Bay Trail benchmark appears online, crushes fastest Snapdragon ARM SoC

[SiliconWars]

So AMD didnt spend a cent in graphics technology R&D since 2005?

Yes of course, however they also have a discrete GPU business paying for it.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Not so much "problems" but having to make custom CPU's for Apple is adding costs they wouldn't have had they just had proper graphics.

What custom CPUs? Its regular CPUs they use.

And it seems you forget the power consumption part. Same when people compare a 35W discrete card with a single digit W IGP.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Not so much "problems" but having to make custom CPU's for Apple is adding costs they wouldn't have had they just had proper graphics.

Now Apple is demanding even more, which means bigger and bigger dies and stuff like Crystalwell which certainly didn't come cheap on the R&D budget. All of this could have been avoided and the money spent elsewhere.

AMD's aquisition of ATI might have cost them a lot, and they might have overspent, but at least they are still not spending it.

Intel's eDRAM will be leveraged in the datacenter with Xeon Phi.

Unlike AMD, Intel's R&D efforts eventually pay off...and usually quite well.

 

[Abwx]

During the time of the "illegal activities", AMD were capacity constrained anyway, so that had nothing to do with AMD's chances of becoming a true equal to Intel.

That s not true but it s not the adequate thread so i wont
go to length commenting theses issues.

 

[rgallant]

I thought amd's big issues was the world melt down in 2008 , being crippled by a high deit load but manageable if 2008 didn't happen, if they had a normal year to year operation , instead they had to give away most of their assets and work force. while high respected ceo's put as much money in their pockets that they could carry ,then walked or were fired.

 

[SiliconWars]

Intel's eDRAM will be leveraged in the datacenter with Xeon Phi.

Unlike AMD, Intel's R&D efforts eventually pay off...and usually quite well.

Yeah I can't wait to see how much Intel is making on Xeon Phi and how long it'll take to pay off the Larrabee R&D. Should be better than McAfee anyway, one would hope.

 

[CHADBOGA]

The various fines and payoffs intel has had to make as compensation is in stark disagreement with this. Intel's argument about capacity constraints weren't accepted by anyone.

The capacity constraints were clearly evident when AMD couldn't supply the retail channel, after they were providing CPU's to Dell, after Conroe's release.

With the release of Conroe, AMD's CPU's would have looked remarkably less attractive than they would have before Conroe, yet even with less attractive CPU's to offer, AMD were capacity constrained.

 

[mrmt]

Whoa whoa whoa. The misfortunes of AMD happened long before the ATI acquisition. The money issues go way deeper than ATI itself. AMD could have paid the same amount and would have been just fine, but there was a corporate culture of over-spending and embezzlement MANY YEARS prior to that, and no proper investments into R+D and technological advancements.

You are right when you say that the problems started well before the ATI acquisition, and that the acquisition itself is more of symptom of the arrogant and incompetent management of the time than the cause of the problem.

However, just look at the streak of bad decisions AMD had to take in order to survive:

- Settle for less than it could with Intel

- Tie itself to GLF until 2024

- The cuts in the engineering department

- Slower IC design cycle when compared to Intel

All these problems can be related to the weak balance sheet AMD presented after acquiring ATI. AMD would have 5.5 billion more to spend or weather losses if they didn't cash ATI shareholders out.

You may argue that AMD had to partner with a GPU designer, and I'll probably agree with it. What they shouldn't have done is to wreck their balance sheet in order to do that. Why not merger? Why not license the IP? Why not make a joint venture?

As of now AMD + ATI is smaller than AMD was at the time of the acquisition, and this is a reflex of what I'm talking here. The combination of incompetent management and weak balance sheet is hindering whatever efforts the new management team is making to save the company.

 

[SiliconWars]

However, just look at the streak of bad decisions AMD had to take in order to survive:

- Settle for less than it could with Intel

- Tie itself to GLF until 2024

- The cuts in the engineering department

- Slower IC design cycle when compared to Intel

All these problems can be related to the weak balance sheet AMD presented after acquiring ATI. AMD would have 5.5 billion more to spend or weather losses if they didn't cash ATI shareholders out.

Actually all of those problems are related to the Intel anti-trust investigations that Intel has paid billions of dollars on.

You may argue that AMD had to partner with a GPU designer, and I'll probably agree with it. What they shouldn't have done is to wreck their balance sheet in order to do that. Why not merger? Why not license the IP? Why not make a joint venture?

As of now AMD + ATI is smaller than AMD was at the time of the acquisition, and this is a reflex of what I'm talking here. The combination of incompetent management and weak balance sheet is hindering whatever efforts the new management team is making to save the company.

That sounds really dramatic but fact is AMD lost more revenue last year than ATI was ever making in revenue. You do have a knack for drama mrmt even if the real story lacks punch. Nice try though, and let's count again at the end of this year.

 

[monstercameron]

Intel's eDRAM will be leveraged in the datacenter with Xeon Phi.

Unlike AMD, Intel's R&D efforts eventually pay off...and usually quite well.

you mention xeon phi then you say

Unlike AMD, Intel's R&D efforts eventually pay off...and usually quite well.

, now it is very hard to take anything you say seriously...

 

[SiliconWars]

I didn't realise McAfee was such a disaster actually. That one alone negates any "overspend" AMD supposedly made on ATI.

Intel must be one of the worst money-wasting corporations in history. Looking at the money they've blown on bad aquisitions (8bn), bribery(6bn), fines(2bn) and other payoffs(1.25bn), 2nd(1.5bn), bad experimental R&D(3.5bn)...it's unbelievable.

That's over 20 billion USD. And AMD is supposed to have overspent on ATI? :thumbsup:

 

[Sweepr]

So many laughable Intel hating posts and he own an Intel CPU.

 

[SiliconWars]

So many laughable Intel hating posts and he own an Intel CPU.

So many laughable AMD hating posts and he own an AMD (or ATI) GPU.

 

[Sweepr]

So many laughable AMD hating posts and he own an AMD (or ATI) GPU.

Awesome discrete GPUs by the way (currently own a HD7970), I never criticized them (ATI/AMD graphics), unlike your thread crapping on anything Intel related despite owning an Intel CPU.

 

[SiliconWars]

Awesome discrete GPUs by the way (currently own a HD7970), I never criticized them, unlike your thread crapping on anything Intel related despite owning an Intel CPU.

Thread crapping huh? When one of ShintaiDK, Chadboga or mrmt start talking about the supposed "wasted cash" AMD spent on ATI (in an Intel vs ARM thread no less), pointing out the 4-5x billions more Intel has just plain wasted cannot under any circumstances be construed as "thread crapping". This thread was crapped on long ago by the usual suspects.

You can rag on AMD all you want, it doesn't bother me one bit - just be sure that you'll be reading some unpleasant facts about your own fan-company back. The only surprising thing so far is that none of you have really started with your personal attacks on me yet.

 

[Arachnotronic]

The only surprising thing so far is that none of you have really started with your personal attacks on me yet.

Ah, baiting...

 

[SiliconWars]

Ah, baiting...

You've lost me.

 

[mrmt]

Actually all of those problems are related to the Intel anti-trust investigations that Intel has paid billions of dollars on.

Maybe you could explain why AMD wrote off most of the acquisition value in the following quarters.

 

[erunion]

Bay Trail is a new core design and has none of the "power and efficiency optimizations" from Haswell, it's completely different.

Bay trail has way better power optimizations, actually. Its a full SoC. And it offers asynchronous cores.

 

[rgallant]

You are right when you say that the problems started well before the ATI acquisition, and that the acquisition itself is more of symptom of the arrogant and incompetent management of the time than the cause of the problem.

However, just look at the streak of bad decisions AMD had to take in order to survive:

- Settle for less than it could with Intel

- Tie itself to GLF until 2024

- The cuts in the engineering department

- Slower IC design cycle when compared to Intel

All these problems can be related to the weak balance sheet AMD presented after acquiring ATI. AMD would have 5.5 billion more to spend or weather losses if they didn't cash ATI shareholders out.

You may argue that AMD had to partner with a GPU designer, and I'll probably agree with it. What they shouldn't have done is to wreck their balance sheet in order to do that. Why not merger? Why not license the IP? Why not make a joint venture?

As of now AMD + ATI is smaller than AMD was at the time of the acquisition, and this is a reflex of what I'm talking here. The combination of incompetent management and weak balance sheet is hindering whatever efforts the new management team is making to save the company.

not saying your wrong but , amd would have a hard time today with no high end gpu ip
-what part of the 2007-2008 loss did ati play
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/23/amd_2008_financials/

"A lot of work will need to be done to make 2009 an improvement over 2008. Last year, today's report revealed, AMD had a net loss of $3.098bn on revenues of $5.808bn. While falling into a $3.098bn hole must be painful, AMD is better off than it was in 2007, when it lost $3.379bn on revenues of $5.858bn."

 

[Arachnotronic]

Bay trail has way better power optimizations, actually. Its a full SoC. And it offers asynchronous cores.

And the design point was for much lower power. If Intel could pull off what it did with Haswell (with a big power gulping L3$ and a 32nm external PCH), then Bay Trail is going to be crazy.

 

[Nothingness]

And if we move back to the topic again. Intels gen7 IGP scales down in power quite well with Silvermont. So now they got a unified GPU uarch across the board.

My understanding is that Intel will still use Imagination GPUs for their Silvermont-based smartphone SoC, Merrifield. If true, that'd mean Intel GPU doesn't scale down enough.

 

[SiliconWars]

Maybe you could explain why AMD wrote off most of the acquisition value in the following quarters.

Yeah it's a paper loss.

It doesn't matter, simple fact is AMD needed ATI or they'd be in a similar position to Nvidia, having a prom ticket but no dress.

AMD's weakness at the time also led to an empowerment of Qualcomm who picked up their mobile graphics handset division on the cheap (you might ask why Intel missed the boat a 2nd time btw?)

Now they are the clear leader in phones, exactly where Intel needs to be. Isn't it funny how these things work out?

 

[Arachnotronic]

Yeah it's a paper loss.

It doesn't matter, simple fact is AMD needed ATI or they'd be in a similar position to Nvidia, having a prom ticket but no dress.

AMD's weakness at the time also led to an empowerment of Qualcomm who picked up their mobile graphics handset division on the cheap (you might ask why Intel missed the boat a 2nd time btw?)

Now they are the clear leader in phones, exactly where Intel needs to be. Isn't it funny how these things work out?

Qualcomm's entire annual CPU/SoC sales come out to ~$6B. Not chump change by any means, but certainly paltry compared to Intel's ~$35B PC chip business and ~$11B server chip business.

 

[SiliconWars]

Qualcomm's entire annual CPU/SoC sales come out to ~$6B. Not chump change by any means, but certainly paltry compared to Intel's ~$35B PC chip business and ~$11B server chip business.

What were those numbers 3 years ago? It's clear enough where the momentum lies at least. Look at ARM as well and their massive revenue increase over the same time period.

This is what is important. It's not what Intel has - they have their billions by virtue of the fact that they had a monopoly for years - it's how fast the others are gaining while Intel goes nowhere fast *now*.

A lot of these questionable decisions Intel made must be coming back to haunt them. All those $billions wasted trying to finish off AMD - what would they do for that money in their pocket right now? The parallels between Microsoft and Intel are quite apparent, Microsoft having spent so much effort and money ensuring Linux didn't get off the ground only to be blown away by Android overnight once somebody else with real money joined the game.