Pray for AMD We were warned, but AMD's second-quarter results were still a shocking bloodbath, with revenue that missed analysts' estimates and came in even lower than the chipmaker's own revised guidance. Last week, we were cautioned to expect AMD's revenue for the period ending on June 27 to be down 8 per cent sequentially, contrary to …
I wonder what things would be like today if AMD when it was at the top of its game hadn't decided to get distracted by and overpay for ATI, in the process go back to being the also ran it has always been? With even Intel laying off now the victory lap would have still been fairly short I think.
And I wonder what would have happened if Intel hadn't engaged in blatant anti-trust behaviour to sabotage AMD so badly back in the day. Intel were found guilty and forced to settle, but the settlement was a bargain for keeping their competitor from gaining ground. Even after that verdict they continue to engage in such practices, such as paying vendors to buy their chips over AMD's. (True - look it up).
I wonder what would happen if AMD decided not to accept the settlement and see it until the end. I doubt it would happen as Intel own shares in AMD so wouldn't happen. I see so many settlements for obvious wins, the only time laws change is when they get seen through, settling just means Intel can do it again and settle again, rather than stopping them and making it criminal.
Quote: I wonder what would happen if AMD decided not to accept the settlement and see it until the end.
----
This "turning tail and settle for pennies on the dollar" is when I dumped my AMD stock and swore never again to purchase anything AMD (stock or products).
AMD screwed all of us who owned AMD stock (and lost 10's of thousands) during the dark days. AMD would have won the suit it they just continued. Then us stockholders of AMD would have won the class action suit against Intel using the victory AMD won and all the detailed wrong doings of Intel documented in the suit.
Instead AMD said screw the stockholders just take the cash (and waste it buying ATI).
Now I look forward to the end of AMD. AMD screwed me and other stockholders so all I have to say now is "Screw you too AMD".
"I wonder what things would be like today if AMD when it was at the top of its game hadn't decided to get distracted by and overpay for ATI, in the process go back to being the also ran it has always been?"
I think it would have been exactly the same outcome because AMD's problem has been it's fabs for over a decade now. AMD haven't been able to compete at process level in terms of outright performance, yield & power consumption going back to the original K8 & Opteron. Back then they couldn't produce them fast enough, and now they can't generate enough demand either.
TL;DR: AMD haven't been able to produce enough of their chips with a decent profit margin so they haven't been able to grow or even maintain their market share.
FWIW I wish it was different, AMD have done some good work over the years.
Brilliant systems.. but they just ain't "cool", they always seem to play 2nd fiddle to Intel and Nvidia, whilst their product recognition / branding just sucks!
Radeon isn't that some kind of detergent?
Piledriver, what is that? a drive?
They need a consistant naming convention for their products and models. Intel took a hit when they moved from Core to the i branding (i5 and i7 etc), but they stuck with it and now virtually every idiot understands it.
Radeon is the same as calling something g-force. I in no way could tell you what the best nVidia card is :P Intel chipsets are still retarded, and they have the processor names Atom, i3, i5, i7, Xeon, celeron and a few other crazy ones, but then which one has multithreding, how many cores? Its retarded. Especially the Xeons.
"They need a consistant naming convention for their products and models. Intel took a hit when they moved from Core to the i branding (i5 and i7 etc), but they stuck with it and now virtually every idiot understands it."
Piledriver, Bulldozer, Kabini etc are names for processor architectures, not models. An A4-4000, is an example of an AMD model number. This is the same as how Intel has Ivy Bridge, Haswell, Broadwell etc, and i7 3770k is an example of a model name. The AMD naming is actually fairly reasonable if you ignore the architecture naming, which is equally as nonsensical as Intel's.
The problems AMD have are marketing and products. That's not to say the AMD products are bad but there's not many instances where Intel leaves a gap that AMD can cater for better. Whatever Intel has or hasn't done, AMD dominated with products like the Athlon 64 and early Opterons.
I appreciate that AMD may not have the money to design a new processor architecture, but taking the server market as an example, they're putting Opteron 63xx processors (3 years old) up against Intel CPUs that are 6 months old. The only thing the AMD CPUs offer is a high number of cores, but for most workloads the performance per core (and performance per watt, for those that care) is terrible. The cost on a 16-core Opteron 6386SE is dramatically lower than a 16-core Intel CPU (Xeon E5-2698 v3), but the performance is completely different. For most workloads a server with dual six-core Intel CPUs will outperform a server with dual 16-core AMD CPUs by a fair way - and at that point the price difference is negligible. Not to mention that Intel has newer, better chipsets with support for things like DDR4.
When buying a PC it's never been clear to consumers exactly what an AMD processor is or what its equivalence to Intel processors is. Equipment with AMD chips in them have always just appeared in cheaper products but for no apparent reason to an ordinary buyer, so they've just got associated with cheap and therefore 'must be crap compared to Intel'. AMD are the Aldi and Lidl of chip makers and they need to do what those shops did and play up to that as these retailers have successfully done. It's their marketing that has failed not their products. Even I don't recommend AMD stuff to people and truly I don't know why that is. Yes they're not as good as Intel but neither are they crap.
"When buying a PC it's never been clear to consumers exactly what an AMD processor is or what its equivalence to Intel processors is"
Same problem here ... There was a time when I would always buy AMD over Intel but over the years it's become difficult to know at first glance what an AMD chip does now. Seems to be no coherent way for the layman to tell one chips performance over another at a glance.
Intel
i3 - good
i5 - better
i7 - best
AMD
Athlon - ?
FX4 - ?
FX6 - ?
FX8 - ?
A8 - ?
A10 - ?
FX<insert random number here> - ?
You skipped a few intel chips to make them seem better?
Intel
Pentium - You added Athlon so why not :P
Duel Core - That means 2 processors taped together as they hadnt mastered cores
Celeron - This means duel or quad processor that could be newer or older than an atom, but is it better or worse than atom?
Atom - Low powered Celeron? who knows, they run cold and stick them in crap tablets
i3 - good
i5 - better
i7 - best
AMD
Athlon - Defunct brand
FX4 - 4 Core
FX6 - 6 Core - This probably gets confusing as intel dont really do more than quad :P
FX8 - 8 core
A8 - Low power good
A10 - Low power better
FX<insert random number here> - ?
There's no point bewailing the nonsensical naming conventions and near total lack of clues about performance. AMD don't advertise to the public, Intel does. A lot.
When most people think 'Intel good' they don't have a clue why, it's simply the only brand they can remember that has something to do with the 'stuff' powering their PC.
AMD do throw money at promoting the graphics products but it's little more than maintaining brand awareness, those enthusiast customers understand the products. They're currently mightily annoyed that AMD rebranded last years product then pretended it was something new.
AMD are now the budget brand, not valued by end users, not chosen by them, just the default when they buy something cheap and low margin. Even the fans stopped caring after the misguided Bulldozer shared core fiasco.
"AMD are now the budget brand, not valued by end users, not chosen by them, just the default when they buy something cheap and low margin."
We reached the point some years ago now where we don't even offer AMD as an option. Even the cash strapped local authorities and schools customers want Intel CPUs even while choosing the cheapest ASUS or MSI motherboards over the more expensive Intel boards the more flush customers choose. AMD may be seen as the "cheap and cheerful" option but even the cash-strapped aren't choosing them for desktops.
AMD's biggest problem is the big PC manufacturers use only AMD's cheapest processors. People get a nifty new computer at a low price only to notice later that it runs at 1.0 or 1.3 gHz, and sometimes it's a single core at that speed! Laptop or desktop, that's the AMD processors they choose to highlight.
The owner of a computer like that finally gets annoyed enough to replace it and they make sure to avoid an AMD processor, never understanding that it wasn't the brand but the cheap parts that made their computer so terrible at everything.
A lot of the time the customer doesn't even bet as far as buying it in the first place. Vendors always pair the AMD chips with shoddy hardware. So whilst the processor might be adequate to their needs the poor screen and shoddy plastic wont. So AMD get disqualified by association.
A high-end laptop or workstation isn't going to use AMD because the high-end Intel chips are more powerful and more efficient than AMD's best chips. But there's certainly room for AMD's offerings in better products than they get.
That's because the OEMs just aren't interested in putting AMD chips in competitive (spec and pricewise) machines.
Not to mention you go into a store and find 50 Intel machines and maybe 2 AMD based ones. One will be cheap and nasty and the other overpriced for the spec.
I still say AMD didn't help themselves by never bothering to try to market themselves to the general public....or for that matter, the IT public.
A silly jingle can help.
That has been going on for the last 15 years. The reason was anticompetitive measures (blackmail) from Intel. Proven, yet only paid a fine.. I say that fine was a good investment.
Now that AMD is busted (it is) they no longer need to do that.
The current FX processors can't compete with Intel.
Thhe current gpus can barely compete with Nvidia.. and they have laid off so many ppl that support (drivers, etc) is way worse than Nvidia -> Nvidia is going to be the only player.
To be fair Intel really didn't have to do anything against AMD. Their products generally have just been better (other than that glorious 18 month period just over 10 years ago) and AMD have just never bothered marketing or selling themselves.
One company makes the effort with their products and the other one doesn't/never has.
Its like if there were just two car manufacturers in the world and they were Mercedes and Morris.
Some of AMD's debt isn't due until 2017 and the rest isn't due until 2020. So no, receivers aren't going to come bursting in the door tomorrow. AMD have time for Carrizo to be selling before then and they will have a very new architecture (Zen) released and in distribution as well. We should also see HBM bedded down as a standard by then in which AMD have the lead.
So whilst the plane has been nose-diving, the ground is still legally five years away and they have measures that could turn things around in that time.
AMD will run out of cash for day-to-day operations long before the long term debt is due.
So AMD has options of selling more shares for cash (and diluting shareholder value) and this may not be an option if the long term bond holders have riders preventing it.
If AMD cannot raise cash they will have to shrink to survive so they may well jettison whole divisions: CPU, GPU etc. AMD in the short term future will be vastly different then they are today.
"...will pick up once Windows 10 ships at the end of the month."
I recall a Chinese company in the manufacturing supply chain for PC hardware saying, effectively, the same sort of thing. That they trust Microsoft to save them just before the Windows 8 debacle. Do NONE of these hardware manufacturing desk pilots get it? If they don't take control of their own future they wont have one.
If they don't find a way to get another good OS (x86) on the market the lack of competition there is going to sink the whole ship. The competition, believe it or not, will even help Microsoft.
My worthless 2 cents...
It would be a shame if PC hardware manufacturers would understand that as wanting to run Android and/or more bloatware on their systems.
Instead AMD could position itself stronger in the professional computing market. They already have the huge advantage of having ECC by default on most CPUs.
The future of PCs is not with Windows, the people still using Windows are either stuck with legacy software requiring legacy hardware, or don't see anything bad with Android.
"The future of PCs is not with Windows, the people still using Windows are either stuck with legacy software requiring legacy hardware, or don't see anything bad with Android."
Christian how on Earth can you say this? Companies will stay with the software that runs their companies. And currently that's Windows. You don't have to like or dislike this, it's a fact. Until business software is released on other OS's businesses with HAVE to remain on windows.
It is not really Windows 10 that they are looking forward to; but DirectX 12, which they helped in developing and ensured that is designed to be multithreaded. Their DirectX 11 drivers has always suffered from being slow because they were built from the ground up to be singlethreaded*; something that they tried to address by releasing their own multithreaded graphics API, which Nvidia refused to support and it didn't see widespread support from developers.
So they are hoping that the release of DX12 and Vulkan would solve this problem since developers would support them and the APIs are designed from the start to be multithreaded. Early benchmarks for DX12 has shown a big improvement on AMDs GPUs when compared to Nvidias, and those tests didn't even include the their latest GPUs!
Since their own API has redeemed them but wasn't enough to move more of their GPUs into the market. They are hoping for a second chance of redemption when DX12 games start to come out!
* don't know why they didn't try to rewrite them again!
P.S. forgive my EngRish, it isn't my first language.
Mantle has been repeatedly proven to be a sizeable advantage only at the low end. Its real use has indeed been to force some of the changes in DX12, but it's not going to make AMD overtake NVidia.
Their GPUs and CPUs are eerily similar in some ways : on paper they should be quite good, but the implementation is lacking.
"It is not really Windows 10 that they are looking forward to; but DirectX 12, "
I suspect the vast majority of users running Windows don't care a stuff about gfx performance enough to wait for DX12. People doing gfx intensive work/gamers are very much the minority of PC users. The big money is selling to corporates so users can run Office. Most desktops do dual gfx o/p these days from the onboard GPU and screen space seems to be more important than high-speed 3D rendering :-)
AMD needs to do two things. One is to get their R&D spending back into something that can actually produce a product that someone would actually want to buy. Next is to take that R&D and go for some new products to diversify its products lines. Don't try to buy your way into a new field, make it yourself. The way company is running now is on the wrong side of a hill with a cliff on it.
They have no cash to spare for more R&D. In fact AMD is saying they will again be cutting operations costs so there go more layoffs and lower R&D spending.
Like clockwork each quarter AMD loses money they cut R&D thus the writing is on the wall: AMD is terminal and dying right before your eyes.
I try to avoid doing business with criminals and cheats. That is why none of the many PCs I have built have had Intel chips since Intel's antitrust and fraud convictions long ago. Whilst it is impossible to totally avoid Intel, I will not consciously give them money for their overhyped sand.
My 2 AMD PCs and 2 AMD laptops purr right along through every hazard, animation rendering or game I throw at them. I will always brag-up AMD chips and I wish them well.
Couldn't agree more with you,
All gaming rigs I build are AMD / Nvidia builds, Yes I could go Intel, but the COST !!! only problem i have ever come across with AMD is ARMA3 it runs better on Intel, but then again it runs like a dog anyway.
Wont buy ATI, due to being stung with Driver issues in the past, and I keep hearing how shit they are every now and then.
When I hear that the driver are good (not just alright) then I might consider jumping ship.
Quote: I try to avoid doing business with ... and cheats.
Then why are you buying AMD stuff. They have shown to cheat over and over again.
Latest example was the review press deck for the Fury X showing it beating the GTX 680 TI by 15%. It turns out AMD tweaked the settings to unplayable levels (for both the Fury X and GTX 980 TI). When the reviews were done independently not one could show the Fury X beating the GTX 980 Ti. There were a couple of ties for a few games but for the most part it was the Fury X that was 10-15% behind the GTX 980 TI.
Firstly, in a market ruled by one or a few giant competitors, for a small competitor to be succesful, they need to have the better product by a significant margin.
Secondly, they have to make the consumer want to pay the price for such significant benefits.
Pagani does not make sub compacts. Any sub compact they could make would be so expensive that people in the market for a subcompact would not be able to afford them. Making them affordable would dilute their brand to the extent it would infect their top tier product. People buying that top tier product would not pay the price of that product if it was identical but had a Vauxhall badge on it.
I think diversification is the wrong path for them at this point. They need to re-establish their brand and build from there.
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