"It's Time for AMD to Give it Up"

[Rob Williams]

From our front-page news:

I have to wonder if CNet ever proofs blog posts before they go live, because one of their latest is appalling. Tech blogger Don Reisinger somehow believes that it would be best for AMD if they were to fold. Yeah, that's it. I'm a fan of Intel like most people, but anyone with half a brain knows that AMD is not going anywhere. Not right now. They might be in dire straits financially, but their product line-ups (aside from Barca) are showing what the company is capable of.

I'm no legal buff, but would the government even allow the #2 semiconductor maker in the world to fold? There's no denying the fact, if AMD were to cease, it would be bad news for consumers. It's been said a hundred times. With competition, better products get developed... prices are kept within reason... the consumers are the beneficiaries.

"If you ask me, AMD should be sold to the highest bidder and liquidated."

What the hell? That's worse than G4TV recommending DDR3 RAM for a DDR2 motherboard. While I agree with some of what the Don has to say, the rest of it is absolutely ridiculous. Of course we are all entitled to our own opinions, that's fine, but this is over the top.

I still have good faith that AMD can turn around. I can agree with the blog post in that the management needs to be re-evaluated, however. AMD relied on their K8 architecture far too long and it really bit them... hard. They need to take a look at the big picture, see what's skewing their progress and fix the problem.

AMD mentioned at last weeks analyst's day that they don't need killer processors to survive, which is true to an extent. They have many other product avenues where they are succeeding. But there is still no denying that they need to sort things out and become true competition with Intel again. It's going to be a great day when it finally happens.

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If you ask me, AMD should be sold to the highest bidder and liquidated. Of course, if you think that's a bit extreme, fire all of its loser executives and try to find some people who actually know how to run a business and compete against larger competitors. Trust me, it's the only way.

Source: The Digital Home Blog
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[On_Wisconsin]

I'm no legal buff, but would the government even allow the #2 semiconductor maker in the world to fold?

Yes. No matter who is running our clusterfark (of a government "for the people"), All Monkeys and Dorks won't be saved. If they won't help the auto industry (one of the largest in our nation, ahead of lawsuits ), they won't help a company with far less impact/less people working for them stateside/a company that average Joe (aka average idiot) doesn't know about. Reality bites for AMD, doesn't it?

 

[madmat]

No the government wouldn't allow AMD to fold. There are tons of subsidies that ailing companies can get from the government to keep afloat. Don't believe me? Look at the airline industries. Not too long ago they were in worse trouble than AMD is, they were hemoraging money and they turned to the government to keep them afloat. Now they're turning profits again.

I don't think that a company can just go running to Uncle Sam every time that they need a financial bandaid but they can get help when it looks like they won't keep the doors open especially when they're the only thing standing between whether one company has a monopoly or not. Besides, it seems the hack writing the blog seems to have forgotten all the money that was recently dumped into AMD when Dubai bought up a boatload of their shares.

 

[madstork91]

If they won't help the auto industry (one of the largest in our nation, ahead of lawsuits ), they won't help a company with far less impact/less people working for them stateside/a company that average Joe (aka average idiot) doesn't know about. Reality bites for AMD, doesn't it?

For example, in the United States (1981–1994), Japanese automobile companies were held to voluntary export quotas. These quotas limited the supply of Japanese automobiles desired by consumers in the United States (1.68 million, raised to 1.85 million in 1984, and raised again to 2.30 million in 1985), increasing the profit margin on each automobile more than enough (14% or about $1200 in 1983 dollars, about $2300 in 2005 dollars) to cover the reduction in the number of automobiles that they sold, leading to greater overall profits for Japanese automobile manufacturers in the United States export market, and higher prices for consumers. (Berry et al. 1999).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectionism

AMD needs help.

Fact: the avg uneducated computer consumer doesnt know who they are.
Fact: This isn't 10 years ago. The avg American is more computer educated now than ever before.

Would some still go "huh?" when and if AMD asks for help, sure. But does washington realize and recognize AMD as a company and their impact/place in the market? Yes.

When I went to work on a sorority girls comp and she had Fire Fox already installed and was running winamp... I knew I had seen first hand evidence of the new age and generation of the internet.

 

[Rob Williams]

Thanks for all the input guys. I wish I had a solid answer on the legal situation though. While AMD is not "well-known", they would still open up a massive monopoly if they were to fold. I really don't feel like running SPARC.

 

[On_Wisconsin]

I'd have to agree with Rob. I forgot about the monopoly factor. I don't think that chick that was using FF cares what's in it as long as it gets her to say, Facebook and fast.

 

[Greg King]

Everyone looks at this from the angle that if AMD closes up shop, Intel will run rampant through the industry but what I haven't heard anyone talk about is what effect it will have on NVIDIA.

At least Intel has been releasing a continual stream of hardcore CPUs and chipsets. Granted this has primarily been to regain what it lost from the netburst fiasco but honestly, how would AMD crapping out effect NVIDIA? We have been stuck with the 8800 GTX as the top dog for over a year now (I use the word stuck loosely). They haven't had any motivation to continually improve on this until recently because they haven't had to.

These companies don't need any more reasons to be lazy, they have enough as it is. From a legal standpoint, I don't see how AMD could fold. They have too many assets to completely disappear and in some capacity or another, will remain around for a long time to come.

Now if they would just shove the Phenom back into the oven and wait till it's done cooking...

 

[THUMPer]

AMD cant go anywhere.
They have the server market. Consumer desktop. laptop. Graphics. laptop Graphics. Geod solutions.
When it comes to servers I am at a tossup here. The Intel Quads rock. But the 4 CPU AMD Blades are even more bad ass. Intel does not support 4 CPU Blades. But they support 32 CPU Dual core systems. We will soon see the first 32 CPU Quad core here at IBM in the coming months. AMD as far as i know does not scale past 4 CPU's. But the AMD memory controller is far superior. Thats why IBM made a special Intel Memory controller for our Intel systems, because Intels sucked.
Im rambling....