[allthingsd.com] AMD getting ready for another round of Layoffs

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NXIL

Senior member
Apr 14, 2005
774
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0
For any of you too young to have seen it, the movie "Office Space" is THE best documentary film on consultants, what they do, how they "think", and how they operate.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151804/

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/office_space/

It has Jennifer Aniston in one of her best roles--though it's hard for her to top 1993's "Leprechaun", which foreshadowed her marriage to Brad Pitt.

Written by Mike Judge (Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill, various spin offs.....) Judge has an advanced degree in Physics from UC San Diego. Translation: he is pretty smart, and is brutally observant. Note: he also wrote "Idiocracy".

Off topic? No: the consultants in the movie are now at AMD.
 
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ninaholic37

ninaholic37

Golden Member
Apr 13, 2012
1,883
31
91
NXIL said:
For any of you too young to have seen it, the movie "Office Space" is THE best documentary film on consultants, what they do, how they "think", and how they operate.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151804/

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/office_space/

It has Jennifer Aniston in one of her best roles--though it's hard for her to top 1993's "Leprechaun", which foreshadowed her marriage to Brad Pitt.

Written by Mike Judge (Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill, various spin offs.....) Judge has an advanced degree in Physics from UC San Diego. Translation: he is pretty smart, and is brutally observant. Note: he also wrote "Idiocracy".

Off topic? No: the consultants in the movie are now at AMD.
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Ahah my friend recommended this to me like 10 years ago, and I still haven't watched it yet. Looking at the trailer, it seems to be just what I need to check out tonight. Thanks for the reminder. :)
 
Phynaz

Phynaz

Lifer
Mar 13, 2006
10,140
819
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AtenRa said:
There are a lot of changes/restructuring happening globally in AMD currently that have a big impact in sales and that effects everything. Thinks will start to change again to the better in a couple of quarters from now.
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Name one company that has cut it's way to prosperity.
 
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beginner99

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2009
5,315
1,760
136
CTho9305 said:
I've heard that the consultants are sometimes brought in to avoid any appearance of improper behavior in the selection of who goes and who stays. There's lawsuit risks if you end up getting rid of too many old/young male/female raceA/raceB people.
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I have no idea if you are right but if, then that also tells you a lot about the state of the current society...

Back to topic. Here (not US) AMD is either unknown or has a bad reputation. People who are more "knowledgeable" on this specific subject are very rare. Or said otherwise they have no, absolutely no brand value.
 
F

Ferzerp

Diamond Member
Oct 12, 1999
6,438
107
106
Centauri said:
Acquired by somebody else.
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What state was ATI in compared to nvidia at the time of aquisition? At this point, if we just look at market cap (not really the place to decide if that's a good metric for value), nvidia is 5 times the value of the combined AMD/ATI right now. Intel is something like 60x the value.
 
Nemesis 1

Nemesis 1

Lifer
Dec 30, 2006
11,366
2
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Tsavo said:
Let's see. A Tech company that eviscerated its R&D department and is dropping engineers like they've got the plague.

They can't sell off the company...at least not its x86 parts because IP deals with Intel won't transfer to a new company.

So what next?

I hope you are all looking forward to buying AMD branded crayons.
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Oh i think intel will let another player into x86. I don't believe they have to now because of ARM but NV would be a good company to buy AMD Intel /NV could come to an agreement on ATI
 
J

JumpingJack

Member
Mar 7, 2006
61
0
0
Ferzerp said:
What state was ATI in compared to nvidia at the time of aquisition? At this point, if we just look at market cap (not really the place to decide if that's a good metric for value), nvidia is 5 times the value of the combined AMD/ATI right now. Intel is something like 60x the value.
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At the time AMD announced the intention to acquire ATI, ATI had a market cap of about 4.6 billion, AMD had a market cap of around 8 1/2 billion. Right now AMD is about 2 billion.

A few googles you will find cases, based on market caps, were ATI surpassed nVidia a few times.

Overall, the ati acquisition has not provided he ROI that AMD was expecting, at least not yet.
 
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A

Ajay

Lifer
Jan 8, 2001
16,094
8,112
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Man, as a tech company they have to innovate their way out of this mess. You'd think they'd clean house in every department and leave engineering for last (they'll still have to cut engineering given their financials).
 
C

ctsoth

Member
Feb 6, 2011
148
0
0
Phynaz said:
Name one company that has cut it's way to prosperity.
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Total rubbish. I advise that you investigate this topic yourself.

Anyway, as far as engineers and sales go, haven't most people on this forum been complaining for years about the quality of AMD products vs Intel, and downright misleading sales/advertising? You can't cheer for every side and expect credibility. The fact that these changes haven't been implemented before highlights the sluggish rate of reform inside of AMD.

I understand that AMD is loosing money hand over fist, a part that many people appear to have missed, and that their R&D budgets are inferior to that of Intel. I also think that some of AMD's decisions were simply bad decisions.
 
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A

Ajay

Lifer
Jan 8, 2001
16,094
8,112
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ctsoth said:
I understand that AMD is loosing money hand over fist, a part that many people appear to have missed, and that their R&D budgets are inferior to that of Intel. I also think that some of AMD's decisions were simply bad decisions.
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That's abundantly clear now (and has been for a while), the market seems to have picked up on it March. Heck, I was overly optimistic myself, but like the market seems to indicate, there have been too many mistakes and it appears as though internal turmoil is chewing the company up and Reed is cleaning house (1. to appease investors and 2. to get everyone on the same page, IMO).

AMD must have offered Keller a huge deal to get him to leave Apple.
 
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pelov

Diamond Member
Dec 6, 2011
3,510
6
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ctsoth said:
Anyway, as far as engineers and sales go, haven't most people on this forum been complaining for years about the quality of AMD products vs Intel, and downright misleading sales/advertising? You can't cheer for every side and expect credibility. The fact that these changes haven't been implemented before highlights the sluggish rate of reform inside of AMD.
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The decisions are made by upper tier management, not by the working engineers. If AMD really wanted to turn the tide, they'd completely dump everyone on their board and pretty much everyone in a high office position with the exception of Keller. Instead, they're opting to cut sales and engineers...
 
Revolution 11

Revolution 11

Senior member
Jun 2, 2011
952
79
91
If all those cuts were for inefficient or badly performing engineers, this would be a good move. More likely, there were both good and bad employees being cut which will harm AMD.

A question for those more knowledgeable in these matters: If Nvidia did end up buying the GPU division from AMD as part of a merger deal or some other arrangement, would that violate antitrust law? Would consumer GPUs count as a sufficient market for antitrust to apply here?
 
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pelov

Diamond Member
Dec 6, 2011
3,510
6
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Revolution 11 said:
A question for those more knowledgeable in these matters: If Nvidia did end up buying the GPU division from AMD as part of a merger deal or some other arrangement, would that violate antitrust law? Would consumer GPUs count as a sufficient market for antitrust to apply here?
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The better question would be why they would want to in the first place? Kepler's doing quite well in the consumer space and Quadro/Teslas are doing well HPC and workstation as well. nVidia would have more interest in AMD's CPU engineers and CPU IP blocks than their graphics division. The battle on the ARM front is being dominated by Qualcomm, Samsung and Apple and the Tegra 3 design is looking very outdated.
 
ShintaiDK

ShintaiDK

Lifer
Apr 22, 2012
20,378
145
106
inf64 said:
Why is this a surprise?
From the source:
The world economy is in a serious downturn and cuts are logical way to go(unless you want overstaffed inefficient money eating company that will go bankrupt in a year or two).
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If you dont invest yourself out of the crisis period you die.

AMD is doing just that, dying. They cut and save on the essentials and kill of any possible future they might have. Rory is the undertaker for AMD.

on the other side you can see Intel using record amounts on construction and R&D.
 
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bononos

Diamond Member
Aug 21, 2011
3,928
186
106
AtenRa said:
There are a lot of changes/restructuring happening globally in AMD currently that have a big impact in sales and that effects everything. Thinks will start to change again to the better in a couple of quarters from now.
Click to expand...

What is the aim of the big restructuring AMD globally that affects everything? Cutting engineers doesn't normally produce a good outcome in design/manufacturing corp.
 
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