[entity279]

Originally Posted by ninelven

Overall, I expect slow but steady growth for ARM matched by a slow and steady decline by x86. But predicting the future is hard...

But the market will shrink (!) so there shouldn't be a match between the growth and decline

[ninelven]

What market?

[Silent_Buddha]

I'm assuming he means the desktop PC market. Then again in the late 90's everyone was saying the Desktop PC market was going to shrink and be irrelevant for most consumers. And that never happened. Again in the early 2000's the same thing was said. And never happened. Ditto the late 2000s. And again now, people are saying the same thing again, and I'm going to bet that once again it doesn't happen.

Regards,
SB

[ninelven]

Yeah, I doubt the PC market will drastically shrink in absolute terms. It's % market share compared to "post-pc" devices will certainly continue to decline, but I would expect the number of active PCs to continue growing.

[Silent_Buddha]

Yeah. I have no doubt that the slate/tablet market as well as smartphone market will continue to grow. But I doubt that it will be at the expense of the PC market. They are both complimentary markets to each other with some overlap but a lot of area's where there is no overlap.

Regards,
SB

[sheepdogexpress]

Originally Posted by Silent_Buddha

Yeah. I have no doubt that the slate/tablet market as well as smartphone market will continue to grow. But I doubt that it will be at the expense of the PC market. They are both complimentary markets to each other with some overlap but a lot of area's where there is no overlap.

Regards,
SB

The rise of the tablets will definitely hurt AMD. Netbook and brazos laptops sales are being eaten up by tablet sales. The netbook was a solid area for growth and revenue that AMD could have used as a income source from products like brazos.. It was a market it could compete with Intel on superior footing since ATOM sucked so much. That market is disappearing overnight because of tablets. AMD is stuck selling 600-700 dollar laptops because at 800 dollars, AMD is running into to many Intel based laptops with discrete graphics.

This generation AMD seemed to drop the ball with laptop manufacturers as it seems like there are far less 7xxx based laptops vs 6xxx in regard to discrete graphics.

With the netbook market fading, AMD is very niche now because the only market it can hope to compete, especially against the intel brand is the core i3 market with only integrated graphics. The public prefer Intel branding too much. And a heavier emphasis is put on the CPU compared to the GPU.

[CarstenS]

Did no one pick up the Q2 number from AMD yet?

A little bit surprising, but surely very welcome they managed to produce a net-income of about 37 million, despite revenue declining about 10% yoy (11% qoq).

Good job in a difficult environment!

More:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/7346...pt?part=single

[trinibwoy]

Originally Posted by sheepdogexpress

. That market is disappearing overnight because of tablets.

As well it should. Netbooks were one of the worst ideas ever conceived.

[sheepdogexpress]

Originally Posted by CarstenS

Did no one pick up the Q2 number from AMD yet?

A little bit surprising, but surely very welcome they managed to produce a net-income of about 37 million, despite revenue declining about 10% yoy (11% qoq).

Good job in a difficult environment!

More:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/7346...pt?part=single

Much of this has to do with losing 10 percent of the workforce. Which according to reports would save 118million dollars for AMD in 2012. In addition canceling project like witchita and Krishna would have also saved money.

In the long run I don't think think saving the money was worth it because they let go of people that were to crucial in AMD CPU division. Brad Burgess the guy responsible for Brazos and it's successor and John Bruno, the guy responsible for trinity. The cuts were too broad and AMD should have not cut guys who were responsible for many of the successes with their CPU division in the last couple years.

[Kaotik]

Wichita & Krishna cancellations costed AMD if anything, as they were pretty much "good to go" excluding the fact that the GF foundries weren't up to the task, thus a lot of possible profits were lost.

[AlexV]

Originally Posted by sheepdogexpress

John Bruno, the guy responsible for trinity.

He was not "responsible" for Trinity, let's not recycle ideas thrown out into the air in sensationalistic purposes. Which is not to say he wasn't a good guy and someone you may want to keep around.

[tunafish]

So, Bob Feldstein just left for the green(er) pastures.

AMD has a serious problem with retaining talent. Corporations keep key people with two things -- boatloads of money, and stock. No-one, not even employees, place all that much value on AMD stock anymore, and they just don't have the cash to keep people. So now whenever someone really distinguishes himself at AMD, he gets an offer he doesn't want to refuse.

[dkanter]

Originally Posted by sheepdogexpress

Much of this has to do with losing 10 percent of the workforce. Which according to reports would save 118million dollars for AMD in 2012. In addition canceling project like witchita and Krishna would have also saved money.

In the long run I don't think think saving the money was worth it because they let go of people that were to crucial in AMD CPU division. Brad Burgess the guy responsible for Brazos and it's successor and John Bruno, the guy responsible for trinity. The cuts were too broad and AMD should have not cut guys who were responsible for many of the successes with their CPU division in the last couple years.

How are you sure that those people were cut? They might have chosen to leave on their own.

DK

[ninelven]

Well, they apparently got Jim Keller back from Apple, so that is a good bit of news.

[Pete]

A news blurb with some info on Jim Keller.

[3dilettante]

I've been trying to get a handle on the scope of Keller's contributions to AMD, particularly with regards to the K7 and K8.
He was employed at AMD from 98 to 99.
It sounds like he could have been involved in the bringup of K7, although the design would have probably been quite final by 98, being that it was released in 99.
It sounds like he had a role in the early parts of the K8 development cycle, but even if he were working on K8 from day one he would have been gone for the majority of its development.

If we consider the lack of a competitive x86 core a significant factor in AMD's woes, Keller is a remnant of a happier time, but he doesn't have the bona fides of the standard bearer of a new Athlon. Athlon was mostly done before him, and K8's core did not hop far from K7.

His most recent experience doesn't look to turn around the weak core problem, and he'd have to contend with the fact that just as he has probably changed in over a decade, so has AMD.
It's not like he's getting the hit band together again, not unless AMD is also rushing to hire back the engineers and designers Ruize and Meyer lost or removed since then.


That said, his SOC and networking experience is probably more relevant to AMD in the few niches it still lingers in. That's not strong comfort for the desktop market. For servers, his most recent experience screams more Seamicro board than powerful Xeon blade.
He does have experience in working to put together disparate system elements and putting together protocol. This might be good for HSA, although it would be more likely that AMD didn't just hire the guy to put together the initiative it's already announced and outlined. The heterogenous elements are about the only thing left to put together, as we are a far cry from the days when the IMC, PCI, and even the L2 were off-chip.

He's coming back just as one of his fingerprints has begun to fade, as we see hypertransport falling out of favor in the latest AMD consumer chips.
One old friend might be that warty old crossbar that AMD put in on the first K8 chips, which interfaced with the HT links and had a spot waiting for that first dual core.
Even though the core he knew didn't quite last the full duration of his absence, he might be in on the ground floor of a replacement for that base element of the uncore he might have helped spec out.

[Gubbi]

Originally Posted by 3dilettante

I've been trying to get a handle on the scope of Keller's contributions to AMD, particularly with regards to the K7 and K8.
He was employed at AMD from 98 to 99.
It sounds like he could have been involved in the bringup of K7, although the design would have probably been quite final by 98, being that it was released in 99.

If I remember correctly, the K7 was mostly developed by the design team acquired from NextGen. Keller was working on a successor to K7. The FPU from this successor was then bolted onto the K7 late in development (and the successor cancelled).

Originally Posted by 3dilettante

It sounds like he had a role in the early parts of the K8 development cycle, but even if he were working on K8 from day one he would have been gone for the majority of its development.

I'd imagine he had some inputs on the system level design of K8, with its integrated memory controllers and HyperTransport.

Originally Posted by 3dilettante

His most recent experience doesn't look to turn around the weak core problem, and he'd have to contend with the fact that just as he has probably changed in over a decade, so has AMD.

Well, prior to being acquired by Apple, PA Semi did develop a potent PPC core with good performance, and outstanding performance/watt (which saw multiple military design wins).

Cheers

[I.S.T.]

The Tech Report news blurb about him mentioned being one of the two credited authors of the x86-64 spec. That is a good reason to have him around, IMO.

[fellix]

AMD shares rise on acquisition rumors

Qualcomm or Samsung?

[AlphaWolf]

Seriously doubt it.

[rpg.314]

Originally Posted by fellix

AMD shares rise on acquisition rumors

Qualcomm or Samsung?

Who's stupid enough to buy AMD?

[itsmydamnation]

Originally Posted by rpg.314

Who's stupid enough to buy AMD?

ARM

Oracle

ps that is the most awesome emoticon by an indescribable margin

[Acert93]

Originally Posted by rpg.314

Who's stupid enough to buy AMD?

How much debt do they currently have?

[AlexV]

Originally Posted by rpg.314

Who's stupid enough to buy AMD?

Somebody who wants to accrue in some serious fire-power in a patent war, perhaps. At this particular point this is one of AMD's primary uses...if somebody else wants their engineers it's pretty obvious that they need but show up and inquire, and I doubt that many would care much about their management structure or other ancillary departments. On the other hand, AMD's patent portofolio is quite respectable. However, I don't place much faith in this particular rumour...yet.

[Alexko]

Originally Posted by Acert93

How much debt do they currently have?

About $3 billion, I think. But that's factored into their market capitalization, which is why it's just under $3.1 billion.

Considering the IP they have, AMD is not a bad buy, just not something I could see Qualcomm making much use of (unless they really need some of their patents). Samsung, on the other hand, might be interested.