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Comment by perihelions | Hacker News Reader

- "Previous Ryzen Threadripper launches have seen a DIY launch happening several months later after the launch of the OEM/Pre-built platforms."

This anti-competitive behavior should be illegal and it should be prosecuted. Clearly, there's some kind of backroom agreement where these "preferred" OEM's are giving AMD money, or some consideration of value, in exchange for locking out their competition. What other, benign explanation is there?

(Not unlike Intel paying OEM's illegal kickbacks to lock out AMD [a], come to think of it).

[a] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30087546

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From the official AMD press release:

"the new AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7000 Series and select Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7000 WX-Series processors will be available from DIY retailers starting on November 21st"

So this time it appears that it will be a real product launch for everyone, not just for Lenovo or the like.

Multiple 7950X systems will always be faster than any of these Threadrippers for a given amount of money, but 7950X is limited to only 64 GB of fast memory (populating two sockets per channel slows a lot the memory), so anyone who needs a lot of memory (up to 1 TB) in a single system might want a 7960X (24 cores @ $1500).

The models with more cores have worse performance per dollar, so it is hard to justify their use instead of using multiple servers, for higher performance at a lower cost.

You can get 48GB dimms now for 96GB from just two sockets.

But yes, there's definitely a memory speed limitation there.

You can use them for servers, but they're meant for workstations with resource-hungry applications. There even are companies that make a threadripper-box-with-a-handle-and-wheels when you need that oomph to be deployable to locations.

Can't speak to whether there are backroom deals, but from a development perspective, we do this because AMD relies on it's partners to help qualify their products for production. We get early samples and work with AMD to sort out any bugs (and even ship with some bugs that are mitigated) in order to achieve faster time to market. Once AMD feels the product is stable enough for general availability, they then open up sales to the general public.

If they actually paid in advance for the whole production run for those months how is that any different compared to the product being released but shelves being empty?

Why are they buying before release? And why can't pther consumers do that?

Because they product product of which that CPU is a fundamental part of the supply chain.

So they have at least initial contract for supply before they even start designing this (mostly work station) products (which often involve e.g. custom motherboards).

I.e. not only are they buying before release, they _need_ supply guarantees long long before release.

The customer can't do that for multiple reasons.

- They haven't signed a NDA contract nor are they in direct contact with first party sells personal so when it's time to early order they don't even know it exist.

- They buy in quantities of 1,2 maybe 10 instead of multiples of thousands (initial charge) with follow up guarantees. E.g. if you look at server CPUs you will see 1kU prices, because this CPUs are sold only (by AMD or Intel directly) in multiples of 1000 units.

If you (or lets say a PC retailer) do buy multiple thousand thread ripper CPUs at once and are willing to enter a contract for this sells long before they are sold (which likely involves an initial % of the price as down payment) you probably could get them early one. Through you would still be competing with DELL and similar for limited supply so you might still have a hard time to get the very first charge. And you also might have some problem getting compatible motherboards as many ORMs produce their own.

Well, sure. The difference is in intent. It's something where I would want court-appointed lawyers reviewing these company's internal communications, and taking depositions, to figure out.

"Oops we sold out" is one thing. "Oops; we conspired with other companies to limit supply and to form a cartel" is entirely another. The industry's been caught doing the latter too often, and governments' oversight is IMO too slow, too weak, and lacking meaningful deterrent power. I think they need to be much more aggressive. This stuff victimizes consumers.

intent exactly

and as far as I can tell it's quite unlikely that there is bad intent involved

as far as I understand DIY sells of Threadriper solely exist for PR, mind share reasons a bit of edge case handling and maybe some book keeping trick to even out certain marked OEM demand fluctuations.

but I don't think they make relevant amounts of profit with DIY sells

I mean think about it most (by far) end users of Threadrippers are companies needing it for work stations.

Most larger companies only buy from OEMs like DELL for various reasons like warranty handling, uniform platforms, certain "enterprise" BIOS features etc.

Even for small companies the DIY part is often an issue, they might not have IT experts and even if this system goes e.g. to a software developer they might not be willing to hardware maintain their PC (and take responsibility for it).

This leafs a relative small number of private enthusiasts and small companies, to small to really be profitable.

Add to that that the demand of DIY is less predictable then that of OEMs, and production capacities for CPUs tend to be limited and even if less so currently tend to still often doesn't allow fast dynamic changes of the amount.

Idk. but if I would be AMD I think I would pin down my big customers on contracts with a more fixed demand (both fixed initially and fixed+%variety follow up) and then plan CPU production of that (with maxed out variety) and if there are any spare factory resources I would use them for either server CPUs or desktop CPUs whatever currently sells hotter. Then if the OMS don't max out their variety I would stock the remainder and once enough stock accumulated pass it the the consumer facing department to sell as DIY parts.

you don't need backroom deals, it's just normal marked because

1. it's not a consumer product but mainly an OEM product

2. it's supply limited (much more so then server or desktop CPUs as the marked is in general more niche)

3. it's an OEM product, i.e. it only sells to companies always in large amounts and they put it into their product. BUT for such supply chains a minimal quantity is needed to be sold per customer. Or the customer won't buy because it's to little to do a product launch.

5. Only if there are left overs is selling to end users even considered, not because of backroom deals, but because it financially makes no sense at all. I would even go as far as to say AMD makes no (relevant degree of money) profit from the DIY sells of Threadripper.

Or in other words it's the standard procedure for companies selling to companies in case of limited demand to first sell to your second best customer as little as you can to satisfy their minimal needs, then continue to your 2nd best customer, 3rd best etc. If there is a huge step down between nth and n+1th best also maybe revisit the first n best customers first and increase their quantity.

How is selective selling the same as paying a company to not buy from your competitor? The knee-jerk reaction here to call things they don't like "enshitification" or "anticompetitive" is really annoying.

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