The Rise, Fall and Renaissance of AMD

[Julio Franco]

AMD is one of the world's oldest CPU makers and the subject of polarizing debate among tech enthusiasts for nearly 50 years. Its story makes for a thrilling tale of twists and turns that we examine today from past to present.

Permalink to review.

https://www.techspot.com/article/2586-amd-rise-fall-renaissance/

 

[NeoMorpheus]

Amazing article and will admit, really surprised to see writers in TS that didn’t outright trashed AMD because of brand loyalty.

That said, I would had added a couple more paragraphs about how hard is for both AMD divisions to compete given the outright dirty and illegal tactics used by Intel and Nvidia up to today (ask Dell for a Ryzen system under their business line or how nvidia pays developers to only properly support their “tech” that magically run like crap on AMD gpus).

Anyways, thank you Nick and Graham for this great article.

 

[Vanderlinde]

The first K5 failed because it had a terrible FPU bug.

The first "unfinished" K5 was codenamed SSA/5 which had bugs in branch-prediction and in the level 1 cache. Earlier units were sold as AMD 5k86.

Big time recall that was.

Edit: all my life I've been on AMD CPUs. Never bought a Intel CPU since the 486DX2/66Mhz. It went from a K6 to a Slot a, socket 462, socket 754, AM2, AM3+ and now AM4. Next upgrade is a AM5.

The FX was the most memorable platform since it OC'ed fantastic right out of the box. Free 40 to 50% performance. All you needed was a good motherboard, cooling and you where good to go.

AMD CPUs just work and their platform has consistent be very stable. Im running on outdated XEON web servers by now but EPYC offers so much (more) while being half the cost pretty much. AMD Baby!

And in regards of video cards; my first 3d card upon a Voodoo2 was a Nvidia 5700 or something in that regard, based on the FX series. Ive repasted the card once and it was dead right after. Since then only ATI/AMD. X850Pro > To X850XTX - you name it.

 

[redhat]

There is important missing info here, AMD–Chinese joint venture with 51-49 in china for X86 license in exchange for 1-2 billion USD

 

[hahahanoobs]

My first cpu was 2600+ Barton core. Then 3700+ San Diego. Then Q6600 and 2500K and currently 5600X, because of the better upgrade path options at time of purchase. I slowed way down after 2500K + GTX 970, because I didn't like BF1 and BFV enough to upgrade for them.

AMD's financials look good because they came from nothing - Bulldozer. Look at their market share across all markets and you see they are struggling hard.

From weak server part shipments compared to Intel (7 to 1), to AM5 platform costs, to their dGPU's slipping to 8% market share, to Zen 3 and 4 being on sale at the same time at the same amounts here in Canada for 3+ months straight (Zen 3). $80 to $280 off. That's crazy. AMD needs help. 5 year process and core lead basically gone. Wow.

 

[NeoMorpheus]

There is important missing info here, AMD–Chinese joint venture with 51-49 in china for X86 license in exchange for 1-2 billion USD

Wasn't that approved by the US government?

If yes, then what's the problem? Better yet, lets point fingers to all companies that use china in one way or the other to produce money.

 

[redhat]

Wasnt that approved by the US government?

If yes, then whats the problem?

Better yet, lets point fingers to all companies that use china in one way or the other to produce money.

I have not said that it is bad or good to deal with china and I really dont care about that to be honest. I just meant that AMD needed money at that time and they got it using the joint venture thing

 

[meric]

AMD has never seen the support they deserved from buyers. There were times when AMD products were much superior or highly competitive, even then they didn't get as high revenues/profits as intel did. I remember how Athlons destroyed intel counterparts despite apparent clock speed deficit. However, AMD also made wrong decisions at the wrong time, a couple of times, as mentioned above.

Zen 5 is close and I wonder what they are working on right now, for after Zen 5? Maybe a brand new architecture?

 

[systemBuilder]

Good article I'd like to see more coverage of three topics. First of all when did AMD stop making pin compatible microprocessors? Because that opened the door for Intel's anti-competitive practices and paying many many different laptop makers not to use AMD chips! Also the move to remove sockets from laptop motherboards in about 2008 I think made AMD swap-in-for-Intel upgrades impossible!

Second there is just not enough coverage of Intel's corruption and the way they threatened their customers to keep AMD chips out of products including laptops now and laptops during athlon days and I am sure they are threatening Google and Amazon and Microsoft to keep AMD chips out of data centers! Intel made a huge mistake in laying off almost their entire CPU architecture division in 2013 to 2014 and that's why the Intel powerpig 12x00 and 13x00 chips are one generation behind AMD's in terms of efficiency!

Third of all I would like to see more about the history of Raj Koduri who left AMD (was ejected?) and is currently in the process of bankrupting Intel's iGPU division. He was a 1-hit wonder (rx480 / rx580) in GPUs! He had a big demotion just 5 days ago! His damage to Intel is not a terrible thing because Intel's iGPU division was basically asleep from 2013 to 2020 they made zero progress during that time! Intel's iris pro 5200 of 2013 was a high point that Intel did not exceed for 8 years!

 

[Timoo]

Good article.
Always nice to read this kind of stuff.

My all-time favorite remain the Durons 800 & 1100. The "pencil-CPU's", which could be unlocked by a pencil stripe, giving you full potential in a time where overclocking was still a "thing".

And the most wonderful GPU I own, is a Radeon R9 295X2.
What a fun-machine is that!

 

[Guillermo Belli]

No mention of Llano? That was the first APU, was short lived (only one generation) but was still on Stars architecture, performance was probably higher than Bulldozer.

The low power chips like Bobcat and Puma, although they were slow compared to mainstream CPUs, moped the floor with the Intel Atoms. This was a big win in my opinion.

 

[Motcat]

Good article with accurate technical details. You mentioned the Opteron release, but missing was AMD's revolutionary design combining the north bridge on the same die as the CPU cores. Prior to this, both AMD & intel architecture was Cores (CPU function) - North Bridge (Memory Controllers) - South Bridge (I/O). Each one of these components were separate chips. AMD was first to eliminate the NB (with inherent latency) and move the memory controllers on to the same die as the CPU. Intel didn't follow up for a couple move years.

 

[meric]

Good article with accurate technical details. You mentioned the Opteron release, but missing was AMD's revolutionary design combining the north bridge on the same die as the CPU cores. Prior to this, both AMD & intel architecture was Cores (CPU function) - North Bridge (Memory Controllers) - South Bridge (I/O). Each one of these components were separate chips. AMD was first to eliminate the NB (with inherent latency) and move the memory controllers on to the same die as the CPU. Intel didn't follow up for a couple move years.

x86-64 (aka AMD64), Heterogenous System Architecture (HSA), heterogeneous Uniform Memory Access (hUMA), hypertransport, infinity fabric, vulkan, freesync etc etc AMD either created or contributed many technologies such as these but they chose to share and support many of these as open standarts. I always think that a huge opportunity was lost when they began to fail with the famous phenom TLB bug (and bulldozer fiasco after that) and that resulted in them not being able to invest enough funds to R&D, which prevented them from designing great products (such as extremely fast and efficient APUs for example) during 2010s. If phenom failure/bulldozer didn't happen, there's a high chance we would be talking about much different product lines today.

 

[Hodor]

Writing an article about AMD and not mentioning AM-29000 is heresy. No, I'm not talking about the slow am2900, but the RISC AM 29K.

It was the fastest CPU in the era when RISC CPUs blossomed. It had 64 general purpose registers (when Intel had only 8) plus 128 additional registers for fast function parameter passing (Intel x86 doesn't have such registers, not even today).

AM 29K also had variable size register windows, which could adapt to the function parameter count. That meant function calls were incredibly fast, and most of the time entire call depth could be covered by the register banks.

These advantages made AM 29K suitable for applications where Intel architecture was too slow, such as in vehicle control in airspace industry, military radar signal analysis, rasterization in laser printers, etc.

Technology developed for AM 29K was later used in AMD K5 and K6 CPUs, which is why they were so fast. AMD had to strip most of the features from 29K, because they were too advanced and incompatible with x86 architecture, but even those features that were kept were enough to make the AMD chips faster.

Skipping such an important CPU in a story about AMD is like skipping PlayStation in an article about Sony.

 

[BadThad]

Gentlemen - GREAT SUMMARY! This brought back many memories, made me realize just how many different CPU's I've worked with over the decades. Man, tens of thousands of $$$$ flushed away. LOL

Back in the 268 and up days you had to keep buying to stay on top of the game. To me the potential upgrade benefits were much bigger than today. I have found over the past ~6-7 years there has been little compelling reason to upgrade my CPU's.

 

[sevos]

Great article, brings lot of great memories.
We started in 1993 with am386, am486, then short episode with pentium 100 (until we blew it up ). After that I stick to AMD only in desktop (laptop not counted). It was K5 (100MHz), K6 (333MHz), Duron 800, Athlon XP, Athlon 64, Athlon II X2, Phenom II 940 along with Radeon HD 6850 and after that long waiting period until first Ryzen in November 2017.
.
Except the first am386 I have all the CPUs (unfortunately without mobo) in a shelf

 

[Vanderlinde]

Good article I'd like to see more coverage of three topics. First of all when did AMD stop making pin compatible microprocessors?

It was a chipset license thing I believe. After Socket 7 it was everyone for themselfs.

End of the line for NVIDIA chipsets, and that's official

GPU giant NVIDIA has confirmed that the company is putting the brakes on the Nforce chipset line because of legal wranglings with Intel.

www.zdnet.com

But also AMD pulled a Intel during the Nforce chipsets generation(s). They halted Nvidia pretty much by being able to produce chipsets which where far more superiour then both Intel or AMD's.

 

[HardReset]

But also AMD pulled a Intel during the Nforce chipsets generation(s). They halted Nvidia pretty much by being able to produce chipsets which where far more superiour then both Intel or AMD's.

And how was that? Nvidia basically stopped making chipsets for FX-series when AM3+ came out. Problem is that there is nothing that makes Athlon64 chipsets incompatible with FX CPUs. Heck, you could put nForce3 150 from 2003 into FX CPU supporting motherboard without any major problems.

Probably Nvidia just thought making AMD chipsets only was not worth it.

 

[msroadkill612]

Amazing article and will admit, really surprised to see writers in TS that didn’t outright trashed AMD because of brand loyalty.

That said, I would had added a couple more paragraphs about how hard is for both AMD divisions to compete given the outright dirty and illegal tactics used by Intel and Nvidia up to today (ask Dell for a Ryzen system under their business line or how nvidia pays developers to only properly support their “tech” that magically run like crap on AMD gpus).

Anyways, thank you Nick and Graham for this great article.

Yep, its a rarity to see such an objective article. It doesn't eulogise amd, but nor does it slyly damn them with faint praise etc. like most.

 

[msroadkill612]

My first cpu was 2600+ Barton core. Then 3700+ San Diego. Then Q6600 and 2500K and currently 5600X, because of the better upgrade path options at time of purchase. I slowed way down after 2500K + GTX 970, because I didn't like BF1 and BFV enough to upgrade for them.

AMD's financials look good because they came from nothing - Bulldozer. Look at their market share across all markets and you see they are struggling hard.

From weak server part shipments compared to Intel (7 to 1), to AM5 platform costs, to their dGPU's slipping to 8% market share, to Zen 3 and 4 being on sale at the same time at the same amounts here in Canada for 3+ months straight (Zen 3). $80 to $280 off. That's crazy. AMD needs help. 5 year process and core lead basically gone. Wow.

Wow - what rot. As the article states, intels only positive in servers is a diminishing reluctance to switch horses in a market Intel 100% owned til a few years ago.

AMD now own 18% by volume & 28% by revenue, the latter figure reflecting their grasp of upmarket sales.

We see delay after delay from an Intel who dont dare release their much lauded new designs, knowing they are competitively still born.

Further, their much lauded brand, has been eviscerated by their haughty treatment of partners and customers over the 10nm node shift fiasco - their failure to be honest with them has cost them very dearly and embittered them.

Intel servers dont even compete with last gen 64 core Milan, & 96 core Genoa is way out of their league.

They are not catching up, they are trailing further as time goes on.

 

[hahahanoobs]

Wow - what rot. As the article states, intels only positive in servers is a diminishing reluctance to switch horses in a market Intel 100% owned til a few years ago.

AMD now own 18% by volume & 28% by revenue, the latter figure reflecting their grasp of upmarket sales.

We see delay after delay from an Intel who dont dare release their much lauded new designs, knowing they are competitively still born.

Further, their much lauded brand, has been eviscerated by their haughty treatment of partners and customers over the 10nm node shift fiasco - their failure to be honest with them has cost them very dearly and embittered them.

Intel servers dont even compete with last gen 64 core Milan, & 96 core Genoa is way out of their league.

They are not catching up, they are trailing further as time goes on.

I mean, being outshipped 7 million to 1 in just one quarter isn't so reassuring that Epyc is king and AMD is fine.

Client down 40% YoY and only 8% of the dGPU market aren't anything to brag about. Below 20% market share in everything they do. Def isn't how you take the lead. AMD should get out of graphics and focus on CPU. It's time. It seems AMD can only get ahead when their competition is struggling and even that doesn't last long. Budget brand. Rinse and repeat....

 

[HardReset]

I mean, being outshipped 7 million to 1 in just one quarter isn't so reassuring that Epyc is king and AMD is fine.

Intel has not have anything against Epycs for three years. And they won't have in another three years. Problem is that server buyers are stupid and buy Intel because of that. When buyers get wiser, Intel is in real trouble.

Client down 40% YoY and only 8% of the dGPU market aren't anything to brag about. Below 20% market share in everything they do. Def isn't how you take the lead. AMD should get out of graphics and focus on CPU. It's time. It seems AMD can only get ahead when their competition is struggling and even that doesn't last long. Budget brand. Rinse and repeat....

You see that 8% dGPU share is units shipped. Wonder why Nvidia is not going to launch mid priced 4000 series GPU's anytime soon? Because they overshipped older stuff and now they just have to wait until oversupply is gone. AMD however has no similar problems and can much sooner sell mid range 7000 series cards, they have no huge excess inventory.

Like with CPUs, AMDs problem are stupid buyers who buy Nvidia regardless which brand is actually better. For example RT was supposed to be really great, useful etc etc when Nvidia released RTX 2000 series. After 4 years we can safely say RT on RTX 2000 series is still totally useless. And will be. For some reason reviewers haven't learned nothing and still promote RT heavily 🤦‍♂️

Another good example is 6500XT that got very bad reviews. After few weeks, same people realized that heck, there is nothing better available for same price

Problem is not AMDs products. It's stupid people.

 

[NeoMorpheus]

It was a chipset license thing I believe. After Socket 7 it was everyone for themselfs.

End of the line for NVIDIA chipsets, and that's official

GPU giant NVIDIA has confirmed that the company is putting the brakes on the Nforce chipset line because of legal wranglings with Intel.

www.zdnet.com

But also AMD pulled a Intel during the Nforce chipsets generation(s). They halted Nvidia pretty much by being able to produce chipsets which where far more superiour then both Intel or AMD's.

Actually, Intel had to sue nvidia because they never had a license yet lied that they did.

AMD back then decided to re-enter the chipset market permanently and Nvidia simply dropped out.

Nvidia may not be licensed for future AMD chipsets | bit-tech.net

AMD says future AMD platforms will only use AMD chipsets, but hasn't confirmed if this applies to both the server and desktop markets.

bit-tech.net

Read the readers replies about how people were not happy with nvidia (which tells me that they were wiser than the rabid cult members we have today).

Lastly, from Wikipedia:

The original nForce chipset was let down by patchy driver support and less than optimal hardware design. Performance of the dual-channel memory controller and "DASP" did not greatly surpass the VIA Technologies KT266A chipset that was usually as fast and cheaper. The optimized parallel ATA driver support was introduced and then withdrawn after hardware incompatibilities showed up, and the much heralded SoundStorm audio was seen to crackle under heavily loaded scenarios. In fact, the ATA driver would remain an issue at least into the life of nForce4 where it was still known to cause problems with some hard drives and optical drives

Link here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NForce#Performance_and_problems

Personally, I had a Shuttle XPC with the nForce chipset and didn’t experience any of that.

 

[NeoMorpheus]

Intel has not have anything against Epycs for three years. And they won't have in another three years. Problem is that server buyers are stupid and buy Intel because of that. When buyers get wiser, Intel is in real trouble.

You see that 8% dGPU share is units shipped. Wonder why Nvidia is not going to launch mid priced 4000 series GPU's anytime soon? Because they overshipped older stuff and now they just have to wait until oversupply is gone. AMD however has no similar problems and can much sooner sell mid range 7000 series cards, they have no huge excess inventory.

Like with CPUs, AMDs problem are stupid buyers who buy Nvidia regardless which brand is actually better. For example RT was supposed to be really great, useful etc etc when Nvidia released RTX 2000 series. After 4 years we can safely say RT on RTX 2000 series is still totally useless. And will be. For some reason reviewers haven't learned nothing and still promote RT heavily 🤦‍♂️

Another good example is 6500XT that got very bad reviews. After few weeks, same people realized that heck, there is nothing better available for same price

Problem is not AMDs products. It's stupid people.

Preach it brother!

I blame the influencers (I call the so called reviewers that because thats how they are carrying themselves these days) for our current mess.

The RT nonsense, the constant push of RTX gpus down our throats, sometimes even when the subject is not relevant ( I was watching a video about cell phones and the influencer included the “incredible 3090ti” for zero reason whatsoever) And you end up with the current mob of rabid followers that as you said, will only buy nvidia.

 

[Vanderlinde]

And how was that? Nvidia basically stopped making chipsets for FX-series when AM3+ came out. Problem is that there is nothing that makes Athlon64 chipsets incompatible with FX CPUs. Heck, you could put nForce3 150 from 2003 into FX CPU supporting motherboard without any major problems.

Probably Nvidia just thought making AMD chipsets only was not worth it.

The performance of those chipsets and esp in regards of overclocking was quite better.

300Mhz FSB ... That was unthinkable on a Via or even AMD chipset back in the days.