14 DAY TRIAL // AMD stands strong as the number eight chip manufacturer in the world, trailing after its number one competitor on the CPU market, Intel, but what does AMD have planned for the near future. I don't believe that they are about to surrender and not try to win back the number one spot, but here's a little question "What is AMD going to do if the R600 isn't going to have the desired effect on the computer industry?"
That's something that makes you wonder, first their company had somewhat of a downfall when they purchased ATI, then they had seen an increase as a chip manufacturer, now whether or not the R600 will be accepted by the computer industry will add more to one side of the already delicate balance they are trying to keep.
You may call this a "sinusoidal movement" as their company went up and down the stock market. Another thing that puzzles me is why is AMD still holding on to their CPU architecture; they've been on the market so long one might think they have the necessary knowledge in order to pull out something new out of the hat and get back in business.
I'm saying this because I don't know of any company that doesn't want to be number one at what they do, or die trying for that matter. And Intel has thought of this in a different matter, even though their processors had indeed a bigger operating frequency, AMD was always on their tail, and literally got the better of Intel with their superior technological products. So what Intel did was to evaluate the entire architecture used by AMD in their processors, and beat them at their own game, which they did through the Core architecture and series of processors.
Now coming back to the original question, what is AMD going to do if the R600 fails? They haven't had much success with the QuadFX initiative, at least not so far. My concern is that one day, if the line of events follows a certain path, AMD will be taken over by another company, maybe by Intel. It is said that "the R600 launch is to be the biggest in GPU history", with some estimated over 100 million chips built on the 65nm technology to be delivered to the market in 2007. This being true, AMD is taking a big chance by riding everything they've got on a single card. Hopefully it's an Ace.