Rise and Fall of AMD

The rise and fall of AMD: How an underdog stuck it to Intel | Ars Technica

here is a good article about the history of AMD, there is still the 2nd part, that should be coming in I dont know when

 

Quite a nice read, but most important thing - era of the great Athlon 64 and first Opterons - is in part 2...

 

2nd part is up

The rise and fall of AMD: A company on the ropes | Ars Technica

 

So AMD used to use Intel chip designs? Interesting, seems they're doing pretty good these days in comaprison. Embedded G-series SoCs marketing.

More than 2X CPU performance increase, 20% increase in graphics performance and a 33% footprint reduction make the AMD Embedded G-Series SOC platform the ideal single-chip solution http://bit.ly/11fA7La

 

Good article.

I feel like this had to have been intended as a postive comment, but I can't help thinking that "every day felt urgent" as "oh my goodness there's another fire, we've got to put it out before it's out of control!" At least, as a software developer, if something is "urgent", at best it usually means it needs looking into fast, not that it's your ordinary everyday issue. At worst, it's effecting customer(s) or major internal projects right now and needs someone addressing it right now.

The background and interviews were interesting. The bits about Sanders and the atmosphere around him were new to me. The bits about convincing Abu Dhabi to invest in Global Foundries was interesting. I am left wondering though, other than starting earlier than need be, what were the major problems in Dresden? It seems like there had to have been something else causing the delays, when competitors like TSMC usually are able to make profits with fabs.

Other aspects were more visible. The "green" and "red" culture. The execution issues of late. It probably isn't a good thing that I'm certainly not the only one referring to having an ATI Radeon graphics card even today.

I'm still a bit surprised that Wall Street values Intel 50 times as much as AMD. Intel being valued more highly is no surprised, but the disparity was greater than I expected.

 

really depends on who you ask, 99% of the people will be worried by the state that amd is. Their employees are.

Still they are betting on the right chips now, servers and mobile computing, I disagree with the last statement about their lack of focus. Surely the gpu industry has only one, deliver more power in newer products (I hope that with raja, the enduro fiasco is not repeated again), but they apparently know where to focus on, and have more or less committed to a plan for the next few years

I think now they do have better management than what they used to have, even with the self flattering comments of Ruiz, the best thing that he did was to actually create global foundries, nothing much more, that indeed gave them focus. I actually hope they get more design wins this year. They do need to downsize staff and allocate talents, which they have been doing for awhile, focus on developing more solutions for growing markets like the mobile one (extreme low power like this G series is a great thing)

But in the end it will depend on how good their market dept is, which is to say, terrible news. They need those design wins to actually stay alive, otherwise bankruptcy is going to happen.

dont forget that they need to monetize that ARM purchase that they made, its still in the red that one

 

AMD has always been fighting an uphill battle. Even for the two years that the Athlon 64 was clobbering Intel on performance, price, and power consumption, Intel was still selling far far more chips than AMD. That just goes to show that having the better product is only half the story. And now that Intel's chips are for the most part more power efficient and powerful (although AMD is competitive on price), AMD is in some deep water in the traditional CPU market.

 

Server market is where the money is. They pretty much hold entire market share on that one. Higher profit margins, higher price per chip.

 

Bottom line is that they need to get their name front and center in marketing on everything. They need to get in bed with marketing at major OEM's to flaunt the chip's potential. Offer competitive designs compared with Intel's thin and light machines using full 35W APU's instead of the 17-19W ULV's. I hate to say it but marketing will be their downfall. Heck even my dad who does nothing more than just surf the web, when I configured a laptop for him, he refused to get AMD because he wanted the Intel name.

 

you flatter then too much, like me you think they have a marketing department, I think we are getting too lenient, oxford dictionary is going to hunt us down

 

That is a problem, and I'm sure he's far from the only one who insists on Intel even though it doesn't really matter for what he's doing.

I'm curious as to whether the ATI acquisition helped or hurt financially. In other words, did the ATI profits outweigh the debt payments? That seems to be a basic prerequisite for saying the ATI acquisiton made sense, as Ruiz still maintains it did, but I've never seen anything that says definitively.

 

unless you get the balances for each year we wont know

 

Finally read through the entire thing. Very interesting. Didn't know the original CEO (Sanders) was such a pompous bling flinging jerk. That sucks.

 

I was a bit surprised that it was the new fab plants that played a major role in knocking down AMD during the mid 2000s. I thought it was mainly Intel's shenanigans.

Welcome to the club.

Back in 2010 when Microsoft had that 3% savings promotion with any purchases done with Bing (Use Bing to look up item, go to Newegg or Amazon, purchase it, and prove it to MS through email), I decided to build my own desktop with an AMD CPU and GPU and show it to my dad.

I learned three things about him:

1. He had absolutely no trust in me. Back in 2009, I took apart a decommissioned university laptop. The only issue was that I couldn't reattach the keyboard connector even with two weeks of trying and a pair of tweezers, given the extremely short connector cable length and the fickle snap-on tabs.

2. Hardcore Intel/Nividia fan.

3. Partial hypocrite. Bought me an Asus N61Jq laptop that had an AMD GPU, and had far worse performance than the proposed desktop for the same amount of money. He honestly believed I could use the same 6 lb 17" laptop with three hours of battery life throughout college. Keep in mind that I was a high school freshman at that time.

 

Intel's crap didn't help much though and it was downplayed a lot more in the article than it should have been to be honest. I don't care how "minor" felt it was, it was still illegal and significant to put a kink in AMD's affairs. Losing major customers like that can really turn things upside down for any company.

Heh, yeah dads. I hope I don't act like that around my kids (of which I have two).

 

I dont think it was downplayed, you get the example of NEC, where 90% of pcs where AMD, after that not even 10% were amd anymore, that is a bad as you can make that case. It did put a significant dent on AMD operations, now to attribute that everything bad stemmed from there I dont think its either fair or actually true

 

Interesting. AMD began as a copy cat, who reverse engineered Intel CPUs because they didn`t have the know-how to create their own designs. Then later AMD had to buy NexGen and their expertise to be even able to compete against Intel`s processors, since the processors became too complex to reverse engineer

Not exactly impressed...

 

Two weeks ago my dad refused desktop i built for him because cpu wasnt Intel Pentium it was Intel but Core i5. Hours of explaining didnt help - he and many of his colegues who are customers of mine think that Pentium is best thing out there and that "Core" is equivalent to "Celeron". In the end i told him he's getting a Pentium and i got him some a8 apu and he is amazed how fast his new "pentium" is.

 

got amd in all systems and no problems, like their work

 

OK, except first x64 instructions, first desktop dual core, first to break 1GHz, first x86 server quad core CPU, Trinity offers six native SATA III ports when Intel only two... shall I keep going?

AMD still is a think tank and has talent. Intel just has money behind them because they lie, cheat, and steal their way into the industry. If AMD had the marketing muscle behind them that Intel does, AMD wouldn't be the lost puppy dog.

 

Having a corrupt CEO for years did not help either....

 

Corrupt CEO definitely doesn't help. It's too bad for all that talent there too. Just because CEO is an idiot doesn't mean hiring managers didn't want the best talent.

 

the worst is not having an incompetent FUMOFFU, its just to have the entire staff and later CEOs behave like that, AMD best years early 2000s, with core 2 duo they hang on, after that they were reduced to budget systems

this is shameful, and I cant believe Ruiz tried to make himself look like the savior, he is just a hard working FUMOFFU, doesnt have enough talent, he did 2 saving graces, create global foundries and resign

When you have that kind of staff for successful years no wonder you are in such a dire position, at least they got one competent CEO this time around, lets hope he turns around or basically AMD is the only company that tries to compete with intel that they nevertheless cant fail, otherwise it would be a monopoly

and I got censured, so lets bypass that with fumoffu

 

The G-series SoCs are based on Jaguar cores, notice the exposure and connection to the PS4

AMD unveils G-series embedded Jaguars

AMD Moves To Make Waves in Another Chip Market - Digits - WSJ

 

they need to improve their marketing, glad its going to be a good option for tablets, with jaguar throughly beating and trashing atom, I hope they get more design wins

 

I think with the PS4's popularity, AMD will get some of this exposure. AMD powered PS4 for "fun," AMD powered computers for "work." Yes, their marketing dept. needs to step its game up. The products are good enough, but if they're not bothering to tell people about then how can you expect them to buy your merchandise?

For example, we see car commercial now a days with hip-hop DJ hamsters for KIA. The hamsters have NOTHING to do with cars, except that they're fat and cute and attention grabbing. Those commercials never mention specifications nor any new latest tech that went into those cars yet the commercials themselves are what helps people become aware of KIA's products. And with an aggressive ad campaign like that, their cars still sell. Doesn't matter if you're using hamsters or humans to reach people. Other companies do a similar thing, and using different methods of advertising without actually even mentioning any technical specs that only appeal to us nerds.

AMD could do the same. If they would just target people's emotions and sometimes throw in some commercials about how "high tech" their latest and greatest silicon is, it would appeal to both sides of the spectrum (those looking at the specifications and those looking for a quality product that does what THEY NEED it to do at a price that the competitor just cant match). It would be cool to see ads on benches, buses, trains, billboards, TV, and on the internet for AMD. One day, AMD should create an "AMD" brand of computers. They already have "AMD branded" RAM, SSDs, GPUs and CPUs to name a few. This way they could make more PREMIUM branded AMD products. I know they're not in this business, yet, but it would certainly put their name out there.

I agree that at this point they do need more design wins, closer relationships with the OEMs and improved marketing to reach all kinds of people from the very techy to common folk. Those G-series SoCs are paving the way for some good thing to come.

 

As of now, in Intel's HQ:

"Sir. AMD is starting to show some threats."

"Okay. Inject another round of cash steroids into the marketing department. AMD won't respond to our ads."

 

AMD should also release all of their processors unlocked, at the same price points as they are now - I'm sure many enthusiasts would appreciate the ability to overclock without limits more than maximum performance. BUT they really need to implement a good protection mechanism first, since FXes burn out left and right while Cores run without a heatsink without problems...

 

Unlocking all CPUs: Cannibalizes your more expensive CPUs because savvy buyers will find the CPU model with a high ratio of "golden" chips and buy a high end cooling system.


As for the second part, I think you're a bit late by nearly a decade. Thermal protections are standard on all modern CPUs, and all laptop/desktop CPUs will shut off if no heatsink is attached, some take several seconds (ex: Atom CPUs), others take milliseconds (ex: FX-8350 and i5 3750K).

Just look up "running i7 without heatsink" on Google search engine. There's no way that a 1 inch squared aluminum piece is going to dissipate 77W without exceeding 100C.

The only time the thermal protection won't shut off fast enough is if you OC'ed and over-volted a CPU, then suddenly removed the heatsink and fan while it's running Prime-95. But that affects not just AMD, but Intel and Nividia.

 

Come on, AMD! You can do it!

They just need to gradually pick up momentum. Hopefully their console gigs with PS4/XBox720 will help them out and they can continue with their moderate success in APUs. If they can just bring their CPU performance up a bit their APUs could be killer since they should be able to stay ahead of Intel by 1 generation on integrated graphics.

 

These "savvy" users are few and far between. The Llano chips were unlocked for the most part, just were limited by max voltage. I don't think it would matter either way. It required special software to overclock so it's not like your average Joe could just crank up the voltage and clock speed. It would be an added bonus for the enthusiasts who are really the free marketing for any commodity. Trinity went complete opposite of Llano. The whole chip is TDP limited so it caps GPU performance in favor of TDP, so games that should be playable are not. And temps of my A10-4600m never exceed 72C yet it throttles GPU performance just because an internal measurement says so.

 

It will be hell of a job to get people to stop believing that i7 +3gb gpu =good computer.

 

Kind of true, but higher end CPUs could overclock further and better. Also yes, FX processors have thermal protection, but they still burn out because of the combo of high voltage allowance by AMD and bad VRMs on motherboards, which doesn't seem to be the case with Core processors...

 

If you bought a mobo with crap VRMs, that's not AMD's problem. That's the mobo manufacturer's problem.

As for Intel, I don't think they limit the voltage level unlike Nividia. Mobo manufacturers determine the acceptable voltage level through BIOS. I've seen a picture of an auto-OC that set an Ivy Bridge CPU to around 1.45V, which is quite high.

 

Personally, I think amd had a great chance at capturing the budget enthusiast market, especially during the early 2000's. Their price point and performance were perfect, except that issues always seemed to get in the way, whether it was some gpu firmware problem or some cpu underperforming.
Sure Intel had a gigantic marketing machine, but people listened and cheered for amd. But for one reason or another, the company seemed to always shoot themselves in the foot.

Sent from a Galaxy far, far away

 

My wife has a 5600K running at 4.3ghz with 2133mhz ram and it's great for her.