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AMD CEO saying it's a "data center first" company and PC sales will plummet(techradar.com)

34 points by haunter 1 day ago | 27 comments

I feel like tech companies across the board are making a pretty massive misstep of ignoring their traditional businesses in favor of AI. Understandably, every percentage point of production not spent in this generational build out is a waste but it feels like corporate Dutch disease. When the build out ends, and it will end, the cost to rebuild the relationship with the consumer may be lethal for a lot of companies.

Apple is probably the company to watch having taken (or otherwise been forced to take) the other strategy.

[–] ksec 23 hours ago

It is not like they are ignoring PC market. The new node will now goes to Server Market first, it is expensive and Server market is making more money. It wasn't that long ago Workstation and Server were where the best tech came first.

One could even argue the whole industry haven't been PC first for nearly a decade. It is Smartphone first before moving on to anything else.

[–] nubinetwork 1 day ago

AMD and Nvidia sure have burned any desire I had left for this industry.

[–] Neywiny 1 day ago

I mean what'll you do? Intel only for PCs? Like in disappointed too but I'm not gonna go try to fab the stuff myself.

[–] CoolestBeans 1 day ago

I think the problem these companies will run into is that people are unlearning to desire the latest gadget or console because they've been priced out. Obviously there's some amount of device that's closer to necessity but the marginal stuff I think has been hit and will be hit in the future. For example, its typical that through a video game console's lifecycle the price comes down to get the more casual gamers. That hasn't happened because of shortages. That's an entire generation of would-be gamers they're losing out on today and in the future.

Personally, I've balked at the price of two gadgets I wanted to get in the last couple of months (a Steam Deck and a digital notebook). Does that make me less likely to buy one in the future if the prices go down? I don't know but probably.

[–] PostOnce 1 day ago

ARM is here. Apple and Qualcomm and a whole host of chinese companies make PC-tier processors that aren't AMD/Intel/x64

It's possible people get pissed off enough they buy those instead. Or simply buy them because that's what's available, and it therefore becomes The Norm.

[–] pjmlp 1 day ago

Moving away from x86 will be the death of PC clones.

[–] jmercouris 1 day ago

I think just like how we saw the development of Asics, we'll see crystallized models at some baseline level of competence. Then, we'll probably see a huge glut of excess capacity in the GPU market, and we won't need excessive gluts of RAM and compute.

[–] mrandish 1 day ago

I remember when building a cool desktop PC was a fun hobby.

[–] cite_please 1 day ago

Which is exactly what it will be going forward. A hobby.

[–] WarOnPrivacy 1 day ago

Tech giant's war on consumers - this may be the most relevant reason to attack data center developments.

[–] cite_please 1 day ago

How?

[–] WarOnPrivacy 9 hours ago

The usual. Zoning, onerous bureaucracy, the opposite of whatever we do to lure sportsball stadiums.

[–] vannevar 1 day ago

The tech oligarchy not only wants to corner the market in AI, they want to corner the market in compute itself.

[–] wormius 1 day ago

oligopoly

* I mean to add to... not replace your use of oligarchy. I realized it looked like i was doing a "ftfy" but not my intent after I posted.

[–] BatchJob 1 day ago

No reason to mince words then. Its clear the tech industry is waging resource wars against the American public. They want our land, our water, our power, and our computing equipment for themselves.

They will stop at nothing to take it all.

[–] cite_please 1 day ago

They’ll take it all. Decades of being told to vote with their wallet is paying dividends.

[–] jsiepkes 1 day ago

"I see AI and super intelligence [..]"

"super intelligence", well someone has bend a knee apparently.

[–] AnimalMuppet 1 day ago

I don't think so. If they had, they wouldn't have said "AI".

I think they're saying "superintelligence" to mean ASI, or at least AGI.

[–] officeplant 1 day ago

She's been at the table with trump and the rest of that corrupt squad numerous times.

She didn't bend, she crawled right up in happy and willing.

[–] naveen99 1 day ago

eventually data centers will go on fire sales just like downtown commercial real estate.

[–] expedition32 1 day ago

After my current PC dies it's probably game over for my gaming hobby. But hey I can use an LLM to order pizza I guess lol.

[–] Shitty-kitty 1 day ago

Fret not, the LLM will play games for you while you wait for you pizza.

[–] type0 21 hours ago

Just another step in the war on general purpose computing, you'll own nothing and you'll be happy!

[–] secondcoming 1 day ago

Dumb. There'll be a huge market for home-run LLMs.

[–] gkhartman 1 day ago

Agreed, but Apple already has a huge head start in that market. I could see a CEO choosing not to compete if they know they can't catch up.

I suppose that also implies that AMD thinks it can catch up with Nvidia in the datacenter.

[–] gdulli 1 day ago

Streaming services became terrible and there hasn't been a huge market for home Plex server.