AMD's Ruiz Presses Industry To Stop Pushing Tech For Tech's Sake

Hector Ruiz, president and CEO of AMD, used his Tuesday keynote presentation at Comdex Fall 2002 to chide the IT industry, including his own company, for pushing technology for its own sake and urged his peers to focus instead on capabilities specifically demanded by customers.

There are two unique and contradictory situations facing the semiconductor industry, Ruiz said. The first, Rock's Law, states that the cost of capital equipment for semiconductor production doubles every four years, a rule he said has held to the point where only a few company can invest in new facilities.

The second, Moore's Law, states that the average cost of semiconductors drop by half every 18 months, Ruiz said. As a result, the average cost per transistor for semiconductors has dropped to one-millionth of a cent compared to about a penny per transistor in the late 1970s.

"Therefore, if someone asks are semiconductors expensive or free, the answer is yes," said Ruiz.

Even if the price per transistor falls below one-millionth of a cent, Ruiz asked the audience, what is the value of further development? "In aggregate, I believe we as an industry have been guilty of pushing more and more new technology because we can. ... I believe we need a new policy: No new technology unless customers demand it," he said.

While both Rock's Law and Moore's Law will continue to be important, they will also continue to decline in value, Ruiz said. Instead, he suggested following Metcalf's Law, named after Robert Metcalf, father of Ethernet, which states that the value of the network increases exponentially with the number of users on the network.

"In my view, this rule is the new rule for all of us," Ruiz said. "The success of one will not be possible without the success of others."

Ruiz used the keynote to give a brief introduction to unveil that the company's upcoming 64-bit desktop processor series, code-named Clawhammer, will be formally known as the AMD Athlon 64.

He also shared the stage with IBM Fellow Pat Selinger, who demonstrated a 64-bit version of IBM's DB2 database software running on a two-way server featuring 64-bit AMD Opteron processors and the Linux operating system.

Also on stage with Ruiz was Henry Juszkiewicz, CEO of Gibson Guitars, who introduced the world's first digital guitar. It looked and played like a normal electric guitar, but inside was an AMD processor with the Hyper Transport Protocol data bus. On the side was an Ethernet port for connecting the guitar to a network.

Ruiz's keynote also featured guitar player Slash of the rock band Guns and Roses, who was introduced by an AMD announcer as the "CEO of Rock and Roll." Slash closed the keynote playing his rendition of "Rock Rock Rockin' on 64" to the tune of Bob Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door."