> I just hope AMD doesn't go away or
> Intel pricing is going to go through
> the roof (again).
I don't want AMD to go away either, but Intel's pricing won't necessarily go through the roof if AMD goes away.
The x86 CPU market is essentially saturated at this point. You can buy a "fast enough for most stuff" desktop computer for $50 or less at a thrift store, and most of us on Hacker News probably already own 4 or more x86 cores.
At this point, Intel's primary competitors are its own previous CPUs. I own several Core 2 Duos, a Core 2 Quad, and a Core i7 quad.
By all accounts, I am exactly the kind of customer they're going after with their newer CPUs. However, since I'm so happy with my current stuff, Intel is really going to have to outdo themselves (and price it right) before I'm moved to buy another Intel chip.
on the consumer side? I agree with you. But the server side, when you are paying for power (and can consolidate a bunch of servers into one) the compute power available per watt makes a staggering difference. Yes, I can run my business off 100 servers from 5 years ago... or 25 modern servers, where the modern servers take about as much power one for one, as the 5 year old servers.
Considering that power/cooling/etc in a datacenter often goes for north of $250 per Kw per month, you can bet that we watch performance/watt very closely.
I don't want AMD to go away either, but Intel's pricing won't necessarily go through the roof if AMD goes away.
The x86 CPU market is essentially saturated at this point. You can buy a "fast enough for most stuff" desktop computer for $50 or less at a thrift store, and most of us on Hacker News probably already own 4 or more x86 cores.
At this point, Intel's primary competitors are its own previous CPUs. I own several Core 2 Duos, a Core 2 Quad, and a Core i7 quad.
By all accounts, I am exactly the kind of customer they're going after with their newer CPUs. However, since I'm so happy with my current stuff, Intel is really going to have to outdo themselves (and price it right) before I'm moved to buy another Intel chip.
That's what I mean by competing with themselves.