AMD Nabs Apple Graphics Chip Designer

[blastingcap]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57580297-92/amd-nabs-apple-graphics-chip-designer/

More info here at none other than Anandtech.com: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6907/the-king-is-back-raja-koduri-leaves-apple-returns-to-amd

Excerpt:

I remember back when AMD’s CTO of the Graphics Product Group, Raja Koduri, first quietly left the company for Apple. This was hot on the heels of Apple’s hiring of another AMD GPU CTO, Bob Drebin. At the time (2009) I didn’t understand why Apple would want so many smart graphics guys on staff, were they working on their own GPU? Mac OS X was hardly a gaming platform of choice back then so the idea didn’t make much sense to me. It turns out that Steve Jobs wanted to surround himself with the absolute best in the business. Today, the impact of the work of folks like Bob Drebin, Raja Koduri, Jim Keller and others is quite evident. Apple tends to ship some of the fastest GPU hardware in the mobile industry, and its work in bringing high-DPI displays to virtually all of its products is unparalleled. Apple also played a huge role in driving the performance of Intel’s processor graphics. It turns out, that’s what happens when you hire a bunch of crazy smart GPU folks.

Last year AMD announced it re-hired one of the folks who eventually landed at Apple: CPU architect Jim Keller. Keller was responsible for one of the more memorable AMD CPU architectures, as well as played an unknown role in the development of Apple’s own CPU roadmap (Keller likely had a hand in the planning for Swift).

Today, word of another major hire surfaced earlier than expected: Raja Koduri now works at AMD once again. For the past 4 years Raja has been working on all things graphics at Apple, but now thanks to a great offer and a fear of getting too comfortable at Apple, he's back at AMD.


Nags, nabs; what's a consonant between friends?
-ViRGE

 

[Olikan]

fisrt Jim Keller, than Gustavson... now this guy
what the point of this articles? one, 2...20... high ranked guys can't do much

at the same time, i wonder why they join AMD... maybe there is something that they know, and we don't?

 

[Sable]

nags lol

 

[Gikaseixas]

APU's seem to be the focus

 

[smackababy]

So AMD's performance will go up slower and their price will be higher? That is why this guy will impact right?

 

[notty22]

The gpu division lost alot of personnel through lay offs and people changing companies. AMD needed to re-stock with key personnel.

There is a another article examining the never settle bundle, how much it might be costing AMD.
I can post the text. You need to use adblock to stop seekingalpha from wanting a membership.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/135...never-settle-cost-a-bundle?source=google_news

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is probably the most interesting speculative play on the market. Despite the obvious competitive pressures that it faces from rival Intel (INTC) in the PC processor space and from giant Nvidia (NVDA) in the graphics space, there is a pretty decent chance that once the company sorts itself out, the stock could go to ~$5-6. The main driver for a bull thesis isn't market share gains in PC processors, but instead a diversification away from the PC. However, during the most recent earnings call, it seems that my suspicions about the firm's "Never Settle" bundle, in which the company basically gave away a bunch of high end games with their graphics cards to stimulate sales, came true.
Sales Up, Profit Down
While AMD's management bragged that they likely gained share in the high end desktop add-in graphics board market thanks to aggressive bundling, the harsh reality is that this came at the expense of operating profit. Take a quick look at the most recent earnings report to see just what I'm talking about:

(Click to enlarge)
So what we have is that while GPU sales were up 3% Q/Q, operating income in the segment was down 27% with the excuse given that there were lower GPU sales to OEMs. This is probably true, but it's deeper. See, when AMD sells GPUs to OEMs, it's not trying to entice them with bribes of free game codes. OEMs typically pick the part with the best performance per watt per dollar for the particular design that they are trying to sell, and it seems that as OEM sales are lower, AMD is losing market share among the OEMs, probably most markedly notebooks.
But to the retail add-in-board crowd, the free games obviously helped. Sure, the top line and probably market share numbers will look less dismal, but the bottom line got whacked and whacked hard despite both an increase in ASPs as well as market share gains in the top end of the discrete add-in-board market. This means that, as suspected, AMD is paying these game developers a bundle in order to be able to supply its customers with these game bundles. No surprise.
Is This A Strategic Move?
Nvidia has traditionally had a better developer relations team than AMD. That's why Nvidia's drivers are better, out-of-the-box game compatibility is better, and multi-GPU works better. That being said, AMD is probably trying to gain market share in PCs at the expense of profits in order to win over developer mind-share. The game console wins also are a nice, inexpensive way to do that, as the developers are essentially forced to learn the AMD hardware inside and out.
That being said, the argument that Nvidia is doomed as a result of the AMD console wins doesn't really hold water as it seems unlikely that Nvidia's developer relations team is sitting around twiddling its thumbs while AMD, to quote Rory Read, "steals the bacon". AMD owning the consoles is nice, and AMD winning more market share by (effectively) bribing its customers with free games is also nice, but this doesn't solve the long term problem that the company has: where are the GAAP earnings?
Conclusion
AMD's turnaround story is an interesting one, and if they can really hit free-cash-flow positive during 2H 2013, then I see big upside for the stock. That being said, don't let these "tricks" of shipping $150 worth of games with a "$449" video card to gain market share fool you into thinking things have fundamentally changed in the landscape; they haven't. AMD is buying itself some publicity for when the Jon Peddie GPU market share numbers come out, and it's this sort of "window dressing" that I'm seeing AMD do across all of its segments (from bragging about how great "Temash" and "Kabini" will be to promoting its market share gains) that could certainly help keep sentiment up while the fundamentals take their time to catch up.
Will the Street buy this? We'll find out soon enough.
Disclosure: I am long AMD, INTC, NVDA. (More...)

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[blastingcap]

nags lol

Lol sorry for the typo, I am going to leave it there for comedic value.

 

[Stoneburner]

APU's seem to be the focus

Is this a comment about the guy's ethnicity?


Oh, sorry I misunderstood.

 

[Gikaseixas]

Is this a comment about the guy's ethnicity?


Oh, sorry I misunderstood.

Your paranoia will get you killed - like ur sig
Now seriously, just addressing Olikan's post.

 

[tviceman]

Good move by AMD. I seriously think this is an entirely different company than 12-18 months ago. Going after PC developers with support and bundles, leveraging their best GPU and CPU assets to nab all the big console makers, and dramatically improving driver software for the graphics cards. I know Intel will be just fine for a long foreseeable future, but I sincerely see Intel not having the same fortunes that it had from 2010-2012 in the coming years. I think Nvidia will continue to evolve and finally be a sure hit when they release their first custom ARM cores, and I see AMD fighting back and regaining share in the high volume notebook space that Intel has recently dominated AMD in. It really is good news all around. A competitive AMD will keep Intel and Nvidia in check. Six months ago AMD was bleeding money at the rate of going out of business this year. Now, they're on the verge of turning the company around entirely. :thumbsup:

 

[Stoneburner]

Thread title should be changed to "AMD GOT ITS CHAIN BACK!" since the dude was stolen by Apple from AMD first.

And even though Anand seems to have glowing praise for Mr. Koduri, AMD's graphics division has not been hurting technologically. I'm not sure I understood the hints about Koduri's "impact" being coterminous with Keller's impact.

 

[raghu78]

overall this is good news after the depressing financial results from AMD. Mark Papermaster, Jim Keller, John Gustafson and now Raja Koduri. AMD is adding key technical personnel to drive their product roadmap. The one I am most excited about is Jim Keller - the architect of Athlon 64. His influence on AMD CPU roadmap and designs will be felt after the excavator generation, around late 2015. the CPU division really needs to do better as its the one pulling AMD down. The game console chip revenue will help return AMD to profitability. But for long term profitability and sustainability AMD needs to compete with Intel in the server market and high end desktop market.

 

[AnandThenMan]

...AMD needs to compete with Intel in the server market and high end desktop market.

Server for sure. High end desktop, I honestly wonder if in 5 years the market will even exist outside of a small group of enthusiasts. But either way, the tech is very similar for both markets.

 

[MrK6]

overall this is good news after the depressing financial results from AMD. Mark Papermaster, Jim Keller, John Gustafson and now Raja Koduri. AMD is adding key technical personnel to drive their product roadmap. The one I am most excited about is Jim Keller - the architect of Athlon 64. His influence on AMD CPU roadmap and designs will be felt after the excavator generation, around late 2015. the CPU division really needs to do better as its the one pulling AMD down. The game console chip revenue will help return AMD to profitability. But for long term profitability and sustainability AMD needs to compete with Intel in the server market and high end desktop market.

Hard to screw it up more than some of the previous degenerates holding the reins did. Hopefully these folks kick the tires and light the fires for the company as it has some great products, but really needs to round out.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Beat me to it Just read this

Good Luck AMD!

 

[parvadomus]

i wonder why they join AMD... maybe there is something that they know, and we don't?

I wonder what people think when they say this kind of things. Why would anyone change his job? Maybe they pay them better? :awe:

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Anand reports that AMD is allowing Raja to pursue a Pixar like company side project

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Move apple folks from apple and here are the results....aholes!

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-...johnson-is-destroying-the-company-2012-6?op=1

 

[grimpr]

Move apple folks from apple and here are the results....aholes!

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-...johnson-is-destroying-the-company-2012-6?op=1

Just wrong, Raja Koduri is a PC,ATI & AMD engineer and not in anyway associated culturally with Apple drones and executives from outer space. He came back to his home, the pc x86 world.

 

[Fx1]

The gpu division lost alot of personnel through lay offs and people changing companies. AMD needed to re-stock with key personnel.

There is a another article examining the never settle bundle, how much it might be costing AMD.
I can post the text. You need to use adblock to stop seekingalpha from wanting a membership.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/135...never-settle-cost-a-bundle?source=google_news

That idiot seems to think hes a mystic.

27% decrease is likely to be mobile related and that fits better with OEM sales than anything to do with never settle bundles.

Also how much do you really think AMD pays the developers for those games? Bulk licence keys will be cheap. No retail margins to worry about. No DVD costs either. Its also in the interest of publishers to see PC gamers upgrade because people who spend on hardware will spend more on software.

Not to mention that only select retailers get the bundles which says that it might be costing retailers some money for the increased sales on the back of the bundle.

No one spends 27% of their revenue on free software.

Just a dumb ass blogger who knows nothing as usual. The reason i rock Ghostery is so these losers dont get paid.

 

[sontin]

That idiot seems to think hes a mystic.

27% decrease is likely to be mobile related and that fits better with OEM sales than anything to do with never settle bundles.

Sure, OEM deals which have better margins than workstation sales, channel sales of AIB cards and console royalties (which are 100%...). :|

Also how much do you really think AMD pays the developers for those games? Bulk licence keys will be cheap. No retail margins to worry about. No DVD costs either. Its also in the interest of publishers to see PC gamers upgrade because people who spend on hardware will spend more on software.

Why want EA, Eidos and Co. $50 for a download game when they can sell them for <$10 and making so much money?
Why do they not going into the F2P world with these >$20 millions budget games? Yeah right.

Not to mention that only select retailers get the bundles which says that it might be costing retailers some money for the increased sales on the back of the bundle.

AMD and nVidia buying only a certain amount of keys. So they are limited. That's the reason why only select retailers have them.

No one spends 27% of their revenue on free software.

AMD does...

 

[Fx1]

Sure, OEM deals which have better margins than workstation sales, channel sales of AIB cards and console royalties (which are 100%...). :|



Why want EA, Eidos and Co. $50 for a download game when they can sell them for <$10 and making so much money?
Why do they not going into the F2P world with these >$20 millions budget games? Yeah right.



AMD and nVidia buying only a certain amount of keys. So they are limited. That's the reason why only select retailers have them.



AMD does...

You have no idea how business works clearly.

 

[sontin]

Yeah, what a counter. :awe:

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Just wrong, Raja Koduri is a PC,ATI & AMD engineer and not in anyway associated culturally with Apple drones and executives from outer space. He came back to his home, the pc x86 world.

point taken, I don't claim to know this guy. Personally I want amd performing good again.

 

[raghu78]

people please do not respond to off topic posts. there are people here to thread crap any AMD related thread or discussion. by responding you are derailing the thread as much as the people who are guilty of thread crapping.