become the next intel. He can’t realize that goal if he sells out.
Now one would think that buying ATI would give AMD an instant advantage in both graphics sectors: the discrete and the integrated markets. Yet, things seem very very quiet on the discrete front. One would also believe we would be seeing more chipset developments in the roadmaps considering ATI recently stunning successes at chipsets for AMD systems, that is the RD480 and namely, the RD580 chipsets.
So the question that crossed my mind this morning is: is this a misstep due to the distraction provided by the buyout of ATI, or is this a deliberate attempt. Attempt at what is the question? and I believe it’s an attempt to not upset nvidia until such time it has won enough Bread & Butter markets to grow its financial war chest. and THEN only start squaring up for battle in the discrete and chipset markets again. (ATI is does very very well for itself in the commercial electronics sectors mind you. That is another curiously understated portion of AMD’s recently updated portfolio of products. Hmmm)
Yes, all very simplistic arguments. But AMD has been very very quiet of late. There are ‘new’ products coming to market, but very little fanfare. IDF is traditionally a good ambush marketing occassion for AMD. AMD was a no-show this year. The newest graphics tech from ATI, the R600 is verrrry slow coming to market, and there’s no solid GPU roadmap. Some talk of an R700 that will introduce a modular design approach, a branching from the currently monolithic method of GPU design if you like. But no test silicon. Nothing. zero. Zilch.
So what has AMD been doing all this time? In gaming parlance: OEM FTW!
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Nvidia will probably never sell out to intel, and if it even would, it’s too expensive to become a buyout target. It would probably be cheaper for intel to pirate all the important engineers from nvidia if it simply wants to develop a decent integrated graphics chip.
I think ATI (or AMD should I say) is staying below the radar first to finish its rebranding before announcing and bragging what it has. Note that only recently AMD rebranded the 1600 and 3200 Crossfire chipsets to AMD 480X and 580X respectively.
Lastly, given the roadmaps http://trackingamd.blogspot.com/2006/12/amd-processor-roadmaps-for-2007.html AMD seems to be ready for a good fight against Core in 2007 when it launches its reworked cores and the Barcelona native quad-core.
yes, that is correct, but at this late stage of the game, and given the very loud noises Intel is making with its Core Techonology, its very disquieting that AMD has not produced anything that even hints at what u are suggesting based on a cursory look at the roadmaps: and that is that AMD will be competitive against Intel and Core 2.
The reality is, no one knows what new AMD cores will do, and nothing at the moment suggests a momentum swing back into AMD’s favor. Sorry to say this, but everything is just wishful thinking unless AMD produces the numbers. Think of it this way, AMD will very soon be almost 2 manufacturing nodes behind Intel now that Intel has produced A0 Penryn silicon that boots windows. And since the release of Core technology, Intel has decided honesty is the best policy. So based on their production of believable and replicable information, and the fact that AMD is soo damn quiet (not to mention R600 was delayed again! and hopefully to build inventory for a very hard launch), its Blue team all the way unless AMD DELIVERS.