AMD Execution Thread [2023]

[Deleted member 2197]

In a rather sad news, AMD is massively downsizing their China team, with the Radeon Technology Group taking most of the hit.

AMD China to Experience Massive Downsizing, Radeon Technology Group Affected The Most

AMD's "Radeon Technologies Group" in China will reportedly get hit with a massive layoff, with an expected workforce reduction of 10-15%.

wccftech.com

I think AMD had mostly R&D in China so this will be good news to Chinese rivals looking to hire and get a closer look at AMD's IP.

 

[Kaotik]

In a rather sad news, AMD is massively downsizing their China team, with the Radeon Technology Group taking most of the hit.

AMD China to Experience Massive Downsizing, Radeon Technology Group Affected The Most

AMD's "Radeon Technologies Group" in China will reportedly get hit with a massive layoff, with an expected workforce reduction of 10-15%.

wccftech.com

Unlike WCCFTech claims, RTG is responsible for all the GPU IP, not just "consumer GPU segment". They're also for whatever reason quoting the "worst speculated case" numbers rather than what was actually claimed at the source ("around 300-450"). And of course, as all quality sites do, they turned "is rumored to happen" to "will happen" in the title.

 

[GhostofWar]

When they say profit margins reduced to 97% compared to last year, what exactly is this saying? I read it as they are down 3% on profit? am I missing something here that explains why that would trigger firing all that team? Will this have any impact on consoles down the line?

 

[TopSpoiler]

When they say profit margins reduced to 97% compared to last year, what exactly is this saying? I read it as they are down 3% on profit? am I missing something here that explains why that would trigger firing all that team? Will this have any impact on consoles down the line?

AMD Reports Second Quarter 2023 Financial Results

Browse AMD’s company-wide and financial press releases.

ir.amd.com

Net income down 94% ($447M -> $27M).

 

[Silent_Buddha]

In a rather sad news, AMD is massively downsizing their China team, with the Radeon Technology Group taking most of the hit.

AMD China to Experience Massive Downsizing, Radeon Technology Group Affected The Most

AMD's "Radeon Technologies Group" in China will reportedly get hit with a massive layoff, with an expected workforce reduction of 10-15%.

wccftech.com

Expect more and more tech companies to start pulling out of China as much as they can. Apple for example is looking to move most or all of their China operations to India.

When they say profit margins reduced to 97% compared to last year, what exactly is this saying? I read it as they are down 3% on profit? am I missing something here that explains why that would trigger firing all that team? Will this have any impact on consoles down the line?

It shouldn't. Gaming was one of their bright spots being down only 4% YoY which lead it to being their top revenue earner at 1.6 billion USD. And that was mainly due to growth of semi-custom revenue (consoles) since gaming graphics declined.

Data center another source of graphics revenue was only down 11% YoY.

So, the 2 major sources of revenue from GPU sales are doing well which should mean that there is continued funding for GPU related R&D.

PC inventory adjustment and low demand in the PC space drove most of the drop.

If we look at their GAAP vs. Non-GAAP we see that Non-GAAP is not nearly as bad as GAAP (operating income down 46% instead of down 104%). This is due to any one time adjustments or acquisitions or non-standard (non-cash) expenditures. In Q2 2022, the purchase of Xilinx was finalized so that's part of the large discrepency between GAAP and non-GAAP. For Q2 2023 we have that adjustment for PC inventory which is impacting GAAP numbers. There are other things likely impacting GAAP numbers.

Usually GAAP is lower than Non-GAAP as companies don't account for expenditures that it views as necessary to compete in the marketplace, IE - an acquired asset just shifts money around in a company but there's no theoretical loss. So an acquisition isn't seen as an expenditure so much as just moving cash from one place to another place. GAAP takes that into account because investors want to see the impact of acquisitions on a companies bottom line as an acquisition may or may not be a wise investment and may or may not lead to a significant loss in th future (think of all the major acquisitions in history that have gone bust, like Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia, for example).

Regards,
SB

 

[^M^]

It's going to be weird in five years When the Nvidia alternative will be Intel.

 

[Flappy Pannus]

It's going to be weird in five years When the Nvidia alternative will be Intel.

Considering Nvidia is moving into the PC CPU business I guess it was destined to be.

However I really wouldn't read that much into this re:China, at least specifically wrt to AMD's GPU aspirations. They may indeed not care about the high end, but that doesn't mean GPU's won't remain a key part of their business, especially as the industry continues to gravitate towards heterogenous architectures.

 

[Seanspeed]

Considering Nvidia is moving into the PC CPU business I guess it was destined to be.

However I really wouldn't read that much into this re:China, at least specifically wrt to AMD's GPU aspirations. They may indeed not care about the high end, but that doesn't mean GPU's won't remain a key part of their business, especially as the industry continues to gravitate towards heterogenous architectures.

And just because they're not doing a high end RDNA4 part doesn't mean they're abandoning high end products altogether. For many years, Radeon alternated between low/mid end series and higher end parts per generation. This wouldn't be anything new for them, even if it's a break from how they did things with RDNA2/RDNA3.

Should also be noted that the claims of no high end RDNA4 parts are still just rumors.

 

[DegustatoR]

Considering Nvidia is moving into the PC CPU business I guess it was destined to be.

It's been 20 years of them "moving into PC CPU business" and I still have doubts that this is anything but a backup plan in case Intel or AMD will decide to close up their platforms.

 

[Scott_Arm]

It's been 20 years of them "moving into PC CPU business" and I still have doubts that this is anything but a backup plan in case Intel or AMD will decide to close up their platforms.

laptop/tablet/portable market seems the most likely but I still don't know how viable windows for arm is unless it has good x86 emulation. Getting into the custom pc space would be difficult. Who would make the motherboards?

 

[DavidGraham]

they turned "is rumored to happen" to "will happen" in the title

https://twitter.com/x/status/1716874908863770911

 

[Kaotik]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1716874908863770911

Yes? It's the exact same source

 

[DavidGraham]

Yes? It's the exact same source

Charlie (from SemiAccurate) claims he confirmed this from his own sources.

23.9.2's are out, they've split them into separate RDNA and GCN drivers, with latter only getting new game support

Linux support is now discontinued for Vega and Polaris.

AMD has officially confirmed the discontinuation of support for Vega and Polaris architectures in their AMDVLK open source driver on Linux (AMD GPU Open team). The changelog for the Q4 release confirms that GFX8 and GFX9 architectures, which encompass Vega and Polaris, are no longer supported.

While AMD has not explicitly announced the end of Windows support, there has been no update for these graphics cards for over a month

these cards were moved from the main branch to a separate package in the Windows driver release. Since then, despite two updates to the official branch, drivers for Polaris and Vega remain unchanged

AMD officially drops Vulkan driver support for Polaris and Vega architectures on Linux - VideoCardz.com

Linux AMDVLK drivers say goodbye to RX 500/Vega series Is Windows next? Gamers using AMD RX Vega and RX 500 series graphics cards are facing uncertainty surrounding AMD’s driver support. In September, these cards were moved from the main branch to a separate package in the Windows driver...

videocardz.com

 

[Kaotik]

Charlie (from SemiAccurate) claims he confirmed this from his own sources.

My critique wasn't about whether it'll turn out to be true or not, but about the way they turn a rumor into a fact and present it in worst possible light.

 

[SmooTh]

AMD China
https://yicai.com/news/101885751.html

Recently, there was news in the market that AMD has carried out large-scale layoffs in China. In this regard, AMD officially responded to the first financial reporter on October 26: "The network rumors are untrue. Based on the adjustment of the company's strategy, the company has recently optimized and reorganized the organizational structure to a small extent. ”

 

[Seanspeed]

If RDNA 5 can't turn things around I have a tough time believing AMD will stick around in PC graphics for much longer

Could AMD give up on discrete gaming GPUs and stick to consoles and APUs?

www.pcgamer.com

Cant say I agree much with the reasoning - that RDNA2 was only good cuz it was for consoles, and thus that RDNA3 wasn't good cuz it was only for PC. That seems like a wildly simplified narrative. I'm sure AMD did have some extra incentive to ensure RDNA2 was decent, but this was not why RDNA3 was bad. RDNA3 came a full two years after RDNA2, it was a top down full range lineup and critically AMD will have known that Nvidia's new generation would be switching to a modern TSMC node and so was bound to make some solid leaps. AMD could not afford to just slack off. It's not like the NBA where you can rest a player one game so they are better in the next. If you're not playing your best every game, you will fall behind and it's very hard to then catch back up as all this stuff builds on each other. RDNA3 is bad cuz there's something wrong with it, not because AMD just didn't care.

Also the argument that RDNA5 is their last chance cuz it'll be the basis of the next consoles - not a safe assumption, either. Especially if RDNA4 is just a one year 'gen' and RDNA5 comes in 2025. That leaves room for RDNA6(or whatever they have planned afterwards) to still be utilized. They dont have to commit to using older GPU hardware for new consoles as saw with PS4 Pro and then of course PS5+XSX, all of which released with the latest GPU tech AMD had.

Not to say I fully disagree with the premise that Radeon needs to show some signs in the near future or else it could face real questions within the company. I just dont like the arguments used here.

 

[del42sa]

https://www.techspot.com/article/2741-four-years-of-amd-rdna/

4 Years of AMD RDNA: Another Zen or a New Bulldozer?​

 

[Scott_Arm]

I think I’d like to see amd focus on the low end and mid range and try to capture as much market share as possible with price to performance. We need a highly competitive gpu market.

 

[DegustatoR]

I think I’d like to see amd focus on the low end and mid range

Lowest margins with them being about zero in low end thanks to iGPUs. They've been doing exactly that between GCN1 and RDNA2 and the place we're now is a direct result of that focus.

 

[Seanspeed]

I dont think what 'range segment' they focus on is really the make or break factor for them. They just need to execute on the architecture and technology at the moment. Everything follows from that.

Lowest margins with them being about zero in low end thanks to iGPUs. They've been doing exactly that between GCN1 and RDNA2 and the place we're now is a direct result of that focus.

Pretty sure when they say 'low end', they dont mean something like GT1030 or whatever, but more like a 7600. And no, iGPU's are not threatening discrete parts like this.