Xbitlabs: AMD’s Executives Admitted Inability to Compete – Intel.

[richardginn]

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/dis...ete_Intel.html

[Soul Assassin]

Wow. The quotes there are outrageous if true.

“If you look at it, with an objective set of eyes, you would never buy AMD. I certainly would never buy AMD for a personal system if wasn’t working here. If I was a decision maker in a Fortune 500 company, I wouldn’t use AMD,” Henry Richard, executive vice president of marketing at AMD from 2002 to 2007, is reported to have said internally, according to Intel.

Besides, claims the world’s largest maker of chips, Mr. Richard described AMD as saddled with a reputation that “we are cheap, less reliable, lower quality consumer type of product”.

According to Intel AMD’s marketing chief called AMD “pathetic” for “selling processors rather than platforms and exposing a partial story, particularly in the commercial segment, that is clearly inferior to Intel’s if we want to be honest with ourselves”. By that, Mr. Richard admitted AMD’s incapability to compete against Intel when it comes to commercial desktops and notebooks.

At least he's honest. That was always the complaint I had against AMD back in the day, that they didn't offer a full platform worthy of corporate use.

[ua549]

That news actually broke last December, but was not widely publicized.

There is no reason to doubt the truthfulness of the statement. It fits the image I always had of AMD. They never had a turnkey solution, thus the bad chipset experience. In addition the technology they used changed frequently so they didn't have a stable platform to offer to business. By stability I mean that what one purchased on day 1 couldn't be purchased on day 180. That was not good for businesses that needed a homogeneous installed base.

[anubis44]

Wow. The quotes there are outrageous if true.


At least he's honest. That was always the complaint I had against AMD back in the day, that they didn't offer a full platform worthy of corporate use.

The irony of course is that this fool was saying this at one of the periods over the last 30 years when AMD actually had a clear and obvious design advantage in nearly every respect. At that time, he would have been faced with the choice of either a dual core Athlon 64 or a Pentium IV. What an idiot. He would have gone with the Pentium IV!

Incidentally, the myth that AMD chipsets aren't as good was debunked years ago. As a first-hand example, all the workstations used in my reserve army unit are A64 X2s. Since the work done on them is sometimes mission-critical in the most literal sense, it hardly seems possible they're not as reliable as Intel's kit - so much for an 'unworthy' corporate platform. LOL.

[Soul Assassin]

Incidentally, the myth that AMD chipsets aren't as good was debunked years ago. As a first-hand example, all the workstations used in my reserve army unit are A64 X2s. Since the work done on them is sometimes mission-critical in the most literal sense, it hardly seems possible they're not as reliable as Intel's kit - so much for an 'unworthy' corporate platform. LOL.

Nobody's talking about "AMD" chipsets. We're talking about the nonexistence of AMD chipsets and the forced use of crap from nVidia, Via and SiS. And yes, none of them are reliable as Intel's chipsets.

[anubis44]

Nobody's talking about "AMD" chipsets. We're talking about the nonexistence of AMD chipsets and the forced use of crap from nVidia, Via and SiS. And yes, none of them are reliable as Intel's chipsets.

Actually somebody did mention Intel's 'rock solid stability', implying that AMD CPU's didn't/don't have reliable chipset options, but they edited out that comment after the fact. That's not really my bad.

[ua549]

Stability also refers to the length of time that a product revision is available.
That is very important for a company with a large installed base.
They want to be able to purchase the exact same product over a period of time.
Intel is the king in that regard.
nVidaia, Via and Sis pumped out chipset revisions every month. That is the opposite of stable.
In essence the product one bought last month can't be bought this month.

[Nater]

AMD STILL can't do a good implementation of AHCI on their chipsets NOW. Not to mention how bad their server chipsets continue to be. That situation is likely to be remedied this year. Doing VM migration on an intel platform is trivially easy and always just works. You've got to cross your fingers and sacrifice a chicken or two when you try to do the same thing with an AMD server.