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#51
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On Sat, 05 Jun 2004 04:13:04 GMT, Robert Myers wrote:
It's fun to make fun of emotion- and probably hormone-driven gaming PC buyers that you can feel superior to, I guess, but given a choice between game PC buyers as an irrational decision maker (the desktop supercomputer buyers) and the warehouse-sized supercomputer buyers with a taxpayer credit card, I'll take the kids that want their cases to glow as the better bet for the future of computing, thank you very much. They don't hold press conferences to celebrate how smart they are for spending $100 million on their last taxpayer-financed boondoggle or for working out a deal that turns the availability of low-cost university-owned real estate into an opportunity for personal fame with a minimum contribution to science, and they don't expect the whole world to recognize how important they are for owning computers that take up so much real estate. The kids who want to have fun will eventually get us just as much memory, just as many gigaflops, and just as much science as the press-release generators and self-promoters, with a whole lot smaller expenditure of taxpayer dollars and a whole lot less hot air. There. Now I feel better. :-). RM It was a nicely purgative rant ;-) |
#52
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KR Williams wrote:
In article S41wc.50391$Ly.31838@attbi_s01, rmyers1400 @comcast.net says... Do you really think Intel could get the chipset marketing campaign for free like that? For one thing, Intel tolerates licensed chipsets from other manufacturers. If it intends to continue tolerating them, then it needs to maintain reasonable relations with them, and suddenly declaring that the "Intel Inside" moniker would not apply to boxes with licensed non-Intel chipsets would be virtually a declaration of war on licensed chipsets for Intel cpu's--probably not the message Intel wants to send to anyone With as many mistooks as Intel has made over the last couple of years... Nothing would surprise me. What's the ServerWorks deal all about anyway? ...Intel slitting their collective throat once again, as I see it, anyway. Dumb! There is no money in chipsets. They're simply a necessary evil. The difference between Intel and its proprietary and jealously-guarded frontside bus and AMD with hypertransport could hardly be more striking. The benign interpretation of Intel's strategy is that Intel doesn't want to have problems with chipsets blamed on its silicon. The dark interpretation, which is supported by Intel's own public pronouncements, is that Intel wants to use control of the processor as a wedge to control as much of everything the processor eventually connects to as it profitably can. The strategy is unattractive, but I don't know that I would call it dumb, at least in the short haul. Over the long haul, I'm not so sure, but if I try to think about the long haul in this business right now, I wind up with bigger questions than Intel's frontside bus strategy. RM |
#53
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In article k7Kwc.17468$%F2.10716@attbi_s04, rmyers1400
@comcast.net says... KR Williams wrote: In article S41wc.50391$Ly.31838@attbi_s01, rmyers1400 @comcast.net says... Do you really think Intel could get the chipset marketing campaign for free like that? For one thing, Intel tolerates licensed chipsets from other manufacturers. If it intends to continue tolerating them, then it needs to maintain reasonable relations with them, and suddenly declaring that the "Intel Inside" moniker would not apply to boxes with licensed non-Intel chipsets would be virtually a declaration of war on licensed chipsets for Intel cpu's--probably not the message Intel wants to send to anyone With as many mistooks as Intel has made over the last couple of years... Nothing would surprise me. What's the ServerWorks deal all about anyway? ...Intel slitting their collective throat once again, as I see it, anyway. Dumb! There is no money in chipsets. They're simply a necessary evil. The difference between Intel and its proprietary and jealously-guarded frontside bus and AMD with hypertransport could hardly be more striking. The benign interpretation of Intel's strategy is that Intel doesn't want to have problems with chipsets blamed on its silicon. The dark interpretation, which is supported by Intel's own public pronouncements, is that Intel wants to use control of the processor as a wedge to control as much of everything the processor eventually connects to as it profitably can. We see this differently. There is only so much money that can be spent on the CPU and it's necessary attachments. Every dime that is spent on the attachments is a dime that cannot be charged for the CPU. This is where I think Intel is *dumb*. The know they can dictate to the chipset manufacturers, so why go through the grief? Indeed, if they play one against the other they wind up with the whole pot, minus the production costs. Capitalism at work. AMD certainly figured this out, since they got out of this losing market. The strategy is unattractive, but I don't know that I would call it dumb, at least in the short haul. Over the long haul, I'm not so sure, but if I try to think about the long haul in this business right now, I wind up with bigger questions than Intel's frontside bus strategy. I repeat, *dumb*. Chipsets are no more than an necessary evil. -- Keith |
#54
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KR Williams wrote:
In article k7Kwc.17468$%F2.10716@attbi_s04, rmyers1400 @comcast.net says... KR Williams wrote: snip With as many mistooks as Intel has made over the last couple of years... Nothing would surprise me. What's the ServerWorks deal all about anyway? ...Intel slitting their collective throat once again, as I see it, anyway. Dumb! There is no money in chipsets. They're simply a necessary evil. The difference between Intel and its proprietary and jealously-guarded frontside bus and AMD with hypertransport could hardly be more striking. The benign interpretation of Intel's strategy is that Intel doesn't want to have problems with chipsets blamed on its silicon. The dark interpretation, which is supported by Intel's own public pronouncements, is that Intel wants to use control of the processor as a wedge to control as much of everything the processor eventually connects to as it profitably can. We see this differently. There is only so much money that can be spent on the CPU and it's necessary attachments. Every dime that is spent on the attachments is a dime that cannot be charged for the CPU. This is where I think Intel is *dumb*. The know they can dictate to the chipset manufacturers, so why go through the grief? Indeed, if they play one against the other they wind up with the whole pot, minus the production costs. Capitalism at work. AMD certainly figured this out, since they got out of this losing market. What you would attribute to cleverness on AMD's part, I would attribute to necessity. Intel has the cash and the need to find applications for what it does best (making silicon); AMD doesn't have the cash, and it doesn't make silicon. If you're cash-strapped, it makes sense to do what AMD is doing: conserve resources and focus on the core business. If you're Intel and trying to find things to do with money, then letting someone else make anything you could make is just giving business away. I can think of arguments either way as to whether the strategy Intel has chosen is really the best choice for the interests of shareholders. Those arguments rarely carry any weight. Corporations instinctively hoard and reinvest cash with the goal of growing, whether hoarding and reinvestment really correspond to wise management of shareholder resources or not. The fact that the interests of management don't necessarily and frequently just don't align with the interests of shareholders *is* a problem of modern corporate capitalism. RM |
#55
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In article 7cbxc.15546$4S5.6605@attbi_s52, rmyers1400
@comcast.net says... KR Williams wrote: In article k7Kwc.17468$%F2.10716@attbi_s04, rmyers1400 @comcast.net says... KR Williams wrote: snip With as many mistooks as Intel has made over the last couple of years... Nothing would surprise me. What's the ServerWorks deal all about anyway? ...Intel slitting their collective throat once again, as I see it, anyway. Dumb! There is no money in chipsets. They're simply a necessary evil. The difference between Intel and its proprietary and jealously-guarded frontside bus and AMD with hypertransport could hardly be more striking. The benign interpretation of Intel's strategy is that Intel doesn't want to have problems with chipsets blamed on its silicon. The dark interpretation, which is supported by Intel's own public pronouncements, is that Intel wants to use control of the processor as a wedge to control as much of everything the processor eventually connects to as it profitably can. We see this differently. There is only so much money that can be spent on the CPU and it's necessary attachments. Every dime that is spent on the attachments is a dime that cannot be charged for the CPU. This is where I think Intel is *dumb*. The know they can dictate to the chipset manufacturers, so why go through the grief? Indeed, if they play one against the other they wind up with the whole pot, minus the production costs. Capitalism at work. AMD certainly figured this out, since they got out of this losing market. What you would attribute to cleverness on AMD's part, I would attribute to necessity. Intel has the cash and the need to find applications for what it does best (making silicon); AMD doesn't have the cash, and it doesn't make silicon. No question that AMD doesn't have the resources that Intel has on hand. However, that doesn't change PC economics. Simply, there is no money there other than in the CPU and OS. Diluting resources to produce unnecessary (unnecessary if someone else can be fooled into doing it) chipsets is a waste of capital. If you're cash-strapped, it makes sense to do what AMD is doing: conserve resources and focus on the core business. If you're Intel and trying to find things to do with money, then letting someone else make anything you could make is just giving business away. I'm sure they could find a hole to bury a pot-full of cache. That's pretty much what chipsets are. They've stubbed their toe in every other endeavor, graphics in particular. I can think of arguments either way as to whether the strategy Intel has chosen is really the best choice for the interests of shareholders. Those arguments rarely carry any weight. Corporations instinctively hoard and reinvest cash with the goal of growing, whether hoarding and reinvestment really correspond to wise management of shareholder resources or not. The fact that the interests of management don't necessarily and frequently just don't align with the interests of shareholders *is* a problem of modern corporate capitalism. -- Keith |
#56
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On Mon, 7 Jun 2004 22:27:13 -0400, KR Williams wrote:
We see this differently. There is only so much money that can be spent on the CPU and it's necessary attachments. Every dime that is spent on the attachments is a dime that cannot be charged for the CPU. This is where I think Intel is *dumb*. The know they can dictate to the chipset manufacturers, so why go through the grief? Indeed, if they play one against the other they wind up with the whole pot, minus the production costs. Capitalism at work. AMD certainly figured this out, since they got out of this losing market. Intel has other motives here. Back in the late '486/early Pentium days, when PCs were really starting to proliferate and production was ramping madly, Intel found their sales could be limited by chipset availability, and decided that the way to ensure all possible CPUs could be sold early (when margins are highest) was to make sure the chipset support was there. Chipset production was basically a tool to ensure that CPU sales weren't at the mercy of outside vendors, and it's worked very well for them as a strategy. They're a low margin business, but they enable the high margin business. It also helps guarantee compatibility and reliability (with a few well-known exceptions), and the chipsets are manufactured on older technology production lines that aren't capable of making the latest CPU geometries, so it allows reuse of already depreciated resources. Sure, they've messed it up a few times, but overall, it's been very effective. Neil Maxwell - I don't speak for my employer |
#57
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Neil Maxwell wrote:
Intel has other motives here. Back in the late '486/early Pentium days, when PCs were really starting to proliferate and production was ramping madly, Intel found their sales could be limited by chipset availability, and decided that the way to ensure all possible CPUs could be sold early (when margins are highest) was to make sure the chipset support was there. Chipset production was basically a tool to ensure that CPU sales weren't at the mercy of outside vendors, and it's worked very well for them as a strategy. They're a low margin business, but they enable the high margin business. I think AMD has the same strategy these days. For the last two generations, the K7 and K8 lines, AMD has always introduced its own chipsets first, and then stepped back once the third party chipsets came online. I guess it's two ways of achieving the same results. Yousuf Khan |
#58
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#59
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On Tue, 08 Jun 2004 11:19:11 -0700, Neil Maxwell
wrote: On Mon, 7 Jun 2004 22:27:13 -0400, KR Williams wrote: We see this differently. There is only so much money that can be spent on the CPU and it's necessary attachments. Every dime that is spent on the attachments is a dime that cannot be charged for the CPU. This is where I think Intel is *dumb*. The know they can dictate to the chipset manufacturers, so why go through the grief? Indeed, if they play one against the other they wind up with the whole pot, minus the production costs. Capitalism at work. AMD certainly figured this out, since they got out of this losing market. Intel has other motives here. Back in the late '486/early Pentium days, when PCs were really starting to proliferate and production was ramping madly, Intel found their sales could be limited by chipset availability, and decided that the way to ensure all possible CPUs could be sold early (when margins are highest) was to make sure the chipset support was there. Err, yeah, I think that's what the "necessary evil" comment Keith made was all about. Chipset production was basically a tool to ensure that CPU sales weren't at the mercy of outside vendors, and it's worked very well for them as a strategy. They're a low margin business, but they enable the high margin business. It also helps guarantee compatibility and reliability (with a few well-known exceptions), and the chipsets are manufactured on older technology production lines that aren't capable of making the latest CPU geometries, so it allows reuse of already depreciated resources. Sure, they've messed it up a few times, but overall, it's been very effective. Effective for consumer chipsets, sure, but this whole discussion started with the high-end server chipsets where Intel has been failing miserably for 5 years and is now looking to become the ONLY supplier in the business. Take a look at the 2-way and greater servers from all the major OEMs. HPaq doesn't have a single Intel chipset in the bunch, all Serverworks for 2 and 4 way with their own customer job for 8-way setups. IBM is pretty much the same story. Dell, forever the Intel stalwart, has something like 1 or 2 of their 2-way servers using Intel chipsets, but the bulk use Serverworks and all of their 4-way servers are Serverworks chipsets. However now Intel has declined Serverworks license for future chipsets, meaning that all of those servers from all of the major OEMs need to switch to an Intel chipset for future designs. What's even worse though, there is no Intel chipset for them to switch to! Intel has yet to release a 4-way (or greater) chipset for their P4-style Xeons. In short, Intel is largely shooting themselves in the foot. Their performance in the 4P server market absolutely stinks vs. the Opteron, largely because they are limited to 4 processors sharing a 400MT/s bus. They can't increase that, not because they don't have the processors for it but because they don't have their own chipset and refuse to let Serverworks build one for them. Even in 2-way servers, where the margin by which the Opteron beats them is slightly less embarrassing, they're still stuck at a 533MT/s bus speed and forcing all their customers to trash existing designs in favor of an untested Intel solution. For the moment their only solutions in this market at the e7505 chipset (limited to 533MT/s bus speeds for now at least) and the i875P (no PCI-X support and limited memory capacity for a server). ------------- Tony Hill hilla underscore 20 at yahoo dot ca |
#60
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Tony Hill wrote:
[SNIP] Intel solution. For the moment their only solutions in this market at the e7505 chipset (limited to 533MT/s bus speeds for now at least) and the i875P (no PCI-X support and limited memory capacity for a server). IBM and Unisys build their own chipsets, and they are pretty meaty. I would like to see a comparison between one of them fancy 4P in-house chipset boxes and an Opteron box. IBM reckon they can go to 32 way, believe it when I see it I guess. :P Cheers, Rupert |
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