The AMD Execution Thread [2018]

Where are the dirt cheap GPUs then? I kinda wanted a vega 64 so I could get a free sync monitor. Anyway who knows what is going in now. I am hoping black friday sales have some awesome deals so I can upgrade some long neglected hardware. I seriously wonder what is going on if thee are tons of GPUs that are just sitting. It is better to lose $40 per card then lose $150 for an unsold card. Whatever the actual breakdown you get the idea. Maybe it is nearer to losing $10 or $50, but it seems likely that there is some gap there.

 

Dropping 21% due to missing target by 3%? Lol

 

That’s what happens when everybody panic sells with no regard for the actual value of a company. The stock market is a pure bullshit casino.

 

All those guys selling shorts needed some food on the plate, too!

/s

 

It is a huge bubble at the moment. Companies are mostly completely overvalued. What are people going to invest in though? We are awash in cheap money from ages of low interest rates and new tax cuts for the wealthy. That money has to go somewhere. Every time we make a bubble so it is not really a surprise.

 

Especially in AMD's case.The P/E ratio at its peak was absurd.

AMD is a great company and Epyc is going to turn a lot of heads over the next half decade. However servers are a game that moves in years, not months. Epyc 1 was never intended to sell well; its purpose is to prove that AMD knows what they're doing, and to serve as a litmus test for AMD to showcase that they can support their enterprise customers over the long haul. You have to prove that you'll be a solid, reliable partner (and with a strong roadmap) before sever vendors will risk billions of dollars on you, and that is a test of time.

 

There is a combination of factors. Even being down 50% off recent high, the stock still had a massive run-up fueld by high expectations. Missing on revenue, plus negative outlook for Q4 plus inventory issues are on piled on top of extremely jumpy market.

I think both AMD and Nvidia have not seen the worst of crypto collapse yet. It was never just about losing the revenue of the mining sales, the real reckoning is dismantling of large scale mining operations and the resulting secondary market that will crowd put new sales. I think AMD, with its limited portfolio, is particularly susceptible to this.

 

From the earnings call transcript it might take some time before the CG segment recovers. It is a good thing Epyc is rolling along.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/42...-2018-results-earnings-call-transcript?page=1

 

What's interesting is the fact that they've apparently already sold over 20 millions worth of 7nm Vegas before they've even started sampling them to customers

 

Well, that explains why they are doing Vega Instinct only on whatever limited capacity there is of 7nm.

So the inventory problem is expected to last till Q1 2019. I say NVIDIA made sure their problem won't last that long with the RTX pricing. AMD doesn't have that option of course because they have nothing new.

 

I didn't read the whole transcript. Do we know if the inventory problem is more "focused" on Polaris, or Vega too ? Because in my mind, not a lot of Vega were made anyway because of the lack of HBM2 modules ?

 

Assuming at least ~$2k for each, that's only 10 000 units or less…


I think a good part for AMD missing the forecasts may be coming from the fact that they failed to launch Vega Mobility. That chip (which according anandtech is supposed to not be KBL-G's Polarega) should have brought some revenue that effectively didn't exist. That chip is completely MIA, and it's weird as hell because Scott Wasson was showing the chip to the public as early as February this year.
KBL-G didn't really take off, either. It could be because Intel upgraded their high-end 45W solutions to 6-core chips, making KBL-G less attractive which in turn made AMD sell less Vega M GH/GL chips than anticipated. And that would be ironic because AMD are the ones who drove Intel to increase core count on their consumer parts.

 

AMD's fiscal year starts on january. Nvidia's fiscal year starts on February. This makes comparing quarters for things like crypto mining slightly apples to oranges as nvidia is 1 month in "future" compared to amd when reading quarterly results. Also this makes amd have q4 fully in holiday season whereas nvidia q4 has also january in it.

 

If it really is crypto-caused, then it's very likely the excess inventory is Vega.

 

If the RX 590 launch is indeed eminent, then it's Vega indeed. AMD shouldn't risk launching another Polaris if they have a Polaris over stock problem. Unless they want to do an RTX launch style, which I doubt AMD would even consider in the first place.

That's one more reason AMD would want to wait before launching another gaming Vega, they either do that and suck up the loss of the over stocked old Vega, or wait for the channel to clear first.

 

No that is what happens when the Hype doesn't meet reality.

Hype drove the stock to $30, reality drove it back under $20.

 

The “Intel literally has no Xeons for sale, AMD 30% market share inbound” was pretty popular in some circles until Intel posted a blowout quarter.

 

The Vega Mobile (GFX9) presented in Feb has supposedly been sampling for some time.

But hey, this is classic AMD's style - unveil/hype the "finished" product to public 8+ months before it is possible to buy it. Really stupid.

 

I really wish AMD would stop doing that, yes.
I guess with so much time between releases on the GPU front, they might feel the need to brag about stuff that is way too early in development, just so they're kept in the news.

For example, if it wasn't for these "early teasers", no one would have heard of Radeon between late 2017 and late 2018 (or whenever Vega 20 is being launched).

 

Two sides of the same coin. Just people buying and selling on hope and emotion and no sense of what’s actually going on.