AMD: The Rise, Fall and Future of an Industry Giant

Oh, don't worry, you'll be there soon. Their already gearing up to embed chips into everything, like your shoes. And <I>totally</I> by coincidence, the federal government is preparing a huge rollout of RFID sensors in high-traffic public places. Then they can track you all the time. What a wonderful idea! /s

As for AMD, buying ATI was a good idea which they bungled completely. Letting go of the mobile division was bad enough, but the combined CPU/GPU thing may be just as big of a mistake. The corporate world is perfectly happy with cheap-as-dirt onboard video. The desktop market is being driven totally by gamers now..and the first thing that usually gets upgraded in most gaming systems in the GPU. For at least a couple more years, these "APUs" are not going to be as good as discrete chipsets. All you're getting is a CPU with the unnecessary added cost of a GPU that you can't upgrade without also swapping out your processor. While it would be cool if the progress of CPUs and video chipsets were perfectly synchronized, how likely is that to happen? I also have an inherent mistrust of any device that tries to do too much. There are always compromises in performance.

I didn't know dividebyzero wrote articles lol. Good article man.

I really tried to make sure my new gaming laptop had AMD in it, but I just couldn't. I bought stock in the company purely because I supported them as underdogs and competitors to Intel... Looks like I may lose a lot of money.

Make a radical new design in the processor department good enough to beat the intel's ivy bridge,sandy bridge-E series.I believe then,AMD will rise again.

He also finds time to help us noobs. Who woulduv thunk it!

Only time will tell if they go the way of DEC.
I used to love the alpha servers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Equipment_Corporation#Final_years

AMD has had great products at better prices for a long time now. The frustrating part is how little hay they have been able to make from that. And now, Intel really does actually have superior processors - albeit much more expensive. But even during the P4, which sucked, Intel was making more money than AMD. And Atom! How did Intel get way with that POS? It is like Intel can do anything and make money, but AMD must be perfect and even then barely get by. But AMD compounds things with stupid mistakes! Okay, you're going to buy ATI, why that price? And if you're paying that for ATI, why are you giving away Adreno for chump change? Think about how much better off AMD's bottom line would be if they were getting royalties off every Snapdragon! Ugh...

Nice article. Thanks!

Very well written.. nice facts and actual truth. AMD will rise again hopefully since w/o them we are f'ed by Inhell.

Great article. One oversight: "SLOT-A", the very first Athlon format immediately prior to "Socket-A".

AMD was hoping to make CPU upgrades as easy as swapping out a PC card. But it was a slow inefficient design plagued by problems with cards not seated properly (one thing you CAN'T have is a CPU making a bad connection.)

I bought my first x86 PC in 1995... an AMD 120MHz 486 in had built for me by a local retailer (I build my own now). I've used nothing but AMD ever since. Never owned an Intel CPU.

What are you smoking? I was an AMD loyalist and had owned everything AMD since the original K6 but Intel have dominated since the introduction of Core 2 Duo, I only switched when the Core 2 Quad's were introduced and ive never looked back. AMD/ATI is drowning.

I dont mind paying extra for the performance and features Intel provide.

Very nice article dividebyzero I enjoyed reading it and like others said it was a trip down memory lane, at least from about 1996

AMD have trailed (badly) on CPUs since at least Core2Duo. But they are currently more-than-competitive on GPUs. I'm thinking of buying a new PC. It will be Intel (sorry) but as for GPU, 7870 or 7950 currently offer better performance for the money than anything nvidia have.

I don't know if AMD will survive, but even if they do it seems like its going to be a very dull period in the CPU market for some time to come - the days of the likes of Am486, 586, K6-2, Athlon, Thunderbird or A64, giving Intel a much-heeded kick up the behind seem to be long gone.

Not only is no competition bad for consumer value, its also boring to watch. The underdog suddenly overtaking the top dog put some excitement into the business.

I always owned AMD up until the dual core intel chips were intel just got better than AMD. Hopefully AMD can make a big comeback as competition for intel is good for everyone.

Oops, my bad. Had originally intended to cover the plug-in module slot, but being an evolutionary dead end as far as AMD were concerned ( server mezzanine cards and proprietary connections notwithstanding) decided to omit the info and concentrate on the mainstream socket implementation, but you are 100% correct. Slot-A (June 1999) predated Socket-A (August 1999) by around three months.

Thanks for the excellent read Graham Singer, appreciate it.

So adreno is radeon eh...
if the ceo of amd during that time is the same as of now = "you're fired!"

qualcomm made a coup buy buying it.

Article is missing lots of important things from past and just mentioned small amount of them superficially . I hope it is for to make article short enough not to bore the readers in the expense of going superficial.

Wow that was probably the best reading I've ever read on TS.