The AMD Execution Thread [2007 - 2017]

[UniversalTruth]

I don't know what the logic behind this thought is... if you are willing to clarify a little bit.

But in any case- recent news involving AMD are all bad or in the negative direction... perhaps the end for them is approaching.

 

[Homeles]

I don't know what the logic behind this thought is... if you are willing to clarify a little bit.

Acer makes the crappiest of the craptops. Ferrari makes the nicest of luxury sportscars. So slapping a Ferrari sticker on an Acer is pretty lol-worthy.

 

[UniversalTruth]

Acer makes the crappiest of the craptops.

That is such a nonsense given that you will be so welcome to see my own personal laptop, what a masterpiece with ultra high quality it is.

 

[Homeles]

And their low end stuff is exceptionally low end. Which is the point.

 

[rpg.314]

I agree about the collision course, but Intel ultimately winning is less obvious to me. They do have a process advantage, but there is some question as to exactly what it will amount to in a couple of process nodes, given that the power benefits brought by each generation seem to decrease. On the flip side, the power advantage inherent to the ARM ISA, or rather to ARM decoders, is real, but small. Technically, this looks like a draw, or at least a close call.

The process advantage is real. Intel's n-1 process will give TSMC's leading edge process a bloody nose in perf/W any day. The packaging advantage is real with interposers and TSVs. The density advantage is real. The process - architecture co-design advantage is real. The ISA disadvantage is imaginary.

Therefore, I think deciding factors are to be found elsewhere, and the ARM ecosystem does have a few advantages: being more fragmented and less vertically integrated, the risks and costs are spread over more companies, making the whole more resilient to mistakes, failed projects, etc. For instance Samsung's loss could be Qualcomm's gain, and vice-versa. Of course, this also means that some of the synergies possible for Intel are less likely with ARM, and there is some redundancy.

The diversity is a plus point. Though it is not clear just how much of a plus it is. HW design is VERY conservative to begin with.

Then of course is the whole software side of things, which is harder to predict, but I suspect that Microsoft's x86 legacy will be about as much of an obstacle to ARM as Android's reliance on the latter. That is, with Windows RT on one side and Android/x86 on the other, or rather their respective successors, nothing insurmountable.

The ARM code base is their real challenge. But with android, I think a THE WAY IT'S MEANT TO BE 86ed program could solve that.

 

[itsmydamnation]

intel and arm dont have the brand name exposure in the mobile market, apple, samsung, HTC, etc do. You think they want to be nothing more then OEM's, that why i think atom in the phone space will fail. tablet could be different because OEM's and windows have a chance there.

 

[Raqia]

Sounds like a good read:

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/02/14/former-amd-chiefs-book-describes-fight-against-intel/

This verifies the rumors that nVidia was AMD's first acquisition choice straight from the ex-CEO's mouth.

 

[UniversalTruth]

AMD Executes Purchase Agreement to Sell and Lease-Back Austin Campus

http://www.techpowerup.com/181322/A...ent-to-Sell-and-Lease-Back-Austin-Campus.html

 

[Malo]

Isn't this old news? Or is this yet another campus they're selling?

 

[Alexko]

They'd already announced it, now they're actually doing it.

 

[Davros]

Former AMD CEO has some advice for intel
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-20/amds-former-ceo-has-advice-for-intels-next-ceo

 

[liolio]

Former AMD CEO has some advice for intel
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-20/amds-former-ceo-has-advice-for-intels-next-ceo

Well actually those advices kind of make sense to me, too bad he was not that inspired while running AMD...

 

[nikos64]

Please stay on topic.
This belongs to the "The Intel Execution Gloom" topic,
Or the
"Intel shows signs of strain" one.

 

[UniversalTruth]

With this price drop from today, AMD is in a deep trouble having to fight not only weaker brand recognition but also very aggressive pricing from NVIDIA which place the GTX 660 at 7850 price level while offering much superior performance.

 

[jimbo75]

So when AMD drops prices they are in trouble...and when Nvidia drops prices AMD is in trouble?

Nvidia is dropping prices because they are losing sales again. The GK106 full part is a little faster than AMD's Pitcairn salvage part...the sky isn't exactly caving in here. I'm pretty sure AMD has plenty of room to drop prices on the 7870.

 

[eastmen]

pricing hasn't had much movement in the last year. So it was time for stuff to start falling. AMD released a new card at $150 that upset some pricing. Its good to see stuff moving down in price. I'm hoping to see 7970 performance in the low $300 range soon.

 

[thatdude90210]

So when AMD drops prices they are in trouble...and when Nvidia drops prices AMD is in trouble?

Nvidia is dropping prices because they are losing sales again. The GK106 full part is a little faster than AMD's Pitcairn salvage part...the sky isn't exactly caving in here. I'm pretty sure AMD has plenty of room to drop prices on the 7870.

It's funny like that. I recently saw a post on shacknews that said something like "hey AMD get your crap together so Nvidia would lower their prices." But if you look around, their lineup is pretty competitive. For example, the 7970 Ghz ed is pretty competitive with the 680, plus generally cheaper and comes with a nice bundle. Yet Nv isn't lowering the price on the 680, probably because it's still selling well. So who do we blame here? I don't know, but it wouldn't be AMD.

 

[UniversalTruth]

So who do we blame here

AMD.
If everything had been correct with their lineup and especially 7970 performance, then GTX Titan and GTX "680" wouldn't have existed in that form. And now because of it, NVIDIA thanks G O D and sells a 250$ card for 440$...

 

[Raqia]

AMD.
If everything had been correct with their lineup and especially 7970 performance, then GTX Titan and GTX "680" wouldn't have existed in that form. And now because of it, NVIDIA thanks G O D and sells a 250$ card for 440$...

Yeah, I remember that nVidia had said something about AMD's stack being less than they had expected. It's clear the BOM for the 7970 was higher than that of the 680 with a more complex PCB for the wider memory bus, more GDDR5, a larger die, and more expensive cooling solutions. The compute performance of the 680 also screams mid range card.

I think in time, better drivers will help the 79xx series beat the high end 6xx's by a larger margin especially now that AMD has snatched all the console contracts from nVidia with GCN powering most of the consoles. Each dollar spent in driver development will have more impact and I'm sure AMD's CEO will recognize this. There has been talk of a substantial rewrite of the memory management sub-system for GCN architectures, and it is surprising to not see better AA performance over nVidia given the beastly advantage in memory bandwidth AMD enjoys.

 

[swaaye]

I think in time, better drivers will help the 79xx series beat the high end 6xx's by a larger margin

The cards have been out for more than a year! And even before release the drivers would have been in development for who knows how long. Granted, the first 6 months were still a mess. How that happened is a curiosity. They were breaking VLIW architectures in the drivers at the time too.