AMD CEO Lisa Su Interview: Confident In Next Graphics Launch, Zen's Success Is Key

[FritzEiv]

Last week, away from the noisy hullabaloo of Computex in Taipei, a small group of journalists were invited to a free-form discussion with AMD CEO Lisa Su.

AMD CEO Lisa Su Interview: Confident In Next Graphics Launch, Zen's Success Is Key : Read more

 

[junkeymonkey]

is this some more of the AMD 'next year '' ? funny thing with that is next year never comes around ?? look at there new cards how hard can it be to produce refresh items ?? so long a wait and delays .. AMD needs to put there money where there mouth is at some point in time .. all talk and no action don't sell [opinion]

[sorry down vote guys but the truth hurts ]

 

[turkey3_scratch]

Lol put their money where their mouth is. Agree, they are way too slow at releasing new products IMO.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

The next line of graphics cards look great, can't wait for the 300 series. I am excited to see its performance and power usage. As for Zen, it seems they are getting smarter by moving toward higher IPC but I still don't think even a 40% IPC increase will reach what Skylake brings to the table. But if AMD pulls off high clock rates again and lots of cores it can for sure bring more competition to the table and drop Intel of the CPU dawg.

 

[Larry Litmanen]

I have issues with articles and people talking about all this technology, Sure HBM sounds great, yes it is stacked or whatever. But at the end it is just a technology, what user cares about is the end performance. If i have a GTX960 and i am running into issues because it is not powerful enough can i buy a $200 AMD card that will be powerful enough to run the games that i want. That's really all we want to know, we don't care about the technology you use.

 

[3ogdy]

You're right - first they're only releasing overclocked R9 2xx cards + the Fury card with HBM and all that. BUT, the thing is I'd rather see them do this step by step , and more slowly if necessary but get it right, than be quick and frack things up. Let'em take their time. As much as they need - as long as the products will be competitive in the market, fine - obviously nobody will buy AMD if they release a CPU in 2017 that's beating what Intel released 4 years earlier and little more.

 

[Larry Litmanen]

The next line of graphics cards look great, can't wait for the 300 series. I am excited to see its performance and power usage. As for Zen, it seems they are getting smarter by moving toward higher IPC but I still don't think even a 40% IPC increase will reach what Skylake brings to the table. But if AMD pulls off high clock rates again and lots of cores it can for sure bring more competition to the table and drop Intel of the CPU dawg.

According to Steam Hardware survey Intel comes in 75% of all PCs that have a Steam account. It will be impossible to drop Intel in the next 4-5 years, AMDs chips would have to be THAT much better than Intels and substantially cheaper too as Intel can cut a few bucks and convince major PC makers to continue using it's chips.

I wish this lady nothing but good luck as AMD is the reason nVidia and Intel innovate, but she has her job cut out for her.

 

[TechyInAZ]

I hope AMD's Zen provides some serious competition for intel. For now it's looking great!

 

[jimmysmitty]

The next line of graphics cards look great, can't wait for the 300 series. I am excited to see its performance and power usage. As for Zen, it seems they are getting smarter by moving toward higher IPC but I still don't think even a 40% IPC increase will reach what Skylake brings to the table. But if AMD pulls off high clock rates again and lots of cores it can for sure bring more competition to the table and drop Intel of the CPU dawg.

According to Steam Hardware survey Intel comes in 75% of all PCs that have a Steam account. It will be impossible to drop Intel in the next 4-5 years, AMDs chips would have to be THAT much better than Intels and substantially cheaper too as Intel can cut a few bucks and convince major PC makers to continue using it's chips.

I wish this lady nothing but good luck as AMD is the reason nVidia and Intel innovate, but she has her job cut out for her.

A price war would never work with Intel. They have the margins to undercut AMD. They have shown that before. AMDs only bet is to have a CPU that performs better per watt and dollar than Intel so Zen will have to be an Athlon 64 (K8). Problem with that is though that Skylake is not a Netburst which was one of the advantages that K8 had. It was the perfect storm where Intel released a poor uArch and AMD released a good uArch. I don't think Intel is going to do that again so AMD has a lot of work going for them.

And her claims of being first is all fine and dandy but most of the time implementation is what matters more. They were first to a mass produced IMC CPU yet Intels implementation is faster. That is key, to implement it in a way that highly benefits the product.

I guess we will see next year although I wish it was this year because I don't think next year will be soon enough.

 

[Ghoul]

The next line of graphics cards look great, can't wait for the 300 series. I am excited to see its performance and power usage. As for Zen, it seems they are getting smarter by moving toward higher IPC but I still don't think even a 40% IPC increase will reach what Skylake brings to the table. But if AMD pulls off high clock rates again and lots of cores it can for sure bring more competition to the table and drop Intel of the CPU dawg.

According to Steam Hardware survey Intel comes in 75% of all PCs that have a Steam account. It will be impossible to drop Intel in the next 4-5 years, AMDs chips would have to be THAT much better than Intels and substantially cheaper too as Intel can cut a few bucks and convince major PC makers to continue using it's chips.

I wish this lady nothing but good luck as AMD is the reason nVidia and Intel innovate, but she has her job cut out for her.

A price war would never work with Intel. They have the margins to undercut AMD. They have shown that before. AMDs only bet is to have a CPU that performs better per watt and dollar than Intel so Zen will have to be an Athlon 64 (K8). Problem with that is though that Skylake is not a Netburst which was one of the advantages that K8 had. It was the perfect storm where Intel released a poor uArch and AMD released a good uArch. I don't think Intel is going to do that again so AMD has a lot of work going for them.

And her claims of being first is all fine and dandy but most of the time implementation is what matters more. They were first to a mass produced IMC CPU yet Intels implementation is faster. That is key, to implement it in a way that highly benefits the product.

I guess we will see next year although I wish it was this year because I don't think next year will be soon enough.

Next year will be too late and AMD won't even reach Intel's performance

 

[InvalidError]

A price war would never work with Intel.

For a price war to occur, AMD would first need to become a credible threat. Depending on how that 40% IPC improvement pans out, we might get to see Intel reconsider their margins and that would be nice but I doubt AMD will claw back enough ground to make a significant dent in Skylake sales.

 

[junkeymonkey]

I like the down vote guys , but yet don't give his 2 cents worth on this -- lol

 

[FritzEiv]

I have issues with articles and people talking about all this technology, Sure HBM sounds great, yes it is stacked or whatever. But at the end it is just a technology, what user cares about is the end performance. If i have a GTX960 and i am running into issues because it is not powerful enough can i buy a $200 AMD card that will be powerful enough to run the games that i want. That's really all we want to know, we don't care about the technology you use.

OK, next time I'll ask Lisa Su how her new graphics cards will play Larry Litmanen's games 🙂 But seriously, isn't that what this site is about? How the technology works as well as how WELL it works?

Anyway, Nvidia's CEO had this to say about stacked memory, so he agrees with you, but at the same time said Nvidia would be going there too: "When asked about high bandwidth, or stacked memory for Pascal, Huang quickly touted the Maxwell memory architecture and then said that what matters is performance and efficiency. The future will likely hold stacked memories, but for now the cost of that memory is high and the availability is low. 'It's a little too early to use it,' he said."

That's from this piece: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-gpu-tv-console-future,29234.html

 

[Larry Litmanen]

I have issues with articles and people talking about all this technology, Sure HBM sounds great, yes it is stacked or whatever. But at the end it is just a technology, what user cares about is the end performance. If i have a GTX960 and i am running into issues because it is not powerful enough can i buy a $200 AMD card that will be powerful enough to run the games that i want. That's really all we want to know, we don't care about the technology you use.

OK, next time I'll ask Lisa Su how her new graphics cards will play Larry Litmanen's games 🙂 But seriously, isn't that what this site is about? How the technology works as well as how WELL it works?

Anyway, Nvidia's CEO had this to say about stacked memory, so he agrees with you, but at the same time said Nvidia would be going there too: "When asked about high bandwidth, or stacked memory for Pascal, Huang quickly touted the Maxwell memory architecture and then said that what matters is performance and efficiency. The future will likely hold stacked memories, but for now the cost of that memory is high and the availability is low. 'It's a little too early to use it,' he said."

That's from this piece: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-gpu-tv-console-future,29234.html

Well look the reason i brought it up was because sometime ago i was i think on CNET and they did a comparison of Apple iPad and Nexus. As the guy was reading the specs Nexus was a hair shy of basically being 2 times as fast as Apple, but when they started comparing the actual use of the device (how long it takes for app to launch, the actual use of the product) somehow Apple beat Nexus in every category.

That's why i am saying we should not just look at specs and technology but the actual end usage.

Maybe it is different for you and others here, but i am an accountant, word stacked means something else to me, all i know is how well my games run and how fast my PC starts up.

 

[de5_Roy]

i like amd because amd's actions are always interesting.
try saying intel*yawn* without boring yourself.

 

[tomc100]

It's been confirmed that the R9 300 series is basically rebrand of the 200 series. The only new gpu coming out is the Radeon Fury that uses the HBM and is direct competition to the Titan and GTX 980 Ti. It seems HBM is too costly to be used in their lower cards. I really hopes AMD can get its act together since I really hate Nvidia and all the BS tactics that they use with Gameworks and overuse of tessellation.

 

[junkeymonkey]

''It's been confirmed that the R9 300 series is basically rebrand of the 200 series''

that's the part I dnt get for all there put offs and delays for release ?? NVidia did not have issues with jerking the higher end 700 cards and reuse that inventory to make the 970 that quickly replaced them ??

''Furthermore, as we mentioned in our GTX 980 review, GTX 970 has been a pure virtual (no reference card) launch, which means all of NVIDIA’s partners are launching their custom cards right out of the gate. A lot of these have been recycled or otherwise only slightly modified GTX 700/600 series designs, owing to the fact that GM204’s memory bus has been held at 256-bits and its power requirements are so low.''

that's all and really not even that much to do for a quicker release of the cards tweak the current 200 chips and refresh there bio's ?

 

[jimmysmitty]

''It's been confirmed that the R9 300 series is basically rebrand of the 200 series''

that's the part I dnt get for all there put offs and delays for release ?? NVidia did not have issues with jerking the higher end 700 cards and reuse that inventory to make the 970 that quickly replaced them ??

''Furthermore, as we mentioned in our GTX 980 review, GTX 970 has been a pure virtual (no reference card) launch, which means all of NVIDIA’s partners are launching their custom cards right out of the gate. A lot of these have been recycled or otherwise only slightly modified GTX 700/600 series designs, owing to the fact that GM204’s memory bus has been held at 256-bits and its power requirements are so low.''

that's all and really not even that much to do for a quicker release of the cards tweak the current 200 chips and refresh there bio's ?

I would guess the difference is that they already had Maxwell out there with the GTX 750Ti and the GTX 980 was more of a refresh, much like Hawaii XT vs Tahiti XT. So it didn't take much to do. Fiji XT, however, has a pretty big change to it with HBM and it isn't as easy as slapping it on with an interposer. They now have extra heat added to the GPU to dissipate as well as other changes to compensate for.

That is what would make sense for the delay to me, Fiji XT is what was holding the new lineup back not the rebranded parts.

 

[skit75]

I've been on the green team for half a decade but I really want AMD to do well. I'm not above switching teams.... it just seems I've always had a better green choice when I upgrade. Just give me the opportunity!

 

[junkeymonkey]

That is what would make sense for the delay to me, Fiji XT is what was holding the new lineup back not the rebranded parts

that would be like NVidia holding back on the 900 cards cause the 960 was not ready ???? right ?

how silly and I did say above I could understand the late release of the hbm cards all the refresh cards could now be selling putting cash in there bank , right ?

 

[jimmysmitty]

That is what would make sense for the delay to me, Fiji XT is what was holding the new lineup back not the rebranded parts

that would be like NVidia holding back on the 900 cards cause the 960 was not ready ???? right ?

how silly and I did say above I could understand the late release of the hbm cards all the refresh cards could now be selling putting cash in there bank , right ?

Problem is that no one cares about the refreshes, they probably wont sell much. People are clamoring over Fiji XT because that will be better and hopefully better than what NVidia has. To launch an entire line of just refreshes would kill sales altogether.

 

[junkeymonkey]

I hope so to. but how many times can they keep refreshing ? 200 were refresh 7000 the 300's refreshed 200's I mean come on amd ..... lol

 

[tomc100]

That is what would make sense for the delay to me, Fiji XT is what was holding the new lineup back not the rebranded parts

that would be like NVidia holding back on the 900 cards cause the 960 was not ready ???? right ?

how silly and I did say above I could understand the late release of the hbm cards all the refresh cards could now be selling putting cash in there bank , right ?

Problem is that no one cares about the refreshes, they probably wont sell much. People are clamoring over Fiji XT because that will be better and hopefully better than what NVidia has. To launch an entire line of just refreshes would kill sales altogether.

I don't think anyone would care if the performance was on par with the GTX 900 series. AMD has probably one of the worst marketing strategy of any company. Allowing Nvidia to dominate market shares by leaving a giant vacuum and having the GTX 900 series be uncontested for so long is the dumbest thing you could possibly do. And adding to their troubles, they are inconsistent with driver support for new games and a complete drop in support for mantle to more titles and no longer supporting effects like TressFX. Meanwhile, Nvidia is bribing game developers into using that garbage Gameworks which slows every gpu down with the exception of the GTX 970 and higher. Big titles like Far Cry 4, Witcher 3, Project Cars, and Arkham Knight are all using gameworks. Other than Star Wars Battlefront 4, what other games will be using AMD Evolved? With both consoles using GCN architecture, all multiplatform games should be running better on AMD gpu.

 

[childofthekorn]

I hope so to. but how many times can they keep refreshing ? 200 were refresh 7000 the 300's refreshed 200's I mean come on amd ..... lol

I'm hoping its due to the fact that they're hurting. Its crazy to see how competitive GCN is and how long they were able to utilize. However I too am tired of seeing the rebrands on the top tier cards, should only be for the lower tier cards rebrands are used IMHO. I'm hoping to see this changed next year.

 

[jimmysmitty]

That is what would make sense for the delay to me, Fiji XT is what was holding the new lineup back not the rebranded parts

that would be like NVidia holding back on the 900 cards cause the 960 was not ready ???? right ?

how silly and I did say above I could understand the late release of the hbm cards all the refresh cards could now be selling putting cash in there bank , right ?

Problem is that no one cares about the refreshes, they probably wont sell much. People are clamoring over Fiji XT because that will be better and hopefully better than what NVidia has. To launch an entire line of just refreshes would kill sales altogether.

I don't think anyone would care if the performance was on par with the GTX 900 series. AMD has probably one of the worst marketing strategy of any company. Allowing Nvidia to dominate market shares by leaving a giant vacuum and having the GTX 900 series be uncontested for so long is the dumbest thing you could possibly do. And adding to their troubles, they are inconsistent with driver support for new games and a complete drop in support for mantle to more titles and no longer supporting effects like TressFX. Meanwhile, Nvidia is bribing game developers into using that garbage Gameworks which slows every gpu down with the exception of the GTX 970 and higher. Big titles like Far Cry 4, Witcher 3, Project Cars, and Arkham Knight are all using gameworks. Other than Star Wars Battlefront 4, what other games will be using AMD Evolved? With both consoles using GCN architecture, all multiplatform games should be running better on AMD gpu.

The consoles running AMD hardware does not mean it should run better on AMD GPUs on PC. The biggest hurdle is that they have very specialized APIs. The PS4 uses their own version of OpenGL while the XB1 uses a specialized version of DX11.X and will be moved to a specialized version of DX12 with Windows 10.

That means that they still have to rerun the code to make it run on PC then optimize it from there. The hardware of the consoles just makes porting super easy since it is all running x86 code now.