Samsung and Global Foundries will produce AMD's Next Gen Greenland GPU and Zen CPU

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Aug 11, 2008
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If you read this forum and go thinking "hmm an unusual amount of pro AMD activity here" you are wearing differently coloured shades than me.

Take the keller threads, the zen hasnt taped out yet threads, and see the scrutiny that ie. wccftech is under, as a source, by certain posters depending on what story it portraits(pro/anti amd/intel), the double standards are so obvious that you HAVE to assume a person is invested somehow, either that or some psychological phenomenon/disorder is at play.

No not any "unusual" pro-AMD activity at all. Just the usual, along with the usual paranoia that everyone who doesnt buy the hype somehow hates AMD.
 

NostaSeronx

Diamond Member
Sep 18, 2011
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A couple months later...

AMD cancels Zen.
AMD adopts 22FDX.
AMD goes Puma+(*cough*Excavator+((Crane(AMD64)/Harverster(AArch64)*cough*) for all products!

IoT, Dense Server, and Green HPC #4Life.
 

cytg111

Lifer
Mar 17, 2008
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No not any "unusual" pro-AMD activity at all. Just the usual, along with the usual paranoia that everyone who doesnt buy the hype somehow hates AMD.

I dont see the hype, maybe save for one or two posters, noone really do, everyone knows its a longshot (zen), just portraying the possibility (however unlikely) is what it is. There is a difference between entertaining an idea and shutting it down beforehand, and that is sort of what is going on here IMO.

edit: take the usual suspects, when have you last read anything that speculates towards a turnaround for AMD? Never? Yea, me too.
 
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Mar 10, 2006
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edit: take the usual suspects, when have you last read anything that speculates towards a turnaround for AMD? Never? Yea, me too.

AMD's situation has deteriorated over the last 5 years or so. Anybody who has predicted a "turnaround" has been proven dead wrong. Kind of hard to have any sort of confidence in the company after seeing it crumble like that.
 

cytg111

Lifer
Mar 17, 2008
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AMD's situation has deteriorated over the last 5 years or so. Anybody who has predicted a "turnaround" has been proven dead wrong. Kind of hard to have any sort of confidence in the company after seeing it crumble like that.

Thanks for reinforcing my point?
 

Sweepr

Diamond Member
May 12, 2006
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No not any "unusual" pro-AMD activity at all. Just the usual, along with the usual paranoia that everyone who doesnt buy the hype somehow hates AMD.

Agreed. This is one of the few forums where there's some constructive criticism instead of 24/7 blind AMD cheerleading (*cough* SemiAccurate *cough*). And for those suggesting this doesn't happen on Intel threads, you must have missed all the latest launch threads.
 
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III-V

Senior member
Oct 12, 2014
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If you read this forum and go thinking "hmm an unusual amount of pro AMD activity here" you are wearing differently coloured shades than me.

Take the keller threads, the zen hasnt taped out yet threads, and see the scrutiny that ie. wccftech is under, as a source, by certain posters depending on what story it portraits(pro/anti amd/intel), the double standards are so obvious that you HAVE to assume a person is invested somehow, either that or some psychological phenomenon/disorder is at play.

Wccftech is just a pile of garbage regardless of the subject.
 
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Mar 10, 2006
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Thanks for reinforcing my point?

Past performance is the best indicator of future performance (though not perfect). Once AMD starts to show signs of improvement/life, it will be more reasonable to "speculate" on a "turnaround."

AMD's PC business continues to be in free-fall, it has lost massive share to NVIDIA in GPUs (and AMD's GPUs are actually not anywhere near as bad competitively as their CPUs are), it recently sold off yet more assets to stay afloat, the semi-custom business is solid but not enough, and the company is now pretty much betting the farm on regaining share in the server market with Zen-based CPUs.

Good luck to them; we'll see when the first Zen benchmarks/tests hit the Web whether they can ultimately pull it off or not.
 

cytg111

Lifer
Mar 17, 2008
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Past performance is the best indicator of future performance (though not perfect). Once AMD starts to show signs of improvement/life, it will be more reasonable to "speculate" on a "turnaround."

AMD's PC business continues to be in free-fall, it has lost massive share to NVIDIA in GPUs (and AMD's GPUs are actually not anywhere near as bad competitively as their CPUs are), it recently sold off yet more assets to stay afloat, the semi-custom business is solid but not enough, and the company is now pretty much betting the farm on regaining share in the server market with Zen-based CPUs.

Good luck to them; we'll see when the first Zen benchmarks/tests hit the Web whether they can ultimately pull it off or not.

The best weather forecast for tomorrow is still that is going to be somewhat like today, agreed. We all know they're bleeding hard, we all know the Zen may be too little too late, - and that is with perfect execution (GFO, and all that entails).. Still what is the harm of speculating along those lines? I guess ppl do it cause the x86 scene will be so much duller without them. We could more or less close this forum section down and go straight to press releases.
 
Mar 10, 2006
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Still what is the harm of speculating along those lines? I guess ppl do it cause the x86 scene will be so much duller without them. We could more or less close this forum section down and go straight to press releases.

What's the harm in believing that AMD's chance of success are low?

As long as people can disagree with each other in a civil fashion on these forums and present rational arguments, I see no reason why both points of view cannot be discussed/debated. At the very least it can be fun for the participants (I love a good debate) and it can also be pretty fun for those who spectate, too.

There are certain posters here who think that business analysis has no place in an enthusiast forum, but I 100% disagree: understand the business dynamics and you can at least tease out a sense of where the industry is going, what products you can expect to see, etc. It's all good stuff and it's all relevant IMO.

That said, if the mods (and only the mods) say that these topics aren't allowed then of course I will not discuss them, but as long as a particular line of discussion is permissible by the ToS and as long as we can be civil, I don't see any downside to talking about the business side of the equation as it ultimately determines what products we get and what we pay for them.
 
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III-V

Senior member
Oct 12, 2014
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This is one of the few forums where there's some constructive criticism instead of 24/7 blind AMD cheerleading (*cough* SemiAccurate *cough*). And for those suggesting this doesn't happen on Intel threads, you must have missed all the latest launch threads.
Yeah... as a whole, the internet has an AMD bias... there's a lot of leftover from the days where previously clever CS/IT guys realized that they could get the same/better hardware from AMD for less money. I actually quite like AMD too, and would prefer a company with their values being the industry leader over, say, Nvidia. There's a lot of honorable stuff that AMD does that doesn't necessarily create profit for themselves, but dramatically reduces the cost that other companies and consumers would otherwise have to pay for (e.g. FreeSync, Mantle getting folded into DX12/Vulkan).

That stuff doesn't make a lot of headlines though. And I'd definitely say this particular forum has an Intel bias, although there are certain members of both camps (in particular, one on each side that stand out in my head) that really are so vitrilolic and ignorant that they have no business existing outside of some sort of forced reeducation center.
 

cytg111

Lifer
Mar 17, 2008
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What's the harm in believing that AMD's chance of success are low?
..
That said, if the mods (and only the mods) say that these topics aren't allowed then of course I will not discuss them, but as long as a particular line of discussion is permissible by the ToS and as long as we can be civil, I don't see any downside to talking about the business side of the equation as it ultimately determines what products we get and what we pay for them.

I wholeheartedly agree.
As I said one, or maybe two, believes their chances of success is high. Remove them from the equation.
Whats the harm in thought-provoking-engineering their way out of the *-hole they're in now? Why must it be *shut down*? I dont understand ppl in masses.
 

cytg111

Lifer
Mar 17, 2008
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.. although there are certain members of both camps (in particular, one on each side that stand out in my head) that really are so vitrilolic and ignorant that they have no business existing outside of some sort of forced reeducation center.

- wow, but yea.
 

Phynaz

Lifer
Mar 13, 2006
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We were talking about multi-threading and multi-core scaling in DX-12 vs DX-11 and how Mantle performance will be almost the same in DX-12 games.

Citation needed.

You don't seem to realize Mantle is dead. It's not a thing. In AMDs own words it was a "proof of concept".
 

Phynaz

Lifer
Mar 13, 2006
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No, you hope they will. Just like you did countless times before.

We heard for ages now that the next AMD product is going to fix it and turn it in the right direction. But it only goes south every time.

There was no limit on what Carrizo couldn't do either. It turned out to be the biggest APU flop yet. The PC division will end around a 50% decline in 2015. And it will continue so in 2016.

Llano, Trinity, Richland...they were all supposed to save AMD. They ended up being a continuation of the same failed strategy.

At least from what we know Zen is a break from that.
 

Phynaz

Lifer
Mar 13, 2006
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And here we have it again. Intel shareholders derailing another AMD thread to the point of it being unreadable and unrelated.

Thanks for ruining the forums.

Have you checked your 401k lately? You are most likely an "Intel shareholder”.
 

Phynaz

Lifer
Mar 13, 2006
10,140
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A couple months later...

AMD cancels Zen.
AMD adopts 22FDX.
AMD goes Puma+(*cough*Excavator+((Crane(AMD64)/Harverster(AArch64)*cough*) for all products!

IoT, Dense Server, and Green HPC #4Life.

Did your mother smoke crack when she was pregnant?


Insulting other members is not allowed
Markfw900
 
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PPB

Golden Member
Jul 5, 2013
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4 posts in a row (there is an edit button you know) and still, nothing of value was added to the discussion. Probably CPU technical discussions arent your thing.

ONT: This was linked in another forum and seemed useful, its a talk about x86 CPU design and validation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDmv0sDB1Ak

After watching it, it becomes evident to me that validation and debugging is probably THE area where a huge disparity between 2 CPU designer's R&D budgets should show, and as the talk progressed it also became evident why Bulldozer was shipped in the state it did.
 

ultimatebob

Lifer
Jul 1, 2001
25,135
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A couple months later...

AMD cancels Zen.
AMD adopts 22FDX.
AMD goes Puma+(*cough*Excavator+((Crane(AMD64)/Harverster(AArch64)*cough*) for all products!

IoT, Dense Server, and Green HPC #4Life.

That's probably a better future than what I see for the company. I see it getting broken up when they run out of cash and the majority of their IP ending up with a second tier SoC company like Allwinner when it's sold for pennies on the dollar.

On the bright side, cheap cell phones and tablets will have much better graphics a few years from now. The downside is that Intel will probably start slowly raising prices on their processors due to lack of competition on the lower end of their product line. We already see this happening with the higher end parts that AMD cannot compete with.
 
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DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
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None of those got touched/fixed for CON cores because it likely involved massive core redesign.

Actually, there were some tweaks to L1 and L2 cache in Carrizo that flew under my radar. The L1 data cache doubled in size without reduction in efficiency while the l2 size was cut in half. The l2 is faster in Carrizo than it is in Kaveri . . .

A couple months later...

AMD cancels Zen.
AMD adopts 22FDX.
AMD goes Puma+(*cough*Excavator+((Crane(AMD64)/Harverster(AArch64)*cough*) for all products!

IoT, Dense Server, and Green HPC #4Life.

I don't know whether to laugh or to cry.
 

Fjodor2001

Diamond Member
Feb 6, 2010
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Regarding the article in the OP, what conclusions can we draw from that AMD will have their chips produced by both Samsung and GF?

I'd say:

-Since Samsung already has their 14 nm process up and running, AMD should not run into any problems producing the Greenland GPU or Zen CPU due to GF having problems implementing the 14 nm process.

-AMD will likely prefer to produce the 14 nm chips at GF anyway, since they have a WSA with GF.

-However AMD is not tied down by the WSA as much as before, since they e.g. can start producing the chips at Samsung and then later move production to GF.

-It seems like AMD follows in Apple's footsteps, where they have a second source for producing their chips. And in AMD's case it's better in some aspects, since both GF and Samsung the the exact same 14 nm process. For Apple, their A9 chip is produced on both TSMC 16 nm and Samsung 14 nm, so there will be process related differences between those chips.

-I should assume that AMD's bargaining power gets better due to having two sources of their chips.

Any other thoughts on this?
 

mrmt

Diamond Member
Aug 18, 2012
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-However AMD is not tied down by the WSA as much as before, since they e.g. can start producing the chips at Samsung and then later move production to GF.

-It seems like AMD follows in Apple's footsteps, where they have a second source for producing their chips. And in AMD's case it's better in some aspects, since both GF and Samsung the the exact same 14 nm process. For Apple, their A9 chip is produced on both TSMC 16 nm and Samsung 14 nm, so there will be process related differences between those chips.

-I should assume that AMD's bargaining power gets better due to having two sources of their chips.

Any other thoughts on this?

I can't really see where all these conclusions of yours are coming from. Here are my two cents:

- Apple indeed got a second-source for their chips, but that second source is Samsung, not Globalfoundries, because their first source is still (and will be for the foreseeable future) TSMC. Globalfoundries got a total of 0 Apple orders allocated to them.

- That Samsung might be manufacturing chips for AMD is much more likely of a settlement between Samsung and Globalfoundries than a sudden relief from the stringent conditions on the WSA. The trend on the WSA is for it to become more and more stringent, not lax: It comprised part of the CPU, then all CPUs, then finally all CPUs and part of the GPU line up.

- Globalfoundries wasn't shy to make AMD swallow a bill to backport a low volume part like Jaguar to their 28nm process.

- Nothing was reported at AMD that tilted the WSA balance towards them, quite the opposite, the shrinking volumes gives even more bargaining power to Globalfoundries.
 

Fjodor2001

Diamond Member
Feb 6, 2010
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- Apple indeed got a second-source for their chips, but that second source is Samsung, not Globalfoundries, because their first source is still (and will be for the foreseeable future) TSMC. Globalfoundries got a total of 0 Apple orders allocated to them.
This was exactly what I wrote (i.e. that Apple uses TSMC + Samsung, and AMD uses Samsung + GF). Didn't you read my previous post? The point is that both Apple and AMD now have a second source.
- That Samsung might be manufacturing chips for AMD is much more likely of a settlement between Samsung and Globalfoundries than a sudden relief from the stringent conditions on the WSA. The trend on the WSA is for it to become more and more stringent, not lax: It comprised part of the CPU, then all CPUs, then finally all CPUs and part of the GPU line up.
We have no idea how this settlement is arranged, we can only speculate. But the main point is that AMD now can have their chips produced at both Samsung and GF. And Samsung already has the process up and running. So in that respect AMD is not tied down by the WSA as much as before. AMD's chip launches will not be delayed by GF potentially not having their 14 nm process ready in time. I don't see how you can spin this to a negative thing for AMD!? (But I know you always try to do that ;) )
- Globalfoundries wasn't shy to make AMD swallow a bill to backport a low volume part like Jaguar to their 28nm process.
What does this have to do with the info in the OP?
- Nothing was reported at AMD that tilted the WSA balance towards them, quite the opposite, the shrinking volumes gives even more bargaining power to Globalfoundries.
Having a second source, and having Samsung which already has the 14 nm process up and running as supplier is not a good thing for AMD? Why do you think most companies strive to have a second source if possible? Because it's bad business?

Also, whether AMD's chip volumes increases or decreases going forward is irrelevant to the info in the OP. The benefits of this new situation is there regardless.
 
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