Submitted via IRC for Bytram
HP boss: Intel shortages are steering our suited customers to buy AMD
With the Windows 7 refresh cycles forecast to run and run, Intel's protracted CPU shortage is sending conservative corporate enterprise buyers into the arms of AMD – or so says HP Inc's CEO.
Dion Weisler took to the stage late last week at Wall Street financial analyst Bernstein's annual conference to discuss HP and the wider industry.
He told Bernstein IT Hardware researcher Toni Sacconaghi that HP was was having some success promoting AMD to suited customers – you know the types, those who historically never got fired for buying IBM.
"It's hard to change commercial behaviour because for the longest time Intel has done an incredible job in the commercial space of selling the value proposition of Intel. And in many cases, it may be a superior product," Weisler said.
"Commercial customers have made a decision. In times of extended shortage, a customer then has to choose between 'Do I have nothing or do I give this a try?' And when they give it a try and that's a good experience, barriers have been broken."
[...] Mikako Kitigawa, senior principal analyst at Gartner, said she had also heard that CPU shortages had been "impacting refresh cycles of corporate customers".
"We have also heard that corporations started considering AMD-based PCs," he told The Reg. "Even if these companies are not impacted by the shortage this time, some of them started preparing for plan B for future events like this because it is too risky to rely on a single vendor."
Weisler said he expects the Windows 7 refresh buying pattern to continue well into next year. He estimated that about a fifth of the installed based has yet to replace ageing stocks.
See also: AMD Zen-based Hygon chips start putting the squeeze on Intel in China
Related Stories
Intel internal memo highlights competitive challenges AMD poses
A recent post on Intel's employee-only portal titled, "AMD competitive profile: Where we go toe-to-toe, why they are resurgent, which chips of ours beat theirs," has found its way to Reddit and offers a fascinating glimpse into how Intel perceives one of its largest competitors and the challenges it is posing to some of its divisions.
[...] Penned by Walden Kirsch as part of "the latest in a Circuit News series on Intel's major competitors," the piece notes how AMD was the best-performing stock on the S&P 500 last year and enjoyed its second straight year of greater than 20 percent annual revenue growth in 2018. One of the reasons for AMD's resurgence, Kirsch surmises, is its strategic re-focus on high-performance products in the desktop, datacenter and server markets.
Specifically, Kirsch highlighted AMD's use of TSMC's 7nm manufacturing process, victories in public cloud offerings and its next-gen Zen-core products as factors that will "amplify the near-term competitive challenge from AMD."
[...] The company believes its 9th Gen Core processors will beat AMD's Ryzen-based products in lightly threaded productivity benchmarks as well as in gaming benchmarks. With regard to multi-threaded workloads, Intel said AMD's Matisse "is expected to lead."
Soon to be discontinued internal news series.
See also: Platform Storage Face-Off: AMD Upsets Intel
AMD Ryzen 16 Core 5.2GHz CPU Benchmark Leaked, Crushes Intel's i9 9980XE
AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6 Core, 12 Thread CPU Tested on X470 Platform – Single-Core Performance On Par With The Core i9-9900K
AMD Ryzen 7 3800X Benchmarks Leaked, Crushes Intel's i9 9900K in Multi-threaded Performance
Related: Intel's Processors Lose More Performance From Vulnerability Mitigations Than AMD's
AMD and Intel at Computex 2019: First Ryzen 3000-Series CPUs and Navi GPU Announced
HP Boss: Intel Shortages are Steering Our Suited Customers to Buy AMD
AMD Details Three Navi GPUs and First Mainstream 16-Core CPU
Intel says it was too aggressive pursuing 10nm, will have 7nm chips in 2021
[Intel's CEO Bob] Swan made a public appearance at Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, Colorado, on Tuesday and explained to the audience in attendance that Intel essentially set the bar too high for itself in pursuing 10nm. More specifically, he pointed to Intel's overly "aggressive goal" of going after a 2.7x transistor density improvement over 14nm.
[...] Needless to say, the 10nm delays have caused Intel to fall well behind that transistor density doubling. Many have proclaimed Moore's Law as dead, but as far as Swan is concerned, Moore's Law is not dead. It apparently just needed to undergo an unexpected surgery.
"The challenges of being late on this latest [10nm] node of Moore's Law was somewhat a function of what we've been able to do in the past, which in essence was define the odds on scaling the infrastructure," Swan explains. Bumping up to a 2.7x scaling factor proved to be "very complicated," more so than Intel anticipated. He also says that Intel erred when it "prioritized performance at a time when predictability was really important."
"The short story is we learned from it, we'll get our 10nm node out this year. Our 7nm node will be out in two years and it will be a 2.0X scaling so back to the historical Moore's Law curve," Swan added.
Also at Fortune and Tom's Hardware.
Related:
Intel's "Tick-Tock" Strategy Stalls, 10nm Chips Delayed
Intel's "Tick-Tock" is Now More Like "Process-Architecture-Optimization"
Moore's Law: Not Dead? Intel Says its 10nm Chips Will Beat Samsung's
Intel Releases Open Letter in Attempt to Address Shortage of "14nm" Processors and "10nm" Delays
Intel Says "7nm" Node Using Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography is on Track
Intel Promises "10nm" Chips by the End of 2019, and More
Intel Launches Coffee Lake Refresh, Roadmap Leaks Showing No "10nm" Desktop Parts Until 2022
Intel Shares "10nm" Ice Lake Processor Details
HP Boss: Intel Shortages are Steering Our Suited Customers to Buy AMD
Intel's Jim Keller Promises That "Moore's Law" is Not Dead, Outlines 50x Improvement Plan
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Wednesday June 05 2019, @01:14PM (1 child)
Excellent!
It seems to me breaking the corporate "Intel only" trend would be a good thing for everyone - maybe even Intel, who have always seemed to be a lot more innovative when AMD is nipping at their heels.
Sure, their profit margins will likely shrink, but I imagine its a lot easier to recruit and retain good talent when you're encouraging them to push boundaries, rather than working on yet another profit-maximizing minor iteration of an old design. And in the long run, the kind of talent a company keeps has a way of defining it.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday June 05 2019, @06:14PM
Also, HP basically seems to be saying to Intel "Lower your prices". Which is good for us too in the long run.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Wednesday June 05 2019, @02:02PM (1 child)
in the spirit of AMD tech, does anyone know of a really good workstation with dual-epyc (128 cores, 256 threads) that will handle 2TB of memory and have loads of slots (for GPUs).
Nvidia might be the GPU (CUDA etc) , but the value of AMD PCIE lanes etc, looks very good.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 05 2019, @09:23PM
All three have been producing dual socket boards for both intel and amd for years now some with up to 7 slots. AFAIK EPYC is good for (2x2)4TB of memory. Threadripper is only good for 1TB.
Best of luck!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 05 2019, @02:07PM (10 children)
I'm getting tired of waiting for a replacement for my 8yo desktop at work. The delay, I'm told, is caused by the Intel shortage, so I searched Dell for AMD-based alternatives. All they came back with are a few gaming rigs and portables. I'd love a Ryzen-based OptiPlex, but there's no way I'd get approval for a gaming machine. (Corporate is heavily invested in Dells for general consistency and support, so looking elsewhere isn't an option.)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Pino P on Wednesday June 05 2019, @02:17PM
Would an OptiPlex with a Ryzen CPU be better received if you pitch it as the machine that game developers use?
(Score: 2) by Snow on Wednesday June 05 2019, @03:09PM
Call it a workstation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 05 2019, @03:13PM (6 children)
I think my machine must be 7 years old now, has 8 threads and 32 gigs of core. I feel no need for a new machine. What do you feel you need?
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday June 05 2019, @04:33PM (3 children)
I don't know about the AC, but our 3-5 years-old machines compile FPGAs in 1 to 3 hours, depending on project. Opening the design databases can take 5 minutes, and running reports even longer.
Even 10% would already be a noticeable gain, and 20% would clearly be an improvement.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 05 2019, @06:05PM (1 child)
Yeah, but last I checked CPUs haven't improved by all that much recently. One cheap and productive way to increase speed would be to install a PCIe based SSD.
The original AC talked about his desktop. If you're compiling FPGAs professionally, and 1-3 hours sounds rather complex when I think of my term project that compiled in less than 10 minutes, I would have expected that be done on a decked out compile farm rather than a desktop.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday June 05 2019, @06:12PM
It's a mix. Batch jobs in the compile "farm", but regular needs to analyze and tweak at the desktop.
FPGA jobs are not disk-constrained, typically. Memory bandwidth and thread speed are the main factors. With bigger caches, faster RAM, and chips than can keep a few thread above 4GHz, we should see at least 10%. When it takes a few iterations to get the tools to @#%$#& behave as specced, that start to add up quickly.
I used to have customers doing cutting-edge FPGA compiles using the best gear they could buy, and still running 16h after optimizations. Those guys are not happy about the current CPU stagnation.
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Wednesday June 05 2019, @07:07PM
I'm curious what the specs are on those machines.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 3, Funny) by NateMich on Wednesday June 05 2019, @06:26PM (1 child)
That's a lot of core.
(Score: 5, Funny) by mechanicjay on Wednesday June 05 2019, @07:33PM
My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
(Score: 2) by datapharmer on Wednesday June 05 2019, @07:22PM
Inspiron 27 7000 can be configured with Ryzen. If work is telling you there is a delay because of that it just means they are using a CTO model and not a ready to ship one. If they are a bit more flexible you can have them shipped out same day with intel or amd.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 05 2019, @03:49PM
Intel will release chips using their 10 nm process node any
daymonthyear now.