Raja Koduri, Radeon Technologies Boss, leaves AMD to Join Intel

[humbug]

Brand loyalties created the duopoly we have today, we are to blame for it and it seems we haven't learned anything from it.

 

[Yaayuh!]

It’s sad to see him go but I’m hopeful that they will get someone in with a fresh head and bring some new and exciting energy to take them in a different direction.

AMD have come on leaps and bounds in CPU and have a very strong product line. Now we need to see the same in GPU.

 

[Nablaoperator]

Oh and for those salivating over the prospect of Intel buying up RTG AMD would first have to agree to such a sale, RTG are nothing without the Graphics IP that AMD own, Graphics IP that it can and does use to leverage over Intel, Graphics IP that if Intel owned it could kill AMD over night.

Some of you may think AMD are stupid, they are not stupid enough to hand Intel the nails and the hammer for their own coffin, what are Intel going to do with the Radeon name that has no IP?
RTG will never be for sale because RTG is AMD, they own all of its IP.

Why do you think Intel don't develop their own X86 based Graphics, because between them nVidia and AMD own all the IP.

I had always maintained that RTG needs to be a separate entity. They can maximize value by licensing their IP to anyone who wants it without strategic constraints.. A private equity firm will be able to unlock more value (and be able to bid higher) than any corporate suitor.

And Raja going to Intel - would definitely like to see another competitor in the high-end discrete graphics market

But after these developments, I would say that I am no longer convinced that buying Vega was a sound decision

 

[Geck0]

Raja does not equal Jim Keller, not by any stretch and Navi will have already finished primary development so stop the glee party, nVidia shills. It will remain to be seen how good Navi is but that's a little while off yet.

 

[KentMan]

I think Raja was given the reigns of RTG on a 1 shot you better make it work type deal, unfortunately Vega was a cabbage and now Raja is paying the price for it. The writing was on the wall with Polaris, its less than stellar arrival, issues with PCIE power draw dogging it and it being demod against the 1080 in Xfire etc.

Infact i think the writing was on the wall with Fiji, who knows if Raja had a hand in that at all? potentially he did, maybe he didnt, none of us know. Anyhow Vega was his shot at the limelight, forget Navi, he was given the reigns of Vega and look what we ended up with. Admittedly i think the card was only ever really designed for professional use in mind and was *Watered* down for gaming enthusiasts etc.

AMD needed to make money, they focused on CPUs and it paid off bigtime for them, now its the GPU's turn, they have their CPU roadmap setc, respins and refinements of Ryzen will carry them for a good few years, they can skim off profits from that to fund getting back in the GPU race.

Putting Lisa Su in charge of RTG is a master stroke, if your the board of a company and one of your leaders absolutely smashes a stranglehold your main competitor has on a market they have had sewn up for a good many years, and that division is now stable and requires less handholding and governance, then you move that person to the next failing department and see if they can spin their magic there.

If anything Raja leaving is a very good thing, he was a good guy and enthusiastic about Vega, it was his job to be. But Lisa is a results driven person, i firmly believe she wants to see AMD take major share in all markets it is in. Under her i think she will push RTG on to make something competitive, i wouldnt put it past her scrapping Navi if its a donkey at this stage and getting it redesigned if need be.

 

[ubersonic]

It's really obvious to be honest, Vega is a stinker. You don't keep your job after a failure like that, end of.

Most of the "Vega r the wurst" talk just comes from Nvidia fanboys who wouldn't have bought it anyway. It's by no means amazing but it's not bad either, and if AMD sacked people just because their product wasn't noticeably better than their competitons there would be nobody left on the payroll ^^

 

[JediFragger]

but I’m hopeful that they will get someone in with a fresh head

This guy do?

 

[Geck0]

He was better as Dr Who.

 

[Brazo]

Problem with AMD is they constantly over hype and under deliver.

We had ‘poor volta’ and now people are reduced to hoping that Navi may just match Pascal.

 

[Rroff]

I think Raja was given the reigns of RTG on a 1 shot you better make it work type deal, unfortunately Vega was a cabbage and now Raja is paying the price for it. The writing was on the wall with Polaris, its less than stellar arrival, issues with PCIE power draw dogging it and it being demod against the 1080 in Xfire etc.

Infact i think the writing was on the wall with Fiji, who knows if Raja had a hand in that at all? potentially he did, maybe he didnt, none of us know. Anyhow Vega was his shot at the limelight, forget Navi, he was given the reigns of Vega and look what we ended up with. Admittedly i think the card was only ever really designed for professional use in mind and was *Watered* down for gaming enthusiasts etc.

AMD needed to make money, they focused on CPUs and it paid off bigtime for them, now its the GPU's turn, they have their CPU roadmap setc, respins and refinements of Ryzen will carry them for a good few years, they can skim off profits from that to fund getting back in the GPU race.

Putting Lisa Su in charge of RTG is a master stroke, if your the board of a company and one of your leaders absolutely smashes a stranglehold your main competitor has on a market they have had sewn up for a good many years, and that division is now stable and requires less handholding and governance, then you move that person to the next failing department and see if they can spin their magic there.

If anything Raja leaving is a very good thing, he was a good guy and enthusiastic about Vega, it was his job to be. But Lisa is a results driven person, i firmly believe she wants to see AMD take major share in all markets it is in. Under her i think she will push RTG on to make something competitive, i wouldnt put it past her scrapping Navi if its a donkey at this stage and getting it redesigned if need be.

As much as anything their problems have been foundry related - GF 14nm does OK for low power, low voltage stuff but generally isn't well regarded for desktop GPU kind of products.

I'm not sure on their approach either - Fiji seemed a relatively good architecture if ultimately time limited before needing an overhaul and handicapped (scalability and price, etc.) by HBM - I dunno why they didn't go for a tweaked/reconfigured design (Polaris was kind of halfway there) that would have allowed for better efficiency with real world loads on a node shrink and then focus on a new design.

 

[TNA]

I think Raja was given the reigns of RTG on a 1 shot you better make it work type deal, unfortunately Vega was a cabbage and now Raja is paying the price for it. The writing was on the wall with Polaris, its less than stellar arrival, issues with PCIE power draw dogging it and it being demod against the 1080 in Xfire etc.

Infact i think the writing was on the wall with Fiji, who knows if Raja had a hand in that at all? potentially he did, maybe he didnt, none of us know. Anyhow Vega was his shot at the limelight, forget Navi, he was given the reigns of Vega and look what we ended up with. Admittedly i think the card was only ever really designed for professional use in mind and was *Watered* down for gaming enthusiasts etc.

AMD needed to make money, they focused on CPUs and it paid off bigtime for them, now its the GPU's turn, they have their CPU roadmap setc, respins and refinements of Ryzen will carry them for a good few years, they can skim off profits from that to fund getting back in the GPU race.

Putting Lisa Su in charge of RTG is a master stroke, if your the board of a company and one of your leaders absolutely smashes a stranglehold your main competitor has on a market they have had sewn up for a good many years, and that division is now stable and requires less handholding and governance, then you move that person to the next failing department and see if they can spin their magic there.

If anything Raja leaving is a very good thing, he was a good guy and enthusiastic about Vega, it was his job to be. But Lisa is a results driven person, i firmly believe she wants to see AMD take major share in all markets it is in. Under her i think she will push RTG on to make something competitive, i wouldnt put it past her scrapping Navi if its a donkey at this stage and getting it redesigned if need be.

I really hope she can turn it around so we can get some competition again. Would love to see them back in the game in the next few years. Otherwise Nvidia will just take the milking to the next level.

I was close to picking up Vega but the pricing and lack of warranty put me off. In the end I just sold my Freesync monitor as I cannot see AMD brining the performance required for 4K as that is the resolution I game at. At the end of the day I would rather give my money to AMD when possible, but they made it impossible for me with Vega

Looking forward to see what Navi turns out to be still. But with this news, I cannot see it coming out any time soon or being that great. Probably won’t be very competitive either like Vega.

 

[jubei]

Oh no! Now who will bore us with stories about after parties instead of giving us information about products?...

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Funny to see all the usual suspects sounding off in that thread like they knew what was happening. I imagine they'll be here soon enough.

Oh and for those salivating over the prospect of Intel buying up RTG AMD would first have to agree to such a sale, RTG are nothing without the Graphics IP that AMD own, Graphics IP that it can and does use to leverage over Intel, Graphics IP that if Intel owned it could kill AMD over night.

Some of you may think AMD are stupid, they are not stupid enough to hand Intel the nails and the hammer for their own coffin, what are Intel going to do with the Radeon name that has no IP?
RTG will never be for sale because RTG is AMD, they own all of its IP.

Why do you think Intel don't develop their own X86 based Graphics, because between them nVidia and AMD own all the IP.

Both threads on the matter yesterday conveniently ignored the rest of the article from Hexus who broke the story(Tarinder over on Hexus knows Raja Koduri personally it appears,so it might be why they got the exclusive?),where it appears AMD is now re-focusing on RTG by putting more money into it:

https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/posts/31316259/

AMD is putting additional resources behind the RTG team moving forwards, we're informed, with the view of making the graphics arm of the company bigger and better.

 

[TonyTurbo78]

AMD is the only thing stopping Nvidia from charging £699 for a 1070 type card, And we all know they would if they could get away with it, We all better hope AMD's GPU arm stays afloat.

With Intel and AMD teaming up, they could actually kill off Nvidia GPU's or even taking it to the extreme, the need of PCIe at all, we could look at it from a different angle. This new partnership could scare the life out of Nvidia GPU division, could in turn drive down Nvidia prices and the the annual rape of us each year.

 

[subbytna]

With the recent news of Intel incorporating RTG tech into their mobile chips, plus the success of the Ryzen platform, makes you wonder if it wouldn't be better for AMD to just sell off RTG. Maybe Intel would be interested?

AMD could focus on CPU design and stop loosing so much money =P

typo error

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

or maybe taking it to the extreme, the need of PCIe on motherboard at all, maybe look at it from a different angle.

Wasn't there a rumour years ago about Intel trying to that?

 

[subbytna]

in a two horse race, there is nothing remotely amusing about this. Prepare to get fleeced.

100% correct. Those on here gloating that AMD have lost a key player, should be wary of a monopoly where the only "winner" is Nvidia whilst we ALL get shafted.

 

[TonyTurbo78]

Are you guys missing the big news here with AMD partnering with Intel. I'll say the big winner and the big loser could actually be the opposite. Nvidia could end up being shafted here in a way.

 

[AthlonXP1800]

Wow what a shocked news. 40 days ago Raja was on sabbatical leave and expected to returned to RTG in next few weeks in December to face huge challenges with HBM2 yields, Vega cards shortages, custom Vega cards from AIB partners, RTG red balance sheets, Navi, HBM3 and future projects so now he decided to resigned, gave up on hardware and wanted to explore driving broader solutions so he can develop AI chip for autonomous car while spend more times with his family?

https://wccftech.com/exclusive-raja-koduri-will-seeking-new-horizons-intel/

If true then it look like rogue Raja is defected to Intel to develop AI chip for Intel autonomous car in secret deal after Intel signed off license to let Intel use RTG Vega GPU on Intel CPUs, Raja probably took all secrets with him to Intel so Intel got all information needed to build a Goliath driver for Intel Vega GPU to compete with AMD Vega GPU that could put RTG David driver to shame. Lisa Su must be absolutely furious when she heard Raja wont returned to RTG and AMD in next few weeks then he defected to Intel. Brian Krzanich Intel CEO probably laughed like JR Ewing at Lisa Su.

It possible the next CEO could decide to canned Vega 11 because HBM2 was far too expensive and want to return to GDDR5 in the similar way Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella did to shutdown Nokia division and killed off Windows 10 Mobile years after former CEO Steven Ballmer made the worst decision to acquired it when he wanted Microsoft Phone with Windows 10 Mobile to compete with Apple iPhone with iOS and Android phones.

 

[old gamer]

Are you guys missing the big news here with AMD partnering with Intel. I'll say the big winner and the big loser could actually be the opposite. Nvidia could end up being shafted here in a way.

Absolutely, it been muttered before about being able to do away without graphics cards altogether and a intel/amd partnership could make this a reality and getting a stranglehold on pc gaming.
With the state of amd's market share they don't have much to lose, now get Microsoft Onboard and things start to look well dodgy for nvidia.
But this is all if's and but's and could take years to happen