Today, AMD is on a roll. It is no longer in Intel’s shadow and is dominating the PC and data center markets. While Intel’s disastrous performance under the previous CEO is a factor, AMD’s almost unbelievable attention to the needs of specific customer segments is also a significant factor.
Though AMD has typically been one of the more responsive vendors in its market, the company’s decision to pursue the game console market, which none of its competitors wanted, forced AMD to increase its responsiveness and partner collaboration. It is this extra effort that has transformed AMD from a lamb to a lion in the market.
Let’s look at the opportunities AMD has identified using the gaming market’s lessons learned. The Alienware AW720H headphones, which are a version of the Dell headset I reviewed a couple of weeks ago and are specifically tuned for gaming, will round out our discussion.
The Data Center Event by AMD
In San Francisco last week, at the venerable Fairmont Hotel, AMD hosted a sizable press and analyst data center event. Benchmark after benchmark demonstrated that AMD’s components were much more efficient than those of its rivals. This wouldn’t have meant much on its own because benchmarks from a vendor showcasing an advantage are at best dubious.
AMD, however, went much further. Nearly every significant processor released had a reliable customer who supported AMD’s claims of improved performance and increased energy efficiency, including Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.
Industry stalwart Forrest Norrod, who left Dell to work for AMD, introduced one of the company’s most intriguing clients: Citadel Securities COO Jeff Maurone, who was effusive in his praise for AMD and claimed that their solution had increased Citadel’s performance by a startling 35%.
This was enormous praise from an unquestionable source, and Citadel Securities is one of the biggest market makers in the world, where milliseconds can make a difference. Citadel is impeachable because, in addition to being regulated, performance has a direct impact on its bottom line, making it unforgiving if a component doesn’t live up to expectations.
With 1 million concurrent cores processing 100 petabytes of data to better predict market movements, AMD’s effort was evidently successful. However, all three cloud providers and even Facebook provided consistent evidence that AMD’s components weren’t oversold and were capable of performing as promised.
This shouldn’t come as a surprise because Lisa Su, the CEO of AMD, is a former executive at IBM, which instills in its employees the value of integrity. Based on the fact that Lisa Su has never been known to exaggerate her skills, I can say that she has internalized this lesson.
It was also intriguing that Dell, a company that has historically resisted using AMD for much of anything, was the featured OEM rather than HP or Lenovo, both of which have long used AMD parts. According to what was said on stage, Dell now has a strong belief in AMD.
Gaming related lessons learned
By paying attention to what the vertical markets wanted but weren’t getting from Intel, AMD was able to move past it. This raised concerns because some of the biggest cloud vendors appeared to have made the decision that they could design chips just as well as or better than a chip company and had begun to manufacture their own chips, posing a risk to all chip companies.
A chip manufacturer like AMD ought to be able to create a component that is better, faster, and less expensive than a home-built one, but not if they didn’t pay attention to the needs of the buyer. Since the beginning of the PC and server market, this practice of not paying attention to customers has been widespread, but it has dissatisfied some of the biggest companies. They began creating and using their own processors as a result, a development that, if it continues, could render AMD and Intel obsolete.
But AMD’s extensive experience, intellectual property, and early pivot to chiplets have given the chipmaker a significantly improved market position and allowed it to target markets better with distinct products for web hosting, telephony, hyperscale computing, AI, and memory design, providing up to 2x performance improvements in the targeted markets. This greatly contributes to the success of AMD.
MLPerf’s Demise
The fact that many of the attendees to the stage didn’t appear to use benchmarks like MLPerf anymore was another intriguing development at the event.
Although MLPerf is one of the most popular AI benchmarks, AMD and the customers they had on stage claimed that nobody besides chip manufacturers uses it. In fact, a closer look at many of the well-known benchmarks reveals that, aside from chip company bragging rights, they aren’t really used that often for assessing a purchase. Instead, consumers are making decisions by evaluating products using their own datasets and solutions, much like they would if they were designing their own chips.
Because they needed to design and tune their unique data center processors for these equally unique vertical workload types, AMD had to work closely and collaboratively with these customers. The result, according to the customers on stage, was significantly more powerful than the alternatives.
I’m beginning to question whether it is still necessary to use generic benchmarks in light of the shift to testing hardware using actual workloads.
Conclusion
among the top three chip manufacturers in the U.S. S. With fewer outside distractions, AMD is better able to focus on market opportunities and create distinctive products to take advantage of them. In order to build stronger relationships with and develop distinctive solutions for some of the largest cloud and financial clients in the world, it uses skills developed while entering the game console market.
Customers like Petronas, a sizable international energy company, made it clear that AMD’s solution is superior to alternatives in almost every way. AMD’s emphasis on building relationships is reaping enormous benefits and solidifying its position as a rising leader in the semiconductor sector.
One more thing to note: While some benchmarks singled out Intel, AMD’s presentation spent a lot more time emphasizing understanding and satisfying customer needs. This pivot is crucial as the company moves from being in last place to first place in its sector.
Alienware AW720H Dual-Mode Wireless Gaming Headset
The Alienware AW720H headphones from Dell resemble the AW920H headphones I reviewed two weeks ago, but they are very different. The AW920H headphones are Bluetooth, but the AW720H headphones are not. They only function when you use the wired connector or the included dongle.
These headphones cost $129.99, which is about $70 less than the AW920H models. They appear to have very similar microphones and speakers.
Although you might be able to use a cable to connect these to your smartphone, they are really intended for gaming and sacrifice some of the Bluetooth headphones’ wide range of applications in order to offer gamers — the headphones’ intended market — lower latency and better sound quality.
Both black (called Dark Side of the Moon) and off-white (called Lunar Light) are available in the AW720H headset. I favor black. With the dongle or cable on a desktop or laptop computer, you could also use these for video conferences. Although I’d contend that a non-Bluetooth solution is probably better for a desktop user than a laptop user—unless the laptop is a gaming laptop this is only because it is typically simpler to use a Bluetooth set of headphones for most things.
My ears can clearly hear the music, but the sound is skewed toward the low end due to the headphones’ emphasis on the lows rather than the highs. On my gaming rig, I used these primarily with the audio cables that came with it, and they performed as intended. They ought to perform admirably on aircraft that still require a physical connection via an audio cable.
They should last longer than most of us would be playing or listening with a 30-hour battery life estimate. If you physically connect them, they continue to function passively as headphones even without power, so they are still useful if you forget to charge them. However, these are designed for gamers and are most suitable for gaming.
The AW720H headphones feature the lighted Alien head from Alienware on the outside, as do the AW920Hs, which also have a boom microphone with a light to indicate when you are broadcasting.
The Dell Alienware AW720H headphones are my suggestion and this week’s Product of the Week if you’re looking for a headset that is specifically tuned for gaming and will be used primarily with a desktop computer.