Intel: Slower Growth Ahead; May Have Taken Share from AMD

[Guest]

Intel has posted its highly anticipated Q2 quarter results, which were preceded by reports of slowing PC sales and predictions of a decelerating PC business overall.

Intel: Slower Growth Ahead; May Have Taken Share from AMD : Read more

 

[CaedenV]

If memory serves correctly Q2 of last year was during or shortly after Sandy Bridge, and all of the chipset issues were taken care of. SB offered an amazing value at the time of performance per price compared to the previous generation, which made for a very compelling purchase (heck, even I picked one up later in the year). Ivy bridge is no slouch, but it does not offer the same kind of leap ahead that SB did, focusing instead on laptop and ultrabook sales... which... well... nobody needs one, and we are all happy with our SB chips, so it is no wonder that things have slowed a bit.

At least they get to tell their board of directors 'well... at least we aren't AMD'

 

[rocknrollz]

Intel expects Q3 revenue of about $14.6 million, give or take $500 million to the south and north.

I hope they don't expect that.lol I think you meant billion.

 

[rocknrollz]

Meant for the 14.6 million part, not the 500 million.

 

[ddpruitt]

AMD said it expects revenues to decline 11% not that they actually have (could be higher or lower). I doubt it's as bad as it seems, it's Intel's interest to paint a bleaker picture of AMD.

 

[tomfreak]

I hate to say this but, if AMD did not catch up in1-2yrs, which they are admmiting themselves that they are not completing with Intel. At this kind of rate Intel move, AMD main core business will be GPU, not CPU anymore.

 

[sp0nger]

Didnt AMD recently say they werent going to compete with Intel anymore? Lol well Intel is competing with you soooo

 

[DroKing]

Intel is still a shitty company. The only reason why they own majority of market is because of their dirty tactics back in 90's therefore you are a shitty company Intel. You bought your way to market supremacy, you didnt achieve it by selling good products so GET THE FUDGE OUT.

 

[nforce4max]

Here is a little trick if they really do want a quick buck, cut prices and increase volume rather than wait for demand on the bases of business and ordinary consumers to upgrade when they need to or they could just host a rebate program. Drop the prices of the Pentium and Core i3 line then sales will begin to pick up a little. As for the Celeron make up the losses on the backs of the i5 and i7 sales then sell Celerons for less than what it costs to make them for like $20 a pop boxed with a cooler. It will eat into Atom sales but it also will put pressure on AMD. As for AMD it needs to transition to different fabs such as TSMC and use more modern process tech that isn't as costly to develop for cpu development. May as well begin using similar tools as what they use for their gpu development when it comes to transistor design. AMD can still put plenty of heat on Intel in the low end and low power consumption arena but they need some new meat behind the management department.

 

[teh_chem]

[citation][nom]Tomfreak[/nom]I hate to say this but, if AMD did not catch up in1-2yrs, which they are admmiting themselves that they are not completing with Intel. At this kind of rate Intel move, AMD main core business will be GPU, not CPU anymore.[/citation]
I think it's important to look at the bigger picture though. CPU speeds have vastly exceeded what any average user needs. By a huge amount. But at the same time, CPU speeds alone can't net what things like GPGPU computing can (in terms of performance). In theory, the APU is a great introduction--it will (hopefully) encourage software producers to adopt the hybrid hardware package and implement things like OpenCL in a much wider form than currently.

Other than that, the APUs are fine. Not bleeding edge performance, but so few people need that, and it's not even priced to be bleeding edge.

Intel has made significant gains with the HD4K chipset, but unless you're buying a higher end IB CPU, most mid-range IB CPUs will be getting the HD2500 (IIRC--like the i3's and some i5's, I think...). Kinda defeats the purpose since most people who buy high-end CPUs will also be doing graphically-demanding tasks (most--of course not all).

This financial forecast is...a handjob from the analyst to intel. AMD might have missed some financials, but they're making progress. And even being a hardware enthusiast, I have to side with AMD--the desktop market is slowly dwindling. Why bother making huge R&D investments to win the CPU clock performance battle if few-to-none of the consumers really care?

 

[aicom]

[citation][nom]DroKing[/nom]Intel is still a shitty company. The only reason why they own majority of market is because of their dirty tactics back in 90's therefore you are a shitty company Intel. You bought your way to market supremacy, you didnt achieve it by selling good products so GET THE FUDGE OUT.[/citation]
Where have you been living? In my book, Intel has been offering superior products for years. Since the Conroe days, we've seen win upon win from Intel.

 

[silverblue]

[citation][nom]otacon72[/nom]Of course AMD's revenue is going down...it's only making those garbage APUs now.[/citation]
Desktop Trinity and Bulldozer's replacement, Vishera, are due late October. That's three months away. We are in a period where AMD aren't really releasing any new desktop products, but mobile Trinity is arguably more important anyway.

 

[silverblue]

Oh, go away sans2212 or whatever your other alias was.

 

[ronch79]

Too bad people see AMD's FX lineup as inferior. Even so, those FX processors aren't half bad. People should thank AMD for still trying to compete even if it's getting more and more difficult for them to do so considering Intel has tons and tons of money for R&D whle AMD's R&D budget probably isn't even as large as Intel's marketing budget alone. I think people need to stop bashing AMD and give them more credit (and buy their products too!).

 

[silverblue]

It'd be nice to stop seeing people call for a 32nm Phenom II X8 as well. It'd never happen, and even without considering its lack of support for newer ISAs, I just don't think it'd cut it.

 

[willard]

[citation][nom]ronch79[/nom]I think people need to stop bashing AMD and give them more credit (and buy their products too!).[/citation]
I'm sure that works great in fantasy land, but in the real world, people don't buy inferior products just because the company that makes them is putting up the good fight. If AMD wants to move chips, they need to make chips people want to buy.

The APUs are a step in the right direction. Most people don't need a powerhouse CPU like the 3770k. They need something that's going to give them good value. The FX series chips were an astonishingly bad value when they were launched, and only after having their prices slashes are they starting to approach the price they're really worth.

I think we all knew what to expect when AMD released their marketing material comparing the 8150 to the 990X on value, which may is probably most disingenuous marketing I've ever seen in my life.

 

[BSMonitor]

[citation][nom]DroKing[/nom]Intel is still a shitty company. The only reason why they own majority of market is because of their dirty tactics back in 90's therefore you are a shitty company Intel. You bought your way to market supremacy, you didnt achieve it by selling good products so GET THE FUDGE OUT.[/citation]

Here I thought it was their capacity and flawless execution the past 6 years. I seem to recall AMD selling chips in the $400 - $1000 range once they took the performance lead. Perhaps they should have priced themselves to take market share. Not make a quick buck.

 

[teh_chem]

[citation][nom]BSMonitor[/nom]Here I thought it was their capacity and flawless execution the past 6 years. I seem to recall AMD selling chips in the $400 - $1000 range once they took the performance lead. Perhaps they should have priced themselves to take market share. Not make a quick buck.[/citation]
I'm not saying that AMD does currently have a $1000-worth processor, but keep in mind, the high-end enthusiast segment represents like a fraction of a percent of their potential market (and potential revenue). It makes way more business sense to market to the masses that benefit from the products, rather than making a $1000 CPU for bragging rights. Low-to-mid-range is where the most money is to be made. Hence why AMD has taken a stance with their APUs to match that adequately. They're making a very sensible business move, not simply trying to make a quick buck. Spending a lot on R&D to hit uber-high performance numbers when the consumers honestly don't benefit from the improved performance is a waste. Like I mentioned earlier, the current CPU performance is still more than the masses need and even take advantage of. Note, this is not the enthusiast market (of course). But the enthusiast market doesn't really represent a significant revenue stream.

 

[kronos_cornelius]

The unfair reality for AMD is that nobody will use GPUs as recommended until Intel get APU's

This happened before. AMD went onto multi-core first, but the industry did nothing. It wasn't until Intel came out with multi-cores that the software was modified.

If AMD follows it falls behind, but if it lead nobody follows... a lose lose.

AMD needs to take a bigger part of the stack to have more control over its destiny. Partner with a hardware company like Dell, then modify a Linux distro like Ubuntu to use the APU 100% on the top 10 apps. Then sell it directly on a website. A kind of Android Nexus, but for AMD's APUs.

Just waiting for developers to port the code won't work because developers march on Intel's orders (or ARM's). Without porting code to GPU's, AMD APU's can't compete.

 

[teh_chem]

[citation][nom]kronos_cornelius[/nom]The unfair reality for AMD is that nobody will use GPUs as recommended until Intel get APU'sThis happened before. AMD went onto multi-core first, but the industry did nothing. It wasn't until Intel came out with multi-cores that the software was modified.If AMD follows it falls behind, but if it lead nobody follows... a lose lose.AMD needs to take a bigger part of the stack to have more control over its destiny. Partner with a hardware company like Dell, then modify a Linux distro like Ubuntu to use the APU 100% on the top 10 apps. Then sell it directly on a website. A kind of Android Nexus, but for AMD's APUs.Just waiting for developers to port the code won't work because developers march on Intel's orders (or ARM's). Without porting code to GPU's, AMD APU's can't compete.[/citation]

There wasn't any lag between Intel's dual-core releases and AMD's. Intel had their Pentium D's released in 2005. AMD released their X2's in 2005--almost the exact same quarter. There was no dwell in programmer adoption because of intel vs. AMD--there was just a general dwell in programmer adoption because it takes resources to parallel-thread programs that were historically single-threaded. While the instruction sets are different for Intel vs. AMD multicore processors, that is generally taken care of within the drivers for the chipsets for the CPU/motherboard, not on the end of programmers specifically coding for a specific CPU.

 

[hector2]

"Dual Core" was another area where AMD screwed up. They took a more difficult, single chip dual core design approach that took longer to bring to the market. They talked about how a pure single die design with 2 cores offers performance & efficiency advantages over combing 2 separate cores in the same package. Intel, on the other hand, knew that Time-to-Market is also Time-to-Money and that the longer a new product takes getting to market, the higher it's performance must be and the lower the cost must be to be competitive. Intel leapfrogged AMDs lead with a dual core product having 2 separate cpu chips in the same package --- while also working on a single chip, 2-core design in parallel. AMD squandered an opportunity to get to the market early and watched helplessly as Intel out-manufactured them. When Intel's own single chip design was launched, it was just the after-burners kicking in.