The AMD Execution Thread [2007 - 2017]

[sorry, accidental double post]

 

If the validation process uncovers issues that can be circumvented by disabling certain features (at the expense of some performance/power-efficiency, of course) I would expect AMD to do just that, even with SMT. They're in such a dreadful competitive situation that they have no choice, and even a half-broken Zen CPU ought to be better than Vishera.

 

If the Excavator refresh is practically Carrizo + DDR4 (rumors point to it being a dual-module CPU + 8 CU GCN1.2) and made using a rather old process, why isn't it coming much sooner?

 

http://seekingalpha.com/article/3283275-amd-fails-again-keeping-it-in-perspective

This kinda sums everything up.

 

....

 

Remember that Carrizo is mainly optimised for certain power ranges, mainly around 15 W, where it shows best efficiency ?

I would think they need time to bring similar heavy optimisations in the desktop suited power envelopes.

 

What is the impact of Fury's underwhelming launch on the company's earnings through 2015? Could they ever recover now?

 

I don't think it's very important: they will still sell out because, crappy marketing aside, it's a decent performers for its price.

I think that the 3xx rebranding at a higher price will result in increased sales at a higher ASP. That may have a bigger impact on earnings than FuryX.

 

Oh, no, quadruple facepalm

Microsoft might be interested in buying AMD, according to source

 

Very good analytic article.

 

Someone on the Tech Report suggested an AMD acquisition drinking game with the following rules:

It looks life fun, but at this point I'd be really concerned about my liver.

 

Microsoft buying AMD wouldn't be so bad maybe. Dunno what would happen with discrete GPU development tho - MS has traditionally wanted to prop up Xbox on the expense of the PC due to one of these earning them royalties on software while the other doesn't - we would have to watch out about that, I think...

 

Beyond demonic possession or losing a terrible bet while drunk, what could motivate MS to do this? I understand that after (apparently? that's what the press said) offering 55 bln. for Salesforce it is expected that no ridiculous purchase is a bridge too far for MS, but still...

Full redisclosure: I work for MS, however not in any area related to any potential acquisition, therefore what I write is merely my 2c.

 

I guess savings on Xbox chips maybe enough. Right now AMD's market cap is 1.92B. Obviously the price would go up for a sale, but that's less than what MS paid for Minecraft. If they buy AMD for 3B, but save a 1B in the long term, it would probably be worth it, especially if they're planning another Xbox. Perhaps there's some savings on servers for Azure this way as well.

I would be surprised in this acquisition, but with all the cash MS has, they have to do something with it.

 

I find it highly unlikely that Microsoft pays $100 to AMD per Xbox.

 

Indeed.

 

I find it more unlikely that AMD pays $0 to TSMC/GF per xbox SoC wafer

 

well the cost of the Xbox chip is ~105 bucks to produce

 

Got a source for that information that's reliable?

 

I concur, >$100 seems excessive.

A 300mm 28nm HP wafer cost around $3000 in 2013 (from memory, can't find the source). At ~360mm²/die that would yield around 150 dies per wafer or around $20 per die, - not discounting yield.

Yield can't be worse than 50% (redundancy for regular structures as SRAM and CUs), with packaging I'd expect a per die cost below $50 a pop.

*Edit: I can see 28nm wafer prices were around $5800 in early 2014 (crunch?)

Cheers