AMD puts pressure on Intel with new generation of server chips | The Industry Standard

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14 points·procyon··6 comments

Good to hear something other than delays, bugs and losses from AMD. The current 4-core Opteron is outclassed by the latest Nehalem-based Xeons, even in the historically strong FP performance metrics. So the 6-core Opteron is arriving just in time...

AMD will never seriously threaten Intel. Intel can throw a billion dollars at anything AMD does and come out with a better solution. Some facts...

Intel's research budget last year: $5.7 billion

AMD's Revenue last year: $5.81 billion

Intel needs AMD to exist so that they can avoid anti-trust lawsuits. If AMD fails then Intel will face a lot of legal problems.

Disclosure: My dad works for Intel.

Using your logic, the one with the biggest wallet will always win. Which is not true! (Of course the one with the biggest wallet already won the big wallet award!)

We have seen many giants fall or fail, Microsoft never came up with an answer to the iPod, you may argue that MS didnt really try that hard, but still I think its a good example.

And finally, there is always a place for No. 2, AMD can be a player, it doesn't have to be No. 1 to remain a player.

Intel does seem to be pretty well run and highly specialised. Microsoft seems to struggle with its internal structure and seems a little more dispersed than Intel is (think of XBox, Zune, Windows, Office, keyboards, home broadband equipment, .Net, Surface...)

Can't disagree with economy. But AMD did manage to really rock in 2005-2006, didn't it?

EDIT: According to the article, AMD bagan to rock with server processors in 2003

"It’s worth noting that Intel’s hyperthreading technology allows it to treat one core as two, via software. Hence, Intel says its eight-core chip does the work of a 16-core chip."

That's a little optimistic on Intel's part.

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