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Xbit: AMD's project WIN strategy to remain a mystery for three months

cbn

cbn

Lifer
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/di...ategy_to_Remain_Mystery_for_Three_Months.html

AMD to Remain Mum About Rory Read’s Strategy Shift Announcement
[11/09/2011 01:42 PM]
by Anton Shilov

Advanced Micro Devices’ recently appointed chief executive officer Rory Read on Wednesday addressed the company’s staff using a webcast. It is believed that during the conference via the Internet the head of the company explained the employees the chip designer’s new strategy and tactics. Unfortunately, the webcast was not made public and its contents will remain secret for around three months.

“Today's meeting is an employee meeting, so no, there is no external webcast. You should look ahead towards our Financial Analyst Day event in February, 2012, [for disclosure],” said Michael Silverman, a spokesman for AMD.

It is widely believed that Rory Read wants to refocus AMD onto more consumer oriented products. As a part of the new strategy, the low-power Bobcat micro-architecture and products on its base will play a very important role in future of the company. It is completely unclear what the company will attempt to do with its high-end architectures in the future. Nonetheless, it is unlikely that AMD has already set a new roadmap for the forthcoming years.

The company’s new strategy and tactics is called to be “Project WIN”, but the latter word is not an abbreviate for something like Winning In the New world, but is “simply an internal term/brand to describe the operational efficiencies” that the company “has addressed on the last several earnings calls”, according to an official statement. The latter fact means that the Win was not entirely architected by Rory Read, but also by the board of directors and certain executives (probably those, who were not fired during the recent layoffs). The key pillars of the recent initiatives of AMD are growing revenue, lowering costs and reducing time-to-market.

Last week AMD fired from 10% to 15% of its staff in order to reduce costs, something that was unnecessary according to many analysts. The company cut the staff across the board and fired particularly loads of marketing and public relations specialists, which will reduce the chip designer’s ability to communicate with the outside world on daily basis.

Just a little after the merger between AMD and ATI Technologies, AMD’s headcount was 16500 (of which around 2800 were employed at the fabs in Dresden, Germany), which means that the company needs headcount of around 13700 in order to create and sell leading-edge accelerated processing units, central processing units and graphics processing units. Meanwhile, the company now has less or around 10 000 people, which may simply be not enough to deliver quality products in time. For example, AMD’s latest Bulldozer micro-architecture was two years late and failed to impress the reviewers.

What was said today by Rory Read will be partially revealed earlier than in three months from now. However, it is clear that the company hardly made any massive announcements today, e.g., adopt ARM architecture and start developing chips for smartphones. Nonetheless, it is clear that AMD will never be the same as before.
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Wow, now they are even delaying and being secretive about their future plans. Seems like to me they dont have a plan except to screw their employees.

Maybe RR should set an example and donate his 1M per year salary back to the company.
 
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=32519094#post32519094

I already said that we shouldn't expect anything, but I when I saw the Xbit article, I thought that maybe they had some source other than the leaked Rory's email that was addressed to AMD employees only. Well, apparently not. Most companies have these webcasts which are nothing more than all-hands meetings. Both of the companies I worked for have them on a quarterly basis. So why did media think that this worldcast was to be public when AMD made no official announcements about it?

frozentundra123456 said:
Wow, now they are even delaying and being secretive about their future plans. Seems like to me they dont have a plan except to screw their employees.

Maybe RR should set an example and donate his 1M per year salary back to the company.
Click to expand...

And why this attitude? Do you think that Intel's tick-tock strategy was simultaneously announced to the general public and to the actual engineers who worked on its implementation? Or the plan to have tri-gate transistors in IB?
Do you really believe that Intel, nVidia, Apple etc. tell you their future plans at the same time they reveal them to their employees? What would be the purpose of NDAs then...
 
It's the move to graphene I predicted 2 months ago. Hey AMD I accept Paypal for royalty payments. thx
 
jones377 said:
So Rory only told his remaining 12k employes? Way to keep a secret for long 🙂
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I'm guessing he told them in no uncertain terms that some very aggressive, very generic, very predatory, very unspecific things were going to be focused on across the board going forward, ya know, for leveraging the synergies and such into new paradigm shifts and so on.

If there was any meat to it then I'm sure the analysts would insist they were apprised of the details now instead of waiting 3 months from now while letting 12k employees leak it into the public domain.
 
Idontcare said:
I'm guessing he told them in no uncertain terms that some very aggressive, very generic, very predatory, very unspecific things were going to be focused on across the board going forward, ya know, for leveraging the synergies and such into new paradigm shifts and so on.

If there was any meat to it then I'm sure the analysts would insist they were apprised of the details now instead of waiting 3 months from now while letting 12k employees leak it into the public domain.
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Well said. Did you read the quote in the just posted article by Anand?? Talk about talking a lot and saying nothing!
 
Idontcare said:
I'm guessing he told them in no uncertain terms that some very aggressive, very generic, very predatory, very unspecific things were going to be focused on across the board going forward, ya know, for leveraging the synergies and such into new paradigm shifts and so on.
Click to expand...

sounds like a winning strat
 
frozentundra123456 said:
Wow, now they are even delaying and being secretive about their future plans. Seems like to me they dont have a plan except to screw their employees.

Maybe RR should set an example and donate his 1M per year salary back to the company.
Click to expand...
That's what logic would dictate. AMD is Fun for the forums. Can't wait to here the ramblings of Base durring this secret period . AMSDs moto will fight this war with hype.
 
🙁 I hope the ATI part can at least keep competing with nvidia for awhile longer even if the CPU side has fallen apart.

I remember how the 48xx series pushed nvidia into instant $100+ price drops and improved GPUs, competition is good.
 
February is a good month to initiate a good old fashioned restructuring. Doing it now wouldn't make for very pleasant holidays.
 
frozentundra123456 said:
Wow, now they are even delaying and being secretive about their future plans. Seems like to me they dont have a plan except to screw their employees.
Click to expand...

Maybe AMD keeping quiet is not such a bad thing.

Remember how Nvidia project Denver (announced Jan 2011) took everyone by surprise?
 
Judging from the general surprise with this news, I take it that amd didn't entrust anyone to clear out the misconception that this project win is confidential company business for the next 3 months, and they let the rumors and excitement run rampart on the internet, unchecked fora whole week or more...

If so, then I hope this they aren't going to continue with this kind of negligence now that they have a new ceo, and that their PR department will be restructuring into a more public-friendly one.
 
-Slacker- said:
Judging from the general surprise with this news, I take it that amd didn't entrust anyone to clear out the misconception that this project win is confidential company business for the next 3 months, and they let the rumors and excitement run rampart on the internet, unchecked fora whole week or more...

If so, then I hope this they aren't going to continue with this kind of negligence now that they have a new ceo, and that their PR department will be restructuring into a more public-friendly one.
Click to expand...

They more or less had no PR people to clear this out. They seriously fired almost everyone who would usually have been tasked to talk to the press and public.
 
Intel17 said:
Project Denver is a joke.
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Yea, everything ARM is a joke. ARM suck!!!!!!!!!! Its terrible and everytime i see anything related to ARM in a post i cant help but bash it.

ARM can only be used in cell phones and errrrrr, tablets, Anything else is jut moronic. ARM is completely incapable of ever being used elsewhere. I bet anyone 50 dollars you will never see ARM in anything that matters. ARM is just not capable of any improvements, its architecture is a joke. its a waste of time.

x86 on the other-hand is the shiz. I am thinking of changing my name to Mr. x86 and naming all my children after companies that are licensed to this superior technology. Its so superior that nothing is better that it. Nothing comes close to x86 is any way and nothing ever will. Every other so called architecture is a freakn joke!


P.S.
ARM doesnt really sell more CPUs that x86 by ten fold either! And the dang sure arent efficient at nothing. Anyone who claims otherwise has jumped in a trend head first and now is suffering from brainbamage.

x86 is the only future.....period!!
 
Letter from AMD CEO Rory Read to the Company
"Team,

Today we undertook the difficult, but necessary step, of implementing a reduction in our AMD workforce. This is a company-wide action that will include all functions and locations across AMD and impact approximately 10% of our global workforce. A decision to lay off fellow employees is never easy or taken lightly, but these reductions are a required step to remain competitive and ready the company for 2012. This action was necessary to rebalance our skillsets, drive to a more competitive cost structure and enable us to fund our key growth areas.

Over the past 60 days we have been working through a detailed review of our business, our market and our growth opportunities. Our industry is at an inflection point as new trends emerge around the consumer experience, the breakdown of traditional control points and technology convergence. It’s clear we have to take aggressive steps to create distinct value for our customers, and must optimize our existing business today while enabling the company to capture future growth. If we do not take action now, we will miss these opportunities and be squeezed out.

To strengthen our market position, we have to rebalance our skillsets to better align with these market shifts and implement a more competitive cost structure. Our competitors are serious and significant, and we will take the required actions to beat them. All of the transformation work we have underway, like Project WIN, will help drive operational improvements, increase efficiencies and lower our operating costs, but we need to take additional action. A lower cost base allows us to be more competitive today and to invest back into the business to fuel our "attack" strategies in- low power, emerging markets and the cloud. I will share more insights into our strategy and path forward in my upcoming Worldcast on November 9th.

I believe in my core that AMD is uniquely positioned to take advantage of the opportunities in front of us, and it is up to us to seize them. If we stay focused and continue to tap into the fighting spirit that lives within the walls of AMD, we can build momentum every day moving forward. We must continue to come together as an organization and write the next chapter for AMD – together as one unified company. We are building a company to last and need every single AMDer around the planet working together and toward the same goals. This is our company and our time to seize the opportunities, to step out of the shadows of others and to lead in this changing technology landscape.

There is no question it is difficult to see our friends and co-workers move on. But we cannot allow this to reduce our focus or commitment. We still have work to do as we prepare for 2012 and I am entirely confident that we will be ready. We must keep moving forward. Customer interest for our products is positive and demand remains strong, so it’s critical that we remain focused on delivering on our commitments in Q4. Please do not let up or pause. We must act and must always do what we say and own what we do … it’s the AMD way.

Together we will accomplish great things.

Rory"
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So their definition of WINning is to cut down their workforce? :hmm:
 
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