The AMD Execution Thread [2007 - 2017]

[Wynix]

AMD have released a new roadmap; Nothing has changed apart from the colours.

New one:

Old one:

 

[Alexko]

Nonsense. Everyone knows purple chips are much faster.



But seriously, the lack of visibility into 2015, or even into 2014 for graphics is pretty weird.

 

[overclocked_enthusiasm]

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20140224PD214.html

"AMD has reportedly moved its desktop business headquarters from the US to Beijing, China and has also assigned its desktop business general manager Steven Liu to the new office with the goal of strengthening the company's competitiveness in China's DIY channel. Through the move, the company is also trying to tighten its relationship with Lenovo, according to sources from the upstream supply chain."

Interesting. What bearing this will have on anything I have no idea. There were some rumors last fall of Lenovo buying AMD because of Rory's history but I just don't see that happening. Maybe they just want to be closer to their number 1 growth market which is clearly China.

Could my idea of AMD moving GPU production to GF to cover an aggressive 2014 WSA (due in large part to the $190 million miss in the 2013 WSA) be responsible for the lack of visibility in the roadmap right now?

 

[UniversalTruth]

Don't forget that your national american debt is $ 57,462,490,805,714 and rising.

http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/

THAT is an insane amount of money and I would bet the Chinese would be more than happy to put their hands on more american businesses.

There is no other way to pay these enormous bills

 

[overclocked_enthusiasm]

Don't forget that your national american debt is $ 57,462,490,805,714 and rising.

http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/

THAT is an insane amount of money and I would bet the Chinese would be more than happy to put their hands on more american businesses.

There is no other way to pay these enormous bills

Our portion of that is "only" $17,000,000,000,000...lol

 

[Babel-17]

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

 

[3dilettante]

The government's debts are not on AMD's ledger, nor any money AMD would save or make from internal reoarganization have bearing in the reverse direction.
The federal government doom and gloom topic can get a thread in the appropriate forum.

 

[overclocked_enthusiasm]

The government's debts are not on AMD's ledger, nor any money AMD would save or make from internal reoarganization have bearing in the reverse direction.
The federal government doom and gloom topic can get a thread in the appropriate forum.

The national debt really has no bearing on any company either doing business here or choosing overseas. Taxes may rise in an effort to reduce this national debt but generally corporations are taxed at a low rate to foster investment and retention. The move to China is likely what that said it was...to get closer to the action.

 

[UniversalTruth]

This debt belongs to the whole nation, and each citizen has approximately - 55 k$ debt...

The government works or is supposed to work for the people not for themselves.

However, you are right, they definitely will now be closer to the customers in Asia.

Hope is that they will step on their feet finally and be competitive with others

 

[eastmen]

Beema will be nice to replace my e-350 in the media center however who knows when it will hit at this point.

Also the lack of non apu's for the desktop just cements my move away from amd

 

[UniversalTruth]

Ok, let's put it here, answering my question from two days ago:

I found some more good info on the 20/16nm transition on a Kaveri breifing by AMD product CTO Joe Macri. I'm quoting a few paragraphs from pg3 of the article and have highlighted the important parts in bold. Source - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/14/amd_unveils_kaveri_hsa_enabled_apu/?page=1

When is 28 nanometers faster than 22?

Kaveri is baked in a 28-nanometer, planar, bulk silicon process, which is nowhere near as efficient as state-of-the-art FinFET (what Intel calls "Tri-Gate") or even the less-than-TriGate, more-than-bulk – and somewhat expensive – silicon-on-insulator (SOI) process that was used in Kaveri's predecessor.

There were reasons to go with 28nm rather than 22nm, Macri told us, that were discovered during the design process. That process was run by what he identified as a "cross-functional team" composed of "CPU guys, graphics guys, mixed-signal folks, our process team, the backend, layout team."

That cross-functional crew identified a boatload of process variants, and members of the team each ran tests based on their areas of interest, examining such factors as power curves and die-area needs.

"What we found was with the CPU with planar transistors, when we went from 28 to 22, we actually started to slow down," he said, "because the pitch of the transistor had to become much finer, and basically we couldn't get as much oomph through the transistor."

The problem, he said, was that "our IDsat was unpleasant" at 22nm, referring to gate drain saturation current*. In addition, the chip's metal system needed to be scaled down to fit within the 22nm process, which increased resistance.

"So what we saw was the frequency just fall off the cliff," he said. "This is why it's so important to get to FinFET."

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?p=1830596#post1830596

They're likely to skip 20nm for high-performance APUs and go straight to 14nm FinFET. There is now a solid amount of evidence supporting this.

For low-power APUs it's less clear. These don't necessarily reach very high frequencies, so 20nm might make sense in 2015. But Mullins/Beema remains on 28nm.

There will be new "pure" CPUs (SoCs without graphics, really) this year, but they will be ARM-based. AMD might not design any more "pure" x86 CPUs, no one knows.

 

[overclocked_enthusiasm]

NewEgg

290x 9/9 IN STOCK ($649) down $50 in 1 week MSRP $549
290 8/8 IN STOCK ($549) down $50 in 1 week MSRP $399
280x 10/11 IN STOCK ($449) down $20 in 1 week MSRP $299
270x 12/12 IN STOCK ($249) down $20 in 1 week MSRP $199

Ebay

Pricing similar or higher to NEW

I will update this list each week...this is the first time since mid-December I see good availability on these SKUs. As critical as I have been, this gives me hope pricing will stabilize further and continue falling closer to MSRP. The 280x and 290 are the most "overpriced" at about $150 over MSRP.

Has the disruption in Bitcoin spread to Litecoin and the other GPU mining viable currencies? If so, that could account for the dramtaic difference in this 7 day period OR the AIB partners were able to restock due greater availability from AMD OR more likely a combination of both. It will be interesting to watch Ebay for signs of people bailing on mining with AMD GPUs...didn't see it today.

 

[Babel-17]

NewEgg

290x 9/9 IN STOCK ($649) down $50 in 1 week MSRP $549
290 8/8 IN STOCK ($549) down $50 in 1 week MSRP $399
280x 10/11 IN STOCK ($449) down $20 in 1 week MSRP $299
270x 12/12 IN STOCK ($249) down $20 in 1 week MSRP $199

Ebay

Pricing similar or higher to NEW

I will update this list each week...this is the first time since mid-December I see good availability on these SKUs. As critical as I have been, this gives me hope pricing will stabilize further and continue falling closer to MSRP. The 280x and 290 are the most "overpriced" at about $150 over MSRP.

Has the disruption in Bitcoin spread to Litecoin and the other GPU mining viable currencies? If so, that could account for the dramtaic difference in this 7 day period OR the AIB partners were able to restock due greater availability from AMD OR more likely a combination of both. It will be interesting to watch Ebay for signs of people bailing on mining with AMD GPUs...didn't see it today.

Thanks! I was wondering about the pricing situation. I guess that as long as miners can justify the electricity, and space, used they will keep going with these cards.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Has the disruption in Bitcoin spread to Litecoin and the other GPU mining viable currencies?

Irrespective of the value volatility, the Bitcoin hashrate itself has continued to rise over this period so I don't see that miners are bailing which would likely be the case for altcoins as well, which supposedly have their on intrinsic value (although, I personally question where or why).

 

[overclocked_enthusiasm]

Irrespective of the value volatility, the Bitcoin hashrate itself has continued to rise over this period so I don't see that miners are bailing which would likely be the case for altcoins as well, which supposedly have their on intrinsic value (although, I personally question where or why).

There is an inverse relationship to high hashrates and GPUs ability to be cost effective miners yes? So the higher the hashrate the less likely GPUs make sense for mining...wonder where the tipping point is for Litecoin and others...

 

[Wynix]

There is an inverse relationship to high hashrates and GPUs ability to be cost effective miners yes? So the higher the hashrate the less likely GPUs make sense for mining...wonder where the tipping point is for Litecoin and others...

Hopefully(for AMD) it is close to the launch of the 300 series, otherwise they will find it hard to compete against the flood of cheap 200 series cards on the used market.

 

[Dave Baumann]

There is an inverse relationship to high hashrates and GPUs ability to be cost effective miners yes? So the higher the hashrate the less likely GPUs make sense for mining...wonder where the tipping point is for Litecoin and others...

Well, the BTC hashrate graph is there to show that overall the mining pool doesn't really seem to be affected by recent activities, that specifically doesn't relate to GPU's. However, its to true to say that for a single coin the higher the hashrate there is a double penalty in reward - 1.) there are now more people wanting a slide of the pie and 2.) the difficulty goes up so payouts become less frequent (or to try and maintain the frequency). On the flipside, though, that is the case for each individual coin and the more altcoins that pop-up that people believe have some value to more opportunities there are to distribute the load and mine alternative things.

For instance, Litecoin hash rates and difficulty levels have fallen from their peaks because other coins have popped up and people have started mining those as opposed to Litecoin and these other coins have become more profitable. A lot of altcoin miners are using pools that have a simple algorithm (based on current exchange Bitcoin exchange rates and coin difficultly level) that calculates the current most profitable coin and automatically switches to that. By my reconing, the profit, even at these rates, is in the 4x-5x range over the electricity costs and a card would have been paid for in 1 to 2 months.

 

[ams]

NewEgg

290x 9/9 IN STOCK ($649) down $50 in 1 week MSRP $549
290 8/8 IN STOCK ($549) down $50 in 1 week MSRP $399
280x 10/11 IN STOCK ($449) down $20 in 1 week MSRP $299
270x 12/12 IN STOCK ($249) down $20 in 1 week MSRP $199

These are the same already heavily inflated prices we saw one or two months ago at Newegg, so nothing really new here other than more supply trickling in relative to a few weeks ago.

IMO the supply shortage of these GPU's is not being driven exclusively by mining demand. It appears that AMD and their AIB partners have a shortage of components due to AMD prioritizing components and wafers [the latter all manufactured using TSMC 28nm fab. process] for PS4 and Xbox One. In other words, AMD and its partners prioritized for next gen consoles (and likely even underestimated pent up demand for next gen consoles), and supply of their new PC gaming GPU's suffered as a result (which in turn led to MSRP's in the USA that were way way beyond the MSRP's that AMD gave to reviewers, no pun intended).

 

[3dilettante]

The long lead times for fabs and manufacturing/shipping apply to the consoles as well.
Both console manufacturers were likely geared up for high numbers and would have made their APU orders match that ahead of time. Feedback for console supply in the time frame in question is dominated by launch-period hype and the holidays.

Even with high demand, there are intermediate parties whose schedules and planning decouple AMD from the end market.

 

[overclocked_enthusiasm]

These are the same already heavily inflated prices we saw one or two months ago at Newegg, so nothing really new here other than more supply trickling in relative to a few weeks ago.

My gut tells me prices hit a high water mark the last 2 weeks (since the $900 290x that showed up) and that is why the price "drop" is relevant imho. The thing that sets this time frame apart from the prices 1-2 months ago is the availability on each sku I listed...there is MUCH more "In Stock" now....90%+.