AMD Reorganizes and Creates Radeon Technologies Group

[Joe!]

Could be good news, but I'm a little hesitant to believe any positive before it happens.

 

[humbug]

Our well informed industry sources suggest that Intel is interested in the acquisition of AMD. Before you blast us with your comments, the world changed a few years back and Intel is not a monopoly anymore. Apple has quite big of a stake with iPads and companies like Samsung have their own SoCs that are used for their tablets and phones. Qualcomm and MediaTek got stronger as well. In this changed world Intel would have a chance to acquire AMD if it really wanted.

No no no no no no no.... we need AMD to compete with Intel not be a part of them

And trust Fud to make a lame statement about Intel not being a monopoly with AMD as a part of them.

 

[Orangey]

Because Intel are non-existent in phones that means they are not a monopoly in desktop.

Fudo smoking crack again.

 

[TheMorningStar]

No no no no no no no.... we need AMD to compete with Intel not be a part of them

And trust Fud to make a lame statement about Intel not being a monopoly with AMD as a part of them.

May keep them apart and make them compete for bonuses just to motivate their engineers who have been scratching their ass for years because AMD hasn't produced anything remotely challenging

 

[humbug]

May keep them apart and make them compete for bonuses just to motivate their engineers who have been scratching their ass for years because AMD hasn't produced anything remotely challenging

Intel's last 3 generation of CPU's have seen performance improvements of 2 to 5% with each one being more difficult to overclock, their new Mainstream 8 thread i7 is £320, that's up £45 from Haswell, if Intel don't get any competition the next 8 thread i7 will again be 5% faster and cost £370.

AMD just need R&D Money to bring the fight to Intel, but not Intel's money.

 

[Silent_Scone]

They need to get people onboard with 6 figure pay cheques that know what they're doing first. Fairly ignorant to discredit what Intel have done in recent years. AMD's only real asset was brought in via a third party over a decade ago and was seemingly let go under poor management. That's how Intel got away with netburst for so long prior to this and it's the same reason they're getting away with increments now.

 

[humbug]

They need to get people onboard with 6 figure pay cheques that know what they're doing first. Fairly ignorant to discredit what Intel have done in recent years. AMD's only real asset was brought in via a third party over a decade ago and was seemingly let go under poor management. That's how Intel got away with netburst for so long prior to this and it's the same reason they're getting away with increments now.

People think if something is more expensive its better, this is reinforced by people on forums always looking to justify over priced components to potential buyers.

When AMD had the faster and cheaper CPU's Intel still sold twice as many at a higher price. the P4 was an atrocitus pile of junk and yet everyone wanted one for an army of Intel enthusiasts going into full damage control mode doing Intel's marketing for them.
As a result we are now in a sytuation where a company with the better product could not get any traction while the company who made the pile of junk got all the sales for R&D.

Intel are now charging way over £300 for mainstream CPU's because they know an army of enthusiasts will do their marketing for them.

Now we will never know what may have been if AMD had got the traction they deserved, and we never will because that "Intel at all costs" attitude still very much exists.

 

[andybird123]

When AMD had the faster and cheaper CPU's Intel still sold twice as many.
People think if something is more expensive its better, this is reinforced by people on forums always looking to justify over priced components to potential buyers.

Intel are now charging way over £300 for mainstream CPU's because they know an army of enthusiasts will do their marketing for them.

you do know that the vast majority of CPU's are not bought by people who go on forums, right?
the vast majority of CPU's are bought by big companies, so as well as performance / power usage there's all sorts of rebates and deals that go on

the difference is that when AMD have a competitive chip they actually do have SOME market share, where as now they are hemorrhaging market share on all fronts as intel are not even having to offer rebates to get big business

 

[humbug]

I edited my post ^^^^^ and paying OEM's ecte not to use the opposition is another argument.

AMD can do better if they get a lot better, but they can never get anywhere near to sustain a healthy R&D no matter how good or how much better they may be.

Same goes for GPU's.

 

[andybird123]

I'm on the fence as far as CPU's go. If Zen is actually brilliant then they could win back a big chunk of business on the CPU front, but as far as GPU's go, seeing as how they only just managed to match Nvidia on perf/watt with HBM, when Nvidia switch to HBM I think AMD will slip even further behind, unless they find a way to get round the ROP bottleneck they are suffering from with the Fury's

 

[mmj_uk]

When AMD had the faster and cheaper CPU's Intel still sold twice as many at a higher price.

That's because they ran cooler and had more stable (Intel) chipsets, AMD's best chipsets were often VIA who were a lot more problematic.

For example, K7 was probably AMD's best ever CPU but..

Athlon 1000 - 65W TDP
Pentium 3 1000 - 29W TDP

Athlon 1400 - 72W TDP
Pentium 3 1400 - 32W TDP

If you're an OEM wanting to skimp on heatsink/case fans/power supply and make big profits which would you choose?

the P4 was an atrocitus pile of junk and yet everyone wanted one for an army of Intel enthusiasts going into full damage control mode doing Intel's marketing for them.

Once P4's had a big advantage in clockspeed (which they eventually did) they were pretty decent and they overclocked really well (1.8a @2.7ghz+, [email protected]+ etc). Northwood was really good in its heyday.

As a result we are now in a sytuation where a company with the better product could not get any traction while the company who made the pile of junk got all the sales for R&D.

The trouble with AMD fanboys is they only ever look at raw benchmarks and don't see the wider picture. AMD have just never really been as attractive to the mass market compared to their competition, most of their products have appealed primarily to enthusiasts whose sole interest is performance.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I'm on the fence as far as CPU's go. If Zen is actually brilliant then they could win back a big chunk of business on the CPU front, but as far as GPU's go, seeing as how they only just managed to match Nvidia on perf/watt with HBM, when Nvidia switch to HBM I think AMD will slip even further behind, unless they find a way to get round the ROP bottleneck they are suffering from with the Fury's

Sadly,AMD is dependent on GF and although this is a rumour,still sad if true:

http://www.extremetech.com/computin...dly-still-interested-in-acquiring-the-company

The problem is performance is not the only metric,but also how much the chips cost. Ever since the Phenom range,even when AMD has made competitive chips on a few occasions they have been massive in die area compared to Intel ones.

Part of the problem has been design but also the fact that Intel is just ahead in process nodes.

Of course,Intel needs to amortise R and D on fab tech too,unlike AMD currently,but still,its a problem.

They need not only performance but something which is cost effective,otherwise Intel can fight them on price. Look at Atom and P4,and the subsidies Intel can push.

By the time 14NM/16NM becomes viable for larger CPUs,Intel would have had close to a year with a more mature 14NM process.

If anything AMD can probably have more chance of fighting Nvidia as they are locked into the same companies for making their GPUs.

Its probably why they have reorganised their GPU division.

Remember,Nvidia went from having a performance/watt advantage with the GTX200 series,to two and a half years of not having it,which they regained with Kepler.

 

[andybird123]

yeah, technically GF are separate, but Abu Dhabi own big chunks of both GF and AMD and GF is still reliant on AMD for big chunks of its business, so if GF don't recoup its R&D then AMD don't have anywhere to make its CPU's unless it switches to using just TSMC

frankly it's all a bit of a mess

 

[humbug]

That's because they ran cooler and had more stable (Intel) chipsets, AMD's best chipsets were often VIA who were a lot more problematic.

For example, K7 was probably AMD's best ever CPU but..

Athlon 1000 - 65W TDP
Pentium 3 1000 - 29W TDP

Athlon 1400 - 72W TDP
Pentium 3 1400 - 32W TDP

If you're an OEM wanting to skimp on heatsink/case fans/power supply and make big profits which would you choose?



Once P4's had a big advantage in clockspeed (which they eventually did) they were pretty decent and they overclocked really well (1.8a @2.7ghz+, [email protected]+ etc). Northwood was really good in its heyday.



The trouble with AMD fanboys is they only ever look at raw benchmarks and don't see the wider picture. AMD have just never really been as attractive to the mass market compared to their competition, most of their products have appealed primarily to enthusiasts whose sole interest is performance.

Yeah, those are the arguments from the time but that has nothing to do with the P4.

I had a P2 and a P3, i was happy with them and the argument of the time was the P4 was the best thing since sliced bread, so i got a P4 HT 3.2Ghz at a huge cost, it ran at 85c under load, it was also slow, unresponsive and unstable, i hated it.

At my whits end with it i got an Athlon 3200+, it was like night and day, it ran much cooler, the system was infinitely more responsive and the performance was a lot higher despite the lower clock speed.

@ Andy, the problem is AMD need to be better just to sell enough to stay afloat, (doing well) 30% CPU market share and 40% GPU at lower margins.... there is no room for R&D in that, there never has been, without R&D you cannot stay ahead.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

yeah, technically GF are separate, but Abu Dhabi own big chunks of both GF and AMD and GF is still reliant on AMD for big chunks of its business, so if GF don't recoup its R&D then AMD don't have anywhere to make its CPU's unless it switches to using just TSMC

frankly it's all a bit of a mess

Hector Ruiz FTL. Whereas probably backing away from having fabs made sense due to the stupid level of money its costing companies,some of the agreements they signed as result,seemed VERY one sided.

GF 32NM delays were a disaster. Even look at Llano - it was not only delayed masively due to production issues,but the clockspeeds were massively down than expected.

Kaveri was delayed by a year due to issues with GF 28NM and clockspeeds were down.

This is why the A10 6000 series was released.

Even a six month delay can change the competitive nature of the product released.

Even on the GPU side it would no surprise me if Fury was targeted for the GF 20NM which was cancelled - after all the console APUs are being made at GF too.

It worries me with AMD on the GPU side since Nvidia has tended to be more conservative to jumping to new nodes quickly,and seemed to have weathered the 28NM storm much better,and I get the impression AMD seems to be more dependent on jumping to new nodes quicker.

You kind of saw it with the HD3000 series where they managed to jump to 55NM first and make a small GPU which they could at least get some sales from.

The issue if GF keep delaying,you end up with a 2017 release for Zen which will be fighting Kaby Lake made on a now mature 14NM process,instead of just Skylake. The GF process won't be as mature with regards to yields at that point I suspect.

It also means the APUs will be delayed too,meaning even more traction for Intel in the mass market.

The worst thing is GF licensed the process from Samsung anyway - so its even more ridiculous at all the delays.

I really think AMD probably needs to consider second sources for their CPUs,even someone like Samsung.

 

[humbug]

If AMD don't get new CPU's in 2016 they will be dead by 2017.

They are losing $450m a year as of last year and likely to be higher this year. They don't actually have any money left to lose.

 

[Orangey]

Been saying all along they need either a better deal with GF or just dump 'em.

 

[humbug]

Been saying all along they need either a better deal with GF or just dump 'em.

dump 'em

 

[AthlonXP1800]

Look like AMD CEO Lisa Su finally see sense that childish and violent behaviours absolutely has no place in AMD workplace so she fired Roy Taylor as his twitter account is now deactivated and gone. Robert Hallock and Richard Huddy could be next to go.

https://twitter.com/amd_roy

Now Roy Taylor no longer at AMD so maybe he will go back to NVIDIA or Intel.

Hope AMDMatt job is safe.

 

[Ian Evey]

Look like AMD CEO Lisa Su finally see sense that childish and violent behaviours absolutely has no place in AMD workplace so she fired Roy Taylor as his twitter account is now deactivated and gone. Robert Hallock and Richard Huddy could be next to go.

https://twitter.com/amd_roy

Now Roy Taylor no longer at AMD so maybe he will go back to NVIDIA or Intel.

Hope AMDMatt job is safe.

Because someone's Twitter account is deactivated you think he got sacked?