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Apple Hires High-Ranking Chip Designer from AMD.

I had lunch with a high ranking AMD chip designer today, and in my opinion AMD is going through a "time of change" or - although the AMD'ers would cringe to hear me say it - what Intel's former CEO Andy Grove would call an inflection point (]link to article about inflection points). I don't think it's clear how things will play out, but what is clear is that the industry as a whole is changing. The change from performance to low-power, the cost of fabs, the rise of mobile and the tablet. I'd say things changed fundamentally with the release of the iPhone, but I'm sure that there would be people who would say that it started before that and I'm giving Mr. Jobs too much credit. Regardless, for sure it's a time of change and this creates a motivation or an opportunity for people to change companies or careers.
 
The layoffs late last year affected primarily marketing and PR not engineering, when did AMD last had its round of chops for engineering?
 
Who told you that? They eliminated a large part of their top engineers, including John Bruno and the guy that designed Crossfire.
 
If you're asking if AMD is getting out of the high-end desktop CPU business, there won't be a high-end desktop CPU business in a few years.
 
bononos said:
The layoffs late last year affected primarily marketing and PR not engineering, when did AMD last had its round of chops for engineering?
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Not true - engineering was hit too. I know some engineers who were affected.

pm said:
I had lunch with a high ranking AMD chip designer today, and in my opinion AMD is going through a "time of change" or - although the AMD'ers would cringe to hear me say it - what Intel's former CEO Andy Grove would call an inflection point (]link to article about inflection points). I don't think it's clear how things will play out, but what is clear is that the industry as a whole is changing. The change from performance to low-power, the cost of fabs, the rise of mobile and the tablet. I'd say things changed fundamentally with the release of the iPhone, but I'm sure that there would be people who would say that it started before that and I'm giving Mr. Jobs too much credit. Regardless, for sure it's a time of change and this creates a motivation or an opportunity for people to change companies or careers.
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Very interesting read, thanks. Maybe I should check out his book.
 
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pm said:
I had lunch with a high ranking AMD chip designer today, and in my opinion AMD is going through a "time of change" or - although the AMD'ers would cringe to hear me say it - what Intel's former CEO Andy Grove would call an inflection point (]link to article about inflection points). I don't think it's clear how things will play out, but what is clear is that the industry as a whole is changing. The change from performance to low-power, the cost of fabs, the rise of mobile and the tablet. I'd say things changed fundamentally with the release of the iPhone, but I'm sure that there would be people who would say that it started before that and I'm giving Mr. Jobs too much credit. Regardless, for sure it's a time of change and this creates a motivation or an opportunity for people to change companies or careers.
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Think of the actual performance change from a Q6600 to a 2500k - < 100% increase at best in a 4 year period.

Look at the same amount of time... from a 450mhz p2 (1998) to a 2.5ghz p4 (2002).... which has had a greater increase in the same time span.

I agree fully with PM and where the industry is headed. Lower power high performance chips with not much improvement over what we have currently... until a shift in technology is made.
 
Rhoxed said:
I agree fully with PM and where the industry is headed. Lower power high performance chips with not much improvement over what we have currently... until a shift in technology is made.
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Maybe while the cpus suffer from increasing heat density issues, some type of wireless breakthrough will be one of the new frontiers?

EDIT: Or looking at things from another direction, maybe some improvement in cooling and battery tech? (I noticed Andy Grove has advocated Intel get into the battery manufacturing business)
 
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High-Ranking in terms of position? That doesn't mean they were any good and considering the fail BD was it might actually be a good thing.
 
SonicIce said:
If you're asking if AMD is getting out of the high-end desktop CPU business, there won't be a high-end desktop CPU business in a few years.
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There are too many applications that demand high performance for the desktop CPU market to disappear. I doubt the desktop CPU market is going anywhere anytime soon, but even if it does die, the worst disruption I can see happening is higher-end server CPUs filling the void.
 
theevilsharpie said:
There are too many applications that demand high performance for the desktop CPU market to disappear. I doubt the desktop CPU market is going anywhere anytime soon, but even if it does die, the worst disruption I can see happening is higher-end server CPUs filling the void.
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That's already what happens. LGA 2011, anybody?
 
Intel17 said:
I'd imagine that the CPU architects at somewhere like Intel get paid $150-200K pretty easily.
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That would be some of their lowest level engineers. Anyone who is actually at that level of semiconductor design at Intel is probably closer to half a million or more, imhe.
 
I'd look out for Apple buying a large plot of land. You'd figure with all of their cash they should be able to provide everything from semiconductor engineers to fabs and right down to the products and keep it all in house. All they need to do is spend the money...

and start with a large plot of land 😛
 
Phynaz said:
Who told you that? They eliminated a large part of their top engineers, including John Bruno and the guy that designed Crossfire.
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CTho9305 said:
Not true - engineering was hit too. I know some engineers who were affected.
......
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The OP was asking about the cpu business and this is a cpu subforum. So like I said from what I gathered from the news and from threads here months back, it looked like AMD axed the Graphics PG hard - guys like Killebrew, Bergman got the chop.

I also said primarily (not only) PR and marketing- my question was whether AMD ever conducted a big RIF on its CPU engineering dept recently.
 
bononos said:
The OP was asking about the cpu business and this is a cpu subforum. So like I said from what I gathered from the news and from threads here months back, it looked like AMD axed the Graphics PG hard - guys like Killebrew, Bergman got the chop.

I also said primarily (not only) PR and marketing- my question was whether AMD ever conducted a big RIF on its CPU engineering dept recently.
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Yes last November, along with everybody else.
 
Arkaign said:
That would be some of their lowest level engineers. Anyone who is actually at that level of semiconductor design at Intel is probably closer to half a million or more, imhe.
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"lowest level engineers" would be graduates with a B.S. degree and they would not be making $150K.
 
bononos said:
The OP was asking about the cpu business and this is a cpu subforum. So like I said from what I gathered from the news and from threads here months back, it looked like AMD axed the Graphics PG hard - guys like Killebrew, Bergman got the chop.

I also said primarily (not only) PR and marketing- my question was whether AMD ever conducted a big RIF on its CPU engineering dept recently.
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My answer was about the CPU business. Most of the people I know at AMD are CPU design engineers, and they were significantly affected by the last round of layoffs.
 
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