Salaries of Attrition

"AMD said that it had only 13 per cent of the x86 CPU market at the end of 2007, "less than half of what it requires to operate long-term as a sustainable business.""

Cutting Ruiz's salary would double their sustainability then? :)

"Including likely appeals, this long running case might drag on five more years."

Intel can afford to drag the case out over years. AMD cannot. This is just a study in risk vs reward on the shady deals of Intel (and probably all companies') sales reps make with vendors. I've known a few sales people that would try the hard sell approach, and force vendors into a lock in with their product. Swag and gifts aren't uncommon, and those things can take many forms that don't easily equate to dollars and pounds sterling. :)

Cheers,
John

Quality x86 chips!

Back in 2005 when the court case was filled and covers the alleged period before 2005, I believe AMD saying that they had superior products is true.

Until 2006 with Core 2, their CPUs were far superior of anything Intel had. From desktops to servers. And still in server enviroment dominate the market.

It's suprisingly back then advertising Pentium 4 3Ghz as powerfull computer while AMD had the 64bit series out!!!! Anyone who knew about the market was laughing. But people believing the crap advertising bite the hook.

How's this going ?

So does this look in favour of AMD ??

If AMD would loose this trial, what then, will they have to pay for the trial and then deal a huge sum of money to intel and become bancrupt ??

Or could AMD affoard to loose this trial ?

AMD, you had [at least] one chance

oh please.

AMD is crying a river, I can see it from my house. They had several chances to stay on top when intel was getting its arse beaten in the benchmarks with the netburst-nightmare.

AMD just has to face the music. if you produce generally inferior products for many years, then you will fail as a business and the competition will walk all over you.

Don't IBM, HP & Dell have legal departments?

It seems "on the face of it" highly unlikely that the legal departments of IBM, HP & Dell would, after legal review, permit US or country violation of anti-trust or equivalent laws. What am I missing? Is AMD trying to open up new avenues of large company business practices???

I like the way AMD presents the case..

What they say is that because AMD did not get the market share they expected to get, Intel is cheating.

There are many factors why AMD did not perform like they wanted. Some of them are market related, some most of them are the fault of AMD, and some of them are Intel related.

If we look at the AMD64 era than we see many mistakes from AMD. The knew the AMD64 was better than the Northwood P4. However, with the pending release of the Prescott P4 the could not promte the AMD64 that well, because the AMD64 was maybe better than the Northwood P4, but nobody knew if it would beat the Prescott P4.

So the launch of the Prescott P4 arrived, and it apeared to be a dead duck. After that AMD could promote the AMD64 as the better CPU. But instead of focussing on the power/performance ratio they promoted the 64-bit compatibility in a market where there was virtualy no 64bits software. It was the one feature that the AMD64 had that would be totaly worthless if Intel would have released there complete own fully incompatible version (owing 80% of the market, software vendors go for the bigger fish). AMD knew that and they didn't much promoting untill Intel comfirmed it would support the same standard. Be then we weher in early 2005.

So basically, AMD promoted the wrong features of the AMD64.

The AMD64 was also AMD's first server CPU. The only available chipset at the times was from AMD. ANd they only made one chipset and had to rely on third parties (like nVidia) to produce other chipsets. This took time. Also, anybody working at a company that uses servers knows that swapping to another platform (AMD instead of Intel) is not a decision that is taken lighly. Infact, most company would stay with Intel, even if the AMD servers where better. Simply because they knew Intel products for so many years and knew what they could expect. Unlike the new AMD products wich first had to prove it's stability and relaibillity. Combined with the uncertainty of the next generation of Intel CPU's, and slim availability of x64 software. It's not strange that it took a long time for AMD to get a foothold into the server market.

The desktop was different. Untill the AMD64 AMD was mainly seen as the cheap alternative to Intel. When it was discovered that the AMD64 was better (even due to sloppier chipset support), it got a foothold. But remember that the AMD64 was not sold at discounted prices and Intel did reprice it's CPU's to be at least competetive at the price level. Many people would have made AMD64 based systems because they where simply faster. But at that time, that was still a very small market.

Companies like HP, Dell, etc. that build desktop systems for both enterprices and private persons would also need time to build AMD64 based desktops and workstations. It was a new platform, and it costs a lot of money to retool factories to build them, to reschool support personel to support them. On top of that, they had to get the chipset and the CPU from different supliers which adds to the complexity.

To top it off, AMD scaled it's production down by clossing it's AUstin based chip factory. At a time when Intel was building more and more factories.

So even if the AMD64 would have been in instant succes, AMD would never have been able to supply the market. Making the CPU a no buy option for the big PC companies (HP, Dell, etc.).

These companies could easily get the needed supply from Intel.

Add to that that AMD had no answer to the Core 2 Duo. Even when they new months in advace before it's introduction that it would be much faster than the AMD64. They could not because they choose to build e true 4 core CPU (the Phenom), which released much to late, and was faulty. Even today the Phenom may be at the same price level, they do not have the power/performance advantage.

They also decided to buy ATi, which did cost them a huge amount of money. They could also have chosen for a samller chipset company (like SiS), which would have cost them much less and would generaly have benefited them just as much.

And the prices of AMD64 CPU's was much to high. Most CPU's had the same pricelevel for quite some time. Advantage in speed was slow (maybe a few 100 Mhz per year). They where on top and instead of progressing and attaking the market, they just sold there CPU's for as much as they could.

So, looking at it this way (which is my own personal view btw). You could say the AMD should have know that it would have taken time to gain a decent market share (and they did, in 2006, odly enough even after the Core 2 was introduced). It is unrealistic to assume a certain share of the market just because your product is better.

If AMD just would have had enough trust in the AMD64 in the first place, they would have realy put the heat on Intel. They should have build factories instead of closing them, and they should have sold the AMD64 at the same way Intel sold there COre 2 Duo's. AMD should have lowerd there prices and realy attack the market after it was known the Prescott was a dead duck. Instead they chose to bet on x64, and kept the high prices and the slow progress.

It's clear to me that AMD is simply not a market leader. They do not have enough trust in their own product the realy attack the markt.

Anyhow, I'm not saying Intel didn't do anything wrong. But just not on the scale AMD wants to make us believe.

Besides, there is a difference between A) saying that if you buy more of my product then you get a bigger discount, and B) saying that you get a bigger discount if you do not sell the competing products.

The result, however, will generaly be the same.

It's not the best product that wins

This case has nothing to do with who had/has the best products. How many people think that Windows is the best. It has to do with HOW they became so successful. In Microsoft's case, as maybe in Intel's, it was by forcing the all the sellers to pay for a copy of Windows with each system built, whether Windows was on their or not. Intel, being so big and powerful, could easily force even Dell to go Intel only. There was, and is, no way that AMD could supply Dell with enough processors. This makes it pretty easy for Intel to set the rules.

This Is Going To Go One & On

When AMD released the A64 after the Athlon XP line they had the icing on the cake over INTEL. It was a blow to INTEL as they suddenly didn't expect the A64 and it just dominated any chip INTEL could throw at it.

INTEL released the P4 with "Netburst" and Dual Core P4's and it still was a flop when answered by 939 X2. Unfortunatly Sk939 was killed off to quickly in my eyes for AM2 DDR2 support. That still didn't give any massive performance over 939 tests showed a 5% gain and that was not worth an upgrade.

The reason....? AMD didn't research a new architecture for DDR2 to show what AMD chips could really do. It was still using K8 tech and an improved memory controller to support the more bandwidth from DDR2. Call it a improved Memory controller for more overclocking if you will.

AMD release Barcelona and couldn't get the production out on time and still can't even for the delay. Due to rushing for the next release date it has a lv erreta bug on the 1st revisions another blow to AMD. Finally release the B3 revisions and all seems well but it's to little to late they need to get some money (fire hector) and really research a new architecture.

And that it why AMD is now struggling along with Hector's stupid salary for doing nothing absolutly nothing.

AMD is better in a lot of ways.

I apologize if this has been said already, but AMD is better in a lot of ways. If you´re looking for a super-powerful gaming rig, then you simply buy a Core2Duo, if you want to crunch video, maybe a Core2quad.

But what happens if you want to crunch a lot of data over a period of time, and are worried about heat and power bills?
Assuming you can get them, it´s AMD all the way at the moment.

As a Distributed Computing nut, I´m highly regretful for buying into the hype and purchasing a Core2quad, when I could own 2 Phenoms and only tax my window air-conditioner slightly more than what´s happening right now with the Core2Quad.