AMD CEO Stepping Down

... in other news today, the EU looks to be about to sue Intel over "anti-trust".

http://gizmodo.com/5026592/eu-antitrust-lands-intel-with-three-new-charges

makes for interesting readings -

*The EU antitrust investigation into Intel's business practices has just got a little nastier for Intel. Three new charges are being leveled against the chip manufacturer, including charges that Intel paid a leading European retailer to sell only PCs powered by Intel, and also paid a "leading" OEM to delay the launch of an AMD-powered product line. Taken together, the charges indicate a "single overall anticompetitive strategy aimed at excluding AMD" according to the European Commission document. This may come as interesting news to AMD's recently departed CEO. Intel has two weeks to respond.* [gupted from Gizmodo]

I really hope AMD can get back in the game soon - though I just don't see that happening with their current CPU roadmap. Now that they are saddled up with ATi, they are the key company generating competition both in the mainstream CPU and GPU markets, it could be a disaster if Intel and nVidia are allowed to continue to expand their dominant positions.

My fear is that if AMD continue to struggle like this, both Intel and nVidia will be able to sit back, keep their prices high and innovation low and all of us will suffer for it.Take away strong competition from a market and you take away the most potent business reason for any of the vendors to continue throwing globs of resources into R&D.

I already feel this has been happening with nVidia's 8x, 9x and GTX lines... the latest crop are way overpriced, and the earlier cards don't seem to be dropping in price nowhere near as much as they did 2-3 years back when the market was more open.The 8x->9x performance "leap" seemed especially indicative of nVidia resting on their laurels, and my guess is that the GTX range was pushed out of the door because nVidia saw the challenge the ATi 48xx's were about to pose.

I have serious doubts that AMD are even able to compete performance-wise with Intel on the CPU market in the near future.... I think K8 caught Intel with their pants down (and the P4's bare FSB showing!), but now they are back in full swing AMD simply don't have the fabs and finances to keep up with them.

Hopefully they can stay afloat on value/efficiency offerings for a while, before sucker punching Intel with a competitive performance range when they start slacking off in that sector again. Ideally, their Spider concept could be developed into something special to leverage their purchase of ATi and help address current problems in both markets.

In any case, good luck to Mr Meyer - he's going to need it.