Intel has finally admitted it’s fallen behind, and now seems determined to bounce back.
It might seem obvious for a company to acknowledge such things, but along with Intel’s longtime status as one of the tech industry’s two central monopoly-owners came a certain arrogance and complacency.
But AMD’s relentless march in both quality and market share gains woke Intel (Research) up. AMD (Research) may be only about 15% Intel’s size, but it now commands an outsize industry influence.
On Thursday, CEO Paul Otellini unveiled a sweeping restructuring plan for the chipmaker, and announced his intent to cut $1 billion in spending between now and the end of the year.
Intel also announced a highly aggressive schedule for its latest generations of processor chips for all three of its primary product areas – servers, desktops, and mobile.
Intel has to make a choice before it gets back on top: Is it a chip company or a marketing company? In a commodity market branding makes sense. But in a market where performance is key, branding means nothing.
Actually, this almost reminds me of the Jason McElwain story. AMD is such an underdog — so much smaller than Intel, with R&D and marketing budgets that are miniscule compared to Intel’s, and yet they’ve managed to pull more than one rabbit out of their tiny corporate hat. Their most recent rabbit was the Opteron, which was exactly what they needed to make serious inroads into the server chip market. Meanwhile, Intel was completely distracted trying to find new ways to put lipstick on the pig they called “Itanium.”
You’ll notice that Intel’s admissions only come at a time when they’ve announced new chip families that will put them back into the game. Otherwise, they’d still be in denial.
AMD undercut them in price/performance, but has also gained a following. The roll your own crowd are fans, which I’m a member of, but are a small part of the market. Most people could care less, they just want the best perceived value. To the average consumer, due to excellent marketing, thinks of AMD as second tier, the bargain basement chip.
To cut spending, especially by firing people is always an option if you don’t have an idea what to do next. At least, it will keep “The Analysts” quiet for a moment.
Where can I get one of those AMD outfits for my wife?
“Where can I get one of those AMD outfits for my wife?”
Good question. Better question: Where can I get a booth babe for a wife?!
I noticed an interesting comment earlier this week from an Intel VP of Sales and Marketing in discussing the problems with Intel’s server’s division. This person stated “We weren’t meeting the market’s needs or our competitor’s product was better.” I would say both. There has been a bit too much wheel-spinning at Intel. It makes it that much more surprising that Apple picked Intel over AMD for their new systems.
“It makes it that much more surprising that Apple picked Intel over AMD for their new systems.”
Apple picked Intel because its chips run cooler. Apple loves small and quiet which requires cool running chips.
But just imagine the potential a mac could develop if the were able to run the Cell processor *drool*
So many factors undoubtedly dictated the choice of intel over AMD, I’m sure. With Jobs, the unit costs would have been #1.
Apple also went with the change to be able to revive it’s moribund portable lines, and not produce stovetops like the 12″ PowerBook. It’s all about heat management, and the fact that it’s a bitch to get liquid cooling into the form factor.
However, they also were looking at the fact that their ‘nix based OS plays very, very well with multiprocessors. Multi-core processors had to be a factor.
(You just know some team at Apple R&D has a quadcore lash up in a PowerBook form, and a Dual Quad Desktop. The true supercomputer on a desktop. And I want them both.)
What I’m curious about is the date the actual commitment for the big switch was made. That could say lot about what the two manufacturers were able to bring to the table in terms of heat management and multi-core designs at that moment as well as their roadmaps.
For what it’s worth, I host this web site (dvorak.org) and the servers is running a dual core Athlon 64 bit Fedora Core 4 and it SCREAMS! Running 3 times faster than my dual Xeon system I had before.