Radeon HD 2000 series family launch... so what happend?

[Geeforcer]

“We pushed out the launch of the R600 and people thought ‘it must be a silicon or software problem, it’s got to be a bug’. In fact, our mainstream chips are in 65nm and are coming out extremely fast. Because of that configuration, we have an interesting opportunity to come to market with a broader range of products"

"Instead of having them separate, we thought, lets line that up, so we delayed for several weeks."

"The reason we decided to delay the launch was that we wanted to have a complete DX10-enabled solution top to bottom. A lot of people wrote that the reason it is delayed is because of a problem with the silicon, but there is no problem with the silicon. We are demonstrating it. We can ship it today. But if you think about it, looking at where the market is at, the volumes are going to be in the R610 and R630, so it makes sense for us to do a one time launch of the entire family of DX10 enabled products. That meant delaying the R600 for a few weeks, but frankly it doesn't make a difference in the life cycle of the product and talking with our customers and partners, they felt that it would make a bigger impact with one full launch."

"We are going to announce those products in the second part of May. The location has been picked. It is a series of 10 products covering the entire stack with DX10 capabilities, leading edge performance and more importantly, a solution that works with qualified drivers."

"We do not do soft launches."

All these statements were made to by high raking AMD people, some to the investors. I would love to hear what took place.

 

[Maintank]

I have been a fan of AMD for years but the BS coming out of their executive team is wearing my patience thin. They basically lied to analysts in December about their outlook for the 4th and 1st qtrs, now this.

 

[Geeforcer]

Back when we were debating the merits of People's Glorious Family Launch and "ZOMG IMPACT!!2", some people have attributed the delay to the Barcelona factor - which has not materialized either. So, I am quite perplexed. You can't have your executives push the (suspect from the get-go) rationale for the delay, and than after all that talk release ONE card, provide zero explanation for this 180 and expected everyone to sit quietly and forget about it.

 

[nutball]

The next conference call could be an interesting affair.

 

[Mize]

It's basically Barecelona rocks beyond all else or we're months from a "somebody buys the assets of AMD" scene a la 3dfx. Not good news for consumers.

 

[AlexV]

Doubtful...even with their lowish at the moment stock price, that`d still be a fairly huge investment. Intel is out of the question as in now way would such a monopoly be allowed to become legal. Others who would have the cash/assets to trade in for wouldn`t be hugely interested IMHO. And then again, I still don`t thing AMDs fate will be wholly determined by Barcelona...they have fat to trim before actually bleeding badly.

 

[Mize]

Doubtful...even with their lowish at the moment stock price, that`d still be a fairly huge investment. Intel is out of the question as in now way would such a monopoly be allowed to become legal. Others who would have the cash/assets to trade in for wouldn`t be hugely interested IMHO. And then again, I still don`t thing AMDs fate will be wholly determined by Barcelona...they have fat to trim before actually bleeding badly.

nV is on the record for being larger than Intel by something like 2010. AMD would go a long way toward that and would bring them ample tech they don't have. With Intel going into GPUs it makes sense in some ways.

 

[AlexV]

Nv is on the record as in Jen Hsun said that?Well, they should`ve been bigger than Sony already I think, if we were to go by his quotes. They`re not. Don`t get me wrong, nV is a great success model and a great company. They illustrate how one should tackle marketing, design etc. But I don`t think they`ve got the muscle to get AMD. Or the incentive to do such a thing.

 

[Sxotty]

Nv is on the record as in Jen Hsun said that?Well, they should`ve been bigger than Sony already I think, if we were to go by his quotes. They`re not. Don`t get me wrong, nV is a great success model and a great company. They illustrate how one should tackle marketing, design etc. But I don`t think they`ve got the muscle to get AMD. Or the incentive to do such a thing.

I sure hope they don't if they do then competition -->0

 

[Maintank]

Nvidia said they think they can be a 10 billion company in the coming years. I believe intel is a 30 billion dollar company, or close. So no, Nvidia isnt planning on overtaking Intel anytime soon.

 

[MulciberXP]

Nvidia said they think they can be a 10 billion company in the coming years. I believe intel is a 30 billion dollar company, or close. So no, Nvidia isnt planning on overtaking Intel anytime soon.

You're off by about 100B for intel.

 

[Geeforcer]

That $10 billion in 5 years was in reference to annual sales as opposed to the market cap.

 

[Arun]

nV is on the record for being larger than Intel by something like 2010.

Actually, Jen-Hsun said 10 years in 2002, and I think that quote wasn't implying that they would get a $100B+ market cap; rather than theirs would grow substantially, and Intel's diminish substantially at the same time. So he was really just indirectly predicting the CPU becoming a commodity. Whether that will happen in that timeframe or not is very, very arguable though...

Also, keep in mind NV was a major AMD ally back in those days, so it's not unreasonable he was expecting AMD to eat more share of Intel's business, also hurting them. Or, final possibility, knowing Jen-Hsun, maybe he really believed they could become such a large company in such a short timeframe, heh! (in which case, it's pretty much just random investor marketing and hyping it up)

 

[Random Digital]

All these statements were made to by high raking AMD people, some to the investors. I would love to hear what took place.

Yeah, it's one thing to piss off a bunch of computer nerds in their parents basements It's another story when you tick off your investors.

I have a feeling that the next investor update will hold more information than anything we will hear on the tech side.

 

[Geeforcer]

Video I found interesting:

http://blip.tv/file/get/Bleedingedge-BleedingEdgeTV159AMDPressConferenceQA849.mp4

 

[Lux_]

Video

They mentioned that we'd see a software roadmap and more coverage of tools/libraries at family launch (and Peakstream announcement in September).

Just to clarify - as the coverage is minuscule and the roadmap is nowhere to be found, apparently the family launch is not over yet . And rightfully so - midrange parts will be available on the 1st of July :smile:.

Sarcasm aside, the video was good. I really liked the guy with a red tie. But what happened to Orton? He used to be such a nice looking guy, but in that video he looked really old and a little lost... for everybody's sake I hope it was a hangover .

 

[dizietsma]

Looks like the new quad cores for AMD might be drifting further towards the back end of the year rather than end of 2Q, that means it is even more imperitive for R6xx series to be successful in the interim to fill the gap.

Intel is drifting towards 08 for Penryn so it is time for AMD to make hay whilst the sun shines if at all possible.

 

[Maintank]

You're off by about 100B for intel.

I am speaking in terms of revenue, not market cap.