AMD getting out of fabrication?

What do you do when you're always playing catch-up to Intel, watching your workstation market share slip, and piling up something like $2 billion in debt? Well if you're AMD, you seriously consider dropping your fabrication business. According to reports, the company is currently investigating its options for outsourcing more (or all) of its manufacturing to third-party firms in deals similar to the ones it has with Chartered Semiconductor and Taiwan Semiconductor. There are drawbacks, of course, including the possibility of longer development times due to the separation of design and manufacturing (the last thing AMD wants, considering recent Barcelona delay rumors). Regardless of what its final decision will be, it's clear that the news has already hurt the struggling chipmaker in the short-term by causing several market analysts to downgrade the company's stock.

[Via Techmeme]

[Nubaeus @ Jun 20th 2007 6:57PM]

So playing catch-up entails having intel be behind you for 5 years until Core2...didn't realilze that until now.

[Big @ Jun 20th 2007 6:58PM]

AMD will never catch up to Intel. The problem is their marketing. Intel spend so much money on marketing that EVERYONE knows about Pentium processors and trusts the name "intel".
When it comes to AMD's, Turions, Athlons...etc... people who aren't versed in computer terminologies have no idea what they are and don't trust them.

MARKETING makes the difference.

What's sad is that AMD's processors are cheaper and the PC's they are in costs usually more than $200 less than Intel inside PC's and notebooks.

Most PC shoppers feel that because its cheaper it isn't as good and they shun AMD's products.

[JohnTitor @ Jun 20th 2007 7:08PM]

while that may be true
AMD was doing very well pre-Conroe and was directly cutting away at intel's Marketshare
in the world of CPUs, direct consumers usually do their own research
and people buying pre-builds buy from companies that do their own research
so marketing isn't really that big a deal as having the great new product

[RyanTV @ Jun 20th 2007 7:05PM]

"So playing catch-up entails having intel be behind you for 5 years until Core2"

In the semiconductor game, the past 5 years dont mean dick. The now and tomorrow are the only things that count and unfortunately neither are better (or really come close) to what Intel is offering.

[Ed Canale @ Jun 20th 2007 7:47PM]

Yesssssssssssssssss! Die AMD die!!!!!!!

[petrikzviera @ Jun 21st 2007 2:52PM]

yeeesssss, let's buy just Intel. 2000 bucks per piece.Short memmory.

[Krono6 @ Jun 20th 2007 9:09PM]

This is a real shame. AMD make some very decent CPUs, the only advantage Intel has right now is the C2D, and AMD was at the top for quite a while before the whole Conroe business with the FX-60/62.
I really thought AMD would get it's head back in the game, especially after reading some time back about their purchase of ATI.

[Shibathedog @ Jun 20th 2007 9:42PM]

AMD is a much smaller company than Intel, So this core 2 stuff has really hurt them alot (even more so than they hurt Intel being behind for so long since Intel has way more to lose).

[Samir Shah @ Jun 21st 2007 12:45AM]

AMD getting out of fabrication is a good idea. The rationale behind getting out of fabrication should be getting to new technology sooner. AMD does not have economy of scale that Intel has. They should concentrate on design and have IBM and/or other foundries as partners. Santa Rosa has really afffected them, they should push Puma more.

[Cea @ Jun 21st 2007 2:40AM]

For those who enjoy to see AMD die, imagine that one player on the market controls the prices.
If AMD would disappear then we gonna pay a lot more for cpu's.

[Bobarama7k @ Jun 22nd 2007 12:25PM]

Yea, they would have a monopoly on the market, being able to controll the prices with NO alternative, so if you thought intels were expensive now, wait untill AMD "dies", and intel jacks the prices up knowing you have no other option to get your gaming fix. well, maby cyrex, but i dont know how theyre doing now

[cellularcoffee @ Jun 21st 2007 4:39PM]

AMD's stock price jumped almost 8% in one day when Stifel Nicolaus analyst Cody Acree upgraded the company to a short-term trading buy, after 18 months of keeping a neutral rating on the company.

[tekdroid @ Jun 22nd 2007 6:05PM]

AMD still offers better bang-for-buck than intel in the lower-end to mid-mainstream pricepoints. It's the upper-mainstream and the mobile space where Intel shines - and even there AMD is offering good value for the dollar.

Nobody here seems to pay attention to bang-for-buck, which is the real metric where AMD wins with their x2 (since reducing its prices, of course).

x amount of outlay for x amount of performance is all we should be concerned about. Not some price-ignoring theoretical speed with no price-parity with the competition. AMD competes and often surpasses Intel with Core2Duo chips well AT SIMILAR PRICE POINTS... (I stress the similar price points business).

[JLTate @ Aug 9th 2007 7:57PM]

I disagree. If we're talking a quad core system, I can get a standard LGA775 motherboard for $100 and a Core 2 Quad for about $290. To get an equivalent AMD quad core setup for the same price, I'd have to spend at least $200 for a special motherboard with two sockets, and then I'd have buy two $100 processors. It'd put out more heat and consume more power, but it still wouldn't perform as well as a single Core 2 Quad.

Actually, I just now looked it up on Newegg. You can't buy a dual socket AMD motherboard for less than $270, and that says nothing about the $174 Opterons (yes, that's as cheap as they get for socket 1207) that would go with it, or the fact that the board doesn't even support DDR2 800 memory.

[tekdroid @ Sep 7th 2007 6:21PM]

quad core is not lower-end to mainstream. Please read my post carefully.