Is the end imminent for AMD?

[555BUK]

AMD have just launched Trinity APU's and soon more desktop chips, alongside there very popular dedicated GPU's. AMD are also supplying the GPU part for the Wii U, and rumoured upcoming Xbox 720. Remember how well the original Wii sold, well this Wii U deal is another big contract for AMD.

People keep spouting this doom and gloom stuff don't really understand that AMD are doing well in a shrinking PC market. They need to lay people off to make a more streamlined efficient company, doesn't mean there about to go under, that's what business's do...

I am far from convinced regarding Wii U's potential success. Wii U games will cost £30-£40 and the graphics will be little better than tablet games available for a fraction of the price. Nintendo could have troublesome days ahead. Even Sony and Microsoft will struggle to justify high game prices for their new technically superior consoles. Tablets and phones are not just eating into the PC market. Kids are now used to paying 69p for Android/IOS games, rather than saving pocket money for a month in order to buy a second hand console game.

 

[mmj_uk]

When I look at AMD now I'm reminded of the ex-AMD employee posting on a Mac forum a while back, at the time he was smeared as a bitter ex-employee but most of what he said rings true today.

The team that did all the great design work for Athlon 64/Opteron is gone. Forced out or quit in disgust. They now work at Apple, Oracle, misc. startups, and, in my case, changed careers.

The team that designed the K6-2 was the CMD team, which was formed by the acquisition of a company called Nexgen. That team also designed Athlon 64 and Opteron (Athlon was designed by the TMD team). By 2007, all the key CMD folks were gone. The team that was left sucks, and has accomplished little since then other than shrinks to smaller technology and bolting more of the same cores on.

On paper bulldozer is a lovely chip. Bulldozer was on the drawing board (people were even working on it) even back when I was there. All I can say is that by the time you see silicon for sale, it will be a lot less impressive, both in its own terms and when compared to what Intel will be offering. (Because I have no faith AMD knows how to actually design chips anymore). I don’t really want to reveal what I know about Bulldozer from my time at AMD.

What did happen is that management decided there SHOULD BE such cross-engineering ,which meant we had to stop hand-crafting our CPU designs and switch to an SoC design style. This results in giving up a lot of performance, chip area, and efficiency. The reason DEC Alphas were always much faster than anything else is they designed each transistor by hand. Intel and AMD had always done so at least for the critical parts of the chip. That changed before I left – they started to rely on synthesis tools, automatic place and route tools, etc. I had been in charge of our design flow in the years before I left, and I had tested these tools by asking the companies who sold them to design blocks (adders, multipliers, etc.) using their tools. I let them take as long as they wanted. They always came back to me with designs that were 20% bigger, and 20% slower than our hand-crafted designs, and which suffered from electromigration and other problems.

That is now how AMD designs chips. I’m sure it will turn out well for them [/sarcasm]

BTW, you ask how AMD could have competed? Well, for one thing, the could have leveraged K8 and the K8 team’s success and design techniques instead of wasting years of time on a project that eventually got cancelled using people that had never achieved any success. It took Intel years to come out with Nehalem, and AMD could have been so far ahead by that point that they’d have enough money in the bank that they wouldn’t have to accept a low-ball settlement offer in the antitrust suit and they wouldn’t have to sell off their fabs.

AMD will always suck because it is set up so as to suck, and it has insufficient time left to remedy things Further, in AMDs very long history, it had only a single 3 year period of success. Having spent nearly its entire existence sucking, on a clear path to continue sucking, and with dwindling cash on hand and nothing left to sell to obtain one-time profits, I'd say "always suck" is accurate.

No one has stated a single factoid of objective evidence to explain why I'm wrong. I state facts about their stock, their design methodology, their inability to meet roadmaps, their quarterly losses, their loss of personel, their competitive environment.

I'm not sure why people don't understand the difference between hopes and predictions. I've never said I don't root for those guys. All I've said is I predict failure. Every year I root for the NY Mets, but I know that chances are they are going to blow it. In this case I look at past performance, take into account things that I personally saw happen, take into account what my friends who are still there tell me, take into account how much money AMD has in the bank, and I make a prediction. It has nothing to do with me wishing them ill will or hoping that things go well for them.

BTW, you ask how AMD could have competed? Well, for one thing, the could have leveraged K8 and the K8 team's success and design techniques instead of wasting years of time on a project that eventually got cancelled using people that had never achieved any success. It took Intel years to come out with Nehalem, and AMD could have been so far ahead by that point that they'd have enough money in the bank that they wouldn't have to accept a low-ball settlement offer in the antitrust suit and they wouldn't have to sell off their fabs.

I worked at AMD designing CPUs from 1997-2006. I assure you AMD wants to sell high end desktop CPUs. They just can't, because they can't make CPUs good enough that people would be willing to buy them.

We were definitely trying to compete for the same market. For awhile we were doing so successfully. But when we couldn't, we sold our chips into whatever market that was willing to buy them (usually low end retail desktops).

AMD's processor design teams (can't comment on the GPU teams) are bloated, inefficient, and weak - the best folks had gone to Sun, PA Semi, Apple, Montalvo, Metaram, and various other startups years ago (which is why AMD has flubbed the lead it had with Athlon 64).

Nonsense. You act like I'm not still plugged into what's going on there. That I don't go drinking with some of the current employees. That I don't know the people in charge VERY well having had years of experience working with them before (and while) they were in charge. And 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 is a lot of years of screwups while I was still there. 2007, 2008, 2009 AMD continued on the path from the previous 5 years - they did not tape out anything interesting, and continued making spins on designs from early 2002. They spun off their fabs, so they no longer can influence the process they way they used to. Their CEO had to resign in disgrace. The new CEO is a guy that once told the design team (when he was a manager in Texas) "if you don't like it, quit" - and 60 out of 100 people in Sunnyvale quit within a month. They used to hand place and hand instantiate each cell in the design for maximum efficiency and speed - now they rely on tools which perform 20% worse than humans (in order to save money).

I can't speak as to the ATI division, but, yes, the processor division is doomed. You don't have to believe me. Look at their track record for the last 8-10 years, and keep in mind that any new microarchitecture that is sold takes 2-3 years of design time. Then look at their 10K's, their desperation moves (selling the fab, Arab investors, etc.), the well-publicized defections (Fred Weber, etc.) and put it all together. Look at the benchmarks over time. Look at their stock over time. If you choose to write off my statements, there are plenty of objective facts out there for you.

Sometimes a duck is a duck, and the fact that I am an ex-AMD employee calling it a duck doesn't make it any less of a duck.

Remember that these were posted before BD was a known quantity when AMD were not a post-Bulldozer laughing stock.

Nowadays, the best AMD can seemingly do is stick a GPU technology they purchased onto a fairly average processor.

 

[Boomstick777]

I am far from convinced regarding Wii U's potential success.

Hmm more doom and gloom. We've been here before though, remember when the Wii launched, everybody predicted epic failure and Nintendo is gonna fail etc etc.

I think the Wii U will be a HUGE Success it's already sold out for pre order in a lot of places which indicates it's going to do well, and will sell a ton when it's closer to Xmas and in January sales. I will go as far to say that the by the end of it's lifespan the Wii U will succeed the original Wii as the biggest selling console of all time.

There's a big market out there for games. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo can all co-exist, people want an upgrade from the near 8 year old Xbox 360, Wii U is very nearly here and will be a nice upgrade for most console gamers. It will sell, I can guarantee you that lol. The Xbox 720 and Ps4 will also sell well, (People can own more than one console)

Having a big launch window between console means that people will buy more than one...

AMD are fine, just finding there way in a shrinking market. Nintendo are fine and about to do very well with the Wii U. All this doom and gloom stuff is just lame .

 

[littlepuppy]

Massive recent stock price drops, huge fall is 3rd Quarter revenues, runours of 30% staff layoff's, massive debts, little money for investiments, and a wider gap than ever between Intel and AMD CPU's for both performace and efficiency.

Sure, they (and to a lesser extent Intel) have been affected by the Global Recession, but that doesn't detract from the fact that AMD processors suck when compared to their big rival.

Will AMD still be here (producing micro processors) this time next year, or has Goliath hammered the final nail into David's coffin?

in answer to the OP, the end is not nigh. A new owner may be on the cards though, and they will want to get AMD for as little as possible.

Could be just what AMD needs.

 

[humbug]

Intresting read mmj_uk, thanks

 

[555BUK]

AMD are fine, just finding there way in a shrinking market. Nintendo are fine and about to do very well with the Wii U. All this doom and gloom stuff is just lame .

Nintendo's stock has dropped 75% since the Wii and DS sales highs of 2007. The 3DS has been a flop by DS/DSLite standards, mostly due to the surge in App gaming. Why buy a DS game for £30 when you can buy similar Apps for 69p? The truth is that few people are willing to pay £30-£40 for games nowadays when you can get Angry Birds, Doodle Jump, Temple Run, Plants vs Zombies etc for free, or almost free.

AMD are doomed, Nintendo's outlook looks bleak unleass the Wii U is a roaring success, Sony are struggling, and Microsoft cannot sell anywhere near enough XBOX's.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

snip

You do realise the major issue AMD had was process technology,which delayed their time to market?? In fact it was actually highlighted a few years ago by AMD that they need to look at ways of addressing this. This why AMD Jaguar is made with more modularity than previous AMD CPUs,and is more portable between different fab processes,with far less changes required than previous AMD CPUs. This is why they needed more modular designs. A modular design will make it easier to make changes quicker and easier.

Moreover,Intel is 10X bigger,so of course they can hurl engineers at a problem. You do realise IBM,hand optimises their own high end server CPUs even more than Intel?? However,even they have not helped design a standard desktop chip for years. They went straight to SOC designs for OEMs and servers. It is probably where AMD will be headed IMHO in a smaller way.

Even if that chap worked at AMD,any engineer or scientist would love an unlimited budget for their research group. In the real world that is not true. Sadly,engineers don't necessarily make good economists,just like a bowler does not necessarily make the best batsman or a captain. AMD has suffered from too many engineers as their CEOs for too long,which has not helped the company for years. They needed someone 5 years ago with a better view of the market,and I suspect they would be in a far better situation now.

AMD like other smaller CPU design houses,probably does use more automated designs tools to speed up time to market and reduces costs. R and D costs have to be repaid and AMD is smaller. Intel OTH is much larger so can spend more and has more volume to spread costs over. Moreover,you do realise Intel also uses automated tools. These are common throughout the industry.

Also,you heard of AMD Zacate/Brazos - that was mostly designed with automated tools and still beat "hand optimised" Atom. Even Tegra cores are based on standard ARM cores with certain modifications - Nvidia unlike Samsung does not develop its own cores "by hand" either.

Nintendo's stock has dropped 75% since the Wii and DS sales highs of 2007. The 3DS has been a flop by DS/DSLite standards, mostly due to the surge in App gaming. Why buy a DS game for £30 when you can buy similar Apps for 69p? The truth is that few people are willing to pay £30-£40 for games nowadays when you can get Angry Birds, Doodle Jump, Temple Run, Plants vs Zombies etc for free, or almost free.

AMD are doomed, Nintendo's outlook looks bleak unleass the Wii U is a roaring success, Sony are struggling, and Microsoft cannot sell anywhere near enough XBOX's.

You sound depressed.

 

[555BUK]

in answer to the OP, the end is not nigh. A new owner may be on the cards though, and they will want to get AMD for as little as possible.

Could be just what AMD needs.

The problem is that any new investor will have to invest billions to stand any chance of making AMD competetive. They will be taking on a micro processor arm that is ~3 years behind the competition. Can any new investor seriously compete with Intel, who have just spend $5bn (more than twice the value of AMD) investing in just one 14nm Fab Plant?

More likely is that AMD will be broken up with the best bits being sold off. It may make sense for an Intel, Google or Samsung to buy what was ATI, although both AMD+ATI may now be so interlinked as to make them almost inseperable. AMD may only be worth the value of their Patents. They have very few desirable assets.

Even in the GPU deparment NVidia produces smaller and cheaper to build Graphics Cards which outperform AMD. However, the gap here i0s small enough that good investment and strong leadership may turn things around.

 

[Martini1991]

Atom's pretty poor bar it's power usage.
There's a league difference between the new Intel Atom stuff and AMD's mobile stuff, think it's like 1.7W to 4.3W or something.

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Even in the GPU deparment NVidia produces smaller and cheaper to build Graphics Cards which outperform AMD.

Wow,just wow. Now you are just making up stuff.

Cape Verde(HD7750 and HD7770) and the GK107(GT640 and GTX650) are the same size. Cape Verde is faster overall.

Pitcairn(HD7850 and HD7870) and the GK106(GTX650TI and GTX660) are the same size. HD7800 series is faster overall.

Tahiti(HD7950,HD7970 and HD7970GE) is around 20% bigger than the GK104(GTX660TI,GTX670 and GTX680) but are the basis of the AMD compute cards with much superior DP performance. Cost more to make but that is the reason.

The GK110 is the Nvidia compute part and that is going to be big and expensive. The same goes with the GF100 and GF110 against the AMD cards. Compute focussed cards just require more transistors for things like increased cache,etc.

For the first time since the X1900 series AMD has had parity with the Nvidia highend.

So in the 2 most important markets,AMD is not behind and in third market they have had parity for the first time in 5 years.

Also,one more thing - AMD had better time to market too.

Atom's pretty poor bar it's power usage.
There's a league difference between the new Intel Atom stuff and AMD's mobile stuff, think it's like 1.7W to 4.3W or something.

Yet last year when Zacate was launched,both Intel and AMD were both using 40NM/45NM design processes. Yet the 45NM Atom still turned out poorer overall. The reason why the newer Atoms do better is down to the process shrink down to 32NM. You saw that with Nehalem to SB.

Zacate was a mostly a design using automated tools,just like a lot of ARM licensees like Nvidia who don't design the cores but modify parts and integrate them with their own IP.

The current AMD Zacate chips were meant to be shrunk down to 28NM,but they shelved that so they could bring Jaguar forward.

 

[Boomstick777]

AMD are doomed, Nintendo's outlook looks bleak unleass the Wii U is a roaring success, Sony are struggling, and Microsoft cannot sell anywhere near enough XBOX's.

Wow dude, you're like Mr doom and gloom. Microsoft sold a ton of Xbox's, Sony are a massive company, not struggling at all. We're in the longest console lifespan in history, obviously console sales will decline..

Just watch as the Wii U sells outs and re ignites Nintendo console sales...

Anyway..

 

[humbug]

555BUK, your AMD Dom and Gloom rhetoric is getting a bit to much.

 

[555BUK]

Wow,just wow. Now you are just making up stuff.

Cape Verde(HD7750 and HD7770) and the GK107(GT640 and GTX650) are the same size. Cape Verde is faster overall.

Pitcairn(HD7850 and HD7870) and the GK106(GTX660) are the same size. HD7800 series is faster overall.

Tahiti(HD7950,HD7970 and HD7970GE) is around 20% bigger than the GK104(GTX660TI,GTX670 and GTX680) but are the basis of the AMD compute cards with much superior DP performance. Cost more to make but that is the reason.

The GK110 is the Nvidia compute part and that is going to be big and expensive. The same goes with the GF100 and GF110 against the AMD cards. Compute focussed cards just require more transistors for things like increased cache,etc.

First time since the X1900 series AMD has had parity with the Nvidia highend.

So in the 2 most important markets,AMD is not behind and in third market they have had parity for the first time in 5 years.

Also,one more thing - AMD had better time to market too.



Yet last year when Zacate was launched,both Intel and AMD were both using 40NM/45NM design processes. Yet the 45NM Atom still turned out poorer overall. The reason why the newer Atoms do better is down to the process shrink down to 32NM. You saw that with Nehalem to SB.

Zacate was a mostly a design using automated tools,just like a lot of ARM licensees like Nvidia who don't design the cores but modify parts and integrate them with their own IP.

The current AMD Zacate chips were meant to be shrunk down to 28NM,but they shelved that so they could bring Jaguar forward.

I was referring to top end parts GK104 vs Tahiti, but you make a fair point. At the high-end GPU market AMD lag behind but they are very competetive within other areas. Unfortunately, I always look to the high end.

AMD however have taken a step backwards (or perhaps NVidia a step forwards) since their 4800/5800 cards, when AMD built much smaller and much more power efficient GPU's than the competetion, yet only sacrificed a small ammount of performance.

 

[humbug]

Nvidia have lost 2% market share to AMD this quarter, AMD cards performance are on a Parr with Nvidia and at a lower price across the range, and OpenCL direct compute is hugely more powerful on AMD cards while using 10% more power.

Nothing at all wrong with that.

 

[555BUK]

555BUK, your AMD Dom and Gloom rhetoric is getting a bit to much.

I just miss the days of true competetion. Ohh how I loved my Athlon XP M 2500+ and x2 3200+ processors. I would also love it if AMD released a modern day equivelent.

 

[555BUK]

Nvidia have lost 2% market share to AMD this quarter, AMD cards performance are on a Parr with Nvidia at a lower price across the range, and OpenCL direct compute is hugely more powerful on AMD cards while using 10% more power.

Nothing at all wrong with that.

The problem is that AMD's margin is much less than NVidia's for every card sold, and that the total number of graphics cards sold is falling. Look at how much AMD has had to cut 7800/7900 prices to increase it's market share by 2%. NVidia pricing has been much more stable (dare I say overpirced).

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

OTH,Nvdia went more AMD-like as they stripped out more compute abilities,and AMD went more Nvidia like with added compute abilities. AMD did their Fermi like step this generation. If Tahiti was more gaming optimised,it would probably have had a 256 bit memory controller,meaning it probably have been more like a GK104 in size and power consumption. Nvidia also released the GK104 later and AMD admitted they were quite conservative with Tahiti in design IIRC - it seems they used their experience with it to design the later GPUs.

It does appear both AMD and Nvidia are drawing out the generations this time as both the refreshes are being released next year. It seems this is mainly down to TSMC.

In the long-term GCN is going to be very important for AMD,if they want to continue making CPUs.

 

[Martini1991]

Yet last year when Zacate was launched,both Intel and AMD were both using 40NM/45NM design processes. Yet the 45NM Atom still turned out poorer overall. The reason why the newer Atoms do better is down to the process shrink down to 32NM. You saw that with Nehalem to SB.

Zacate was a mostly a design using automated tools,just like a lot of ARM licensees like Nvidia who don't design the cores but modify parts and integrate them with their own IP.

The current AMD Zacate chips were meant to be shrunk down to 28NM,but they shelved that so they could bring Jaguar forward.

I'm not sure why the technicalities are brought in.
They won't be able to penetrate the mobile market if their APU's are using twice as much power as the Intel stuff, performance aside (I'd take the AMD stuff personally)

And it's not just the fabrication, AMD themselves have gone to some lengths to make their new tablet/netbook stuff more power efficient than their previous offerings, but as far as I'm aware, both Hondo and Ontario (And desna etc) are 40nm.
Not vastly different from when AMD stayed 40nm on GPU's and made their designs more efficient.

 

[233]

i could imagine that apple might eye up AMD or parts of AMD

they have a ridiculous pile of cash on hand and could buy amd out with only a tiny fraction of their on hand cash reserves. They also have the backing and the size to invest and restructure AMD and the requirements for the products that AMD produce be it desktops/laptops/tablets/phones

 

[Antowns]

I'm quite enjoying the cheap prices, hopefully it won't end badly though.