The rise and fall of AMD

[Idontcare]

If the AMD board of directors had even the barest sense of direction they would have booted out Ruiz and welcomed in Jen-Hsun Huang as leader of a merged AMD+Nvidia company. It was the most obvious move for ensuring long term share holder value.

Considering how Sanders ran the company, pretty sure the BoDs for AMD was basically just a puppet position where you did nothing but agree with Jerry's plans and cash your grossly excessive paycheck twice monthly with a smile on your face and a skip in your step.

So when Ruiz came along, who himself was appointed "Chairman of the Board", its not like there was a pre-existing culture of back-pressure or accountability from within the ranks of the BoD.

I mean just think about that for a moment...Hector Ruiz was both the CEO and the Chairman of the Board. Talk about wolf in the hen house.

And clever too, talk about white collar criminal. Millions of dollars leaked from AMD to his bank account, all legit because the BoD approved every dollar of it. Helps to be Chairman when you need BoD approval for all your activities, including compensation. :hmm:

 

[Bateluer]

AMD has been killed many times, still it is alive

They are Iron Born?

 

[lagokc]

They are Iron Born?

More like The Nameless One at this point :|

 

[Ancalagon44]

Exactly, AMD opted to go with second-best, on both counts.

They went with choice #2 for their graphics acquisition, and in doing so they kept the status quo of choice #2 for CEO w/Ruiz (versus had they put Jensen into the driver seat at AMD headquarters).

Is it really any wonder when bad management makes bad decisions which in turn further cements the positions of bad management in place to continue making more bad decisions?

Its a cycle that can only be broken by the BoD.

You could argue that the K7 and K8 had little to do with AMD and more to do with a lucky acquisition (Nextgen).

Since then, every important decision has been made poorly.

Acquiring AMD instead of Nvidia.
Not having the strength of leadership to prevent politics between AMD and ATI.
Selling off the fabs and the whole WSA mess (not that selling the fabs off was a bad idea, just executed extremely poorly)
BullDozer and the lets-not-learn-from-our-competitors-mistakes screw up.

 

[lagokc]

"Acquiring AMD instead of Nvidia."

ATi wasn't their first choice...

 

[Ancalagon44]

I meant acquiring ATI instead of Nvidia.

Yes, I know, but they made a mistake. They were too proud to let the Nvidia CEO run AMD, and as a result, Nvidia is now making lots of money while AMD has made how many consecutive losses now?

 

[Idontcare]

You could argue that the K7 and K8 had little to do with AMD and more to do with a lucky acquisition (Nextgen).

Since then, every important decision has been made poorly.

Acquiring AMD instead of Nvidia.
Not having the strength of leadership to prevent politics between AMD and ATI.
Selling off the fabs and the whole WSA mess (not that selling the fabs off was a bad idea, just executed extremely poorly)
BullDozer and the lets-not-learn-from-our-competitors-mistakes screw up.

I would argue the poor-decision making occurred long before. Consider that Sanders' business plan was to basically rip-off Intel's IP, reverse engineer and clone Intel's processors and sell them based on a legal technicality (no ethics there) they thought they could maneuver in the courts.

What kind of business model is that?

Then the K5? A disaster which only drove home the point that AMD had no idea what it was doing if they couldn't steal someone else's IP.

So, barring the ability to steal it, they bought it. The K6 came directly from buying out Nexgen. (not that this was Sanders' brilliance, it was because Bill Gates made it happen) And the K7 only came about because DEC imploded and AMD was able to hire up an entire Alpha design team (including Dirk Meyers, the lead architect for the K7 and eventual CEO).

And the APU vision - buy up ATi, and again not because this was a brilliant plan, it was actually plan B because Nvidia wasn't about to put itself under AMD's "leadership".

Bobcat was the first truly home-grown microarchitecture for AMD other than the K5. And bulldozer.

AMD is just one of those companies, and every industry has one, that is forever stuck in "amateur hour" mode. Like the guy who is still a senior in college but has been there for 7 yrs already. Just can never quite pull it together and grow up.

IMO Rory is trying to get AMD to put on its big-boy pants but he's fighting with a corporate culture that was hand-built by Sanders and carried on by Ruiz. Rory could be a freaking genius and still not win that battle.

 

[Ancalagon44]

Somehow Bobcat turned out... well amazingly well, all things considered, although I think Jaguar should really have been launched last year already.

Bulldozer however, is a lesson in what management can do to good engineers.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

The problem with all the whining about what Intel did in 2001 is that... it was in 2001. Sure, what Intel did was wrong, and hurt AMD. But spit happens, and at some point you have to pick yourself up and move on.

AMD's peak market share came well after those moves, so it's not like they hindered the company from any chance at success. They were just out-managed and out-engineered in the latter half of last decade.

At any rate, at least it's clear that all the people here who try to prop up AMD by making excuses for why they lose to Intel, are just following an established tradition.

 

[Fox5]

Somehow Bobcat turned out... well amazingly well, all things considered, although I think Jaguar should really have been launched last year already.

Bulldozer however, is a lesson in what management can do to good engineers.

Bobcat/Jaguar is really the architecture AMD needed back in 2007/2008. The die size is quite small for the performance, so margins should be better.

AMD's insistence on quad cores and L3 caches already seemed odd to me when they were the value provider. They should have tried to maximize margins on small dual cores and sold as many as possible, instead they squandered market opportunities by producing native quads when the market wanted dual cores.

 

[mrmt]

I would argue the poor-decision making occurred long before. Consider that Sanders' business plan was to basically rip-off Intel's IP, reverse engineer and clone Intel's processors and sell them based on a legal technicality (no ethics there) they thought they could maneuver in the courts.

(...)


AMD is just one of those companies, and every industry has one, that is forever stuck in "amateur hour" mode. Like the guy who is still a senior in college but has been there for 7 yrs already. Just can never quite pull it together and grow up.

They didn't stop there. Microservers? Nothing from AMD R&D engine, they had to grab one on the market. And that happened under Rory's watch.

IMO Rory is trying to get AMD to put on its big-boy pants but he's fighting with a corporate culture that was hand-built by Sanders and carried on by Ruiz. Rory could be a freaking genius and still not win that battle.

I may be wrong, but I don't think a tap dancer like him would have a chance to become a CEO in a company without the kind of amateur culture AMD has.

Every Q&A is a massacre, almost no guidance, slaps from the financial analysts in the room, targets breached, etc. And much of the blame must be directed on him. What's the point in tap dancing like that when your once multi-billion company is now a single-billion company? Whatever chances you have of attracting long term investors beyond Mubadala lies in gaining trust from the market investors, and tap dancing doesn't help on this.

Btw, I think we can see the harsh treatment AMD receives from GLF in another light. They seem to be very punitive to AMD, and now we see reason on why. I would be mad too if I had been cheated to commit billions to a failed company like AMD, and even worse, if I had to deal with the same BoD that cheated me for the years to come.

 

[lagokc]

Somehow Bobcat turned out... well amazingly well, all things considered, although I think Jaguar should really have been launched last year already.

Bulldozer however, is a lesson in what management can do to good engineers.

Bobcat is in a weird power-performance area. Unlike Atom it's too power hungry to fit into a tablet (much less a phone) but it's not quite fast enough to power an HTPC unless you use a lightweight Linux distro. Mine's going to make a kick-ass nas4free box though. :biggrin:

 

[Genx87]

Yes, sort of like a guy who jumps off a building and as he passes the second floor goes: "So far, so good!"

lmfao

 

[Idontcare]

Btw, I think we can see the harsh treatment AMD receives from GLF in another light. They seem to be very punitive to AMD, and now we see reason on why. I would be mad too if I had been cheated to commit billions to a failed company like AMD, and even worse, if I had to deal with the same BoD that cheated me for the years to come.

I think so too. No one likes getting swindled, let alone having it aired in public as Hector has now done.

Not that the GF folks would be vindictive about it, but they sure as heck aren't going to do the whole "fool me once...fool me again shame on me" shtick.

 

[Genx87]

AMD is just one of those companies, and every industry has one, that is forever stuck in "amateur hour" mode. Like the guy who is still a senior in college but has been there for 7 yrs already. Just can never quite pull it together and grow up.

IMO Rory is trying to get AMD to put on its big-boy pants but he's fighting with a corporate culture that was hand-built by Sanders and carried on by Ruiz. Rory could be a freaking genius and still not win that battle.

Well said. Being a fanboy of AMD in the late 1990s and early 2000s. I tend to think my falling out with them was due to me maturing and realizing AMD was amatuer hour. Being young and idealistic I could excuse the mistakes and root for the underdog. Once I got into the real world my tolerance for poor decisions lessened. The result was me going from defending AMD to laughing at their stupid decisions and face palming when they keep coming.

I was in Dallas over the weekend and met a guy who works for TI. We both were dicussing the CPU space and when the subject of AMD came up. The jokes and stories of stupidity seemed endless.

It is a modern day miracle of god they are still open for business imo.

 

[Genx87]

Bobcat is in a weird power-performance area. Unlike Atom it's too power hungry to fit into a tablet (much less a phone) but it's not quite fast enough to power an HTPC unless you use a lightweight Linux distro. Mine's going to make a kick-ass nas4free box though. :biggrin:

Sounds like the perfect AMD design. Fails to find any meaningful or worthwhile market.

 

[Vesku]

They didn't stop there. Microservers? Nothing from AMD R&D engine, they had to grab one on the market. And that happened under Rory's watch.



I may be wrong, but I don't think a tap dancer like him would have a chance to become a CEO in a company without the kind of amateur culture AMD has.

Every Q&A is a massacre, almost no guidance, slaps from the financial analysts in the room, targets breached, etc. And much of the blame must be directed on him. What's the point in tap dancing like that when your once multi-billion company is now a single-billion company? Whatever chances you have of attracting long term investors beyond Mubadala lies in gaining trust from the market investors, and tap dancing doesn't help on this.

Btw, I think we can see the harsh treatment AMD receives from GLF in another light. They seem to be very punitive to AMD, and now we see reason on why. I would be mad too if I had been cheated to commit billions to a failed company like AMD, and even worse, if I had to deal with the same BoD that cheated me for the years to come.

The buyers of AMD's foundry could probably justifiably blame AMD for the 32nm headache but the 28/22/20 woes are largely on those running GF. I don't think it's fear of AMD stealing IP that is holding back other wafer customers.

 

[mrmt]

Sounds like the perfect AMD design. Fails to find any meaningful or worthwhile mainstream market.

A nice balance of low power consumption and one notch above low performance. A master of none, but perfect for the embedded market.

 

[mrmt]

The buyers of AMD's foundry could probably justifiably blame AMD for the 32nm headache but the 28/22/20 woes are largely on those running GF. I don't think it's fear of AMD stealing IP that is holding back other wafer customers.

When GLF was created AMD should have the R&D for 32nm on a very advanced state, and 22nm should be well on its way too. More important, it was being done on established structures at both AMD and IBM, meaning that there wasn't much GLF could do on 32/22nm. For those thinking on how it would be if AMD had the money to keep their fabs, the answer is "it would be even worse", because the mess would have been the same but AMD would have nowhere near the money GLF has. GLF is having the rotten fruits sowed by AMD management.

GLF's fault lies in going powerpoint engineering to overcome these shortcomings, and in not straight up their R&D department almost four years after the acquisition.

But you have to think.... If AMD lied about other buyers, they could have lied about how much cash flow they could expect from AMD, how much of the process R&D was made internally, how much IBM would be willing to give Globalfoundries a say in the R&D and what not. It was a negotiation conducted with bad faith.

 

[Vesku]

The WSA basically bakes in how much AMD pays GF and I don't see how in business AMD is responsible for the buyer investigating fully the history and operation of the IBM process tech club. Certainly the R&D and investment decisions for 22 and 20nm (oh and hail mary 14nm) mostly came under the new ownership. With the amount of money being thrown into it I'm surprised GF hasn't announced a closer partnership with the equipment makers similar to what Intel has done. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...y-10-stake-in-asml-for-about-2-1-billion.html

As far as bad faith it's hard to imagine something that trumps the WSA going unrevealed to AMD shareholders, the buyers of GF appear complicit with AMD management on that front.

Personally I think this explains quite a bit: Ruiz was named Chairman of AMD spin-off GlobalFoundries in March 2009.

 

[krumme]

A nice balance of low power consumption and one notch above low performance. A master of none, but perfect for the embedded market.

Give it a rest guys. Bobcat actually sold like hotcakes - and not for the embedded. Its hardly there you can fault AMD Imagine how many Atom AMD could have pushed. Zero,- as they could not afford all the "design wins" for phones and tablets and as its absolutely crap for..., well its just crap for everything. The netbook market it had existed 3-5 years ago.

 

[mrmt]

The WSA basically bakes in how much AMD pays GF and I don't see how in business AMD is responsible for the buyer investigating fully the history and operation of the IBM process tech club.

Because how much foundry R&D could generate and how healthy was IBM R&D pipeline directly impact how much the fabs were worth.

If IBM had a healthy pipeline and GLF could field 28nm along with TSMC, the value of the asset is X, but if you are only able to field 28nm 2 years later, you have to price a step discount on the value of the asset because you will generate a lot less cash in the second cenario.

Same with R&D. If GLF needs to spend 1 billion to bring the R&D engine to the bleeding edge, price is one, but what if they have to spend 4 billion, those extra 3 billion need to be factored in the price.

 

[mrmt]

Give it a rest guys. Bobcat actually sold like hotcakes - and not for the embedded. Its hardly there you can fault AMD Imagine how many Atom AMD could have pushed. Zero,- as they could not afford all the "design wins" for phones and tablets and as its absolutely crap for..., well its just crap for everything. The netbook market it had existed 3-5 years ago.

This is exactly the problem, Krumme. Brazos could have been a game changer had it arrived along with Atom. When it arrived it sold like hot cakes, but the volumes are already faltering. And with Haswell/Broadwell coming for low power and the new Atom arriving by the end of the year, Kabini won't have the same easy ride.

Simply put, the marketing hole where AMD put Brazos is getting smaller and smaller, and Kabini can't change that.

 

[galego]

Well said. Being a fanboy of AMD in the late 1990s and early 2000s. I tend to think my falling out with them was due to me maturing and realizing AMD was amatuer hour. Being young and idealistic I could excuse the mistakes and root for the underdog. Once I got into the real world my tolerance for poor decisions lessened. The result was me going from defending AMD to laughing at their stupid decisions and face palming when they keep coming.

I was in Dallas over the weekend and met a guy who works for TI. We both were dicussing the CPU space and when the subject of AMD came up. The jokes and stories of stupidity seemed endless.

It is a modern day miracle of god they are still open for business imo.

Ethan Allen in Reason:

In those parts of the world where learning and science have prevailed, miracles have ceased; but in those parts of it as are barbarous and ignorant, miracles are still in vogue.

Some people know why they are open and why are rising. The same people also know by Bobcat was a market success and helped AMD to gain market from Intel and its crappy atoms.

 

[galego]

They are Iron Born?

According to the arstechnica article they are more as Rocky