When I was building a PC last December, I considered AMD until I saw that https://github.com/mozilla/rr requires an Intel processor.
> rr currently requires an Intel CPU with Nehalem (2010) or later microarchitecture.
I don't even use rr at the moment, but I hate the idea of building a monster machine only to find that I'm left out of some cutting-edge technology because I went off-brand.
The problem is that AMD CPUs have lots of bugs in their performance counter implementation. Intel CPUs don't have those bugs. With newer generations of AMD CPUs, AMD has fixed some of these bugs, but others remain.
I wonder why AMD hasn't stepped up to get involved in this project. There might be nothing that can be done with currently shipping silicon, but at least AMD could make sure that on their future silicon it all works. Fixing their performance counter bugs would likely benefit other projects as well.
Isn't this a sign that AMD's test suites are incomplete?
If they implement a feature correctly then break it in the new design, it suggests their test suites didn't exercise it properly, otherwise (you'd think) they would have caught the regression in the new design and fixed it before release.
It's got nothing to do with how long they've been competing, it's got to do with dominance and quality. If AMD overtakes Intel in price/performance, capability, and market share in 10 years (and I think it's totally possible) then I would call Intel off-brand.
If I buy a CPU from company A for the purpose of running programs, but there are some useful programs it cannot run (like rr), not because of some anti-competitive proprietary nonsense by their rival B but rather because of some genuine capability that A lacks, then I call A off-brand.
> rr currently requires an Intel CPU with Nehalem (2010) or later microarchitecture.
I don't even use rr at the moment, but I hate the idea of building a monster machine only to find that I'm left out of some cutting-edge technology because I went off-brand.