9.03.2007

AMD and NIVIO

AMD recently announced a partnership with NIVIO along with an offer of an undisclosed amount of investment. NIVIO is a web based virtual desktop service allowing individual users the right to own virtual PC's for a monthly fee. As for AMD's motives for the investment, Giuseppe Amato, AMD's European technical sales and marketing director, said that this was part of the company's 50/15 initiative (50% population with Internet access by 2015). That is of course if you think Pinocchio's step father isn't lying.

If NIVIO becomes successful we're not talking about third world revenues. From a business point of view, AMD knows it has much to gain as this company can become a driver for demand. The potential to use thin clients to access a more powerful virtual PC is the concept behind NIVIO. AMD's Geode has the ability to expand in this space as the basic CPU for web access. Opteron can power both web servers at the front-end and the farm of virtual machines at the back-end. If this company is dead on about the trend in virtual computing, the decline in desktop PC revenue will be compensated by the pickup in server CPUs and AMD wants to be there.

But it is all a big IF whether the business does pick up. Currently there are quite a few "remote access" PCs being offered as a free service for basic features. This is for people with their own PCs at home which they can access remotely from anywhere. This somehow encroaches into NIVIO's remote PC concept. But, the significant part of the NIVIO's service is providing its users their very own "virtual PC". For a fee of $12.99, you can get your own virtual PC which you can turn on and access anywhere in the world if you have Internet access. The PC is a virtual machine in a shared resource environment.

Again the price is $12.99/mo for a virtual PC. Unfortunately, here's a real, non-virtual Dell PC selling for $11.00 a month. I'm not quite sure how well AMD thought this investment through because it only gets worst. The $11/mo PC from Dell is Sempron based. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot while stabbing your customers.

11 comments:

Joe said...

You fail to mention that the $11/month PC you link to does not include a monitor. Add a monitor and the prices goes up to $15/month. This obvious blunder detracts from the point you were trying to make.

Barcelona out in a few days, it's going to be a winner.

Anonymous said...

"Barcelona out in a few days, it's going to be a winner."

Are you suggesting that Barcelona's will be that competitively priced, in PC's, to sell on launch? Oh, that will save AMD. Hmmm, $10 to $15 dollar a month Barcelona's, what will the geniuses at AMD think of next!

Does it come with a monitor?

INTEL IS DOOMED!

SPARKS

Anonymous said...

"Barcelona out in a few days, it's going to be a winner."

Yep. It's going to be a winner for Intel

LOL

Anonymous said...


INTEL IS DOOMED!


Sharikou's 'Intel BK by 2Q08' projection must've been correct then!

Anonymous said...

Excellent idea!!!

Assessing to my PC from any place in the world! And it doest weight nothing! Don’t even bother if the hardware or software fails! Marvelous!!!

AMD is MASTER of the UNIVERSE!!!!!!

Sparks Intel is DOOMED you hit the nail!!!

Anonymous said...

This obvious blunder detracts from the point you were trying to make.

but what do you think is the associated cost to be able to access your PC through the internet?

Anonymous said...

Sounds like another name for a thin client computer, the kind that has failed miserably as a large-scale concept in the past.

I have my fingers crossed for Barcelona, but am expecting the initial release to be underwhelming. Hopefully AMD can get up to speed quickly, I don't think they can afford to limp along behind Intel for much longer.

Anonymous said...

Here is a reality check:

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/33688/118/

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/33677/135/

Do you really think 2 Gig Barcelonas are gone to stop this? Think again.

SPARKS

Anonymous said...

Hmmm.. Henri Richards goes to Freescale? This must be the big "change of direction" that he alluded to? With the same job? Same state? Same industry?

Smells to me like either:
A) A pure money grab
B) Abandon ship!
C) Don't let the door hit you on the way out

Anonymous said...

Interesting Barcelona pricing
http://www.dailytech.com/AMD+Prices+Barcelona/article8729.htm

2350 2.0 GHz 95W $372
2347 1.9 GHz 95W $312
2347 HE 1.9 GHz 68W $372
2346 HE 1.8 GHz 68W $251
2344 HE 1.7 GHz 68W
$206

So bascially they're milking those 0.1 GHz increments, eh? Almost double the price to go from 1.7HE to 1.9HE? I can see this type of price differential for high end chips, but aren't these the LOWEST speed bins?

Looks like AMD is really greasing up the pole for the early Barcelona adopters. Might want to wait 6 months for the new steppings and get a 20-50% speed increase or dramatically lower power.

Personally, I'm holding out for the 0.05GHz increments! :)

Anonymous said...

AMD Opteron 2300 Series

2350 2.0 GHz 95W $372

2347 1.9 GHz 95W $312

2347 HE 1.9 GHz 68W $372

2346 HE 1.8 GHz 68W $251

2344 HE 1.7 GHz 68W $206


AMD Opteron 8300 Series

8350 2.0 GHz 95W $1,004

8347 1.9 GHz 95W $774

8347 HE 1.9 GHz 68W $861

8346 HE 1.8 GHz 68W $688

Something here looks pretty bad, if they are priced to be competitive with INTC. The dollar amounts speak volumes.

THIS IS THE LAUNCH OF THEIR HIGH END SERVER PRODUCTS???

Prices and model numbers before performance figures?

No wonder the rats are bailing!

Doc's been right along. The yields must have been terrible above 2.0 GHz. They are probably binning, the few they get, for future volume releases.

SPARKS