Breaking: AMD to layoff 5% of its workforce, says The Inq

You did consider the somewhat significant(to say the least) difference in terms of HR between AMD and Intel, yes?And for once I'd like for someone to explain exactly how something that happened over at one of them necessarily is equally good/bad for the other company, as they're hardly identical.

Nope, they are not identical.
 
5-10% doesn't exactly sound like the end of the world to me. More like needed slimming and good news.
I agree with that if most of the cuts are in Austin, given my understanding of AMD's roadmap and the horror stories (i.e. blatant generalized incompetence) I've heard from there. However, in order not to affect the morale of other design teams, I feel that it is necessary for AMD management to emphasize that and make clear that beyond a very small initial number of cuts, other design locations shouldn't worry about layoffs.

My thought is without performance leadership AMD is going to have to be the low cost alternative, and contrary to what some would like to believe that is definitely a very viable long term niche.
It might be able to allow them to strive for "profitless prosperity" and survive a very long time, yes. However right now, obviously they aren't very profitable by being the low-cost alternative. The problem with that also is you can't compete in the server market under those conditions, and that's a very lucrative area that they'd be quite damaged from losing share in. Anyhow, I agree they could survive quite well in the *low-price* market, but for that they need to achieve *low-cost* too. With Barcelona, that's clearly not the case. I am optimistic about the 0MiB variant of Shanghai though, we'll see how that goes.

I sighed when I saw 35 comments to this thread when most stories get just a few.
Remember I'm reusing the same thread for 2 news items, and there has been plenty of regular news on the subject from other sources. I don't think this is an incredible amount of comments given that, but I see your point.

The latest Jon Peddie reports show AMD gaining market share in graphics..but those weren't reported on at B3D but old peddie reports were..what gives?
What gives? Not much except those reporting that data right now being idiots. I reported the EXACT same story with the EXACT same numbers, just with even more raw data thanks to Jon, on February 3rd: http://www.beyond3d.com/content/news/579

It just so happens that one website, I think The Register, decided to 'news' this now either without realizing or without pointing out that it's incredibly old stuff. And then a couple of other websites didn't bother to properly check if it's new informaztion and they reported it too. Many of those are sites which did not even report it when it came out, and their current analysis is also flawed. So I honestly don't think I'm the one who should be asked 'what gives?' ;)

As well as the constant sourcing of Inq and Fudzilla in AMD bad news is a little..
I sourced The Inquirer once because our own internal source confirmed the story indepedently from both Inq and TGDaily. As for Fudzilla, his track record for management-level AMD rumours is truly excellent lately; he has had pretty much everything right and had exclusive information on a lot of stories in that category. I want to use reliable sources as much as possible and that generally doesn't include Fudzilla, but for this kind of rumour it very clearly does.
 
yep its clearly the end of the world for AMD there's no way they could recover from such a massive layoff, just like intel disappeared after their 10% layoff in 2006. ;)

Clearly its bad news if you are amongst the 10% getting cut, but its not necessarily going to negatively affect their productivity going forward.
If I recall correctly a large part of Intel's 10% was planned to be via attrition. Don't know how it worked out though.
 
... and to be honest I'd blame Phenom on a lot of people higher up than the design teams who were saddled with, in no particular order: a bad position, lousy leadership, and unrealistic deadlines (forced by the other two).
unrealistic deadlines?! Phenom was postponed several times, last 2 of which by errors which could've been avoided. Don't tell me that Hector Ruiz is the one to blame for these. :p
 
unrealistic deadlines?! Phenom was postponed several times, last 2 of which by errors which could've been avoided. Don't tell me that Hector Ruiz is the one to blame for these. :p

Phenom as we know it was only started after several false starts that pushed things back by at least six months.
Look at how long it took K8 from demos of functional silicon to when it was released, Phenom in comparison is a rush job.

The TLB bug may very well have been caught 6 months ago or never would have happened if the 10h design effort wasn't cutting it so close.
 
well, the CEO can give directions, but if designers under-deliver, what can he do?
I bet, Hector really hoped any of cancelled projects (k9, k10 etc) will be worth the effort.
 
I don't blame Hector for a fair amount of the 10h debacle.

I've said before that there were other execs and directors who most likely had a more direct hand in this, including the man so many think would be so great as his successor.

The engineers and designers were forced to a last-resort evolution of K8 in a comparatively short time. If the leadership either had more balls or was more decisive earlier, the development teams would have had more time.
 
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