Could this be the end of the beginning or beginning of the end for AMD?

[apoppin]

why for my sake?


i don't have a web site that will suffer


otoh, DT is gonna get a LOT of flack if their benchs turn out to be false

--but they aren't the only ones saying the GTX will beat the XTX

 

[hardwareking]

AMD made its biggest mistake buying ATI
if they coughed more dough,they coulda bought nvidia which wuda given them pretty much instant profit and timely product launches

But im sure they'll find away out of the hole they have dug,without them we wud still be having power hungry prescotts

also they didn't set their priorities straight
they had a lead,became complacent and lost it when C2D came out
They preferred Dell over Retail
They didn't need ATI desperately no matter what excuse of fusion they had

 

[shiznit]

what makes you think nvidia would let them? It might be the other way around very shortly...

 

[BigDH01]

In the short term, the purchase of ATI was a terrible decision IMO. You should not go billions into debt buying a company when you are in a price war in your home market unless you know that the purchased company will earn a profit. Given ATI's recent releases and business performance, I don't think AMD could've possibly thought they would immediately turn a GPU profit.

In the long term, it may be a good investment but we'll have to wait and see. You still have to exist long enough to reap the harvest.

 

[wwswimming]

Originally posted by: Viditor

Originally posted by: nyker96
2. Cash flow problem has been solved this last week with the bond issuance. Bob Rivet (who is one of the world leaders at this) has managed to assure that AMD will have over $2-3 Billion in cash through the end of this year...and without any dilution in shares (he structured the deal using treasury derivatives).

i have asked a lot of people (stockbrokers, a brother with an MBA who works for morgan stanley, etc.) to explain derivatives IN DETAIL. no one has been able to. it's like a loan on a loan, theoretically a way to offset risk in a financial deal.

how does tying AMD's fortune to the derivatives markets make them more stable financially ?

 

[Puffnstuff]

I believe that buying ati was a giant mistake for amd unless they've got something up their sleeve. I had a couple of radeons in my day and the software packages that came with them were always buggy which is one of the reasons I went back to nvidia. I've not encountered that kind of problem since. I'm afraid that ati will be amd's downfall. I've heard excuses for and against the acquisition but at this point it doesn't look well for amd.

 

[PingSpike]

Originally posted by: Fox5

Originally posted by: PingSpike
Where are the fruits of R&D? Thats their problem. They squandered that massive lead they had by sitting on their ****** ass for to long. Did they forget what kind of product they made? They make the kind that goes obsolete in a year. That means you'd better have a better one ready afterwards, unless you enjoy having you're competitors rape you with a wooden spoon.

Was it the previous CEO or the current one who used to work for Motorola? The one who disagreed with the idea that a product should go obsolete so quickly, and would rather just produce one product with incremental upgrades for as long as possible?

Oh well, AMD's stock is pretty low right now, so I'll buy some. I figure the company has at least a year left, and R600 and Barcelona, even if not that great, will make the company more competitive than it has been for a while, and that should bring the stock price up a bit.

I believe it was the current CEO who came from motorola.

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: wwswimming

Originally posted by: Viditor

Originally posted by: nyker96
2. Cash flow problem has been solved this last week with the bond issuance. Bob Rivet (who is one of the world leaders at this) has managed to assure that AMD will have over $2-3 Billion in cash through the end of this year...and without any dilution in shares (he structured the deal using treasury derivatives).

i have asked a lot of people (stockbrokers, a brother with an MBA who works for morgan stanley, etc.) to explain derivatives IN DETAIL. no one has been able to. it's like a loan on a loan, theoretically a way to offset risk in a financial deal.

how does tying AMD's fortune to the derivatives markets make them more stable financially ?

It buys time so they don't have to sell off massive amounts of assets in the immediate future. Sure, they'll pay back more in the long run, but that wouldn't have mattered if they couldn't stay in business till the next year.

 

[spittledip]

I think they won't go under, but they might have to mega-downsize to survive and go back to making "budget" chips like they did when they started. It really is a shame that they squandered their success.

 

[ribbon13]

A few lucky rounds and BAM! Ya get too cocky and out of nowhere you get knocked on your ass like a spirit broken dog. AMD isn't going anywhere if they can get any decent product to market within eighteen months.

Is this current state necessarily a bad thing? Not really, I see this is as perhaps the rebirth of 'efficient code.' When the 'E6600' on the next gen costs far more than it does today, however the market may allow, I bet the quality of software code produced across the board will increase

Anyway, things like ISC07 being held in Dresden, Germany... or perhaps that Red Storm is still #2... AMD still has better FPU than Intel. HyperTransport is still a more elegant solution for super-computing environments. And in general. AMD just needs to adopt some new processor tech.

I have a feeling that they will be a wounded entity for a while, but something tells me that it's not over yet.

 

[PepePeru]

private equity to the rescue.

 

[SuperSix]

Originally posted by: myocardia
I personally think that AMD's CEO has just about run the company into the ground. That's what happens when you let your ego start making decisions that you should be letting your frontal lobes handle, it seems. You're wrong about #7, though. They've released a 3.0 Ghz FX, the FX-74 IIRC, but nobody cared, since it's expensive, hot, and can't compare performance-wise to an overclocked $200 C2D. Let's just hope that AMD doesn't go bankrupt, or we'll all be buying $700 E6600's and $600 8800 GTS's in no time.

Funny, the "ego" you mentioned trickled down from the CEO.

I work for a major disty of AMD, and our rep was in the office (once in 2 years isgust and I asked him then, if AMD would think of offering any low priced desktop CPUs. His response? "We don't want that market anymore".

Seems that's the only market they can compete with now.

Again, as I have said in other threads, and quote the OP:
"6, AMD reported sold too much chips to OEM which has lousy sale forcase all the way to June and AMD having big trouble getting back to retail market due to its pulling retail support during Xmas 2006 which lost consumer+retailer confidence. "

I would venture that AMD lost a VAST majority of the SMB market by turning their back on the channel in 4Q '06, (Licking Dell's ass) and they have a tough row to hoe to get that business back.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: apoppin
not under the current Administration

and *someone* will buy them

there are rumors

but it is PREmature to proclaim the 'death of AMD' - yet

Yeah but *who* will buy them?

The only rumours I've heard have been 'private equity investors', but those guys are on the market for all kinds of companies.

Really only IBM, nVidia (maybe), intel, and Microsoft are bigger than ATI in terms of hardware design/manufacturing (in Microsoft's case they're just a really big tech company with tons of cash). I could see nVidia buying them just like they usurped 3dfx once they were dead, but only once they're completely broke. It would make sense for them if they could get a cheap x86 licence out of it.

IBM has that licence, but their fabs would be a nice match for AMD's chips.

Intel would have a monopoly and I highly doubt the FTC would allow them to buy AMD.

Microsoft, I'm not sure about that one. The FTC doesn't like them much either. I think it would actually make alot of sense for them to do it tho. Think about it - they have an ATI GPU in the Xbox 360, plus then they would have control of *every* aspect of a computer! They would completely pwn the entire computer industry, hardware and software!

 

[Special K]

Originally posted by: SuperSix

Originally posted by: myocardia
I personally think that AMD's CEO has just about run the company into the ground. That's what happens when you let your ego start making decisions that you should be letting your frontal lobes handle, it seems. You're wrong about #7, though. They've released a 3.0 Ghz FX, the FX-74 IIRC, but nobody cared, since it's expensive, hot, and can't compare performance-wise to an overclocked $200 C2D. Let's just hope that AMD doesn't go bankrupt, or we'll all be buying $700 E6600's and $600 8800 GTS's in no time.

Funny, the "ego" you mentioned trickled down from the CEO.

I work for a major disty of AMD, and our rep was in the office (once in 2 years isgust and I asked him then, if AMD would think of offering any low priced desktop CPUs. His response? "We don't want that market anymore".

Seems that's the only market they can compete with now.

Again, as I have said in other threads, and quote the OP:
"6, AMD reported sold too much chips to OEM which has lousy sale forcase all the way to June and AMD having big trouble getting back to retail market due to its pulling retail support during Xmas 2006 which lost consumer+retailer confidence. "

I would venture that AMD lost a VAST majority of the SMB market by turning their back on the channel in 4Q '06, (Licking Dell's ass) and they have a tough row to hoe to get that business back.

Why would the retail sector have much better sales than big OEMs like Dell? I thought enthusiasts such as this board made up a small fraction of the total CPU-buying consumers.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: Special K

Originally posted by: SuperSix

Originally posted by: myocardia
I personally think that AMD's CEO has just about run the company into the ground. That's what happens when you let your ego start making decisions that you should be letting your frontal lobes handle, it seems. You're wrong about #7, though. They've released a 3.0 Ghz FX, the FX-74 IIRC, but nobody cared, since it's expensive, hot, and can't compare performance-wise to an overclocked $200 C2D. Let's just hope that AMD doesn't go bankrupt, or we'll all be buying $700 E6600's and $600 8800 GTS's in no time.

Funny, the "ego" you mentioned trickled down from the CEO.

I work for a major disty of AMD, and our rep was in the office (once in 2 years isgust and I asked him then, if AMD would think of offering any low priced desktop CPUs. His response? "We don't want that market anymore".

Seems that's the only market they can compete with now.

Again, as I have said in other threads, and quote the OP:
"6, AMD reported sold too much chips to OEM which has lousy sale forcase all the way to June and AMD having big trouble getting back to retail market due to its pulling retail support during Xmas 2006 which lost consumer+retailer confidence. "

I would venture that AMD lost a VAST majority of the SMB market by turning their back on the channel in 4Q '06, (Licking Dell's ass) and they have a tough row to hoe to get that business back.

Why would the retail sector have much better sales than big OEMs like Dell? I thought enthusiasts such as this board made up a small fraction of the total CPU-buying consumers.

The problem is that AMD has never been able to produce enough chips to keep up with demand. By winning the Dell deal, they got tons of brand recognition, but they probably lost money on it by selling the chips to Dell so cheap (I'm sure they make much higher profits selling to 'the channel').

 

[AlabamaCajun]

What you don't see right now is all the socket compatible Opteron servers our there sold and being sold. Most of these systems will replace their Santa Rosa's with Barcelona drop ins within six months of release. Barcelona will operate in the same power envelope as the Santa Rosa with a (I estimate) 120% Boost in performance with 4 coherent cores on each die with 2, 4 and 8 CPU blades. This is why you here Barcelona and not much on Agena. Agena and Agena FX will follow in late summer early fall then they need to make profits for a few months. ES chips are out there, it's just a small trickle of info but it's too early to call yet.

As for Fake 4 in the FX system, to expensive, too late. Conroe just reamed that project for current DC being an enthusiast system. It really is a great idea being able to run a server level board with OC ram, SLI video and overclocking. Sure the power factor is a killer but just wait until you can get to Agena FX's into one of these boards with a Pair or Quad of 8800s. No doubt you will need to buy a generator to run it but it's going to kick some As5 when games start running better multi threaded.

 

[zsdersw]

Isn't Santa Rosa an Intel laptop platform?

 

[SuperSix]

Originally posted by: Special K
Why would the retail sector have much better sales than big OEMs like Dell? I thought enthusiasts such as this board made up a small fraction of the total CPU-buying consumers.

The "retail sector" as you put it is much bigger than the enthusiasts on this board. I am talking about all of the small-medium system buiilders who purchase their product though the channel, Tech Data, Ingram, ASI, D&H, Bell Micro, etc, the companies that build PCs for mom, dad, small businesses, etc.

AMD's deal with Dell caused a huge drought of AMD for them, and now that there IS product available, they aren't buying, becuase they converted to Intel during the drought, because there was Intel product available. Some are back to buying small amounts of AMD for their very entry-level systems, but most are stuck on C2D for any performance PCs.

AMD's sales are down roughly 65-70% in the channel, and the translates into (many) millions in sales lost per quarter.

Yes, they sold a ton of chips to Dell, but at what true, long-term cost?

 

[SuperSix]

Originally posted by: zsdersw
Isn't Santa Rosa an Intel laptop platform?

Yes, it is. Not sure what he was referring to.

 

[Lonyo]

Originally posted by: Fox5

Originally posted by: ELopes580

Originally posted by: Fox5

Originally posted by: PingSpike
Where are the fruits of R&D? Thats their problem. They squandered that massive lead they had by sitting on their ****** ass for to long. Did they forget what kind of product they made? They make the kind that goes obsolete in a year. That means you'd better have a better one ready afterwards, unless you enjoy having you're competitors rape you with a wooden spoon.

Was it the previous CEO or the current one who used to work for Motorola? The one who disagreed with the idea that a product should go obsolete so quickly, and would rather just produce one product with incremental upgrades for as long as possible?

Oh well, AMD's stock is pretty low right now, so I'll buy some. I figure the company has at least a year left, and R600 and Barcelona, even if not that great, will make the company more competitive than it has been for a while, and that should bring the stock price up a bit.

It is the current CEO, Hector Ruiz, who is from Motorola. I don't know if he said that, if so then he needs to quit the technology business and sell fertillizer if he doesn't want to be in a short product cycle industry. :disgust:

EDIT: Thinking of AMD CEOs, I was just remembering what the founder, Jerry Sanders, once said: "Only real men have FABs." Hmm, if he and Ruiz weren't so full of their egos they would realize "Only real men make PROFIT!"

If it wasn't (apparently) prohibited by AMD's licensing agreement with Intel (over x86) I'd say AMD should go fabless.
They're barely staying ahead of the industry as a whole in terms of fabs, and IBM is right up there with them and surely has enough high end fab space to sell AMD. The fabs just seem like such a bad idea for AMD, they cost so much money and yet don't really give it a competitive advantage.

I thought AMD were going to use TSMC (or UMC) for extra production when they needed it? That suggests there's nothing stopping them from outsourcing fabbing, except for external capacity.

 

[coldpower27]

Originally posted by: SuperSix

Originally posted by: zsdersw
Isn't Santa Rosa an Intel laptop platform?

Yes, it is. Not sure what he was referring to.

Intel and AMD have different items but are using the same code name.

Santa Rosa on the AMD side refers to the current Opteron 2xxx, and 8xxx line, Dual Core DDR2 Opterons on the 90nm node.

Santa Rosa on the Intel side refers to the 4th generation Centrino platform with 965 Chipset, 800MHZ FSB Merom's & DDR2-667/800 as well as a/b/g/n Wireless.

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: Lonyo

Originally posted by: Fox5

Originally posted by: ELopes580

Originally posted by: Fox5

Originally posted by: PingSpike
Where are the fruits of R&D? Thats their problem. They squandered that massive lead they had by sitting on their ****** ass for to long. Did they forget what kind of product they made? They make the kind that goes obsolete in a year. That means you'd better have a better one ready afterwards, unless you enjoy having you're competitors rape you with a wooden spoon.

Was it the previous CEO or the current one who used to work for Motorola? The one who disagreed with the idea that a product should go obsolete so quickly, and would rather just produce one product with incremental upgrades for as long as possible?

Oh well, AMD's stock is pretty low right now, so I'll buy some. I figure the company has at least a year left, and R600 and Barcelona, even if not that great, will make the company more competitive than it has been for a while, and that should bring the stock price up a bit.

It is the current CEO, Hector Ruiz, who is from Motorola. I don't know if he said that, if so then he needs to quit the technology business and sell fertillizer if he doesn't want to be in a short product cycle industry. :disgust:

EDIT: Thinking of AMD CEOs, I was just remembering what the founder, Jerry Sanders, once said: "Only real men have FABs." Hmm, if he and Ruiz weren't so full of their egos they would realize "Only real men make PROFIT!"

If it wasn't (apparently) prohibited by AMD's licensing agreement with Intel (over x86) I'd say AMD should go fabless.
They're barely staying ahead of the industry as a whole in terms of fabs, and IBM is right up there with them and surely has enough high end fab space to sell AMD. The fabs just seem like such a bad idea for AMD, they cost so much money and yet don't really give it a competitive advantage.

I thought AMD were going to use TSMC (or UMC) for extra production when they needed it? That suggests there's nothing stopping them from outsourcing fabbing, except for external capacity.

Apparently they're limited to 20% outsourced production.

 

[idgaf13]

It has always been my belief that AMD bought ATI
so that they would be able to produce chipsets "in-house" .
Allowing AMD to then be able to offer a "total solution" to OEMs.
The video side of the deal was a nice extra but not the primary reason
for the ATI aquisition.
The deal with Dell was announced at the end of the summer ,
definetly to late to ramp advertising and production for the major buying
seasons of "back to school" and Christmas.
To have a company the size of AMD merge with ATI and supply Dell
all within the busiest part of the year in their market would have been amazing.
There was an article at Theregister.net back in January that described the coming year
The author Charlie D. predicted that Intel would perform as it has ,
the first 6 months of this year have been precisely as described.
Intel cut employees and closed FABs ,yet got no press for those activities.
They co-opted AMDs ideas so as not to lose face ,again and
AMD is made to look like the dead-beat.
Intel is just proving technologies developed by others primarily AMD.
Intel is currently being run by its first non-engineer ,Paul Otellini,
his background is in Marketing ,this working out since they have such deep pockets.
AMD is restricted on two fronts cash and FAB capacity,
Only one fab in Dresden is currently producing CPUs
the other is being retooled ,Do not know when production starts from it.
but it is critical.

 

[Regs]

Originally posted by: Viditor
To answer your questions....
7. There have been more than half a dozen new chip releases over the last 9 months...some of which were 65nm but all of which were still K8. This would be similar to Intel who are also releasing derivatives of C2D...

Problem with this comparison is that Intel's derivatives scales in performance also by cache sizes and by performance per watt. Not to mention Intel has a strangle hold on every market segment so they can sell for whatever is cheaper and offering a balance of performance/features and power requirements.

AMD relied on offering the better product that better fitted the customers needs. Now all they have is 2nd generation best compared to Intel which is quite sad since they had the better product for over 4 years. No matter how you sugar coat it comparing the two, AMD does not have the luxury of rebranding the same product with a higher clock speed and calling it new.

The customer was begging for something new. If AMD was not going to offer it to them, they were more than happy to get it from Intel. I believe the average Joes do care about performance though they do not exercise their options. All they see is "Intel" and "New" and it's a sure sell. Brand recognition goes a long way before any 30 second sound bite commercial. Brand Recognition has to be earned and AMD earned a lot of it in 2005-2006. The last thing they needed was to sit on their hands and to buy-off a fortune that will leave them in debt for a long time and leave their customers empty handed.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: SickBeast

Originally posted by: apoppin
not under the current Administration

and *someone* will buy them

there are rumors

but it is PREmature to proclaim the 'death of AMD' - yet

Yeah but *who* will buy them?

The only rumours I've heard have been 'private equity investors', but those guys are on the market for all kinds of companies.

Really only IBM, nVidia (maybe), intel, and Microsoft are bigger than ATI in terms of hardware design/manufacturing (in Microsoft's case they're just a really big tech company with tons of cash). I could see nVidia buying them just like they usurped 3dfx once they were dead, but only once they're completely broke. It would make sense for them if they could get a cheap x86 licence out of it.

IBM has that licence, but their fabs would be a nice match for AMD's chips.

Intel would have a monopoly and I highly doubt the FTC would allow them to buy AMD.

Microsoft, I'm not sure about that one. The FTC doesn't like them much either. I think it would actually make alot of sense for them to do it tho. Think about it - they have an ATI GPU in the Xbox 360, plus then they would have control of *every* aspect of a computer! They would completely pwn the entire computer industry, hardware and software!

don't forget Samsung
--and Applied Materials [AMAT] was said to be interested


IF AMD stock continues to drop, they won't be so expensive to purchase

from today's news

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39318

STREET INSIDER said AMD has filed its SEC report which it describes as "voodoo financing".

Perhaps the right description of the $2.2 billion convertible note sale is "labyrinthine", or possibly resembling a royal party in Byzantium, or the bureaucracy in the court of Imperial China.

We suspect the conditions of the deal would tax even the most accomplished counter of beans but our attention in the report is to an item dubbed "events of default".

The word default is always slightly worrying.

The masochistic among you can pore over more details here.

AMD's share price is currently trading at $13.61, down 20 US centimes on the day

http://yahoo.reuters.com/news/articlehy...&sz=13&WTModLoc=HybArt-C1-ArticlePage1

GRIM NUMBERS

"We still foresee a meaningful degradation of AMD's cash balances," Citigroup analyst Glen Yeung wrote in a report.

The numbers are grim. Although AMD has nearly $1.2 billion in cash, it must fund a capacity expansion plan that will cost it $2 billion this year alone, even after a recent $500 million reduction aimed at keeping expenses in check.

It also has to buy expensive new production technology to keep up with Intel's upgrades as well as develop new processors to compete with more powerful and efficient ones coming out of its competitor's labs.

Meanwhile, revenue is under pressure amid a price war, which is not seen getting easier on AMD until it debuts a new high-end chip called Barcelona later this year.

The usual fund-raising options are less attractive due to the debt terms AMD agreed to when it bought ATI. A regulatory filing from last October details conditions under which AMD must pay back the debt early

.... [much more edited out]