Barthos Computers Blog

2007 wasn’t quite a lucky year for AMD. The firm wanted its quad core Phenom processor to compete with Intel’s successful Core 2 family, which had run over AMD one and a half years ago by delivering higher performance and better energy efficiency. (This only applies to the processors, mind you; AMD has managed to stay competitive in the mainstream if you look at the entire platform.) The Phenom quad core processor, unfortunately, suffered from a nasty bug - it isn’t much of an issue in desktop environments, but hurt the reputation of the fresh brand. This was particularly disappointing given that the processor arrived half a year late, and still does not reach sufficient clock speed to challenge Intel.

While this was going on, AMD had to digest the acquisition of ATI, which has certainly bound up a lot of resources as well. All of this is unfortunate, as the processor and platform market requires competition to drive innovation. Who knows where processors would be today if Intel had not had its wall back to the wall with the Pentium 4 facing fast and efficient competition from the Athlon 64 family between 2003 and 2006…

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