Intel Plays Defense: Inside Its EPYC Slide Deck

[lsatenstein]

Infrastructure data centre electricity costs will have a major impact to the decision making.
Half the watts needed for a compatible plugin-cpu board, data centre cooling,
an expense that is incurring 24/7, add emergency power backup, fire-insurance, water, etc and Intel should start to worry,

 

[gigabob]

We are at the point where adjunct functions (GPU's, added PCIe lanes for NVMe SSD's and in the future, Optane) will redefine how key workloads are managed. This new generation of CPU's places more work at the feet of DevOps to perform optimizations or completely re-think previous architectures. We know the software cycle time is much longer than the hardware cycle - something that will make IT purchasers les inclined to embrace a new architectures unless clear benefits obtain.

As the article alludes in its opening piece - the real issue is for AMD to present the whiff of a viable competitor, one going after the market sweet spot and dropping real dollars from the Intel margin harvest in the Data Center even as the CPU volume sales on the desktop shrink. Wise IT buyers will do their best to sample and test, which will be frustrating to Intel - but all part of the art of the Deal. I hear Krazanic is a huge Trump fan - so why not.

 

[mlee 2500]

When Intel makes derogatory claims about their competitor without basis or example, they lose credibility on any legitimate statements they may be making as well.

 

[InvalidError]

When Intel makes derogatory claims about their competitor without basis or example, they lose credibility on any legitimate statements they may be making as well.

Yup. Reputation takes years or even decades to (re-)build and be gone in the blink of an eye.

 

[the nerd 389]

I would argue that any claims made by a company about their competition should be thoroughly scrutinized as a matter of course before taking it seriously.

In this case, though, I have to lean towards: a half baked assertion should be just as easily dismissed.

 

[Virtual_Singularity]

Two days of Intel "marathon briefings" extolling Intel's newest Xeon virtues while, at times, unprofessionally trashing AMD, saying EPYC is "glued together", misquoting a Wccftech article, & w/e else I'm failing to mention. These briefings may just end up having the opposite effect Intel seemed to have in mind, even if just by a little. Speaking of Wccftech, they posted AMD's response to Intel, which seemed only fair, fwiw.

I'm not a real fan of Forbes Magazine, but they recently published an article where the most important point re NAPLES/EPYC was questioning how much market share AMD would end up taking from Intel. Forbes' article seemed kinda bullish, saying if AMD could take even 10% of Intel's Data Center Market it'd mean billions in new revenue for AMD. If they came within 10%, it'd change the game for AMD & the server market in general.

Though, all the same, despite the mudslinging, the LGA 3647 socket for Knight's Landing & future Skylake EX/EP/Purley CPU's is massive. Even if they lose some of their market share it's doubtful Intel will break too much a sweat over it.

 

[InvalidError]

Even if they lose some of their market share it's doubtful Intel will break too much a sweat over it.

Between the dent in sales and the price cuts Intel may need to issue to slow down smaller companies' exodus to EPYC which offers nearly double the bang per buck, I'd say Intel has reasons to be nervous.

 

[the nerd 389]

If I'm not mistaken, Intel had been struggling to maintain yields in recent times. I get the impression that losing 10% would actually eat into their profits considerably.

It also means revising their revenue projections substantially, which may translate into downsizing or otherwise talking a short to mid term hit. As such, some upper management may be panicking, which would explain a lot. Intel doesn't have a good history of working well in stressful situations.

 

[lkarnis]

Wonder if Intel will resort to competing with AMD like they did in 2005 by using 'Market Development Funds' (also known as bribes) to pay notebook, desktop and server makers not to make AMD powered machines. That move cost them $1.25 Billion in antitrust fines.

https://www.cnet.com/news/intel-to-pay-amd-1-25-billion-in-antitrust-settlement/