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Let's play armchair AMD CEO!

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Work on making fusion into a proper fusion, so gpu is used for more then just games which means investing a lot in opencl, and convincing people to use it. Make high end fusion designs (i.e. with a bigger gpu) for use in HPC and servers. Look to that as the way of massively boosting performance not x86.

Hence abandon BD but re-use the best bits in existing architectural designs. Stick with x86 cpu cores but go more towards the arm route of more lightweight lower powered cores.
 
i would create a small army of killer monkeys and move the entire amd operation to a small island that is unknown to all. I would then build 1 giant cpu that would do battle with all the little cup's around the world. Destroying them all. My army of killer monkeys would protect the island from anyone who would dare attack my lair.
 
I find it hilarious how many of you think "fire everyone in department A, then hire better people" is something you can actually do. Like highly competent people just grow on trees or like how the fail that is bulldozer is anyone's fault but top management.
 
As much as i love amd, ati, and desktops, mobile is really where they could profit by throwing resources at it. Nvidia is moving to the mobile market, and ATi missed the boat by letting that flow by.

I honestly think the future is going to be dockable ultra portable devices. I'd like to see them modular, too... so one device could plop into a 14" laptop dock, or a 27" desktop dock, or a 65" Entertainment dock.

You don't use your cell phone for watching movies at home, because the TV is more efficient. There's no reason the phone couldn't dock in the TV and stream netflix to your TV. There's no reason it couldn't stream into your home theater system and play songs as you verbally request them.

There's no reason you couldn't dock to a 27" LED LCD with a USB Keyboard / Mouse and play some Battlefield.

Don't get me wrong - I love my desktop, but if someone could make one device that does what my laptop, ipad, desktop, TV, and cell phone does without sacrificing screen clarity or speed, I'd happily trade them all in. Right now it can't be done - but its only a matter of time.

Heck, my cell phone is a dual core beast with an nvidia gpu and its pretty solid at gaming. Not BF3, but soon... who knows.

So were I to lead AMD... that's where I'd be driving our company. Futuristic and sci-fi-ish? Sure... but someone has to build the future we are to become.
 
Depends what my goals were.

Continuing to compete with Intel? Then I'd prepare to offer myself as a purchase to IBM, or a merger. Then prepare the next "Athlon" release. Continue major GPU investments.

Focus on APUs/mobile? Then stop dumping money into the CPU division, improve BD and live with a CPU that's "good enough" for a dying market (x86). Scale it up in cores, improve IPC, but overall no massive financial investments. Simply focus on APUs (mainstream Best Buy market), mobile (low power) and GPUs.
 
I'd ask for a mulligan on the ATI purchase and beg JHH to come take my place (but keep my stock and watch it appreciate).
 
Its fairly self-evident they lack the resources to go toe-to-toe with the existing entrenched big-names in pretty much every market segment you look at.

Be it the Intel's, the Texas Instruments, the Samsungs, the Qualcomms, the Nvidias. Every where you look they are outgunned and out-resourced.

Were this any other business but AMD the future would be easily divined - they will be bought out like National Semi and SUN or face a future of obscurity alongside Via and ProMOS.

But folks hold onto this misguided notion that AMD is too stubborn to fail, that David will slay Goliath, so we just don't let ourselves "go there" when having these sorts of discussions about AMD's fate.
 
bryanW1995 said:
I'd ask for a mulligan on the ATI purchase and beg JHH to come take my place (but keep my stock and watch it appreciate).
Click to expand...

you know, that gives me an idea...
An nVidia AMD merger would be quite ideal. They could illegally lock out intel from the gaming market.

A lot of suits don't realize that the movers and shakers of industry are music, movies, games, and porn. Games are the ONLY reason x86 is the de facto standard and if AMD and nVidia work together they could lock out and crush intel before intel will realize that they cannot treat DX performance like crap.

Sure, there will be an anti trust suit that will fine AMD and nVidia a billion dollars in 15 years, but by then they will have market dominance and intel would be dead.
 
taltamir said:
Games are the ONLY reason x86 is the de facto standard and if AMD and nVidia work together they could lock out and crush intel before intel will realize that they cannot treat DX performance like crap.
Click to expand...

I disagree with this position unless I am misunderstanding that it is being taken within some limited context that I am missing.

x86 is the defacto standard because it was the affordable business/corporate computer for employees in the mid-80's.

From your accounting dept, payroll services, to manual prep and publication, to your marketing team, to your engineering dept...they could all be serviced by the IT dept with a common hardware platform.

Windows tied it all together, making it a rather minimal learning curve for all employees involved.

Those employees went home everyday and talked about their work computer with their families. And then they eventually bought one for the family use, accounting, etc. Then along came the www and that was all she wrote in the 90's.

The only reason this happened for x86 instead of MOS's 6502 or Moto's 6800 is because of system price including the price and availability of the productivity apps that businesses needed for their employees.

In the early 80's I did not know a single person (to recollection) who had a computer at home but "dad" did not use one at work. Dad was always the one who insisted the family buy that $5k computer instead of going to Disney World because he was convinced it was the way of the future and his kids needed to get to know them sooner instead of later.
 
Finally some serious discussion! 😛

But now that x86 is so ingrained into our computing lives, will it ever really go away? Where can ARM really take over without causing significant backwards compatibility issues that most companies and users won't want to put up with?
 
no need to tie to an isa. We have .net and other jit platforms. Who cares the underlying platform these day...as long as ur software is interoperable
 
opethfan said:
Finally some serious discussion! 😛

But now that x86 is so ingrained into our computing lives, will it ever really go away? Where can ARM really take over without causing significant backwards compatibility issues that most companies and users won't want to put up with?
Click to expand...

^ in bold, the answer is "yes" of course it will, but only for the same reasons it came to be, it will be replaced by something that gives us the same capability and functionality (same productivity, or better) for a lower price and higher convenience factor than what we already have now.

The whole iPhone/iPad and iApps phenomenon, lumped in with the general smart-phone market, is the end of x86 as we currently know it.

When smartphones start to have docking stations, the future of tomorrow's productivity machines is being shown to you today:

hero_atrix_accy_3.jpg


^ that's why Intel and Microsoft are scared poopless to get their atom chips and OS into smartphones asap.
 
Idontcare said:
I disagree with this position unless I am misunderstanding that it is being taken within some limited context that I am missing.

x86 is the defacto standard because it was the affordable business/corporate computer for employees in the mid-80's.

From your accounting dept, payroll services, to manual prep and publication, to your marketing team, to your engineering dept...they could all be serviced by the IT dept with a common hardware platform.
Click to expand...
Hardware servicing is identical regardless of whether it is powerPC, intel x86, ARM, SPARC, or what have you.

Software is where it is at. MS realized that, bill gates success was when he retained the rights to the OS rather then relinquishing them to IBM, and then porting the platform to x86.

x86 had success in the early 80s due to what you said. The only reason it remained in power into the 90s is because of windows. The only reason it remained in power through the 2000s was because of games. And even with the above games were a HUGE factor in pushing for faster and better hardware, my first games were all DOS games.

New faster hardware wasn't made for office and excel, it was made for demanding tasks. Enterprise stuff benefits from such extra power but it only needs to be relatively more powerful then current tech, and as such is not a big driver in of itself.

Gaming is what has pushed CPU and GPU and RAM to ever increasing heights and when they became mainstream office software expanded to make use of the new hardware. Yes office 2010 is far better than Einstein document editor for MSDOS (my first word-like program back in 1991) but nobody developed or bought faster hardware for those.

The whole "hardware is fast enough for mobile already" thing people are saying is merely the incorrect explanation given by analysts to the fact that people are not upgrading their laptops and cell phones for greater raw performance. Without even realizing that the REASON people are not upgrading is merely a symptom of people not wanting to game on such devices when they can use their big screen TV + console or a proper PC with a nice keyboard, mouse, and monitor.

I still service corporate computers running Win 3.11 on occasion.

A consortium of gaming companies (EA, BlizzardActivation, Ubisoft, etc) could topple intel and MS in under a year if they made their games for ARM & Linux or SPARC & Solaris or some other platform/OS combo.
 
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Idontcare said:
^ in bold, the answer is "yes" of course it will, but only for the same reasons it came to be, it will be replaced by something that gives us the same capability and functionality (same productivity, or better) for a lower price and higher convenience factor than what we already have now.

The whole iPhone/iPad and iApps phenomenon, lumped in with the general smart-phone market, is the end of x86 as we currently know it.

When smartphones start to have docking stations, the future of tomorrow's productivity machines is being shown to you today:

hero_atrix_accy_3.jpg


^ that's why Intel and Microsoft are scared poopless to get their atom chips and OS into smartphones asap.
Click to expand...

The problem with docking smartphones is of cost and convenience. The MSRP at launch for the original dock was $500. The MSRP of the new Lapdock 100 (which has an smaller and inferior panel, and is also noticeably uglier) is $249. These docks really aren't really any cheaper than comparable laptops. Plus docking your smartphone everytime you need to whatever you need to do on your computer seems to be incredibly inconvenient.(Hey why have the bathroom sink when you got one in the kitchen?)
 
wlee15 said:
The problem with docking smartphones is of cost and convenience. The MSRP at launch for the original dock was $500. The MSRP of the new Lapdock 100 (which has an smaller and inferior panel, and is also noticeably uglier) is $249. These docks really aren't really any cheaper than comparable laptops. Plus docking your smartphone everytime you need to whatever you need to do on your computer seems to be incredibly inconvenient.(Hey why have the bathroom sink when you got one in the kitchen?)
Click to expand...

agreed, I would rather have a smartphone, a laptop, a PC, and cloud sync them. (except for some things I keep on my home fileserver)
 
Idontcare said:
^ in bold, the answer is "yes" of course it will, but only for the same reasons it came to be, it will be replaced by something that gives us the same capability and functionality (same productivity, or better) for a lower price and higher convenience factor than what we already have now.

The whole iPhone/iPad and iApps phenomenon, lumped in with the general smart-phone market, is the end of x86 as we currently know it.

When smartphones start to have docking stations, the future of tomorrow's productivity machines is being shown to you today:

hero_atrix_accy_3.jpg


^ that's why Intel and Microsoft are scared poopless to get their atom chips and OS into smartphones asap.
Click to expand...

+1 for the re-useable laptop chassis!

I really like that idea.
 
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