AMD is a technology company has been recognized as one of the top technology providers in the world. It has its based office in Sunnyvale, California but also have different branches around the globe. It has been living its company motto of “Enabling today. Inspiring tomorrow” by having pioneered the invention of numerous technological advancements since it started its operations in 1969 designing microprocessors (amd.com).
The company pioneered the following recent innovations. The accelerated processing unit (APU) with HSA started with AMD. Microprocessor design has been the major product of the AMD through the years as is still leading the race towards the creation of microprocessors having quantum leaps in their computing capacities. The APUs partnered with the technology called Heterogenous System Architecture (HAS) has been their latest innovation to further improve the computing capacities of desktop computers especially achieving greater heights in improving the graphical displays but without sacrificing it’s price.
AMD also boost that most of the leading PC manufacturers around the world uses their products. These includes well-known companies like HP, Samsung, Nitendo and even computing giant Apple uses the technologies AMD developed to deliver the most powerful technologies in either office use or entertainment.
Well known video game console manufacturers like Sony and Microsoft use the technology developed by the company as the main source of power in major games they have developed. Particularly, AMD has developed semi-custom solutions to the needs of these companies to enhance the image qualities and gaming experiences of their clients. An example of such gaming consoles are Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s Playstation. AMD has also developed a product called Mantle API to further enhance the gaming experiences of gamers because this enable superior graphics display. It enables the developers to fully harness the potentials of their Radeon graphics products because the developers feel that they are getting “closer to the metal” that is powering their games since game development relies on faster graphics to make the fantastic visual displays.
Likewise, the company has also been known to have developed the worlds 16GB graphics card that is already in the market. With the graphics card, advanced engineering and scientific modeling and simulation requirements can already be rendered in ordinary computers that support the gigantic graphics card. With the graphics card capability, it has helped enhance both productivity and creativity of the users because they can already model their ideas on their computer.
Aside from having being the first to have made the 16GB graphics card it is also the first innovator of the HSA enabled embedded processor. By embedding processors, smart devices are created. The embedded technology can be seen in one’s own living rooms, factories, roads or anywhere where there is a need to automate things. With the addition of the HAS technology to these embedded processors, interactive and immersable embedded devices are now made.
Aside of microchips, AMD is also involved in the creation of the most efficient servers that can be partnered with the emerging technology, cloud computing. They have been a major provider of servers for the cloud data centers like amazon and Rackspace. Today, they have servers that are capable of 16x bandwidth. The company recognizes that data centers are developing fast, so in order to accommodate all types of business needs, AMD is the only company who provided the technology to make the 64 bit ARM and x64 bit CPUs to work hand in hand. In this way, the companies realize more flexibility and powerful ways of doing business.
AMD does not only innovate without taking into consideration conservation and other environmental issues. While the company is looking forward to adding power on their products to meet the growing demands of the public, they are also integrating energy efficiency. AMD projects that all of their products would be decreasing their energy requirements by 25% by 2020.
The full range of AMDs products includes desktop graphics cards, desktop processors for different products like the AMD FX Processors, AMD A-Series Processors, AMD Athlon and AMD Sempron processors. Aside from desktop processors they also provide embedded and discrete processors. AMD has also been providing Laptop graphics cards and processors as well as the table processors whom many companies have been using. They have also been providing professional graphics cards and server processors as well as chipsets and memory. In recent years, it has also been starting to produce solid state drives or SSD.
Aside from individual products AMD has also been offering complete packages for their clients. Aside from having laptops, 2-in-1 and tables and desktop computers they have server products for all types of uses like cloud, virtualization and sea micro. They have embedded systems design for industrial control and automation, digital gaming, digital signage and retails, thin client and communications infrastructure. For their professional solutions products, AMD they provide packages that promotes better productivity while unlocking ultimate business performance. In addition, the products are also design to promote security and manageability of the products.
The performance of AMD products have been compared to the products of its biggest competitor, Intel. Its integrity and performance have been a topic of discussion for several technology enthusiasts. There has been debates on whether which company produces more superior products and if the products are compatible with each other.
Intel is a company based in Santa Barbara, California founded in 1968. The products of the two companies are almost the same except that Intel also produces Blutooth chipsets, network interface cards and flash drives while AMD produces DTV decoder chips in addition to their computer products. To date, Intel stands as the bigger company with about 100,00 employees compared to AMDs 17,000. While AMD has a net income of millions, Intel is counting its income in billions already.
AMD and Intel are actually partners in the production of x86 microprocessors, however, Intel broke their agreement with AMD in 1986 causing them to enter in a long litigation them brought the two facing each other in several courts around California. Intel originally gave AMD the go signal to produce the microchips needed by IBM, but later on Intel reversed this and charge AMD with copyright infringement cases. However, AMD won the arbitration case in 1992 and another court awarded AMD with breach of contract damages. Intel continued to file legal charges AMD, however, in 1997, Intel agreed with a settlement and also gave AMD the right to market the K6 MMX processor whom AMD admitted that it is Intel’s trademark. Japan Federal Trade Commission meddled with the issue of the two companies in 2005 which made AMD won antitrust cases against Intel both in Japan and Delaware, USA. It then prohibited Intel to use special means of marketing to lock out AMD products from penetrating the market.
AMD or Intel?
Now, you may have qualms in who’s product is performing better for the tech users because obviously, in the market, Intel products are taking the lead.
When building your personal computer, one may have a hard time deciding which among the two CPU processor manufacturers will he adapt? Intel’s or AMDs? For the inexperienced users, this is a big decision. If a combination of products is made, will they be compatible with each other? Will it work properly? Along with these considerations, there is also a need to weigh other factors such as the pricing and the user’s personal needs.
In terms of cost-eficiency, AMD products are generally known to be cheaper compared to their Intel counterparts. For people with limited budgets, AMD would likely be a better choice since the cheaper CPUs of AMD have better performance compared to their Intel counterparts in the level. However, once the price is above $150, the Intel products becomes more powerful and quicker in performance. The AMDs are generally gaming capable and gives you sufficient amount of performance. Intels Core i3 are generally weak compared to the products of AMDs within the same pricing level and are usually not compatible when you want to shift to its higher end CPUs like Core i5 and Core i7.
If planning to overclock your CPUs, then AMDs are still the typical choice because less money is involved and there are more receptive to adjustment of setting compared to the Intel products. Overclocking is the tweaking of the setting of CPU’s in the desire to get more performance from the chip without having to buy a more powerful version of it.
When talking about GPU efficiency, the game becomes tricky as AMD products can give you cheaper prices but Intel’s i5 and i7 could give you better graphic performance. Everything is then set to the user’s graphics needs.
The Question of Compatibility
With the long history of legal battles that Intel and AMD have entered over the past two decades, one cannot expect that the product of these two companies would have any commonalities, lest of all compatible with each other.
For several years, Intel has been working at the high-end side of the market and obviously, it has been successful because it has a perennial market share of about 77% compared to AMDs 23%. However, technology enthusiast believes that what Intel is unable to do is addressing the needs of the small database server and web servers. Most complain that the Intel products for these specific products do not give them the performance they require for the x86 applications, but it is still expensive. The transition cost for their clients is too high, that is why it does not appeal to the masses.
Realizing the marketing problems of Intel, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) looked for the loophole in Intel’s products. They realized that couldn’t compete with Intel in providing productive markets when in come to the high-end workshops and desktops because they can’t afford developing processors that are compatible with the existing software norms. The strategy f AMD was to developed chips that are based on x86 architecture by can be tweaked to create 64-bit extensions. This resulted in the creation of the particular Opteron and Althon 64 processors of AMD that are the only type of chips in the market that can both serve desktop computers and enterprise servers.
Although, Intel had products made for the 64-bit, these were not tweak able and expensive. Thus, AMDs version was more welcomed on the market besides being able to be used in two architectures. Several companies also provided good reviews on the AMD products in these aspects because of its tested excellent performance in both 32-bit and 64-bit environments. Cost-efficiency has been truly the edge of AMD over Intel.
However, with both microchip giants, racing to produce more innovative technologies that aim to improve the computing power of both desktop and server computers, the problem remains to be the question of compatibility of these chips with the software available on the market. Analysts said that the software is the ones hindering these companies from being able to produce technologies that are on full blast. This is simply for the reason that, although these two want to produce chips with increase power, these would not be usable if the software technology would not be able to race with them. Their argument is that hardware could not work alone. The success is still attributed to 50% of the kind of software they are capable of supporting because these cannot be used without software especially in terms of the Operating system they are capable of supporting. Some analyst joke that, these two should produce chips that is not compatible with each other but is compatible with Microsoft’s Operating Systems.
References:
http://www.diffen.com/difference/AMD_vs_Intel
http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/here-we-explain-the-basic-differences-between-intel-and-amd-cpus/
https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/use-ipp-on-amd-processor
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20040217183622.html
http://news.cnet.com/AMD-compatibility-no-problem-for-Intel-chip/2100-1006_3-5159067.html
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/datacenter/intel-vs-amd-does-the-cpu-really-matter/165
