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Power was once a peer to X86 technology along with a number of now obsolete processor platforms, but as those others dropped off and X86 became dominant, Power continued. Yes, it had to hit above its weight class in order to compete and remain relevant, but it did, and it continues to have some of the most loyal and outspoken customers today who appreciate what Power uniquely brings to the table. 

The reason it has sustained speaks to both a weakness in X86 execution which allows for competing technologies to exist and a level of continued focus and execution by IBM that has enabled the technology to continue long after many thought it would be obsolete.  

Let’s look at the surprising success of IBM Power this week on top of IBM's latest announcements surrounding the platform.  

By Rob Enderle, Enderle Group

AMD’s historic place in the microprocessor ecosystem is as a second source for Intel. Some of AMD’s biggest problems have resulted from its being unwilling to remain second tier and Intel’s understandable reluctance to allow it to rise to peer level. AMD’s prior push to rise to peer status in the early 2000s ended badly because of AMD execution issues and Intel moving aggressively to prevent a favorable AMD outcome.

Rob Enderle delves into the recent rise of AMD, and the lessons to take away from the successes (and failures) of both companies. 

By Rob Enderle, Enderle Group

We are surrounded by fake news, whether it’s from someone trying to discredit someone else, trick us into doing something not in our best interests, or convince us that a viable medical treatment is bad or a non-viable medical treatment is good. Particularly with videos and the emergence of Deep Fakes, we may increasingly see people we trust misrepresented and giving us bad advice or making us believe a false narrative.  Worse, even if we later find that video is false, the impression it leaves with us may cause us to place or remove trust from a person or institution in error. 

By Robert Enderle

Historically, ink-jet printers have been defined by both their ink cartridge configuration and their razor blade marketing model where the printers are sold at or below cost and the printer supplier makes its profit on supplies. The problem with this model is that it isn’t very sustainable. The cartridges are made of plastic which doesn’t degrade well, and the printing company is financially motivated to sell you more of them.  

By Rob Enderle, The Enderle Group

CES is back. From the look of things, attendance is much stronger than it was last year, even though concerns about the latest Covid 19 variant have kept folks like me away again. What interested me early on was the contrast between NVIDIA's and AMD's keynotes. For once, NVIDIA’s CEO was absent (except as a virtual avatar) and the keynote was canned (and streamed). The AMD keynote was led by its CEO in person with an audience and was promoted by CES leadership. 

Let’s contrast the two events and how the two once-similar companies are starting to significantly diverge in terms of focus and strategy. We’ll take a look at the advantages and disadvantages of each unique approach. 

By Rob Enderle, Enderle Group

 By Rob Enderle

This week was Qualcomm’s annual summit in Hawaii, and for once I’m not there, which is kind of a shame because it’s really cold where I live right now. However, on paper, the Qualcomm Oryon processor due next year could be the perfect competitive answer to Apple’s M1/2 if Intel’s coming little core/big core effort is late to market, which seems likely given Intel is undergoing a large layoff.  

Oryon is based on Nuvia technology that has been somewhat problematic given ARM is suing Qualcomm for using the technology in what appears to be a suicidal effort designed to cripple this potential Apple competitor. But if launched successfully as expected in 2024, this processor could be a huge game changer.

By Rob Enderle / October 21, 2022

Typically, when you talk about powering an electrical device or car wirelessly, you are talking about inductive charging. This is generally accomplished by placing the device on an inductive charger or just over it. Inductive charging typically has a range measured in fractions of an inch, which makes it a far cry from Nicola Tesla’s vision of a world powered wirelessly.

But what if you could power or charge devices at a greater range measured in feet rather than fractions of an inch, and could deliver enough power over longer ranges to support wireless IoT sensors and do so relatively cheaply?

By Rob Enderle

IBM has held out the concept of a next- generation, digital assistant for some time. I once hoped that its partnership with Apple would result in a Siri upgrade to Watson that would finally make that poor AI meet expectations. Alas, Siri still sucks, but IBM and Soul Machines just announced they were releasing the IBM Digital Assistant, branded Digital Iris, at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.

By Rob Enderle, September 30, 2022

Over the last decade, and partially as the result of a prior Intel CEO underfunding processor development while AMD remained focused, AMD has arguably passed Intel as the performance king in the segment. Ironically, given Intel’s dominance, they did this on both laptop and desktop systems. Intel is stepping up its game again, and we should see soon if its latest offering can close or even eliminate this performance gap. For now, though, AMD appears to be the performance king.

Let’s talk about AMD’s latest Zen 4 platform and its new AM5 platform which comes with a brand new, and far better, socket.

The Intel IDC Tour and Effectively Correcting an Expensive Misconception

By Rob Enderle September 16, 2022

Often people tend to put Intel’s competitors into the same class as Intel and, increasingly, that is a mistake. I was reminded of that this week when I toured IDC Israel Development Center (IDC) Intel's and FABs. It reminds me of touring Panasonic’s hardened factory and then touring what was represented as a comparable effort by Panasonic’s most powerful competitor. Panasonic’s capability was more comprehensive and not only larger and far better equipped, but it also made the competitor’s effort look like the difference between Mercedes-Benz building a car and some guy building a kit car in his garage. But Panasonic didn’t market that difference so the competitor, which was cheaper, more powerful and far better penetrated into the segment effectively outperformed Panasonic in a market where Panasonic should have been preeminent.

IBM has just announced its IBM i System Subscription solution which has the economic benefits of a cloud service but still provides the security and peace-of-mind benefits of an on-premises solution. 

Can you have your cake and eat it, too? With this service, IBM appears to be saying yes. Let me explain.

– Rob Enderle, The Enderle Group

The US Chips and Science Act took over a year of negotiations to pass and contain provisions that supply around $11B in semiconductor research and development. To begin to make use of this money, over 100 companies in the technology sector have come together to form the ASIC (American Semiconductor Innovation Coalition). This is a broad effort to help address the dire situation the U.S. Semiconductor industry is in because of the pandemic, Ukraine War, and China’s increasing hostility toward Taiwan. Let’s talk about ASIC this week.

– Rob Enderle, The Enderle Group

Years ago, while working at Giga Information Group, several analysts got together and created a service we loosely referred to as “events,” and then wrote about what we had captured as best practices over the years. With companies now going back to having in-person analyst events, I thought it would be handy to cover some of those best practices again to help companies improve the quality of their events.

– Rob Enderle, The Enderle Group

Let’s talk about how HPC and supercomputing are changing and how NVIDIA’s efforts are functioning to create a better world. This is all from Ian Buck’s (VP and GM of NVIDIA’s Accelerated Computing) keynote at ISC22.

– Rob Enderle, The Enderle Group

There have been a lot of discussions about bad store practices of late in which Apple ends up consistently in the hot seat for overcharging for services that are provided by the application developer, not Apple … In contrast, Microsoft has announced it will charge if you use Microsoft’s more reasonable financial services but, if you choose to implement a store from inside your app, you can do that for free. Thus, with Microsoft, you pay for the service you get and, as is generally the case in the real world, if you do it yourself, you don’t have to pay a “tax” to anyone for that privilege.

Let’s talk about the difference between Microsoft and Apple’s market approach in the context of this, admittedly, rather obvious better approach to building revenue.

– Rob Enderle, The Enderle Group

Cisco had an Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) event this week and one of their practices, focused on creating a 360 Ecosystem, is in sharp contrast to Dell’s Concept Luna in terms of approach. But the two approaches aren’t contradictory and could be layered to create an even more sustainable effort from both firms. Cisco is arguably the leader in ESG across the segment largely because they are, as a company, the most focused on making progress on a variety of fronts including homelessness and working with governments at scale to improve communications and governance strength.

Let’s explore that this week.

– Rob Enderle, The Enderle Group

AMD and Mercedes may be one of the most powerful and interesting technology racing partnerships currently in existence. AMD had a prior partnership with Ferrari, but it seemed to be more of a marketing relationship than an operational one. This time, the AMD relationship highlights one of the market advantages in terms of server performance, making it more powerful than the earlier effort. It showcases how these things both should and should not, be done.  

Let’s talk about AMD, F1 racing, and Ferrari this week.

– Rob Enderle, The Enderle Group

HP was once one of the leading innovators in high-end video conferencing and collaboration with its Halo video conferencing effort. It was the first to wed high resolution video conferencing to a service that could link two sites at opposite ends of the world in a seamless experience. However, it failed and was sold to Polycom. Polycom was acquired by Plantronics, which had also been developing market-leading sound solutions for video conferencing rooms. Now, HP has acquired the combined entity which had been renamed Poly.

– Rob Enderle, The Enderle Group

Last week I attended the IBM event with Fast Company on its hybrid cloud solutions. IBM is unique in that it often populates events like this with customers who talk about how IBM’s solutions are used rather than the far less interesting performance metrics of new hardware, software, or networking solutions. This use of customers to create content is far more compelling than the usual vendor talking head, and, in terms of credibility, people who use a technology are far more credible than those who sell it. In short, IBM’s use of customers to tell the story has for some time been a best practice.

– Rob Enderle, The Enderle Group

Next week is NVIDIA’s big GTC event, and there will be a ton of content on AI, the metaverse, digital twins, simulations, graphics, and super-computing. It is also the definitive event on autonomous vehicles and robotics, and this is all happening during the Russian attack on the Ukraine which provides an interesting and troubling context to the future of safe driving. I’m specifically talking about the ability to avoid accidents and hostile areas even if you are out of range of a wireless network or that network is no longer functioning.  

– Rob Enderle, The Enderle Group

TechTalk Summits is proud to announce our partnership with The Enderle Group. The Enderle Group provides an unparalleled look inside breaking technology events to identify the core reasons that buyers and builders of technology should care. Rob Enderle will be providing dedicated content to TechTalk Summit clients.