Roy Taylor: AMD is a starfish and Intel a whale

wilds

Platinum Member
Oct 26, 2012
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The PC market is shrinking, and Roy Taylor knows that.
But AMD’s VP of channel sales doesn’t let it get to him. The chief B2B salesman of the underdog in the CPU and GPU wars has quite the analogy to explain why he thinks AMD will do just fine in a market that just keeps shrinking.

The first section of the article.

Yeah, the article wasn't really that special; but I don't see AMD, NVIDIA, or Intel sinking their ship any time soon.
It is interesting at how these large tech companies are responding to the transformation of the PC market. The PC is not dying; it's just getting thinner, smaller, and more energy efficient.

Mr. Taylor really couldn't reveal anything but he doesn't have to. AMD is not going anywhere anytime soon and if anything, the next generation consoles will help bring back some of their momentum.
 
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Maxima1

Diamond Member
Jan 15, 2013
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“If the water becomes shallow, and you’re a whale, you’re gonna get grounded and you’ll die. If the water becomes shallow, and you’re a starfish, you don’t give a shit,” he said. “If the market goes down by 50 percent, it’s awfully dangerous if you’re a whale.”

That analogy is cute.
 

Idontcare

Elite Member
Oct 10, 1999
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“If the water becomes shallow, and you’re a whale, you’re gonna get grounded and you’ll die. If the water becomes shallow, and you’re a starfish, you don’t give a shit,” he said. “If the market goes down by 50 percent, it’s awfully dangerous if you’re a whale.”

That analogy is cute.

It is a cute analogy but it really has nothing to do with how the economics of business work out.

AMD, a starfish compared to Intel, is most certainly in a more precarious position financially than Intel, the whale. Profits versus losses, quarter after quarter and year after year, are proof of this reality.

Cute analogies are cute, but that doesn't make them valid or representative of the thing they are trying to be an analogy of.

TI is a whale, for example, and they once held 80% of the mobile phone market, now they hold basically zero. And yet they deftly negotiated and managed the reality of their shrinking mobile revenue with aplomb as they diversified into analog markets and kept making profits along the way.

Nokia is a whale that has not managed to do so well, not because it is a whale but because it is managed by an unimaginative idiot (of sorts).

Good people with good resources will do well. Dumb people will always do poorly, well resourced or not. Good people without resources will likewise not do so well IF they are competing against equally good people who are better resourced (space race).

This isn't about whales and starfish, its about people and we have all the necessary analogies at our disposal already.
 
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aigomorla

CPU, Cases&Cooling Mod PC Gaming Mod Elite Member
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Sep 28, 2005
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what happens to the whale when it grows legs via evolution and then starts walking on land?

Why do u think intel is trying to get into the handheld + SSD + almost anything else they think they can implement...

I dont think intel has a problem with shallow waters... seems like it is trying to grow legs and walk on land.


And if the AMD APU is designated the next console... well.. that's one large starfish.. at least the whale can breathe outside of the water. :p
 
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mrmt

Diamond Member
Aug 18, 2012
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“If the water becomes shallow, and you’re a whale, you’re gonna get grounded and you’ll die. If the water becomes shallow, and you’re a starfish, you don’t give a shit,” he said. “If the market goes down by 50 percent, it’s awfully dangerous if you’re a whale.”

That analogy is cute.

Maybe someone forgot to give a look at their own balance sheet before giving an interview. With the *huge* (lol) console margins and *huge* dGPU margins, AMD is still very dependent on the traditional PC market and, more important, desktop market to generate cash to pay their bills. And they still have the WSA quota to fill.

But what can we expect from someone who says this:

I’m a gamer and in many ways the [FX-9590] is my baby. I wanted to do that and I pushed very hard internally for that. It’s a great success. I did that because I love what we’re doing there.
 

Exophase

Diamond Member
Apr 19, 2012
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This guy says some weird things.

Unlike our competitor, who’s obsessed with launching consoles in the mobile market, we still love PC gamers and we’re absolutely committed to them. That’s never going to go away. Nobody should have any doubt that we’re committed to GPUs.
So apparently, nVidia Shield is a sign that they don't love PC gamers anymore and aren't committed to discrete GPUs. Meanwhile, AMD being in every home console where they'll probably walk away with 10x to 100x more sales than Shield isn't a sign of anything at all.

No contradiction there.

If you like at Sandy Bridge, 17 percent of the die was GPU. When they got to Ivy Bridge, it went up to 27. Haswell’s now, I think, 31 to 32. Clearly there’s a trend.
I think he needs to better familiarize himself with Haswell's lineup, if he thinks a single "31-32%" number characterizes it.

We think the reason they’re doing that is because of GPGPU. It’s not because of games.
*smirk*

Anyone who thinks that GPGPU today is a bigger driving force for Intel's IGPs than games is delusional.

It's a facet, sure, a nicety, but clearly not the main point. All you have to do is look at what Intel has used for demos and what they've used in their marketing and promotional material - it's been pretty much nothing but games and hardly a word about GPGPU. Then there's the recent features they've added which are 100% gaming like order independent translucency, attached with language that shows a clear intention to lure game developers with it.

It sounds like he wants to convince himself that Intel is pursuing compute above all else so that CPUs become irrelevant and it no longer matters that AMD is behind Intel in CPU performance...

I just don’t know why they don’t call [Haswell] an APU… it seems just like pride.
He doesn't understand why Intel doesn't use AMD's marketing terms to describe their products? When the marketing term is far from generic or especially descriptive? Really?

What I can, however, say is this: I’m a gamer and in many ways the [FX-9590] is my baby. I wanted to do that and I pushed very hard internally for that. It’s a great success. I did that because I love what we’re doing there.
Someone who takes this kind of credit for a special binning of a processor (calling it "his baby") must not have an awful lot of real engineering accomplishments to take credit for.
 

ShintaiDK

Lifer
Apr 22, 2012
20,378
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PR smacktalk. Seems AMD never learns after their epic arrogance in 2003-2005.

Its simply sad to read statements that got nothing to say really, rather than talking bad about the competitors. And lying at the same time just makes it worse.
 
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sontin

Diamond Member
Sep 12, 2011
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PhysX is an utter failure because it’s proprietary. Nobody wants it. You don’t want it, I don’t want it, gamers don’t want it. Analysts don’t want it. In the early days of our industry, you could get away with it and it worked. We’ve all had enough of it. They’re unhealthy.Nvidia should be congratulated for its invention. As a trend, GPGPU is absolutely fantastic and fabulous. But that was then, this is now. Now, collectively our industry doesn’t want a proprietary standard. That’s why people are migrating to OpenCL.


So that must be the reason why OpenPhysics was such a huge success since September 2009 and we have all these nice games with it...

 

AtenRa

Lifer
Feb 2, 2009
14,003
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Anyone who thinks that GPGPU today is a bigger driving force for Intel's IGPs than games is delusional.

How many Sandybridge, IvyBridge and Haswell desktop onwers do you know that they play games with threir iGPUs ?? (exept Balla :p)
Also, how many will spend $350+ for Haswell GT3 alone (and not be able to change the damn CPU) for gaming ???
 
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Exophase

Diamond Member
Apr 19, 2012
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How many Sandybridge, IvyBridge and Haswell desktop onwers do you know that they play games with threir iGPUs ?? (exept Balla :p)
Also, how many will spend $350+ for Haswell GT3 alone (and not be able to change the damn CPU) for gaming ???

I don't know that many people who play games to begin with and I haven't surveyed them about what they use so I don't think I can meaningfully address your question.

What I do know is that Steam surveys show plenty of people are using Intel IGPs to play games. I also know that plenty of people play games on consoles and Intel IGPs have more or less surpassed them. I also know that plenty of people play games even if they're more than a couple years old or can't run > 60fps at the highest settings. And finally I know that the gap between AMD and Intel's IGPs has shrunk, so maybe you should extend your question to ask who bought Llano, Trinity, and Richland for gaming? Maybe AMD really is pursuing GPGPU here but that's surely not what people are evaluating with those either.

As for your question about who will spend $350+ for Haswell GT3 for gaming, the answer is pretty easy: someone who is buying a laptop for that CPU, and who wants acceptable gaming with good battery life. Or to put it another way, someone buying a Macbook Pro.

Now, do you have any information on how much GPGPU is actually being utilized on these processors?
 

sniffin

Member
Jun 29, 2013
141
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PR smacktalk. Seems AMD never learns after their epic arrogance in 2003-2005.

Yes because PR talk always reflects the internal attitudes of a company

Its simply sad to read statements that got nothing to say really, rather than talking bad about the competitors. And lying at the same time just makes it worse.

lol you say this as if every company ever doesn't talk bullshit. "Lying"? Bit dramatic there. Could you at least pretend to be objective

I wonder what effect your 6000+ posts have had on shareprices. Probably zero, but influencing them clearly seems to be your intent
 
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guskline

Diamond Member
Apr 17, 2006
5,338
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I read the article and understand his PR. IF Intel as a "whale" was merely swimming around in shallow water and not evolving I agree the scenario would be grounding and death. However, they have been hard at work cracking into the mobile market.

I wonder how long he had to think up the starfish and whale analogy. Too bad for AMD the facts don't support his analogy.
 

NTMBK

Lifer
Nov 14, 2011
10,525
6,050
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I wonder what effect your 6000+ posts have had on shareprices. Probably zero, but influencing them clearly seems to be your intent

Oh come on :rolleyes: You can disagree with a person's arguments and views without making that kind of despicable insinuation. It's as bad as the morons who shout "Shill!" whenever someone stands up and says something they don't like.
 

sontin

Diamond Member
Sep 12, 2011
3,273
149
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I read the article and understand his PR. IF Intel as a "whale" was merely swimming around in shallow water and not evolving I agree the scenario would be grounding and death. However, they have been hard at work cracking into the mobile market.

I wonder how long he had to think up the starfish and whale analogy. Too bad for AMD the facts don't support his analogy.

The fun part is that he thinks or really believes that Intel would do nothing. They can easily go after the 20% of the market and squeeze AMD out of the market. And let nVidia do the same.

Hm, thinking about this i really want to see how AMD will survive the attack of two whales when they come into their area...
 

SiliconWars

Platinum Member
Dec 29, 2012
2,346
0
0
PR smacktalk. Seems AMD never learns after their epic arrogance in 2003-2005.

Its simply sad to read statements that got nothing to say really, rather than talking bad about the competitors. And lying at the same time just makes it worse.

So I guess this was all Nvidia's fault too?

Nvidia's Roy Taylor: Nobody Cares About ATI
Nvidia declares the CPU dead

Or is it just another twitter hero who likes the sound of their own opinion just a bit too much? Roy Taylor is and always has been a total wind-up merchant.

The fun part is that he thinks or really believes that Intel would do nothing. They can easily go after the 20% of the market and squeeze AMD out of the market. And let nVidia do the same.

Hm, thinking about this i really want to see how AMD will survive the attack of two whales when they come into their area...

Yeah, guess what they've been trying that for decades. You might want to wake up to the fact that Intel will be going after the easy picking in mobile first. You know what that is called? Tegra.

Starfish eat dead whales btw - http://yourdailyinspiration.me/post/22210205378/starfish-eating-dead-whale
 
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sontin

Diamond Member
Sep 12, 2011
3,273
149
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Funny that you always bring up other companies when we talking about AMD. Makes me wonder if we have someone here who has a close connection to AMD. :hmm:

/btw: Why would Intel ignore 20% of the PC market and going instead into a much more complicated market? Makes no sense. But i guess you need a scenario to distract the viewer from the AMD rep who thinks that neither Intel nor nVidia will evolve and going after the rest of the market if they need to do it to survive.
 
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AtenRa

Lifer
Feb 2, 2009
14,003
3,362
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So apparently, nVidia Shield is a sign that they don't love PC gamers anymore and aren't committed to discrete GPUs. Meanwhile, AMD being in every home console where they'll probably walk away with 10x to 100x more sales than Shield isn't a sign of anything at all.

One difference, AMD only design the APU of the Consoles, NVIDIA Design, Manufacture and SELL the Shiled.

That is, they are selling a finished PRODUCT for non PC Gamers.
 

NTMBK

Lifer
Nov 14, 2011
10,525
6,050
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Funny that you always bring up other companies when we talking about AMD. Makes me wonder if we have someone here who has a close connection to AMD. :hmm:

Oh wow, this coming from the guy who trolls AMD posts so that he can talk about Tegra. Classic!