AMD CEO Left Over Mobile Strategy Disagreement

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I can't understand that really. When he came on it wasn't like AMD was doing marvelous. In fact it was quite the opposite. He came on when they had consistent quarterly losses, a falling stock and a CPU that performed worse than the two year old Intel equivalent.

Its not like he had the ability to say "Hey lets also develop for smart phones and stuff even though our core product is failing us....". He made a hard choice. It was either get AMD moving in the right direction again or go down with the ship.

I think he made the right choice. He got AMD up and moving with a bit of steam again. In fact when he came on, Bulldozer was all but gone from road maps and he got it to the point of release this year.

But I guess the BoD wanted him to instead focus on a segment and let their main product portfolio burn.
 

dman3k

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Sure, he got AMD back barely, but at the lose of the bigger picture.

Everyone knows the computer world is moving to the cloud while people access the cloud with smaller devices such as handhelds. And he sold Imageon to Qualcomm? That's a huge lack of vision!

Quite frankly, seeing through GF spin-off was an easy task that many could do. But selling Imageon can only be done by someone completely inept.
 
Meyer said "let's hold Brazos and let Atom get the nettops/netbooks ground" when he pushed the R&D 2 years, if I recall correctly. I don't know if it was a good or bad call when they were battling bad economy and low rate of success on the x86 ground. You can now tell it was a bad move, but then, the priorities back then were others.

Cheers!
 

yannigr

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The board is wrong. They did stay for too long away from the mobile market but the mobile market is too crowded and AMD is not in a position to offer anything groundbreaking. I am an AMD fan (last Intel cpu was a Celleron 333MHz) but Zacate doesn't show me that they can compete. They have to wait for GF's 28 and 32 nm first. Dirk is an engineer and I think he knows that he can't compete in the smartphone market that's why he stayed away from the mobile market. The same thing happent with netbooks. AMD stayed away and it is making sense. They had nothing to compete Intel. They would have only lose time, money and resources for no good reason.

The board is reacting like the fans of a football club with 1/10th of the budget of other teams that demands to take the championship. Usually the team doesn't wins the championship and ends up in big disappointment and huge debt.
 

rhino13

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I don't support this change in focus.
I'm not claiming to know more than the board, but I need AMD to release another great mainstream CPU, like back in the days of the Athlon.

Without that Intel's just gonna become more and more overpriced.

I don't see focussing on mobile helping them take Intel.
 
That board is full of morons. Dirk knew they had to work on their core products and stabilize those before investing in niche products with very slim margins. It's also pretty expensive for a company to let a CEO go and get a new one so it's not something that's done on a whim, no this took alot of foolish thought.
 
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Idiots... x86 is worthless for phones, diversifying into ARM is expensive and risky... Besides, there are already way too many players in the ARM business, it would be very hard to differentiate yourself from the crowd on your first attempt(ask Nvidia, re: Tegra 1).
 

someguynamedmatt

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[citation][nom]bv90andy[/nom]f*** mobile, maybe do a cpu that can surpass intel and then talk about expanding to other markets.[/citation]
I love you.[citation][nom]megamanx00[/nom]That board is full of morons. Dirk knew they had to work on their core products and stabilize those before investing in niche products with very slim margins. It's also pretty expensive for a company to let a CEO go and get a new one so it's not something that's done on a whim, no this took alot of foolish thought.[/citation]
...You, too.

I love how these meatheads don't understand that you should at least have ONE thing that can perform decently compared to other companies' products. Apparently, not only does the BoD want to suck at making processors, they want to suck even more in the mobile market. I hope they're reading this right now... Hey, shitheads!... Maybe you should fix what you already have and THEN focus on expanding into other markets!

Having been a loyal AMD customer up until now, I hope they know that their stupidity has just lost them another customer... I always thought there was actually a chance for AMD to turn itself around until just now... nope. Unless Bulldozer is an absolute tank, they're just going to stay in the same situation for many years to come.
 

killerclick

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I hope mobile computing turns out to be another fad like 3D. Computer geeks should be at home in their basements and not "consuming content" "on the go". I'll do my part - I'm going to beat up the first guy I see using a laptop or a tablet in public.
 

doron

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I bet the board of directors is just a bunch of rich stupid people who think the world revolves around apple-like innovation.

Seriously, such a company must be a little conservative and stay focused on 2-3 things, you can't expect a company which struggles in low power even for netbooks (until recently with the mediocre bobcat) to succeed in the mobile market without investing an arm and a leg on a possible failure.

Good call, Dirk, for leaving instead of giving up to this nonsense and be remembered for taking amd downhill with this bad decision.
 

kronos_cornelius

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I think Meyer did a good job. But it would be a mistake to underestimate the mobile sector. After all, how many mainframe companies do we know today that underestimated the humbler PC in the 80's. The only one I can remember is IBM, and that is because it embraced the PC revolution.

I would advice AMD to go in Nvidia's direction and create a Fission CPU with ARM architecture. Just like Nvidia will have a big impact due to its superior technology in GPU's (SMP), so too should AMD with it ATI division.

I know AMD has a lot invested in x86, but if Intel has not been able to lower the power consumption on x86 by now, AMD should not waste more money on that endeavor. I think is easier for AMD to switch architectures. AMD is not as married to x86 as Intel since they don't own the patents.
 

Nintendork

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[citation][nom]doron[/nom]I bet the board of directors is just a bunch of rich stupid people who think the world revolves around apple-like innovation.Seriously, such a company must be a little conservative and stay focused on 2-3 things, you can't expect a company which struggles in low power even for netbooks (until recently with the mediocre bobcat) to succeed in the mobile market without investing an arm and a leg on a possible failure.Good call, Dirk, for leaving instead of giving up to this nonsense and be remembered for taking amd downhill with this bad decision.[/citation]

Bobcat destroy Atom in power, power efficiency and price. Is that what you call medioce? Come on...

Brazos is an awesome platform, not even with the help of ION Atom can compete, their cpu's sux, their igp sux, using nvidia ION the power consumption is near 50%+ higher than a equivalent Zacate+HD6310.

At the same price of an ION you get more cpu, more gpu more ram, HDD, etc with a Zacate setup.

 

Marcus52

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If Meyers was intending to slow down all processor development, I'm for the boards decision, on a personal level. On a business level I don't think it's the right time to slow down mobile development either, because there is a lot of competition and AMD needs to get their offerings in the ring and well developed pronto. Dirk may have done a great job getting AMD back on track, but I'm not as sure he would be taking them in the direction I'd like to see in the future. I thought differently before - but that's what we get for guessing from the outside about what's really going on in AMD.

;)
 

msgun98

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[citation][nom]yannigr[/nom] but Zacate doesn't show me that they can compete. [/citation]

If you actually look at how it performs over intel's offerings and at its pricepoint, I think you would completely reconsider this statement. At this point there are VERY few PC users that would ever need more than a Zacate based laptop... its quite snappy, plays 1080p vids great, multitasks well. Only thing it doesn't do is power-user stuff like 300dpi photoshop images, HD video editing, 3D rendering, etc. The majority of PC users don't do any of these things. I think AMD has a winner here and I think it will show in their earnings next year.
 

goodguy713

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[citation][nom]dman3k[/nom]Sure, he got AMD back barely, but at the lose of the bigger picture.Everyone knows the computer world is moving to the cloud while people access the cloud with smaller devices such as handhelds. And he sold Imageon to Qualcomm? That's a huge lack of vision!Quite frankly, seeing through GF spin-off was an easy task that many could do. But selling Imageon can only be done by someone completely inept.[/citation]

Personally i would never use a cloud service .. lack of security and most of the internet connections here in the US suck ! compared to england or austrailia seriously . i mean why would any one want to do that?... AMD should remain focused on whats important building on the core buisness of consumer and hardcore grade processors and not just some watered down chunk of silicon. opteron grade hardware/ reliability with the speed of a 980x would be awesome .. if you have not figgured it out .. apple and invidia pretty much have the low power processor market tied up baring a few snapdragons..point being stay focused dont give up just because things get difficult.
 
I personally applaud him for turning AMD around into a competitor to Intel once again. He really did lead AMD through some difficult times. AMD was in no position to branch off excessively - that would have overstretched their R&D department.
 

im_caius

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US internet sucks compared to Australia?
I'm on the best connection in Aus i think.. i get 14mbps down and 0.8 up..
I know US gets better.
Plus its $150 for me.. expensive for not that good speeds. only 200GB too.
 

alidan

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what does amd do well?

budget cpus which pack a hell of a punch.
i managed to find a laptop with a real 3 core phenom, and not some mobile piece of crap

graphics cards, read what amd did in dx10 and what nvidia did any you will understand better.

amd, as far as i know, has nothing that can touch arm, so why try for a market where you will most likely only be the runner up, after spending billions? arm is so mass produced that they are cheap, and cost effective, can amd make that claim, even in 2-5 years after 2 cpus and 3 revisions of each?

they cant even compete on the high end, where power isnt a problem, much less where every watt counts,
 
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