Why is AMD so stupid?

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IInuyasha74

IInuyasha74

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May 1, 2013
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Hello Everyone,

First, let me be clear I am not a Intel fanboy. I grew up using pretty much nothing but AMD based PC's, except at school but those things sucked at the time so owell. Anyways I had and used for many years an old AMD K7 system with a Burton core, and I used an AMD K8 Venice PC for even longer. I thought the performance was amazing when I got it probably around 2005. I know that at that time nothing Intel had could compete with AMD it seemed, they just lost right out.

I didn't follow computers closely for a while, but I started to again last year. I completely missed the Phenoms and the start of the Intel core series. Doing some back reading now it seems the Phenoms were the last good CPU's created by AMD that actually could match up to Intel. After that AMD just seems to get buried and loses big time, and only the latest Richland and overclocked Piledriver cores match the performance of the Phenoms.

I just can't figure out why AMD was either so dumb or so blind that they started making products much worse than they were already producing. It seems like with a die shrink to 28nm architecture and a few other minor tweaks that the Phenom IIs would probably be competitive against Sandy Bridge, more so than the FX CPUs. I just can't understand it, so I was wondering if anyone else had any idea.
 
Solution
Onus
Let's not have any name calling.
It is a legitimate question, especially for anyone who hasn't followed the industry like many of us have.
The most concise answer is, there a three or four stages to this. This is mostly my opinion. I'd like to believe it's an educated one, but I am not a hardware engineer, and may be missing a lot of detail.
First, AMD didn't fall behind, Intel caught up, and zoomed right on by. When you consider the relative size of the two companies, and how huge Intel's R&D budget is, this was pretty much just a matter of time. Second, AMD tried to catch up (with Bulldozer) by revisiting some ideas Intel had used when trying to catch up with them (e.g. Netburst, in the form of Bulldozer's long instruction...
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Have you tried new AMDs personally?
 
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Yes I have. I haven't used the FX series, but I have used an a10-5700 and an a10-6800k. I just finished testing an a10-6800k for a company.
They make excellent gaming chips and they match up with the quad core FX chips since they have the same cores and everything. They just don't perform well. They can do multi-threaded things well enough, but single threaded performance is way down. The result is that general performance while doing anything not multi-threaded seems less responsive.
Again though this performance is similar to the Phenom II from what I have read about the Phenom's so far. That is why I question why a CPU that is 3 years newer performs as well as a 3 year old CPU.
 
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To answer the OP: AMD is making the (silly) assumption that software will eventually become parallel enough where more cores will be more important then individual core performance.

Now, a few of us who understand how software works have been saying for a while how wrong that assumption is, but unfortunately, few people here believe us. Just more of "The software will catch up in two years!", and a few examples of benchmarks that do scale well to "prove" their point.

I can't wait for December, when next-gen titles start to hit PC, and people start to realize nothing is changing. I can almost already hear the bubble bursting...
 
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Well this does help to explain it a bit, but by 2011 they had already came out with Bulldozer which was the big flop. I can understand shifting markets, but again I don't see why they didn't just revamp the Phenom instead of using Bulldozer.

Though it may be like you and Gopher1369 said and AMD just simply doesn't care anymore. That's a sad thought though.
 
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Not “Stupied”
First. All started when AMD bought ATI. Great move product wise but just afterwards the economy took a nosedive. This caused AMD to go into the Red which in turned caused a loss of valuable manpower (resources) and also seriously cut their RMD budget.

As to the move to smaller die, again a money decision as they are more cost effective, even if they do not match Intel’s performance on a clock->clock basis.

Not everyone has the budget to pay for Intel’s CPU/MB, and for those that are on a budget they DO offer a competitive product.

Calling AMD Stupid is a VERY poor choice of words, and really turns this topic into a FLAME war.
An AMD Fanfoys would consider me an Intel Fanboy, which I’m not – Just I have Plenty of Money and consider Intel’s platform better.


Added:
"This is due to intel's anti-competitive practices."
Also a typical fanboy response,

Just as this is may have been the case quite some time ago, it is NOT the case NOW. Face it if AMD was in Intel's shoes at the time AMD would have done the EXACT same thing.

When you have a superior product you do not need to resort to anti-competitive practices.
 
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Don't read the link detailing how intel has made their compiler generate the slowest code possible for any proccessor that isn't an intel CPU. This is done by a single check of the CPUID string. If you modifiy the compiler to remove this check (Risqué) or mask the CPUID through a VMWare-type-thingy (Or maybe even through AMD's virtualization api, but nobody has done so.), the CPU has the fastest code possible made for it.

Psuedo-code example:

If CPUID == "GenuineIntel"
GenerateFastest()
else
Generate386()
endif


I mean, I linked it. Right. There. In. My. Post.
 
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In my OPINION This should be the solution to every Flame Ware
 like this.

To be honest with you I want AMD to be on par with intel so this whole price thing could actually go down. How about AMD making lets say a different line of Premium CPU which cost the same and performs just like or above the lastest intel processors. Maybe?
 
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Let's not have any name calling.
It is a legitimate question, especially for anyone who hasn't followed the industry like many of us have.
The most concise answer is, there a three or four stages to this. This is mostly my opinion. I'd like to believe it's an educated one, but I am not a hardware engineer, and may be missing a lot of detail.
First, AMD didn't fall behind, Intel caught up, and zoomed right on by. When you consider the relative size of the two companies, and how huge Intel's R&D budget is, this was pretty much just a matter of time. Second, AMD tried to catch up (with Bulldozer) by revisiting some ideas Intel had used when trying to catch up with them (e.g. Netburst, in the form of Bulldozer's long instruction pipeline). This architecture actually does some things very well, but otherwise it fails in the same way it did for Intel; hot, potentially inefficient depending on task, and it sucks a lot of juice. Third, and this is my opinion, AMD did not control the hype. They allowed the technical community to hear over and over again how great Bulldozer was going to be. Fanboys drooled, and repeated it like dutiful parrots. When Bulldozer finally hit, it was a buzzkilling letdown. Yes, it handles some server-related tasks quite well, but for the average person, performs no better than Phenom. People abandoned AMD in droves. I built Omega (listed in my .sig) in anticipation of Bulldozer, and am one of those really hacked off for thinking maybe there was something to all the hype. Again IMHO, under incredible time pressure, AMD cut some corners, using automated design tools instead of letting human engineers complete the designs. As a result, they were suboptimal; it's what my former Marine father would call a "half ass job." Intel of course didn't stop, so we got succeeding generations of their Core designs, totally overwhelming AMD in the performance end of the spectrum. In fact, AMD has thrown in the towel, saying they will no longer compete with Intel in the high-end market.
Finally (and IMHO this may actually save them), AMD has shifted their focus onto what they call an "APU," which basically combines a "good enough for most tasks" CPU with integrated graphics processing that Intel has not yet been able to touch (although they may finally be closing on that one too). If you ever bought a typical Intel-based PC some years ago with their "Graphics Media Accelerator" or even the later "HD Graphics," tried to play a game and couldn't, then you see the huge market segment AMD is addressing with the APU; jack of all trades, master of none, on the cheap. It's a great family PC, and would actually suit the corporate environment fairly well too, which is actually fairly undemanding.
Again, IMHO, Piledriver is what Bulldozer should have been; still not great, but not a buzzkill either, as it generally beats Phenom II pretty well (check Anandtech's "Bench" section). Steamroller, which is due to release around the end of the year last I heard, is another jump up from that.
So, there you have it. It's a lot of [my] opinion, but the truth is that both companies make decent processors for most things. AMD CPUs can get most jobs done for most people fast enough that it doesn't make a big difference. Intel is better competing on price than they used to, and Intel-based motherboards are matching features (e.g. #of SATA 6Gb/s ports) on with AMD-based offerings a little better than they did too. Whichever you choose, you can build a system today that doesn't suck, although at the high end, Intel will generally be stronger.
 
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Solution
I've got to ask why people are ignoring that link I posted, which goes into great detail on how intel are crippling AMD's processors on purpose. There are other ways in which intel is crippling AMD through anti-competitive means, but that one is the most apparent.
 
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To be a little more fair, once you understand why AMD went heavy on the integer cores (and shared FPUs between two "cores" to make a module) it begins to make more sense. As I understand it, Phenom/Thuban cores had decent IPC because they subscribed to the "CPU calculates everything" idea. The point of concentrating on more common integer workloads was to offload the floating point calculations to an architecture that was better at that sort of thing (graphics cards...). Of course, on an FX platform, that doesn't happen with the speed it needs to be a huge leap forward in performance, because now you have to share information between two components, across interfaces that may not be as fast as when it's all contained in a CPU.

Now, consider APUs, and how the GPU is integrated. Now, you don't have to talk so much across different interfaces, but you still have to share RAM. Still, offloading that computational power to the GPU where it makes more sense for certain operations becomes a little easier...

Then think about this: what if you had an architecture that automatically assigned workloads to the best component that could complete that job, in the fastest manner possible? (EDIT: Would it matter if your CPU wasn't as powerful if your GPU could pick up the slack?) What if every component had fast access to that information? Suddenly AMD's intent becomes a little more clear...

Of course, this is all speculation on my part :) But if you spend some time reading, I think HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture) starts to make a lot of sense. Personally, I think AMD is on the right track. Pay special attention to the "transparent to software" portion of that link...
 
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Onus - Pretty much agree.
One comment, Back in AMDs haydays when they were king in performance there was a compatibility issue - Typical home uses and most small business were not affected. However: when specialized "cards" or systems controlled by computer, this was an issue (ie Medical equipmet and systems controlling satellites. This still exist today but to a smaller degree.

There is a reason, Unfortunately Intel has about 75% of the market and if you’re a company that makes specialized system/cards you will ensure that they are compatible with the 75% of market and let the chips fall where they may for the 20%.

@ MajinCry
Yes I read it in a previous post of yours.
And what states that a Company has to optimize THEIR product for a rival company. Don’t like, create your own compiler; AMD could also create their own complier. This is Very common in other products – anyone say APPLE. AMD would also do it except for one factor – that Market share I mentioned which means they would shoot themselves in the foot.

Can NOT verify, although I buy AMD GPUs, I’m not a gamer buthave seen it mentioned several time, AMD tinkered with their GPU controllers/drivers to UP their benchmarks (did Not up game performance). So this is ethical??

Added: @ MercJ you bring up some good points
 
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There are a myriad of reasons as to why AMD is "stupid."

One hotly debated event in their timeline is the acquisition of ATI. A lot of people point to this as the beginning of their downfall; time will tell if that is actually true or not. Either way, they certainly sunk a lot of time and resources into that acquisition. They have only a fraction of the resources available to them that Intel does. (On that note, one could say that it's bound to happen from time to time.)

Despite that being a major event, that's still just the tip of the iceberg. How AMD was "lazy" and had bad marketing decisions/strategies are a couple more topics that people get into it over. Just even mentioning it will start a frenzy - no need to mention Intel in the same sentence. At the end of the day, even with proper debates, we would only still a bit of what is actually going on. The one thing we can be sure of is that the market is changing - we'll see if the changes AMD is making to adapt are apt.
 
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You didn't read much of it, judging from your response.

"Company has to optimize THEIR product for a rival company."

It's that intel does ONE SINGLE CHECK to see if a non-intel CPU is present. If there isn't, the slowest possible instruction set is used (usually 386). BUT GUESS WHAT!? If you patch the check or mask the CPUID string in a virtual machine, the fastest instruction set is used.

So, in you're mind, optimizing a compiler involves removing intentional crippling of competitor's CPUs? That's not optimization. That's undoing of anti-competitive measures.

You're right on the market share. That's why AMD's compilers are never used, because intel has most of the market.

And I didn't say anything about ethics. I'm furious over the fact that there is a backstabbing capitalist company out there, which is intentionally forcing people who didn't buy from their monopoly to suffer sub-par performance SOLEY because their parts don't have the right CPUID string.
 
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For the last time: STOP IT. PRACTICALLY NO ONE USES INTELS COMPILER! I even checked the compiler signatures of a random sample of 10 games I had installed two months ago; every single one was compiled with MSVC. I did 6-7 benchmark programs; 5 were MSVC, two were GCC.

So please, stop it. ICC has nothing to do with AMD's performance, Its a red herring that fanboys are using to justify how bad FX sometimes does, that the internet as a whole has leeched onto because its been repeated as fact over and over again.
 
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Onus, MajinCry, and MercJ thank all thee of you for your insights.
I think I can understand a lot better now what happened with AMD, as it seem a lot like a mixture of the three of your posts. I can see how all of this adds up to the failure of Bulldozer.

For those of you trying to turn this into an argument, a flame war, or something else please don't post if you don't have anything to relate to the actual topic. I know a lot about current tech ad am really well read up on HSA, APU's, the FX CPU's, Ivy Bridge, Haswell, Intel Graphics, and pretty much all other aspects of computer hardware, I was just lacking a bit of understanding of what happened around 2010 that caused AMD to take such a large hit. I know that AMD still produces products that are competitive, but they are competitive up to the i5 level only, and the vast majority of their CPU's seem to compete with i3's. The a10-6800K competes with the i3-3220 for example, and while it has much better graphics and a bit better multi-threaded performance its general performance is way down in comparison.

That being said I have been counting down the days until Steamroller is released because I am hoping it to be a major improvement that will make me want to upgrade from my i3-3225.

Final comment, I know it might have been a little much to call AMD stupid, but from their own tests I think they should have realized bulldozer wasn't ready and held off production of it until it was better. Given financial concerns I can understand why they may not have wanted to do that, but I still don't think it was the best move for them. I actually use and prefer their GPU's at this point after using one for a while now and think that side of the company is doing extremely well. I just find the idea of AMD going from what seemed so much better than Intel with the K8 and K9 series to not being able to compete with the high end CPU's as an idea that is hard to grasp.

Thanks again for your insights.
 
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Also wanted to say thanks to you. I had already started typing my last post before I had seen yours but it was still helpful.
 
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I'm glad there's people that look for the truth, rather than settle for a couple scores here and there. There's always more to the story :) @IInuyasha74, I appreciate that you're willing to consider what others have said, it's much easier to learn if you keep an open mind :) I agree with you that Bulldozer "wasn't ready," at least how we (the "enthusiast community") thought it should be. If I recall correctly, AMD had expected frequencies of around 5GHz with Bulldozer, which would have approached comparable Intel chips for "performance." Obviously, that didn't work out as planned.

It didn't make sense to me either at first. Once again though, if you're designing a chip to be a part of an overall computation system, rather than the CENTRAL processing unit, it actually shows quite a bit of foresight from AMD. You don't need to have a hotshot FPU in your CPU if your GPU can do it better anyway (sorry for the series of acronyms :) ). Why not give more integer cores for the price to tackle those aspects that the GPU doesn't do as well?

Again though, this is all my opinion 😀
 
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