[Deustche Bank Conference] AMD's New x86 Core is Zen, WIll Launch WIth K12

[ShintaiDK]

Not a single player have 20nm products in retail now, most of them will have them shipped in early 2015. Thats when AMD will have 20nm products as well so according to you AMD is another bleeding edge player in the industry

Last i checked AMD just said 2015. Citation please for early 2015 from AMD with 20nm.

 

[tollingalong]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2148620/game-consoles-spur-amds-x86-processor-market-share.html

Pull out the consoles and AMD is losing PC market share.

They played the business game well. There was more money to be made at the time for consoles than PCs so they pulled through. On the other hand their victory might be short lived given the state of PC gaming.

 

[AtenRa]

Last i checked AMD just said 2015. Citation please for early 2015 from AMD with 20nm.

I was talking about the year(2015), sorry if it wasn't clear.

 

[rainy]

Last i checked AMD just said 2015. Citation please for early 2015 from AMD with 20nm.

Most probably we will see debut of Nolan/Amur in similar period of the year as their predecessors' which means Q2 2015.

 

[JDG1980]

I'm cautiously optimistic about K12. AMD has done reasonably well with the cat cores, and hopefully they've put the lessons learned there to good use (as well as the lessons learned while trying to salvage the Bulldozer fiasco). K12 won't match up to Intel's newest chips, but hopefully AMD can match Haswell in terms of IPC and frequency (they'll probably fall short on efficiency/TDP due to the process gap). That would at least be enough to get them back in the game and put some pricing pressure on Intel.

I consider Sandy Bridge to be a bare minimum standard that AMD has to meet with this new architecture. If AMD can't at least match the IPC, frequency, die-space efficiency, and power efficiency of Sandy Bridge, with a five-year head start and a new clean-sheet design, then they might as well throw in the towel. Intel did SB on 32nm, so the process excuse doesn't work here.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Not a single player have 20nm products in retail now, most of them will have them shipped in early 2015. Thats when AMD will have 20nm products as well so according to you AMD is another bleeding edge player in the industry

Not only that, but most of the bleeding edge players will still have the majority of their volume manufactured at 28nm in 2015 and 2016. But i believe you already knew that :whiste:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/232...arnings-call-transcript?page=5&p=qanda&l=last

Dont see anything in that quote that says "early" in 2015, just says "next year". Also that could be for gpus, not necessarily CPUs.

 

[jpiniero]

Honestly, even if AMD was more competitive, I don't think it would change much. Only corporations are buying PCs these days, and that's pretty much always been Intel's stronghold. You almost have to wonder where AMD intends to sell Zen to.

AMD not having a phone/tablet strategy for K12 is pretty scary.

 

[frozentundra123456]

They played the business game well. There was more money to be made at the time for consoles than PCs so they pulled through. On the other hand their victory might be short lived given the state of PC gaming.

Seriously, more money to be made in consoles than PCs? Have you compared AMDs profits (when they managed to make any) to Intels, or even nVidia's? More like that is the only place where they had a competitive advantage, because they had a better igpu than intel and an x86 core which nVidia didn't have. Plus they were willing to settle for lower margins.

 

[cbn]

AMD not having a phone/tablet strategy for K12 is pretty scary.

Not really.

Assuming Apple moves into Desktop and Laptop with an ARM APU (using high drive current xtors not found in phone/tablet SOC) + separate PCH there would be a new ecosystem of ARM desktop apps.

Some of these Desktop/Laptop apps will probably spill over to Android.

K12 meets that demand for performance silicon in Android.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Honestly, even if AMD was more competitive, I don't think it would change much. Only corporations are buying PCs these days

True that!

I did sell an AIO though, to someone (a friend / client), for effectively $220. Staples was selling it for $300, originally $500.

I've got several charity builds I'm working on, though sometimes I wonder if I should just get some friends and make a trip to Microcenter to pick up some $139.99 Win 8.1 tablets (2GB / 32GB), or wait for the Zotac PicoPC for $199.99, and buy some of those to give away.

Though, that wouldn't be as much fun. Thank God Linux is Free and free.

 

[cbn]

Regarding an Apple transition to ARM APU (with high drive current xtors) + PCH, it doesn't need to happen all of a sudden (to all Apple desktops/laptops at the same time).

The company could certainly begin with something like Apple TV and make it more like a Mac Mini for starters. Then after a period of time, the other form factors could follow.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Not really.

Assuming Apple moves into Desktop and Laptop with an ARM APU (using high drive current xtors not found in phone/tablet SOC) + separate PCH there would be a new ecosystem of ARM desktop apps.

Some of these Desktop/Laptop apps will probably spill over to Android.

K12 meets that demand for performance silicon in Android.

There was an article that China plans to fork Android, and make it into their national desktop OS. With K12, AMD would be in a good position to power those computers, whether they use the x86/x64 flavor of Android, or the ARM flavor.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Rory . . . fails to address the elephant in the room (AMD poor software support).

For all the speculation about Zen in this thread (and elsewhere), what you've touched on amounts to a much bigger problem. AMD needs to provide more tools for HSA developers, and their graphics drivers need performance tweaks (at least when something other than Mantle is in use). If they expect to move to a driverless model as has been suggested elsewhere, then that's great and all, but I haven't seen it yet.

I'm as interested as anyone else as to what Zen will be like. In the interim, they need to deal with software issues ASAP.

 

[mrmt]

AMD needs to provide more tools for HSA developers, and their graphics drivers need performance tweaks (at least when something other than Mantle is in use). If they expect to move to a driverless model as has been suggested elsewhere, then that's great and all, but I haven't seen it yet.

FWIW AMD has been stretching itself even thinner in the last three years. They have introduced a new proprietary gaming API, they are trying to improve their professional drivers, they are introducing a new architecture based on a different instruction set that they will have to support with specific tools... All those products should demand more resources, not less, and less is the prevalent trend regarding AMD engineering team. Since Rory Read already stated that further "optimizations" should be coming in the next 3-4 quarters, I'd be really skeptical of AMD's ability to deliver all the software promises they are making.

 

[NTMBK]

FWIW AMD has been stretching itself even thinner in the last three years. They have introduced a new proprietary gaming API, they are trying to improve their professional drivers, they are introducing a new architecture based on a different instruction set that they will have to support with specific tools... All those products should demand more resources, not less, and less is the prevalent trend regarding AMD engineering team. Since Rory Read already stated that further "optimizations" should be coming in the next 3-4 quarters, I'd be really skeptical of AMD's ability to deliver all the software promises they are making.

The fundamentals of several big projects (XBox One software stack, PS4 software stack, Mantle API) are now finished and in place, and GCN has now been round long enough for the drivers to stabilise- hopefully AMD will have freed up more resources to work on other projects. Hopefully...

 

[mrmt]

The fundamentals of several big projects (XBox One software stack, PS4 software stack, Mantle API) are now finished and in place, and GCN has now been round long enough for the drivers to stabilise- hopefully AMD will have freed up more resources to work on other projects. Hopefully...

Still doesn't change the fact that AMD is with far bigger projects on their pipelines and less resources available to them

 

[Maximilian]

We don't know much about the design other than it's a brand new clean sheet of paper "from scratch" microarchitecture

Yeah... wasent that the story with Bulldozer :\

 

[Idontcare]

Still doesn't change the fact that AMD is with far bigger projects on their pipelines and less resources available to them

This is definitely a concern, and more so for the shareholder than the consumer/customer.

But this is precisely what "fading to irrelevance" looks like. We've already witnessed it so many times in x86, most recently with Via (which is irrelevant in all but name only these days).

Sure they are holding on, but the product pipeline is resource starved for lack of corporate revenues which is a vicious self-perpetuating cycle. Once you fall off that wagon, rarely do you succeed in getting back on.

 

[Arachnotronic]

This is definitely a concern, and more so for the shareholder than the consumer/customer.

But this is precisely what "fading to irrelevance" looks like. We've already witnessed it so many times in x86, most recently with Via (which is irrelevant in all but name only these days).

Sure they are holding on, but the product pipeline is resource starved for lack of corporate revenues which is a vicious self-perpetuating cycle. Once you fall off that wagon, rarely do you succeed in getting back on.

The war in the PC CPU market is more or less over -- Intel won, and frankly, as interesting as AMD's new K12/Zen sounds, I just don't know how they'll really be able to outgun Intel's larger resources and stronger base to build off of.

AMD now needs to fight a different battle, one against more evenly-sized and resourced peers.

If AMD were to go all-in in trying to become another Freescale/NetLogic, I could see that working. If they were to try to become another NVIDIA I could see that working too.

The problem here is that they're trying to be Intel, Freescale/NetLogic, and NVIDIA. They don't really have the resources to be competitive against all three at the same time, and I believe AMD's management understands this. But they can't signal it until the "transition" is effectively complete. They need to string investors along into thinking that all of these opportunities are open to them in light of the current weak operating results.

But, I think, if AMD can get its revenue/profit situation under control through successes in a few areas, it can more easily justify to investors a "leaner" strategy.

 

[ElFenix]

Yeah... wasent that the story with Bulldozer :\

yeah but this time around maybe we won't just get a rehash of alpha processor designs from 20 years ago.

edit: would also be nice if they could figure out how to build a memory controller. is any of the secret sauce they used for the 285 available for microprocessors?

 

[cbn]

FWIW AMD has been stretching itself even thinner in the last three years. They have introduced a new proprietary gaming API, they are trying to improve their professional drivers, they are introducing a new architecture based on a different instruction set that they will have to support with specific tools... All those products should demand more resources, not less, and less is the prevalent trend regarding AMD engineering team. Since Rory Read already stated that further "optimizations" should be coming in the next 3-4 quarters, I'd be really skeptical of AMD's ability to deliver all the software promises they are making.

Speaking of AMD stretching itself thinner at least two things come to mind:

1. Linux graphics driver support for their upcoming ARM APUs.

2. What happens to AMD's ARM APU product segmentation strategy when more ARM competitors start making desktop/laptop processors by separating PCH from CPU and GPU (then enlarge those CPUs and GPUs and equip them with high drive current xtors)? How many ARM APU dies will they need to have? (Surely one die stretched thin over a massive range of products won't work anymore). Will they decide dump SOC (which is optimized for tablet/phone by its very nature) and instead focus on a second desktop/laptop die?

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2148620/game-consoles-spur-amds-x86-processor-market-share.html

Pull out the consoles and AMD is losing PC market share.

And why would anyone do that? PC sales have been in freefall for years -- it was a far smarter business strategy for AMD to diversify.

There are now 12+ million new game consoles powered by AMD APU's...... Yet it's unclear if PC sales will ever fully recover to historic sales levels. They definitely shouldn't rely on the PC market.

 

[Arachnotronic]

And why would anyone do that? PC sales have been in freefall for years -- it was a far smarter business strategy for AMD to diversify.

There are now 12+ million new game consoles powered by AMD APU's...... Yet it's unclear if PC sales will ever fully recover to historic sales levels. They definitely shouldn't rely on the PC market.

Look at AMD's financials -- they still very much rely on the PC market, even as it shrinks as a % of revenue because the business continues to contract.

AMD diverts attention away from PCs and towards other opportunities in its presentations/investor calls because it knows that its PC story is likely to continue to be tough for quite some time.

I'm not saying it was a bad move for AMD to try to fight in other markets -- I think AMD's future is in other markets -- but saying that at this stage of the game that PCs aren't important just doesn't jive with reality.

By the way, to answer your point of "why would they do that" -- it's easy. Intel doesn't sell game console chips, so comparing total X86 share is a bit of a misleading metric. It's like saying that Intel has lower share of the ARM server market than AMD does (which is a true statement, but a meaningless one).

 

[cbn]

AMD now needs to fight a different battle, one against more evenly-sized and resourced peers.

I have to wonder how much easier that will be?

One strong factor in AMD's favor though is that they already know how to make big core processors.

The question then becomes what does AMD do to further strengthen themselves in ARM Big core? Do they abandon small core in order to further direct resources to their strengths?

But, I think, if AMD can get its revenue/profit situation under control through successes in a few areas, it can more easily justify to investors a "leaner" strategy.

Yes. Definitely Yes.

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

The war in the PC CPU market is more or less over -- Intel won, and frankly, as interesting as AMD's new K12/Zen sounds.

People said the exact same thing during the launch of the Athlon 64 and Athlon X2... That it's over for Intel. it wasn't true then and it's not true now.

AMD still beats the heck out of Intel if the user is running the integrated graphics -- Intel's best stuff i5 / i7, still can't compete with AMD's $150 APU's in graphics performance.

AMD's marketshare has always been around 10 - 20% of the market and it will probably always been that way. Which makes a lot of sense, since Intel is a company that is 5 times larger.

Intel has a vested interested in helping AMD stay in the market -- otherwise, Anti-Monopoly laws would force a breakup of Intel. All you're saying is just empty banter.