AMD CPU speculation... and expert conjecture

[cdrkf]

@juan, GCN will never be as efficient in traditional GPGPU as a chip from Nvidia. Nvidia's goals are to remove as much GPGPU as possible to reduce transistor count while not crippling specific GPGPU tasks (like those required for PhysX). If they cripple something and it's more efficient to add transistors for specific tasks (NVENC), they will go that route.

AMD's GPU goals are to create a strong monster for HSA. Their efficiency will come from the large performance gains of HSA over GPGPU. But until we see HSA come to fruition, AMD will lag behind.

I do not think AMD has any reason to chase after low power like in mobile ARM. That is a race to the bottom market and it does AMD no good to be there. They want to be in markets where HSA can do well and AMD can offer a solution that no one else can. An efficient and small GPU is not special and it becomes another competitor to ARM GPUs and smaller Nvidia GPUs. But as far as competing with Nvidia on efficiency, AMD is going to have to compete with someone who feels it's fine to just cut functionality out of a product to raise efficiency when AMD is not in the position to do that thanks to HSA.

But being a GPGPU monster for HSA is going to cost transistors and it's going to put AMD behind Nvidia and company in efficiency in traditional tasks. I think that Nvidia knows this and it's why it's pushing efficiency so hard in marketing material (like reviews screaming GTX 750 Ti is fantastic for PPW).

AMD's value and efficiency here won't show up until we get software that can exploit their hardware. And knowing how things have been in the past, it's not a guaranteed thing.

AMD slogan should be:

Lagging today for creating the Tech of tomorrow, who will be obsolete then.

It`s basically the same strategy they used with Bulldozer. HSA seems awesome but if they can`t make use of the tech NOW, they are basically screwed.

Damn it AMD, Damn it... just give me a 4-6 Core Phenom based CPU with 15% increased IPC and 20% increased speed, and i would haste to the local PC Hardware Store.

AMD have actually been pretty forward looking with their designs and haven't been playing it safe...

Phenom was the *first* monolithic quad core on the market. TLB bug + low clock rate + lack of transistors for cache killed it's performance related to Core 2 Quad (2 dual cores in 1 package, a poor solution imo Intel got lucky that Phenom I had problems imo). Phenom II fixed these issues and was a superb chip competative at release with the higher end C2Q chips. Intel then release the first i7 which essentially mixed their stronger core (C2) with all of the enhancements AMD released with Phenom I (monolithic quad core, HT type interface rather than FSB, 3rd level cache etc) and bolted on HT that they had back when they screwed up so badly with P4.

AMD then release bulldozer (2 years late) which unfortunately pitched it against Sandy (gen 2 i7) when it *should* have gone against the previous gen. Bullozer was also a brave design, and was / is reasonably competative againts 1st gen i7 but not against Sandy which had major uarch improvements. Piledriver (which should have been out in time to compete against Sandy) had to contend with Ivy instead...

On the APU side, Intel still don't have anything close to the level of integration that AMD has with HSA- the main issue at the moment is there is no software to take full advantage of the capability however it's imporated for AMD to get something into the wild or there never will be.

Ok, they're behind but you need to give AMD some credit. I mean if you go back to the late 90s, AMD not only kept pace with Intel, they outran them repeatedly with the first Athlon, Athlon Thunderbird (first 1ghz+ cpu), Athlon XP (competative with P4), Athlon 64 (Destroyed P4) and Athlon 64 x2 (first dual core), and they did this with a fraction of the budget Intel had (which is what lead Intel to play dirty as AMD had an equal or better product for nearly a decade).

 

[de5_Roy]

^^ er... they still have equal/better product(s), at certain price points. until intel intruduces something like tri-core atoms with hyperthreading and 20% faster iris pro igpu with 128MB edram and sell that soc under $150, amd will continue to do so.

 

[palladin9479]

Ok guys finished getting the parts in for my A8-7600 demo build.

So far it's

M350 mini-itx case with 150W pico-PSU
ASRock FM2A88X-ITX+
AMD A8-7600 APU in 65W configuration
8GB DDR3-2133 Corsair Vengeance LP
1TB HGST 7200RPM SATA HDD

I happened to have a Noctua NH-L9A sitting around.

http://i537.photobucket.com/albums/ff338/palladin9479/PC%20Builds/20140905_174232_zpsa0945a03.jpg

http://i537.photobucket.com/albums/ff338/palladin9479/PC%20Builds/20140905_180918_zps3c794856.jpg

http://i537.photobucket.com/albums/ff338/palladin9479/PC%20Builds/20140905_180459_zpsba0962dd.jpg

http://i537.photobucket.com/albums/ff338/palladin9479/PC%20Builds/20140905_180435_zpsc6769d2e.jpg

http://i537.photobucket.com/albums/ff338/palladin9479/PC%20Builds/20140905_184039_zps6f6741f5.jpg

One problem I ran into was that with the Noctua cooler attached there wasn't enough space to mount the 2.5" HDD on the top of the M350, the fan on the Noctua was simply too large. With the boxed cooler there was just enough room, but I wanted to try out the Noctua in that case to see how quiet it would be. I'm currently building it with the top open and the HDD on the side while I wait for the external eSATA 2.5" encloser to arrive. It cost me $25 USD and should easily solve this problem at the expense of having to hide it. The other option is to use the boards mSATA port and install on a SDD and while this definitely has it's own benefit, I wanted a large amount of space to store my Steam games without having to use Microsofts mklink to make a network folder appear to be local.

 

[juanrga]

The above Intel vs AMD price war above is interesting but people in other places are speculating and doing expert conjectures (PUN intended) about the future of AMD. This is an excerpt of an interesting discussion in another forum:

Qualcomm - has own CPU and own GPU
Nvidia - has own CPU and own GPU
Intel - has own CPU and own GPU
Imagination - has own CPU (MIPS) and own GPU
Samsung - doesn't own either one. It buys them from ARM

Why Samsung needs AMD:

• 
  ■GPU technology especially, which I'm pretty sure can be easily adopted for mobile, just like Nvidia's Kepler. AMD is already spearheading heterogenous computing and "down to the metal" (or should I say Mantle?) GPU computing
  ■ARMv8-based K12 core coming soonish (2016) - could be good, and would spare Samsung the research/effort
  ■x86 APUs can give Samsung somewhat better synergy/lower costs in its laptop business
  ■Samsung, like Apple, can control its future regarding its processors, and be much more integrated

Why AMD needs Samsung:

• 
  ■foundry highly competitive with TSMC, which they can use to dump GloFlo, which is holding AMD back - something AMD doesn't need right now, as it has enough problems. AMD definitely needs to use a more competitive foundry before it even dreams about competing either with Intel or in mobile
  ■instant placing in millions of new laptops and in 10-100x more mobile devices
  ■a ton of R&D cash - something AMD could definitely use a lot more of to be competitive not just in PCs, but in mobile too, otherwise it doesn't have much of a future
  ■mobile chip experience from Samsung's own mobile chip division

I should say I'm not a huge fan of Samsung these days, but I think these two just need each other too much, and they would match pretty well.

This is just another reason for Samsung to bought AMD

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8492/nvidia-files-patent-infringement-complaints-against-qualcomm-samsung

http://techreport.com/news/27011/nvidia-tries-to-block-samsung-galaxy-shipments-over-patent-dispute

 

[cdrkf]

^^ er... they still have equal/better product(s), at certain price points. until intel intruduces something like tri-core atoms with hyperthreading and 20% faster iris pro igpu with 128MB edram and sell that soc under $150, amd will continue to do so.

Yeah I agree- what I was reffering to though was in terms of outright performance and power consumption.

The AMD of today is forced to compete from a value perspective. Go back a few years they had fundamentally better products irrespective of the metric you used to assess them.

Of course AMD do still compete directly with Nvidia on the GPU side- the R9 295X2 is the fastest single card solution you can get simple as (and now it's had a huge price drop it's also WAY cheaper than any other combination of cards you care to name to get the same performance).

 

[cdrkf]

The above Intel vs AMD price war above is interesting but people in other places are speculating and doing expert conjectures (PUN intended) about the future of AMD. This is an excerpt of an interesting discussion in another forum:

Qualcomm - has own CPU and own GPU
Nvidia - has own CPU and own GPU
Intel - has own CPU and own GPU
Imagination - has own CPU (MIPS) and own GPU
Samsung - doesn't own either one. It buys them from ARM

Why Samsung needs AMD:

• 
  ■GPU technology especially, which I'm pretty sure can be easily adopted for mobile, just like Nvidia's Kepler. AMD is already spearheading heterogenous computing and "down to the metal" (or should I say Mantle?) GPU computing
  ■ARMv8-based K12 core coming soonish (2016) - could be good, and would spare Samsung the research/effort
  ■x86 APUs can give Samsung somewhat better synergy/lower costs in its laptop business
  ■Samsung, like Apple, can control its future regarding its processors, and be much more integrated

Why AMD needs Samsung:

• 
  ■foundry highly competitive with TSMC, which they can use to dump GloFlo, which is holding AMD back - something AMD doesn't need right now, as it has enough problems. AMD definitely needs to use a more competitive foundry before it even dreams about competing either with Intel or in mobile
  ■instant placing in millions of new laptops and in 10-100x more mobile devices
  ■a ton of R&D cash - something AMD could definitely use a lot more of to be competitive not just in PCs, but in mobile too, otherwise it doesn't have much of a future
  ■mobile chip experience from Samsung's own mobile chip division

I should say I'm not a huge fan of Samsung these days, but I think these two just need each other too much, and they would match pretty well.

This is just another reason for Samsung to bought AMD

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8492/nvidia-files-patent-infringement-complaints-against-qualcomm-samsung

http://techreport.com/news/27011/nvidia-tries-to-block-samsung-galaxy-shipments-over-patent-dispute

It's an interesting idea, although with AMD pushing 'semi custom' so hard I wonder if Samsung need to? It would also make sense for Samsung to partner more closely with AMD and get a range of custom SOC products put together- it would achieve the same goal and also avoid all those nasty legal loop holes. It could be a win all round imo.

 

[truegenius]

AMD is not concerned about super low margin markets like smart phones/tablets...you are talking about having to be a massive player in those markets to make the tiny margins even worth the time investment to bring something competitive to market.

These are the top 3 higher margin markets left in hardware:

(1) Commercial Servers/Workstations

(2) HEDT Consumer CPUs/APUs

(3) Consumer GPUs

Embedded solutions can be very profitable, but VIA has a lockdown on a lot of that. Not that AMD could not make inroads to do so, but it would be an even more uphill battle, as VIA is likely over 80-90% penetration in embedded x86 solutions.

amd already working on arm so it shouldn't cost them much to develop low power arm soc for phone/tablet thus i think it will make sense to jump in in phone/tablet market ( i hope it will provide performance at cheap price just like amd do in pc )

currently low cost phones segments is flooded with slow mediatek cortex-a7 and tablets are not improving in performance and price department, still can't find better tablet than nexus 2012 and 2013 ( except dell venue 7, but its x86 ). ( atleast in India )

and intel's solution still have some app comparability issue, high battery usage, heating issue

so still looks like some room to make profit in this department ( as far as phone/tablet sales are high )

 

[gamerk316]

Phones/Tablets are nearing their saturation point. Lets face it, the year over year improvements are no longer there, and more and more, people are using weaker (and cheaper) products over the top of the line ones. I don't view that market as one for future growth or profits.

 

[8350rocks]

The above Intel vs AMD price war above is interesting but people in other places are speculating and doing expert conjectures (PUN intended) about the future of AMD. This is an excerpt of an interesting discussion in another forum:

Qualcomm - has own CPU and own GPU
Nvidia - has own CPU and own GPU
Intel - has own CPU and own GPU
Imagination - has own CPU (MIPS) and own GPU
Samsung - doesn't own either one. It buys them from ARM

Why Samsung needs AMD:

• 
  ■GPU technology especially, which I'm pretty sure can be easily adopted for mobile, just like Nvidia's Kepler. AMD is already spearheading heterogenous computing and "down to the metal" (or should I say Mantle?) GPU computing
  ■ARMv8-based K12 core coming soonish (2016) - could be good, and would spare Samsung the research/effort
  ■x86 APUs can give Samsung somewhat better synergy/lower costs in its laptop business
  ■Samsung, like Apple, can control its future regarding its processors, and be much more integrated

Why AMD needs Samsung:

• 
  ■foundry highly competitive with TSMC, which they can use to dump GloFlo, which is holding AMD back - something AMD doesn't need right now, as it has enough problems. AMD definitely needs to use a more competitive foundry before it even dreams about competing either with Intel or in mobile
  ■instant placing in millions of new laptops and in 10-100x more mobile devices
  ■a ton of R&D cash - something AMD could definitely use a lot more of to be competitive not just in PCs, but in mobile too, otherwise it doesn't have much of a future
  ■mobile chip experience from Samsung's own mobile chip division

I should say I'm not a huge fan of Samsung these days, but I think these two just need each other too much, and they would match pretty well.

This is just another reason for Samsung to bought AMD

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8492/nvidia-files-patent-infringement-complaints-against-qualcomm-samsung

http://techreport.com/news/27011/nvidia-tries-to-block-samsung-galaxy-shipments-over-patent-dispute

LOL!!!

That is just posturing by Nvidia. You do not realize how many patents for mobile GPUs Qualcomm owns. This is an attempt to draw attention to NVidia and their ARM SoCs, and will not even make it to court if they try to press the issue.

Additionally, some of the patents in question are beyond 25 years old...seriously...

 

[wh3resmycar]

Phones/Tablets are nearing their saturation point. Lets face it, the year over year improvements are no longer there, and more and more, people are using weaker (and cheaper) products over the top of the line ones. I don't view that market as one for future growth or profits.

i have to agree, i'm using a sony xperia zl (nearing 2 years) and from a chipset standpoint, having tested a note 3/g2, anything beyond 4 krait cores is excessive, hence an upgrade will be pointless for me. full saturation will come after 64bit ARM SOCs come out (imho).

funny thing with smart phone OEMs is that they keep pushing resolutions up just to warrant that new chipset upgrade. we'll probably see 3k after 1440p in 2 years then 4k in 4 years which again doesn't add anything to the smart phone experience other than one up'ing the competition. would've been better if they just focus on battery life.

 

[palladin9479]

Phones/Tablets are nearing their saturation point. Lets face it, the year over year improvements are no longer there, and more and more, people are using weaker (and cheaper) products over the top of the line ones. I don't view that market as one for future growth or profits.

i have to agree, i'm using a sony xperia zl (nearing 2 years) and from a chipset standpoint, having tested a note 3/g2, anything beyond 4 krait cores is excessive, hence an upgrade will be pointless for me. full saturation will come after 64bit ARM SOCs come out (imho).

funny thing with smart phone OEMs is that they keep pushing resolutions up just to warrant that new chipset upgrade. we'll probably see 3k after 1440p in 2 years then 4k in 4 years which again doesn't add anything to the smart phone experience other than one up'ing the competition. would've been better if they just focus on battery life.

The funny thing is that the real battery killer are those new brighter, higher resolution displays. Battery technology isn't keeping up with display technology and so devices are having less and less battery life with each generation. What's worse is that many of the OEM bloatware keeps the cellular modem active even if your not using the phone, this prevents the modem from going into standby and eats quite a bit of battery. For android phones its the "system standby" category on the battery list that this belongs in.

 

[8350rocks]

Phones/Tablets are nearing their saturation point. Lets face it, the year over year improvements are no longer there, and more and more, people are using weaker (and cheaper) products over the top of the line ones. I don't view that market as one for future growth or profits.

This^

Any entry into that market will be one of the 2:

A high margin halo product that goes in a few low volume, very high end devices...(not to mention you would have to beat Qualcomm out of that market, and they have many of the best integrated modems, etc.)

or

A low margin entry level SKU that is higher volume comparatively, though not necessarily enough to net you any real gains to recoup the development costs (again, you would be up against Qualcomm here as well...)

 

[Cazalan]

Phones/Tablets are nearing their saturation point. Lets face it, the year over year improvements are no longer there, and more and more, people are using weaker (and cheaper) products over the top of the line ones. I don't view that market as one for future growth or profits.

Indeed, and I don't buy the explosive iWatch movement people are talking about.

Now this could catch on with the ladies if they leave off the Intel logos.
http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/35670-intel-shows-off-intelligent-bracelet

 

[juanrga]

Yeah I agree- what I was reffering to though was in terms of outright performance and power consumption.

The AMD of today is forced to compete from a value perspective. Go back a few years they had fundamentally better products irrespective of the metric you used to assess them.

Of course AMD do still compete directly with Nvidia on the GPU side- the R9 295X2 is the fastest single card solution you can get simple as (and now it's had a huge price drop it's also WAY cheaper than any other combination of cards you care to name to get the same performance).

Old AMD had very good products plus a competitive foundry plus some amount of good luck (in the form of Intel problems).

Current AMD has some good graphics products, but the CPU division is uncompetitive (and loosing money) and foundries are clearly behind Intel (22nm FinFET vs 28 nm planar). AMD also had some amount of good luck. E.g. its finances were saved by consoles, but AMD won the contracts because ARM was not ready and Intel lacked customized SoC. At the other hand, AMD have also had some amount of bad luck during this period, like for instance 3M-GDDR5 version of Kaveri canceled because of the bankruptcy of one of the companies doing the SODIMM.

Future AMD will have good products which are being designed by Keller (CPU) and Koduri (GPU) plus competitive foundry (TSMC and Samsung/Glofo will be only half node ahead of Intel 14nm FinFET) plus some amount of good luck (Broadwell delays).

The problem for AMD will be that competition will be much harder from now. E.g. in servers it is no longer AMD vs Intel party, it is now a AMD vs Intel vs Cavium vs Broadcom vs Applied Micro vs... party.

 

[cdrkf]

Yeah I agree- what I was reffering to though was in terms of outright performance and power consumption.

The AMD of today is forced to compete from a value perspective. Go back a few years they had fundamentally better products irrespective of the metric you used to assess them.

Of course AMD do still compete directly with Nvidia on the GPU side- the R9 295X2 is the fastest single card solution you can get simple as (and now it's had a huge price drop it's also WAY cheaper than any other combination of cards you care to name to get the same performance).

Old AMD had very good products plus a competitive foundry plus some amount of good luck (in the form of Intel problems).

Current AMD has some good graphics products, but the CPU division is uncompetitive (and loosing money) and foundries are clearly behind Intel (22nm FinFET vs 28 nm planar). AMD also had some amount of good luck. E.g. its finances were saved by consoles, but AMD won the contracts because ARM was not ready and Intel lacked customized SoC. At the other hand, AMD have also had some amount of bad luck during this period, like for instance 3M-GDDR5 version of Kaveri canceled because of the bankruptcy of one of the companies doing the SODIMM.

Future AMD will have good products which are being designed by Keller (CPU) and Koduri (GPU) plus competitive foundry (TSMC and Samsung/Glofo will be only half node ahead of Intel 14nm FinFET) plus some amount of good luck (Broadwell delays).

The problem for AMD will be that competition will be much harder from now. E.g. in servers it is no longer AMD vs Intel party, it is now a AMD vs Intel vs Cavium vs Broadcom vs Applied Micro vs... party.

Let's hope it works out that way If anything I think they've been making some sensible moves to keep the company stable. The aquisition of ATI was viewed by many as a very bad move (overpriced at the time) and was considdered bad luck, but ironically is now what is keeping them afloat (as without GPU they wouldn't be in the console market).

 

[juanrga]

The above Intel vs AMD price war above is interesting but people in other places are speculating and doing expert conjectures (PUN intended) about the future of AMD. This is an excerpt of an interesting discussion in another forum:

Qualcomm - has own CPU and own GPU
Nvidia - has own CPU and own GPU
Intel - has own CPU and own GPU
Imagination - has own CPU (MIPS) and own GPU
Samsung - doesn't own either one. It buys them from ARM

Why Samsung needs AMD:

• 
  ■GPU technology especially, which I'm pretty sure can be easily adopted for mobile, just like Nvidia's Kepler. AMD is already spearheading heterogenous computing and "down to the metal" (or should I say Mantle?) GPU computing
  ■ARMv8-based K12 core coming soonish (2016) - could be good, and would spare Samsung the research/effort
  ■x86 APUs can give Samsung somewhat better synergy/lower costs in its laptop business
  ■Samsung, like Apple, can control its future regarding its processors, and be much more integrated

Why AMD needs Samsung:

• 
  ■foundry highly competitive with TSMC, which they can use to dump GloFlo, which is holding AMD back - something AMD doesn't need right now, as it has enough problems. AMD definitely needs to use a more competitive foundry before it even dreams about competing either with Intel or in mobile
  ■instant placing in millions of new laptops and in 10-100x more mobile devices
  ■a ton of R&D cash - something AMD could definitely use a lot more of to be competitive not just in PCs, but in mobile too, otherwise it doesn't have much of a future
  ■mobile chip experience from Samsung's own mobile chip division

I should say I'm not a huge fan of Samsung these days, but I think these two just need each other too much, and they would match pretty well.

This is just another reason for Samsung to bought AMD

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8492/nvidia-files-patent-infringement-complaints-against-qualcomm-samsung

http://techreport.com/news/27011/nvidia-tries-to-block-samsung-galaxy-shipments-over-patent-dispute

It's an interesting idea, although with AMD pushing 'semi custom' so hard I wonder if Samsung need to? It would also make sense for Samsung to partner more closely with AMD and get a range of custom SOC products put together- it would achieve the same goal and also avoid all those nasty legal loop holes. It could be a win all round imo.

Partnership would be a interesting alternative. I notice that Samsung is co-founder of HSA foundation.

 

[Cazalan]

LOL!!!

That is just posturing by Nvidia. You do not realize how many patents for mobile GPUs Qualcomm owns. This is an attempt to draw attention to NVidia and their ARM SoCs, and will not even make it to court if they try to press the issue.

Additionally, some of the patents in question are beyond 25 years old...seriously...

The oldest I saw was granted in 2001. The most recent 2007.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/04/nvidia_sues_qualcomm_and_samsung/

Some of these patents have teeth. I wouldn't brush it off so quickly if I were Samsung. They can easily afford to pay a licensing fee for the products coming into America, which is just a fraction of their sales.

 

[juanrga]

Phones/Tablets are nearing their saturation point. Lets face it, the year over year improvements are no longer there, and more and more, people are using weaker (and cheaper) products over the top of the line ones. I don't view that market as one for future growth or profits.

There is a reason why ARM is pushing hard the server/HPC market...

 

[juanrga]

My beliefs/guesses for K12 core, an update. I expect a 'small' core, Jaguar style, but with improved IPC and frequency, and next features/performance:

• 
  ■~6mm^2
  ■~40% +IPC
  ■3.0--3.5GHz
  ■CMP architecture
  ■4-issue
  ■2x128bit SIMD/FP unit

Other thoughts:

Q3-2016 release
95W TDP

Disclaimer: no warranty, I can update my opinion without notice

According to Rory Read the new K12 would be ready in Q1-2016

http://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/index.ssf/2014/09/amd_expects_bumps_in_the_road.html

 

[noob2222]

Nvidia is just after money. Samsung is the company with the most. Samsung doesnt design a gpu, those are from qualcomm, ARM, and imagination. Why sue samsung? To block millions of products, making way for their own products, following Apple.

So why doesnt nvidia sue the source instead? You would have to try and block the entire mobile industry instead of just one list of products.

On a more on topic note, 14nm isnt just some magical tech thats going to solve the entire human race's problems. Ive said it before, shrinking brings its own problems, thermal density. Shrink by 40% and reduce power by 20% and what is the result?

 

[gamerk316]

Nvidia is just after money. Samsung is the company with the most. Samsung doesnt design a gpu, those are from qualcomm, ARM, and imagination. Why sue samsung? To block millions of products, making way for their own products, following Apple.

NVIDIA doesn't want to block the products, they wan to make a few bucks off them. Licensing my friend.

So why doesnt nvidia sue the source instead? You would have to try and block the entire mobile industry instead of just one list of products.

Because ARM is its CPU supplier?

Take a look at what NVIDIA is claiming: They are basically trying to take ownership of the GPU, and thus, force a licensing fee out of everyone.

 

[gamerk316]

L2/L3 cache explanation:

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/55662-top-tip-difference-between-l2-and-l3-cache

 

[de5_Roy]

L2/L3 cache explanation:
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/55662-top-tip-difference-between-l2-and-l3-cache

i wanted to read moar about L2/L3 caches. i know there's wikipedia and other articles, but still!!
/rage (not the game)

 

[jdwii]

To be fair Amd only outdid intel for 6 years or so 1999-2005. Before and after that intel has been superior with Amd having to sell more for less money than intel ever since making their CPU division unprofitable.

Who ever is on top will always get to pick the prices on their competition.

 

[h2323]

Does anyone have any information on how much it is costing GloFlo to produce piledriver silicon now on their 32nm process. I am curious if the process has had a significant yield improvement allowing AMD to cut the cost of them without hitting Margin's to bad, any information would be helpful.