What is going to happen to AMD?

[desura]

Will the company survive and challenge Intel again? Or will it shrivel? I find it hard to believe that Intel would allow AMD to fold, just like MS rescued Apple.

 

[jpiniero]

They will very likely declare bankruptcy at some point, or be sold just before that happens.

If they manage to emerge from bankruptcy mostly intact (minus the x86 business), it would make sense for them to continue to work on semi-custom ARM chips and perhaps continue to sell dGPUs like today.

 

[svenge]

Either Chapter 11 reorganization (read: bankruptcy) or merely continuing its slow decline towards irrelevance much like VIA has.

 

[RampantAndroid]

What happens to the AMD64 patent that Intel relies on...that's my concern. I'm unsure of what the negotiated deal is right now with that.

 

[nismotigerwvu]

The odds of Zen landing as a Conroe-esque counterpunch are quite slim. The process gap won't be quite as severe as AMD has had to deal with the last few years, but it will still be a very real thing. I think what we'll see is a jump back to Phenom II era competitiveness with the top end Zen trading blows with top end i5 models and some specific workloads nipping at the heels of some i7 ones. Additionally, I'd guess that they will run a little hotter and draw a little more power but come at attractive price points. AMD will be fine in the long run, they have nice safe business in the consoles and graphics divisions and who knows, maybe Zen and K12 will round the CPU division back into shape.

 

[jpiniero]

The odds of Zen landing as a Conroe-esque counterpunch are quite slim. The process gap won't be quite as severe as AMD has had to deal with the last few years, but it will still be a very real thing. I think what we'll see is a jump back to Phenom II era competitiveness with the top end Zen trading blows with top end i5 models and some specific workloads nipping at the heels of some i7 ones. Additionally, I'd guess that they will run a little hotter and draw a little more power but come at attractive price points. AMD will be fine in the long run, they have nice safe business in the consoles and graphics divisions and who knows, maybe Zen and K12 will round the CPU division back into shape.

The problem is that Zen is the wrong product at the wrong time. Consumers aren't really buying PCs, they are buying smartphones. And the ones that are they are buying Bay Trail (and not even Core). Corporations are buying PCs, but they have always ignored AMD... and won't start now obviously considering they want laptops and low power desktops.

 

[Enigmoid]

Another one of these threads that will inevitably turn into mud slinging and end up locked.

 

[Burpo]

Yeah, we need more pointless speculation threads..

 

[CHADBOGA]

What happens to the AMD64 patent that Intel relies on...that's my concern. I'm unsure of what the negotiated deal is right now with that.

It is as safe as houses for Intel.

Whether AMD goes belly up or is acquired, Intel retains the rights to AMD64 for perpetuity.

 

[turtile]

They have 800 million in cash on hand... In other words, they aren't going bankrupt.

 

[leper84]

My take as a very AMD friendly consumer- either they become truly competitive with their next release, or I write them off for good. And there isn't much keeping me from buying a 4790k right now.

 

[jpiniero]

They have 800 million in cash on hand... In other words, they aren't going bankrupt.

AMD has a $633M bond payment due at the end of 2017 and another big chunk of the $2.3B owed 2 years later. One of the other posters said that AMD has said that they need $600M cash on hand to be able to continue. You do the math.

Now they might be able to get the junk bond dealers to buy some more bonds (to pay for the current ones), but that's only going to happen if the dealers are really desperate.

I'm sure if AMD posts any kind of loss you will see more job cuts and especially cuts in R&D. Which will lead to more stuff getting delayed or cancelled, which leads to less sales, and well you see where that leads to. I mean that's why the Zen APUs and K12 got delayed into 2017.

 

[Phynaz]

They will very likely declare bankruptcy at some point, or be sold just before that happens.

If they manage to emerge from bankruptcy mostly intact (minus the x86 business), it would make sense for them to continue to work on semi-custom ARM chips and perhaps continue to sell dGPUs like today.

The problem is that Zen is the wrong product at the wrong time. Consumers aren't really buying PCs, they are buying smartphones. And the ones that are they are buying Bay Trail (and not even Core). Corporations are buying PCs, but they have always ignored AMD... and won't start now obviously considering they want laptops and low power desktops.

AMD has a $633M bond payment due at the end of 2017 and another big chunk of the $2.3B owed 2 years later. One of the other posters said that AMD has said that they need $600M cash on hand to be able to continue. You do the math.

Now they might be able to get the junk bond dealers to buy some more bonds (to pay for the current ones), but that's only going to happen if the dealers are really desperate.

I'm sure if AMD posts any kind of loss you will see more job cuts and especially cuts in R&D. Which will lead to more stuff getting delayed or cancelled, which leads to less sales, and well you see where that leads to. I mean that's why the Zen APUs and K12 got delayed into 2017.

The best I can do is quote these. Listen to this man.

 

[cbn]

The problem is that Zen is the wrong product at the wrong time. Consumers aren't really buying PCs, they are buying smartphones. And the ones that are they are buying Bay Trail (and not even Core). Corporations are buying PCs, but they have always ignored AMD... and won't start now obviously considering they want laptops and low power desktops.

Zen is to be used in Servers also, so AMD is not a pure PC play.

Regarding the consumer APUs, the ones I am most interested would be the small iGPU Zen ones (assuming they end up existing as a small die part). Looking forward to seeing what AMD could do with such an APU using the Freedom fabric (from the SeaMicro purchase).

 

[Stormflux]

AMD betting the farm with Zen. With a few other (deck)cards in place; 14/16nm, DX12, Vulkan, HSA, and HBM. If Zen delivers, they have a high possibility of a grand return to former glory with Zen+ and Zen APUs. End game is Q4 2016, it will be an interesting year and a half going forward.

 

[DrMrLordX]

What happens to the AMD64 patent that Intel relies on...that's my concern. I'm unsure of what the negotiated deal is right now with that.

Patents don't last forever. I don't know when the filing dates were for those specific patents, but the products based on them came out over a decade ago.

AMD has a $633M bond payment due at the end of 2017 and another big chunk of the $2.3B owed 2 years later. One of the other posters said that AMD has said that they need $600M cash on hand to be able to continue. You do the math.

They're sitting on 800M now. That gets them through at least one more round of payments. The next hurdle is, what, 2019?

 

[sandorski]

The best is yet to come.

 

[raghu78]

AMD has a $633M bond payment due at the end of 2017 and another big chunk of the $2.3B owed 2 years later. One of the other posters said that AMD has said that they need $600M cash on hand to be able to continue. You do the math.

flat out misinformation. see the CFO presentation from AMD FAD 2015. As of May 6,2015 there is no term debt maturities till 2019.

http://ir.amd.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=74093&p=irol-analystday

I'm sure if AMD posts any kind of loss you will see more job cuts and especially cuts in R&D. Which will lead to more stuff getting delayed or cancelled, which leads to less sales, and well you see where that leads to. I mean that's why the Zen APUs and K12 got delayed into 2017.

AMD Zen based APUs were always going to launch only in 2017. Thats how it happened with Trinity launching in mid-2012 after Bulldozer launched in Q3 2011. You cannot design a APU with a grounds up new CPU core without first designing it and testing it as a standalone CPU product. Zen FX and Zen server CPUs will launch late in 2016. my guess is late Q3 or early Q4 2014 since AMD expected server market share gains only in 2017.

K12 was basically a reprioritization of resources. AMD needed Zen out first in 2016 and that meant resources were prioritized for Zen. btw K12 is AMD's first custom ARM high performance core and so there might be some delays as its damn hard to design a from scratch custom ARMv8 high performance. AMD has experience in x86 (64 bit Hammer) whereas with ARM they have none.

anyway this thread is getting locked up. pointless thread.

 

[NTMBK]

AMD Zen based APUs were always going to launch only in 2017. Thats how it happened with Trinity launching in mid-2012 after Bulldozer launched in Q3 2011. You cannot design a APU with a grounds up new CPU core without first designing it and testing it as a standalone CPU product.

Why not? That's how they did it for Bobcat and Jaguar, worked out pretty well.

To be honest, I think the delay in APUs is because they are waiting for HBM prices to come down.

 

[DrMrLordX]

So I guess the answer to the thread title is: AMD muddles along (or better) until 2019 and then . . . ? We don't know.

 

[Geegeeoh]

As Microsoft kept alive Apple in the 90s, Intel will keep AMD alive... they need to.

 

[richaron]

I have no doubt they'll bounce back a bit in the coming years, whether the bounce is "big enough" is the question. They have a couple of areas where they're competitive, or even years ahead compared to the competition.

Even with current or older arch' an APU on a competitive node and sporting HBM would be the answer to many prayers. No doubt the competition is moving forwards also, but (in the short term) there is zero chance AMD will go backwards once they have these things.

 

[raghu78]

Why not? That's how they did it for Bobcat and Jaguar, worked out pretty well.

To be honest, I think the delay in APUs is because they are waiting for HBM prices to come down.

Zen is not a small low power core like Bobcat designed to run at 2 Ghz frequencies. Zen is a high performance high frequency core designed to run at 3.5+ Ghz speeds. AMD has never implemented SMT before in any high performance core. That adds to the technical challenge.

http://www.realworldtech.com/jaguar/

Jaguar at 28nm was 3.1 sq mm. At 14nm Jaguar would be 1.5 sq mm. Zen is expected to be a 7-9 sq mm core in size at 14nm and much closer to Broadwell in terms of transistor count and complexity. AMD need to execute Zen perfectly and avoid any Barcelona TLB like bugs. Its clearly a do or die situation. So it makes sense to launch Zen in desktop FX and servers. By the time Zen launches the CPU core would be well validated and can easily be integrated into APUs without much risk.

 

[cbn]

Even with current or older arch' an APU on a competitive node and sporting HBM would be the answer to many prayers.

If you mean HBM at the consumer level (like a large desktop APU or a large laptop APU), then I don't think that is true whatsoever.

HBM may have a role in some type of large server APU, but I don't see it doing much for a consumer APU anywhere in near future. This not because HBM is a bad idea, but rather than large iGPUs are a bad idea for AMD. (re: Intel is too strong in mobile and on the desktop dGPU will likely be a better value than integrating large iGPUs.)

Personally, I think AMD's best chance at making APU a success exists at the server level and at the lowest common denominator for the consumer level (ie, small iGPU APU)

Then use that lowest common denominator APU (ie, small iGPU) with freedom fabric and fight Intel's superior node advantage that way (just realize it won't work for all server applications*)

*Maybe to help out the CPU of such a small iGPU APU, AMD could develop some instruction set extensions that shift load from the CPU's FPU to the iGPU? (That would make sense considering I don't expect future Intel x86 CPUs to even need such iGPU instruction set extensions. Floating point for Intel x86 will be contained within the core itself (and be quite excellent) without needing an iGPU).

 

[nemesismk2]

amd will survive and zen will be great