AMD Gives Away Free Chips at Intel Developer Forum

News
By Marcus Yam
published

AMD stands outside asking people if they're hungry for another chip.

he Intel Developer Conference kicked off today in San Francisco (alongside all the other iPhone 5S buzz), and AMD wasn’t afraid to show up to remind everyone that there’s another big name in chips.

In a bit of a guerilla marketing move, AMD handed out branded cans of Pringles chips to IDF attendees as well as simple passersby. On the cans are a URL leading people to http://global.amd.com/chips where they’ll be introduced to APUs and AMD’s Eclectic Tech event Wednesday night at the 111 Minna Gallery where people can bid on the art to benefit the Boys and Girls Club of Silicon Valley.

Along the chip cans were also flyers promoting the next AMD Developer Summit, which will take place from November 11-14 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center – the same place as Nvidia’s GTC. In previous years, the AMD Fusion Developer Summit was held in Bellevue, WA.

Will this cheeky move do anything to rekindle the rivalry between the world’s largest (silicon) chipmakers? Sound off in the comments!

Follow Marcus Yam @MarcusYam. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
42 Comments Comment from the forums
  • rad666
    Pointless gorilla marketing, but amusing nonetheless.
    Reply
  • iam2thecrowe
    Good to see AMD finally promoting their product, which is where they are lacking even more than the performance of their cpu's. If they promoted their products more back in the Athlon XP/64 days, when they actually had a superior product, they would be much more successful today.
    Reply
  • jimmysmitty
    11515934 said:
    Good to see AMD finally promoting their product, which is where they are lacking even more than the performance of their cpu's. If they promoted their products more back in the Athlon XP/64 days, when they actually had a superior product, they would be much more successful today.

    Back then it wasn't just marketing but also they couldn't FAB enough chips. They shut down one of their FABs here in the US and only had their Dresden Germany FAB which cut their ability to produce.

    As for this, pointless. They don't have anything to truly compete with Intel on anything except a price basis and they seem to be trying to rekindle the GHz race when they proved with the Athlon 64 that GHz is not always better. Yet I have seen some people tout AMDs 4GHz+ status when that 4GHz+ doesn't mean jack in the consumer world if the single core performance isn't there and most consumer apps don't use more than 2 cores let alone 4.
    Reply
  • griptwister
    I am hungry for a different chip. I'm hungry for a AM3+ SteamRoller 8 core CPU.
    Reply
  • rolli59
    Nice one!
    Reply
  • JPNpower
    ha ha ha, genius. I love it.

    Now since this post contains the words APPLE, NVIDIA, and INTEL. Watch the dislike count rise for absolutely no reason.

    Oh and I bet that somewhere below is a raging future not introduced GPU performance debate.
    Reply
  • omnimodis78
    This would only have been cool and catchy if AMD were really giving away chips, rather than some lame attempt at humour and word-games. Oh yeah, sooo funny "chips" as in what? Oh wait, maybe AMD is trying to raise some cash by getting in the junk-food industry? Junk...get it? Junk... hey why not, you (looking at you Marcus) put the whole Pringles spin on this pointless story.
    Reply
  • dudewitbow
    11516113 said:
    This would only have been cool and catchy if AMD were really giving away chips, rather than some lame attempt at humour and word-games. Oh yeah, sooo funny "chips" as in what? Oh wait, maybe AMD is trying to raise some cash by getting in the junk-food industry? Junk...get it? Junk... hey why not, you (looking at you Marcus) put the whole Pringles spin on this pointless story.

    look up what AMD did during AMD fan day in the same city, San Francisco. the event was free as well. Then there was the AMD Test drive program where AMD more or less sponsored several users on the AMD fan community by giving them:


    AMD A10-6800K APU
    FM2 A85X Motherboard
    2x4 AMD Radeon, RP 1866 Performance Memory
    Fractal Arc Midi R2 Case
    Fractal Tesla R2 650W Power Supply Unit
    Kingston SSDNow V300 Series 2.5", 60GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive
    LG 24X DVD Burner
    Windows 7 OS Disc


    AMD does give free chips, people just arent aware that they are doing it.
    Reply
  • ddpruitt
    AMD know's it has something that may turn the tide, finally they're trying to capitalize.

    FYI for those that think AMD can't compete, Intel's share of CPU's is extremely small in the grand scheme. The money's in cheap low end devices, just think of what's running your phone, tablet, game console, etc. The only Intel logo is on your PC.
    Reply
  • megamanx00
    So they make good chips other than the Radeon line, or were those bad as well :p
    Reply