Officially 10 Years since the ATI AMD merger. Was it a good idea?

[humbug]

The question of whether it was a good idea or not IMO is mute point, your graphs only look at revenue and profit it completely ignores ATI's cash position which was in dire straits due DX10 debacle/2900 XT.

Also profits are misleading, in this sort of industry a lot of your expenses are R&D which is effectively salaries of people. Most normal business would just show these as an expense, ATI, AMD, Nvidia and Intel can claim that a lot of money they pay in salaries goes to product development that will yield future income so gets recorded as an asset on the balance sheet which inflates there profits somewhat. Actual net cash income from operations is much lower (i.e the actual cash you get in your bank after all your selling and payments to staff and suppliers).

For the consumer it was a good thing AMD came along and purchased ATI otherwise Nvidia would have had monopoly on the discrete video card market in 2006 rather then 2014. ATI needed AMD's collateral to secure funding and AMD need graphics IP for it's APU's so it was a perfect match (just bear in mind ATI wasn't AMD's first choice, it did try to buyout Nvidia before buying ATI).

Exactly this, people forget that AMD bought a failing company in ATI.

 

[Blackjack Davy]

From what I recall wasn't ATI on its knees ready to go bankrupt? From that perspective then yes it was a good idea from consumers point of view or there would be no competition whatsoever. But obviously that doesn't fit with the doom and gloom and lets-bash-AMD agenda most people love to revel in.

 

[humbug]

From what I recall wasn't ATI on its knees ready to go bankrupt? From that perspective then yes it was a good idea from consumers point of view or there would be no competition whatsoever. But obviously that doesn't fit with the doom and gloom and lets-bash-AMD agenda most people love to revel in.

Correct on both counts.

 

[SiDeards73]

Personally i think AMD are on the tip of getting back into profits bigtime, sure Fiji was arguably a flop and Polaris has not exactly been stellar either, but its no secret both were or are stopgap products, even Polaris i feel was rushed out on 14nm just to have some traction in the marketplace. Fiji was imo a first test of HBM and on a new architecture to see how it would be received and probably to test that particular architecture.

Anyhow after the failures in both CPU and GPU segments, they brought in Jim Keller to sort the mess out in CPU and put Raja in charge of RTG, both of these are and will pay dividends for them.

I have a feeling Vega is going to be good on the 1st iteration and will get better with age, same with Zen, i think they finally will have products to fight Intel and Nvidia on both CPU and GPU markets and will establish themselves as back in the game.

I have a sneaky feeling Zen is going to be very good.

 

[Doom112]

Only figure speaks in business. People can see the figure that it is was good or not.

 

[Doogles]

Personally i think AMD are on the tip of getting back into profits bigtime, sure Fiji was arguably a flop and Polaris has not exactly been stellar either, but its no secret both were or are stopgap products, even Polaris i feel was rushed out on 14nm just to have some traction in the marketplace. Fiji was imo a first test of HBM and on a new architecture to see how it would be received and probably to test that particular architecture.

Anyhow after the failures in both CPU and GPU segments, they brought in Jim Keller to sort the mess out in CPU and put Raja in charge of RTG, both of these are and will pay dividends for them.

I have a feeling Vega is going to be good on the 1st iteration and will get better with age, same with Zen, i think they finally will have products to fight Intel and Nvidia on both CPU and GPU markets and will establish themselves as back in the game.

I have a sneaky feeling Zen is going to be very good.

Keep hoping Zen is good but I'm not sure, we will find out next year but I'll be annoyed if I wait for it and it turns out to be another Piledriver.

 

[TheRealDeal]

Zen will be good imo but for pure on Horsepower i don't think Intel will be worried. Graphics power is where i think Zen will shine over Intel and sway some casual gamer's to there side.

 

[queamin]

I think quite a few will throw in a zen apu when they out in a years time.

 

[MissChief]

Whatever happens we need AMD to perform. Without them nvidia can do what the hell they like. Some might say they're doing that at the moment anyway, such is their market dominance, and they might be right. Of course even if they are, whatever they release, at whatever price is being lapped up around the world. Which just encourages them more. AMD need a comparable product to the 1000 series soon. And to try and bring to an end any worrying about the quality of their drivers.

 

[AthlonXP1800]

Tomshardware article was years out of date before AMD spinned off Fabs

Was it a good idea for AMD to buy ATI?

I voted HELL NO!!!

AMD should been NEVER bought ATI back in 2005 and AMD would had spinned off fabs much sooner as 2008 if management team identified the root cause of heavy losses earlier.

AMD was really incredible very lucky to get out of fabs business in 2009 so how is GlobalFoundries doing nowday? Nope they never got any better everyday since spinned off from AMD but things got far much worsen after bought IBM fab 2 years ago, GlobalFoundries's losses was absolutely massive off the scale every year. They never made a profit since first day business opened in 2009, in 2011 GlobalFoundries lost $1.2bn, $2.5bn in 2015 and now in 2016 saw $1.6bn in the first 6 months at the rate of $8.79m everyday so it mean full 2016 result could see losses soared to $3.2bn. Globalfoundries owner Mubadala Technology still explored all options since few years ago to dump all 100% of toxic Globalfoundries business for around $20bn but talks with china government to acquire stakes in Globalfoundries business fell out at the last minute few days ago because they complaint that equipment expenditure for the 12 inch fab was too cheap.

Maybe the owner Mubadala Technology and former ATIC wished they never bought AMD fabs back in 2009 and realised they been fooled that Hector Ruiz had cashed them out and Ruiz laughed off like JR Ewing.

Things would be a lot much different if AMD had not bought ATI for $5.4bn back in 2005. AMD would licensed to use ATI GPU in AMD CPU and ATI still made Imageon for mobile phones and digital TVs today that both Broadcom and Qualcomm would licensed it to use in their products and ATI would be still here and their 2005-2015 annual revenues would be close to Nvidia annual revenues after collected license and royalty fees from AMD, Broadcom, Qualcomm, Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony. ATI would had big Polaris to compete with Nvidia GP104 back in summer and AMD would launched Zen back in 2013 or 2014 after spinned off Fabs in 2008 as GlobalFoundries with different partner.

 

[DarrenM343]

Someone mentioned the crash wasn't a good time to have loads of debt but I think the opposite. A lot of companies paid down their debt during the times of cheap interest rates and if AMD were in a better position they could have reduced their debt.

Quite a few companies these days seem to be splitting off parts of their business. Ebay/Paypal to name one tech company to do that.
Mergers don't always work well. Redundancies usually follow which is not always a good thing, sometimes can be of course.

Personally I reckon they should have remained as they were but who knows where they'd be today. Better or worse, we'll never know.

Hopefully AMD are improving now but reading or listening to what Lucy Lui said or whatever her name is, I think she said with time they can improve their spending on R&D and also I think mentioned it cannot compare with Nvidia's spending at present, which to me means they are limited at present. I think they might be trying to take a fight to Intel on the processor side for now, but who knows, but I doubt personally they'll take a good fight to both Intel and Nvidia at the same time - they don't have the pockets.

I fear for now they're about low end graphics card and when they do produce a higher performer, unfortunately NVidia will simply either release something to blow it away of their current gen OR they'll be close to the next gen anyway. Already the 1080 has been on the market for 4 months or so.

 

[Ian Evey]

Good idea yes, Poorly run yes.

Decent ish products at varied points in time but quickly over shadowed by nvidia products.

Nvidia really need to be beaten by AMD cards, I cannot see it happening though which is a shame.

 

[Rroff]

I fear for now they're about low end graphics card and when they do produce a higher performer, unfortunately NVidia will simply either release something to blow it away of their current gen OR they'll be close to the next gen anyway. Already the 1080 has been on the market for 4 months or so.

I feel sorry for AMD if the rumours are correct and they'll basically be chasing the 1070 - if that was true nVidia are so far ahead with what is coming next it isn't even funny.

 

[ltron]

Exactly this, people forget that AMD bought a failing company in ATI.

It's strange that they weren't profitable because I remember their products being extremely competitive and their market share being high.

The 9700 and 9800 series (I had a wonderful 9800 Pro 256 MB) were legendary GPUs that were dominant in comparison to the Nvidia equivalents. X800 series, X1800 and X1900 were all excellent too if I remember correctly.

 

[tommybhoy]

Well their still trading and if they didn't aquire ATI for Apu's, I have my doubts they'd still be in the cpu game as the AMD acquisition money wouldn't have made a difference in the Intel Juggernaut anyway as Intel would have released faster than what we have now anyway.

RTG is now clawing sales back off Nv with Polaris-sure Nv's still selling more than Polaris, but AMD's up ~7%(?), I'm surprised they've clawed back so much in a short space of time.

 

[Freddie1980]

It's possible that ATI could have secured funding through a share issue, bonds or a regular bank loan back in 2006 which would have given them time to turn things around. ATI were by no means a bad company they just got screwed over by Nvidia and Microsoft over DX10 (to borrow Athlon1800 Dallas analogy it's like when JR Ewing used one of pals to convince Cliff Barnes to invest into a potential oil field that was nothing more then a dust bowl). The problem is comapnies like Nvidia and ATI were ripe for takeovers and ATIs cash position just made them more of a target.

 

[tommybhoy]

to borrow Athlon1800 Dallas analogy it's like when JR Ewing used one of pals to convince Cliff Barnes to invest into a potential oil field that was nothing more then a dust bowl

 

[TheRealDeal]

I feel sorry for AMD if the rumours are correct and they'll basically be chasing the 1070 - if that was true nVidia are so far ahead with what is coming next it isn't even funny.

That's probably BS as a refreshed Fury X with Boosted clocks and more Vram would stick with a gtx1070. Something would to have went seriously wrong for them to be chasing a gtx1070 as in some cases a Fury X already does this.

 

[Doom112]

That's probably BS as a refreshed Fury X with Boosted clocks and more Vram would stick with a gtx1070. Something would to have went seriously wrong for them to be chasing a gtx1070 as in some cases a Fury X already does this.

There is something seriously wrong ,this is the reason why AMD has not released the competition for GTX 1070 and GTX 1070.

 

[humbug]

I think AMD should stop chasing the £400+ market, they don't sell enough GPU's in that segment anyway.

Let Nvidia have it, they already do and there is no way AMD can take it from them.
So put all R&D into making good sub £400 GPU's.