How Can AMD Beat Intel? Some Ideas

[Jason Dunn]

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/AM...Intel,5937.html

"Think of the Spartans at Thermopylae (the movie 300 was over the top, but makes the point): They were the best trained (highest quality) solders of their time and while they eventually got their butts kicked, they took on a vastly larger force and held them for a prolonged period. They didn't do it by going man to man; they did it by focusing on quality over quantity. You might think of this as another way of saying focus, but it is more than that. It is setting a quality mark higher than your competitor is willing to set - and making the market understand that quality. Think about it: Does Apple compete on price or do they compete on perceived quality? Often, we define products by performance, but there are other measures that are often more important. We don't, for instance, all drive cars with big V8s. Toyota beat GM and Ford not by having more cars, more lines, or more resources. They beat them by having better gas mileage and better quality at similar prices."

 

Man-who-is-everywhere-online Rob Enderle has a four-step plan for AMD to beat Intel. He has some good concepts, but the hard part is coming up with the product that matches the concept. It's one thing to say "focus on quality, not quantity", but it's quite another to come up with a product that's higher-quality than what Intel has to offer. One of the ways AMD could compete on quality would be to partner with a motherboard manufacturer and optimize the hell out of the board when used in conjunction with an AMD CPU. A few weeks back I swapped motherboards and put a new ASUS motherboard (an M3A78-EMH HDMI) in to partner up with my AMD 6400+ X2 CPU, and it was a complete and utter disaster - I'm still too upset to write about it. Everything worked (mostly) but the performance was atrocious. Actually, no, it was atrocious multiplied by pathetic...squared. If there was a motherboard with properly tuned chipset drivers that would work great with the AMD processor I had, I would have bought it.

[Jason Dunn]

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/AM...Intel,5937.html

"Think of the Spartans at Thermopylae (the movie 300 was over the top, but makes the point): They were the best trained (highest quality) solders of their time and while they eventually got their butts kicked, they took on a vastly larger force and held them for a prolonged period. They didn't do it by going man to man; they did it by focusing on quality over quantity. You might think of this as another way of saying focus, but it is more than that. It is setting a quality mark higher than your competitor is willing to set - and making the market understand that quality. Think about it: Does Apple compete on price or do they compete on perceived quality? Often, we define products by performance, but there are other measures that are often more important. We don't, for instance, all drive cars with big V8s. Toyota beat GM and Ford not by having more cars, more lines, or more resources. They beat them by having better gas mileage and better quality at similar prices."

 

Man-who-is-everywhere-online Rob Enderle has a four-step plan for AMD to beat Intel. He has some good concepts, but the hard part is coming up with the product that matches the concept. It's one thing to say "focus on quality, not quantity", but it's quite another to come up with a product that's higher-quality than what Intel has to offer. One of the ways AMD could compete on quality would be to partner with a motherboard manufacturer and optimize the hell out of the board when used in conjunction with an AMD CPU. A few weeks back I swapped motherboards and put a new ASUS motherboard (an M3A78-EMH HDMI) in to partner up with my AMD 6400+ X2 CPU, and it was a complete and utter disaster - I'm still too upset to write about it. Everything worked (mostly) but the performance was atrocious. Actually, no, it was atrocious multiplied by pathetic...squared. If there was a motherboard with properly tuned chipset drivers that would work great with the AMD processor I had, I would have bought it.

[Felix Torres]

They could start by cutting heat output.
My new AMD-powered tablet has many great features and I'm generally happy with it but that cpu get waaay too hot waaay too fast. They've had years now to get their power consumption numbers down and they still haven't. Don't think they can, either.

Their basic problem is they're way outclassed on *maufacturing* and trying to make up for it with design. And now they're losing on design, too.

First thing AMD has to do is stop trying to compete in all markets. They really need to focus on one or two market segments and go with then; servers, bargain desktops, and full-function laptops, for example. Or failing that, try to find a niche to play in and get there *before* intel.

The custom mobo idea is a good one since AMD has all sorts of tech that can go in a premium motherboard. In fact, if they would only remember that Windows doesn't *need* PC-compatible chipsets, they could probably architect a monster mobo themselves combining their various assets from ATI. Market it for the gamer crowd and the number crunchers, folks willing to pay a premium this year for next-year's performance.

Above all, trying to match intel on all front just isn't doable; intel has too much economy of scale advantages from their manufacturing prowess for anybody, much less AMD; they're just not big enough. Time to remember there's more to computer performance than just cpus and graphics...

[Jason Dunn]

Originally Posted by Felix Torres

They could start by cutting heat output. My new AMD-powered tablet has many great features and I'm generally happy with it but that cpu get waaay too hot waaay too fast. They've had years now to get their power consumption numbers down and they still haven't. Don't think they can, either.

Yeah, right now the only place they play in is 35 watt processors. With the Shrike-era platform, coming in 2009, they're expanding that to include 19 watt processors for thin/light computers.