AMD is losing money pretty fast. The estimate I saw is that they are expected to go totally broke by about 2018.
The real problems : they owe 2.4 billion dollars, and are making -150 million a quarter.
The main reason they aren't doing so well is their products are marginally competitive and the PC market itself is shrinking.
1. Their CPUs aren't faster than Intel and have been consistently slower per core for years
2. Most GPU generations, their poor drivers hold them back and make them a second rate product
They try to compete on cost, the problem is, their competitors can afford to make a low end product that competes in the same space using the same designs developed for the high end product.
The real problem is it's a self perpetuating cycle of doom. AMD doesn't have the money to pay the army of talented chip designers needed to develop something to fight Intel. They don't have the money to build their own fabs in order to get the same feature resolution and quality as Intel. They don't have the money to pay the army of driver writers they would need to make GPU drivers that compete with Nvidia. That's their real problem - their latest chip (Fury X) is the biggest possible at this process node, using identical fabrication tech to Nvidia. Yet, it isn't faster or even the same speed, despite having superior memory bandwidth. So it's either the chip or the drivers - I suspect the latter.
I'm not a fan of either set of dogs in this fight. Once AMD closes, the price paid for Nvidia GPUs and Intel CPUs is probably going to either go up or remain stagnant for years. Intel will probably just start releasing their new CPUs at $500 for the unlocked chip and will keep the price the same the entire release cycle.
The real problems : they owe 2.4 billion dollars, and are making -150 million a quarter.
The main reason they aren't doing so well is their products are marginally competitive and the PC market itself is shrinking.
1. Their CPUs aren't faster than Intel and have been consistently slower per core for years
2. Most GPU generations, their poor drivers hold them back and make them a second rate product
They try to compete on cost, the problem is, their competitors can afford to make a low end product that competes in the same space using the same designs developed for the high end product.
The real problem is it's a self perpetuating cycle of doom. AMD doesn't have the money to pay the army of talented chip designers needed to develop something to fight Intel. They don't have the money to build their own fabs in order to get the same feature resolution and quality as Intel. They don't have the money to pay the army of driver writers they would need to make GPU drivers that compete with Nvidia. That's their real problem - their latest chip (Fury X) is the biggest possible at this process node, using identical fabrication tech to Nvidia. Yet, it isn't faster or even the same speed, despite having superior memory bandwidth. So it's either the chip or the drivers - I suspect the latter.
I'm not a fan of either set of dogs in this fight. Once AMD closes, the price paid for Nvidia GPUs and Intel CPUs is probably going to either go up or remain stagnant for years. Intel will probably just start releasing their new CPUs at $500 for the unlocked chip and will keep the price the same the entire release cycle.
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