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points by close04 3 days ago | 0 comments
AMD benefited greatly from Intel's self inflicted wound: laying on their laurels thinking the leverage they had with OEMs and inertia will carry them through the hard patch like it did in their P4 times.

Intel stopped advancing in 2014-2015 for a long time. They flopped on the fabrication side, they stuck to the 2-4 core CPUs and charged an arm and a leg for anything with more than that. This gave AMD an opening with their cheap and yet still decently fast higher core count CPUs.

[–] chrisgarand 3 days ago
Also, they spent a long time suppressing AMD by bribing, and strong-arming their partners during the first cycle of AMD beating Intel (Athlon series): https://www.eetimes.com/intel-accepts-order-to-stop-unfair-t... Later on: https://www.rbbecon.com/news/article/commission-imposes-e106...
[–] close04 3 days ago
That’s the leverage I was mentioning. That’s what worked for them in Pentium days and thought will just work again. It helped a lot that AMD had a compelling product to sell.
[–] p_l 3 days ago
They used the same tricks when AMD landed useful 64bit mobile CPUs (turion X2 series and the like). But by zen era even big box retail is selling and models
[–] chrisgarand 3 days ago
I understand, I wanted to showcase the specific anti-competitive behavior that they were forced to pay for.
[–] expedition32 3 days ago
AMD did come up with a really good product. Their Ryzen chips beat anything Intel could muster.
[–] emuljetina 3 days ago
AMD was held back by their fabs, breaking off from global foundries did so much from them too