AMD: What happened?

[sandorski]

AMD's APUs are top notch, BD will probably be more competitive as it is tweaked in the future.

 

[IlllI]

Buying ATI was a really smart move.

maybe, except what they paid for ATI was a dumb move. they overpaid for ATI by alot. i think they ended up writing off like 1 billion because they overestimated the value of ATI.
a ~smarter~ move would have been to put their egos aside and buy nvidia. they would have been in a much better position today, they'd have their foot in the mobile market, more presence with tesla/cuda etc. (assuming those ideas would have been implemented in amd, which is probably assuming a lot since i have a feeling amd would have found a way to screw that up as well)

 

[pelov]

AMD really needed a passionate CEO who knew how to get stuff done. JHH is that person

A maniac?

I agree, they did need somebody with some direction and ability to judge the markets, but Huang and nV? that's a lot of unnecessary baggage, personality, illegal business practices...

The good news for AMD is that the desktop space doesn't matter all that much anymore, so losing the enthusiast space to Intel shouldn't matter all that much so long as they've already got their ship steered in a separate direction. It seems this Read fellow seems to agree considering their latest FA day presentations.

 

[Idontcare]

A maniac?

I agree, they did need somebody with some direction and ability to judge the markets, but Huang and nV? that's a lot of unnecessary baggage, personality, illegal business practices...

The good news for AMD is that the desktop space doesn't matter all that much anymore, so losing the enthusiast space to Intel shouldn't matter all that much so long as they've already got their ship steered in a separate direction. It seems this Read fellow seems to agree considering their latest FA day presentations.

When your competition is the "maniac" at NV and the questionably legit business practices of Intel...yeah, you need to fight fire with fire if you plan on living long enough to see tomorrow.

AMD isn't UNICEF or PETA, dead puppies and baby seal blood should be on the table if it is on the table at their competitors.

 

[pelov]

When your competition is the "maniac" at NV and the questionably legit business practices of Intel...yeah, you need to fight fire with fire if you plan on living long enough to see tomorrow.

AMD isn't UNICEF or PETA, dead puppies and baby seal blood should be on the table if it is on the table at their competitors.

Oh no, haha, I agree. AMD hasn't exactly been squeaky clean either, but Intel is a saint when compared to nV.

Frankly, I think an AMD/nV merger would have suited nV more than it would have AMD. At least with ATi they're producing chips that perform well within a set power envelope which would have been impossible with nVidia. They did overpay and bring GCN/Fusion way too late and that can be attributed to the lack of direction and execution that AMD lacked at the helm. I guess that's been AMD's problem over the last few years: they've consistently been about 2-3 years late. 2 years late to the netbook craze. 2 years too late with Bulldozer and they'll be 2 years too late with their HSA agenda.

 

[IntelUser2000]

In the Athlon XP days, the IPC was very strong that they really didn't need much of an increase when they moved to A64, all they had to do is bump up the clock speeds and the processor scaled really well to speed bumps.

Are you implying the Athlon 64 got small IPC gains? Because that is so not true. The gains they had were at least on par, if not better as the original Athlon did over previous generations. AMD themselves had said 20% was from the integrated memory controller and the rest from architectural improvements for a total of 30%.

 

[Dark Shroud]

maybe, except what they paid for ATI was a dumb move. they overpaid for ATI by alot. i think they ended up writing off like 1 billion because they overestimated the value of ATI.
a ~smarter~ move would have been to put their egos aside and buy nvidia. they would have been in a much better position today, they'd have their foot in the mobile market, more presence with tesla/cuda etc. (assuming those ideas would have been implemented in amd, which is probably assuming a lot since i have a feeling amd would have found a way to screw that up as well)

The problem with that is JJH won't let anyone buy Nvidia unless he's still running the company/branch.

AMD also has very good mobile chips that have been gaining grounds in recent years.

 

[Olikan]

a ~smarter~ move would have been to put their egos aside and buy nvidia. they would have been in a much better position today, they'd have their foot in the mobile market, more presence with tesla/cuda etc. (assuming those ideas would have been implemented in amd, which is probably assuming a lot since i have a feeling amd would have found a way to screw that up as well)

maybe.... ati had Imageon at that time, hard to say, but amd could be in qualcomm position right now, if amd didn't overpayed for ati.

and, openCl have alot momentum right now, will have even more, when intel support it, don't forget of avx2....cuda is already dead

 

[alent1234]

didn't AMD have it's own ARM division that it sold off just like Intel sold off theirs? I can't remember the name but they are fairly successful for whoever bought them


http://www.amd.com/us/press-releases/Pages/qualcomm_acquires_handheld_graphics-2009jan13.aspx

here it is. genius management sold to qualcomm just as the mobile revolution started at dirt cheap prices

and
http://www.amd.com/us/press-releases/Pages/Press_Release_128680.aspx

probably a few more, but these guys sold off their best chance of success AFTER the iPhone was announced and was selling very well. and right about the time the first Droid came out.

 

[sm625]

For a long time I had a running arguement with a collegue at work who said buying ATI was a mistake, while I supported it. But now I am not so sure, or maybe the problem was that they paid way too much for the company.

There's just a lot of money floating around out there. When I look at the valuation of a company like apple, and then I actually use one of their products and experience nothing but endless frustration and aggravation, I can clearly see that billions or even tens of billions can evaporate in the blink of an eye.

 

[SlowSpyder]

IPC has never been an AMD strong point since the Athlon XP days really and this is why I think things have become a bit scewed with their 'more cores' strategy. The Athlon 64 being 64bit and it being priced significantly lower than the Intel Pentium 4/D is what kept AMD in competition. As soon as the dual core variants were released, it left Intel's Pentium 4 in the dust, and Intel spun wheels until they started getting clock gains with 'Core 2' series release. (Core duo clock speeds were too low to show significant gains.)

A 1.8GHz A64 was as fast to faster than a 3.0GHz P4. I would say that AMD's IPC was its strong point, actually.

 

[blckgrffn]

A 1.8GHz A64 was as fast to faster than a 3.0GHz P4. I would say that AMD's IPC was its strong point, actually.

Yes. And at that time you could get ~2.4 Ghz AMD chips with double the L2 cache if you wanted which really made AMD the clear pick in many scenarios. Like gaming. Lo, how they have fallen!

On that note, does anyone want a S939 3000+? I have one with nothing for it to do, so it sits on the shelf by a lowly 1.3 ghz Duron...

 

[Phynaz]

The problem with that is JJH won't let anyone buy Nvidia unless he's still running the company/branch.

As a publicly traded company it's not up to him.

I will admit that in most cases the execs make sure they get a nice sweet deal for themselves as part of the negotiations.

 

[exar333]

Yes. And at that time you could get ~2.4 Ghz AMD chips with double the L2 cache if you wanted which really made AMD the clear pick in many scenarios. Like gaming. Lo, how they have fallen!

On that note, does anyone want a S939 3000+? I have one with nothing for it to do, so it sits on the shelf by a lowly 1.3 ghz Duron...

Yeah, kidding! I remember my trusty ol' A64 3200+ Winchestor that ran beautifully at 2.5ghz. It was pretty comparable to a P4 ~3800ghz or so in most tasks. Faster in gaming/IPC tasks, but sometimes a little slower in encoding.

The DFI Nforce4 board was $100, and the CPU was ~$190. I think I spend more on my 1GB of DDR (Plat rev 2) than the CPU!

My how times have changed....!

 

[blckgrffn]

Yeah, kidding! I remember my trusty ol' A64 3200+ Winchestor that ran beautifully at 2.5ghz. It was pretty comparable to a P4 ~3800ghz or so in most tasks. Faster in gaming/IPC tasks, but sometimes a little slower in encoding.

The DFI Nforce4 board was $100, and the CPU was ~$190. I think I spend more on my 1GB of DDR (Plat rev 2) than the CPU!

My how times have changed....!

The good old days!

I had one of these badboys:

http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/K8/AMD-Athlon 64 3700+ - ADA3700AEP5AR (ADA3700BOX).html

Clawhammer, baby!

Up to ~2.6 ghz, DFI Lan Party, OCZ Powerstream (?) 500W w/adjustable pots, 6800U 512MB and 2x 36GB Raptors wrapped up in a Thermaltake Tsunami.

I am pretty sure that it was nigh untouchable by the blue team.

The Mushkin Blue Line (nearly stolen from the FS/FT forums because it wouldn't run at stock voltage) ran loved the voltage, even though the board could only reliably feed it something like 3.1-3.3V. Something like 2-2-2-5 1T @ 466.

Ah, college, when all my money was funneled back into my PC(s)...

Now I have to make excuses, like how MC has such a great bundle :eyeroll:

 

[meloz]

When i built my first system a year ago, the Phenom II was an obvious choice.

Not really. Phenom II has always been the second choice, Intel made sure of it.

As for what happened to AMD, they lost all memory. They repeated most / all mistakes Intel made with Pentium 4. Now they are paying the price.

 

[exar333]

Not really. Phenom II has always been the second choice, Intel made sure of it.

As for what happened to AMD, they lost all memory. They repeated most / all mistakes Intel made with Pentium 4. Now they are paying the price.

Very accurate.

The issue is that AMD doesn't have the OEM and vendor relationships that Intel had when it mis-stepped. Also, the peformance delta wasn't quite as severe with P4 vs. AXP/A64. A64 definitely grew the performance lead, but P4C was pretty competitive, and very easy to OC as well, but more $$$.

 

[Vesku]

Actually, I'd say the difference during the P4 era was more relevant just minimized by other factors. At that time even a regular computer user could probably notice the difference between a budget cpu and a premium cpu just by trying to use the computer normally. As was pointed out though, AMD lacks the industry clout ($) and connections to paper over poor execution.

Funny that it was an AMD CEO who said "Only real men have fabs." Someone linked a speech by a senior Intel x86 engineer, part of his experience at Intel was that outside of upper management it was a tossup between the Fabs and Marketing for who had the most clout. IMO, Intel today is partly due to a re-balancing of influence from the P4 missteps with the x86 engineers having more input.

 

[blckgrffn]

Not really. Phenom II has always been the second choice, Intel made sure of it.

As for what happened to AMD, they lost all memory. They repeated most / all mistakes Intel made with Pentium 4. Now they are paying the price.

This is just mind-numbingly unthinkable. They could even look to Ultra-Sparc to see where their strategy was going.

I hope a few years from now a book is written so we can find out what led them down this road. Group think? A super powerful exec? WHY? Their must have been a lot of hope riding on the process technology after they realized how low the IPC of their design was...

 

[Idontcare]

This is just mind-numbingly unthinkable. They could even look to Ultra-Sparc to see where their strategy was going.

I hope a few years from now a book is written so we can find out what led them down this road. Group think? A super powerful exec? WHY? Their must have been a lot of hope riding on the process technology after they realized how low the IPC of their design was...

AMD kinda modeled themselves after SUN in more ways than one. They went for the "compute throughput" model like SUN did with Niagara, followed through with the whole "everyone needs to have a corporate blog" mentality, and went fabless like SUN.

Problem is that model did not work out so well for SUN. Not sure why AMD thought they could pull it off.

 

[Dravic]

Yes. And at that time you could get ~2.4 Ghz AMD chips with double the L2 cache if you wanted which really made AMD the clear pick in many scenarios. Like gaming. Lo, how they have fallen!

On that note, does anyone want a S939 3000+? I have one with nothing for it to do, so it sits on the shelf by a lowly 1.3 ghz Duron...

Turn that 1.3 ghz duron into a smoothwall box , that's what I did with mine.. complete overkill.

 

[PingSpike]

Not really. Phenom II has always been the second choice, Intel made sure of it.

As for what happened to AMD, they lost all memory. They repeated most / all mistakes Intel made with Pentium 4. Now they are paying the price.

That's what it appeared like to me. In the A64 and early X2 days I felt like they really had Intel by the balls. Come on, prescott was a hot piece of shit that sucked. You had to hold your nose to buy one of those turds, even if AMD was getting a little expensive. But its almost as if they some how thought they'd dealt a killing blow to Intel at that point. And it still boggles my mind.

They'd won a battle but they were still the underdog and had a long way to go to secure their beachhead. Did they think Intel wouldn't adapt and would just keep releasing prescotts from then on while they slowly took over the whole market with A64? Apparently because AMD seemed to be wandering around off balance and confused from then on. I feel like any idiot knew Intel was going to come back and probably hard but either AMD just didn't have the resources to execute or the management weren't just any idiots. With how late and lackluster the response to core was you'd think AMD only heard about it the day it was released for public purchase.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

What happens is simple: their CPU engineers suck. It's not really necessary to look more into it.

Only products from them worth buying are their graphics cards and APUs.

 

[IlllI]

Phenom II is what Phenom I SHOULD have been.

 

[exar333]

What happens is simple: their CPU engineers suck. It's not really necessary to look more into it.

Only products from them worth buying are their graphics cards and APUs.

That could definitely be part of it, but an engineer cannot just make a decision to go against the whole CPU arch they are told to build. They can make the best of it, mitigate as many of the deficiencies as possible (ie Intel worked wonders with the fsb before going IMC).

In the end, if the 'top brass' dictate a certain direction, the engineer can only do so much. I don't know the inner-workings of what happened at AMD, but I also would love to get a 'behind the blow' perspective of what went down.

I doubt it was simple, and I am sure it was wrought with bad decisions by folks who were either in over their heads or just plain stubborn to change their tune.