These days, when I get on the computer in the morning and look around, I feel like I’m almost guaranteed a steaming, heaping plate of bullpoop for breakfast by certain Green people.
Does anybody else feel that way, too?
In any event, the latest droppings can be found here, most notably this:
“. . . [B]ased on AMD’s simulations the processor doesn’t come “alive” until it hits the 2.6GHz mark.”
Oh, really. So that’s why AMD doesn’t want any benchmarking done; they’re running dead processors! 🙂
Seriously, though, this is a great example of AMD’s sleaziness. If “coming alive” means “starts to become competitive,” that’s probably true enough.
However, the peculiar pick of words imply much more than that, like a Barcelona suddenly gets more than proportionately better once you get past 2.6GHz. This is normally nonsense, and if by some bizarre chance it’s true, that’s a fault, not a feature.
You can find more comments like that, and it’s obvious that AMD is saying one thing to the public and another to those who actually have to make these things work.
Why Do They Keep Doing This?
What is really going on here? Don’t these people feel . . . busted after Computex?
If you look at AMD’s history since they started using their own designs, there’s a pretty steady pattern of delayed implementation and forced do-overs. They’re actually pretty lousy at getting products out the door on time. AMD tends to gamble in their designs and implementations (usually going for the quick, easy and cheaper approach), and come up craps a lot. Palomino, Thoroughbred, the initial Hammers, they all had delays and/or bad first implementations.
So these kinds of problems are nothing new. These problems haven’t killed or maimed AMD in the past mostly because Intel was busy running the PIII and PIV designs into the ground, then taking a long time coming back from the drawing board. Nor was AMD as fiscally extended in the past as it is now.
Well, Intel isn’t screwing up now, and AMD is poor and getting poorer by the day. If AMD had all these delays while breaking even financially, no one except the techies would care one bit, and we don’t matter much financially.
No, it’s because AMD is on the financial ropes that financial people care, and they can kill AMD by pulling the financial plug. To keep those wolves at bay so far, AMD has had to promise the earth, moon and stars to keep themselves financially afloat until next year.
To put it another way, if AMD had said last March, “Boy, Barcelona is really screwed,” think they would have gotten that $2 billion convertible note so easily, or on such good terms, or even at all?
What AMD is doing right now is the equivalent of you continuing to gamble at a casino when you’re deep in the hole and can’t pay what you already owe, hoping, praying, you’ll hit a lucky streak.
OK, maybe Green’s odds are better, but they’ve essentially promised things they don’t have, and the odds are growing longer that they’ll get them in time.
Nonetheless, the bull keeps pooping away. But then, what would happen if it stopped?
AMD has a choice, be honest and die sooner, or be dishonest and die harder later. It’s hard to be fortunate or lucky when you’re dead. Since you’re going to die either way if you fail, unless you’re a really noble soul, odds are you’d prefer to lie and not die today and hope somehow, some way, someone or something will turn your BS into truth tomorrow.
Guess I’m going to be getting a lot more brown plate specials. 🙂
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