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Comment by bane | Hacker News Reader

IIRC, there were several points during that period where AMD tried to become the default CPU for large computer builders at the time (e.g. Gateway, Dell, etc.) due to far better price/performance ratios, yet frustratingly they stuck it out with Intel. I'm guessing Intel offered some sweet sweet long term deals to keep AMD out of the picture.

The landscape could have looked very differently today had those deals gone through.

I think AMD actually ended up with the superior technology all the way back with the Athlon line (when Intel was still PIII) with a better memory architecture and a few other good odds and ends.

They tried to get back in the game with some bold moves, like buying ATI, but it just hasn't panned out for them.

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Three things that have always been in Intel's favor have been their truly massive and always cutting edge fab capability (which no other cpu manufacturer has been able to even come close to), their extremely well-funded R&D teams, and their industry relationships (largely due to those other two factors).

Intel is able to field several different processor lines and architectures simultaneously, and also develop multiple new architectures at the same time. That's not something that most other companies can do. They've also been reasonably good at recovering from mistakes quickly (something that Microsoft has also been fairly good at).

That said, it'll be interesting to see how things pan out with the changes to the computing landscape that are in the works now.

things that have always been in Intel's favor have been their truly massive and always cutting edge fab capability (which no other cpu manufacturer has been able to even come close to)

On a flight a while back I struck up a conversation with a PhD that specialized in chip design. He suggested that if AMD was able to manufacture their chip designs in Intel's fabs, that they would be out Intel chips in terms of performance and power.

The idea was that because AMD uses fabs that are, basically, two generations behind Intel, that their designs have to be more innovative to be able to work within the constraints of the older process.

I'm no electrical engineer, so I took him at his word, but it certain points out that Intel's fabs are a distinct advantage.

I wouldn't go that far. Intel definitely has an advantage in process technology, but it's not as though they rely on it exclusively to stay ahead. For example, currently the AMD and Intel CPUs in the server market are both at the same level of process technology, 32nm, and Intel's CPUs are still overall superior.

Intel's Ivy Bridge processor has been out for almost a year now, and is on the 22nm fab process.

It's 22nm finfet. The finfet is equivalent to a 0.5/1 generation advantage in power or speed.

Ivy Bridge still hasn't been released in the server space. The server market currently has Sandy Bridge chips. The Ivy Bridge chips are due at the end of the year.

Wasn't AMD moving to have (x86) chips made at TMSC?

Maybe if they partner with IBM. Still, even if Global Foundries is two generations behind Intel, that's still one of the most modern fabs and being constantly updated is very expensive.

I've always felt that there fab division should have been forced to be split off from it's design division. It would be better for the industry if architectures had to compete on their merits and all designs had access to the same quality of fabs.

Very sweet long-term deals, yeah. Dell managed to meet Wall St's earnings expectations almost entirely through payments from Intel not to ship AMD systems; they even got in trouble because they fiddled the books to hide where the money was really coming from: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/359770/intel-sweeteners-made-up-...

> I'm guessing Intel offered some sweet sweet long term deals to keep AMD out of the picture.

I don't know whether Intel under bid AMD's pricing or not.

What we know Intel did do, though, is that they ran a marketing blitz of Intel Inside ads so that when consumers went to buy a computer and saw "AMD" instead of "Intel" they reacted negatively. Based purely on the marketing, customers would view the computer sporting the "Intel Inside" logo as the premium product.

Methinks they did a wee bit more than that.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/33882559/ns/business-us_business/t...

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