AMD CPU speculation... and expert conjecture

[de5_Roy]

i found the idea of facebook buying amd amusing.
imagine mark zuckerberg (future ceo or future cto of amd) launching an amd apu and amd fanboys going crazy over how it will revolutionalize the cpu landscape with it's strange new innovation ....and stuff. few months later users discover that their shiny new apu has hardware bugs that leak their private data, passwords to the internet, security measures brick their pc, botnets' resurgance. cue facebook releasing subsequent new steppings of the apus.... not a single dull moment!

seriously though, it was sad that no one seemed to be interested in buying amd, calling it 'legacy company' for it's dependence on pc business and not having (more)mobile products. only if amd had something for tablets and smartphones....jaguar, whar art though...

 

[esrever]

People don't want to buy AMD because they can't use the technology AMD has if they did buy it. They can do better to license an ARM core if they need to get into the cpu business. AMD will not sell the graphic segment by itself either because it will just die right after if such a thing happened. So you are either paying 3x as much as the gpu business is worth just for that if you choose to buy AMD. There is no attraction for anyone from buying AMD.

 

[sarinaide]

Intel Radeon HD XXXX........somehow I don't ever see that happening.

 

[mayankleoboy1]

i found the idea of facebook buying amd amusing.
imagine mark zuckerberg (future ceo or future cto of amd) launching an amd apu and amd fanboys going crazy over how it will revolutionalize the cpu landscape with it's strange new innovation ....and stuff. few months later users discover that their shiny new apu has hardware bugs that leak their private data, passwords to the internet, security measures brick their pc, botnets' resurgance. cue facebook releasing subsequent new steppings of the apus.... not a single dull moment!

They could design a processor with specific hardware to accelerate operations of CSS3, JS ,DOM, HTML5. And if Facebook is using these, other sites would be motivated as well. AMD just might start making profit.

 

[fazers_on_stun]

I thought the figure being bandied about was for every 600 smartphones, 1 server is required.

Still haven't found the THG article, but according to http://www.techradar.com/news/computing-components/processors/intel-new-server-needed-for-every-120-tablets-sold-1069021 you are correct:

Intel reckons that a new server needs to be deployed for every 120 tablets or 600 smartphones that hit the market.

The chip giant has launched a new server chip, the Xeon E5-2600 with up to eight cores, but it was more interested in talking about it in terms of the sheer number of connected devices we're connecting to the cloud every day.

"The role of data is changing dramatically, how it will evolve is becoming increasingly unpredictable," said Intel UK chief Graham Palmer.

"What is happening? There's an explosion of data, there's an explosion of devices connecting to the internet. Our view is that in 2015 there will be 15 billion devices connecting to the internet in some way, with 3.1 billion individuals connected."

"Our own assessment is that as these devices grow, for 600 smartphones or every 120 tablets, that requires another server to be deployed. There's a direct correlation between the number of devices and the deployment of servers to support them."

IIRC from the THG article, that's a huge disparity between 600 and 8.7 ..

 

[gamerk316]

Looks like the beginning of the end. The fact the stock went UP and sale rumors, and dropped after AMD denied this, tells you what the people WHO ELECT THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS, want to have happen.

 

[sarinaide]

I don't necessarily think its the demise yet there are still workable avenues which at least will at least stream in revenue which AMD needs right now, the big player will be Jaguar which should get a foothold in tablet and mobility. Trinity 2 is also a sizable enough improvement over trinity at the same cost.

And then there is Jim Keller. While AMD still has good tech they will carry through, just need to restructure and trim the fat as they will say.

 

[gamerk316]

I don't necessarily think its the demise yet there are still workable avenues which at least will at least stream in revenue which AMD needs right now, the big player will be Jaguar which should get a foothold in tablet and mobility. Trinity 2 is also a sizable enough improvement over trinity at the same cost.

And then there is Jim Keller. While AMD still has good tech they will carry through, just need to restructure and trim the fat as they will say.

I again raise doubts if the relatively power hungry X86 architecture could ever gain a foothold in the mobile market. And Trinity, lets face it, is aimed at laptops, which is a market under pressure from smartphones/tablets.

 

[sarinaide]

Laptops and ultrabooks still serve the collective market better than desktop does, and as a owner of a tablet and smartphone I can still say while they bring business portability on the fly, they are both still completely ineffective for work purposes for which a notebook clearly doesn't suffer the same application limitations.

 

[fazers_on_stun]

People don't want to buy AMD because they can't use the technology AMD has if they did buy it. They can do better to license an ARM core if they need to get into the cpu business. AMD will not sell the graphic segment by itself either because it will just die right after if such a thing happened. So you are either paying 3x as much as the gpu business is worth just for that if you choose to buy AMD. There is no attraction for anyone from buying AMD.

They would probably be interested in the SeaMicro and graphics parts, however. So the strategy would be to wait for AMD to go Chapt. 7, or cut a deal in Chapt. 11, and buy the pieces they want. Also, the patent portfolio would be of interest to a number of companies, probably even Intel..

 

[fazers_on_stun]

I don't necessarily think its the demise yet there are still workable avenues which at least will at least stream in revenue which AMD needs right now, the big player will be Jaguar which should get a foothold in tablet and mobility. Trinity 2 is also a sizable enough improvement over trinity at the same cost.

And then there is Jim Keller. While AMD still has good tech they will carry through, just need to restructure and trim the fat as they will say.

Clearly AMD is under a cash-flow crunch, and is exploring all options. Saw a financial report yesterday stating AMD's revenue this year is down by $1.072 Billion from 2 years ago. So they are dealing from a weak hand - OEMs can command better prices on product, banks much higher interest rates due to the lousy credit rating, etc etc. It's all cumulative unfortunately.

My thinking now is that we'll see another big round of layoffs early next year, not this time a year from now.

One guy, no matter how talented, is not gonna save a big company facing headwinds like a continuing downturn in the PC market. Plus anything new he could bring to the table is years away from being an actual product, unfortunately.

 

[sarinaide]

Clearly AMD is under a cash-flow crunch, and is exploring all options. Saw a financial report yesterday stating AMD's revenue this year is down by $1.072 Billion from 2 years ago. So they are dealing from a weak hand - OEMs can command better prices on product, banks much higher interest rates due to the lousy credit rating, etc etc. It's all cumulative unfortunately.

My thinking now is that we'll see another big round of layoffs early next year, not this time a year from now.

One guy, no matter how talented, is not gonna save a big company facing headwinds like a continuing downturn in the PC market. Plus anything new he could bring to the table is years away from being an actual product, unfortunately.

Hence the restructuring and refining which should see AMD on a personel and resource level operate on significantly lower overheads. It is looking more the case that Vishera and AM3+ is now retired and AMD in the pure X86 market will not be making CPU's with the advent of APU's targeting multiple markets and for all intents and purposes is a much more marketable product with plenty room for expansion on the arch. I wouldn't be at all surprised if production on Phenom II, and Zambezi and Llano is discontinued and remaining stocks are sold out on fire sales, that would also cut a lot of unnecessary expenditure. It was a mistake for AMD to still produce older tech when they released BD, not only did they suffer losses on Phenoms, they suffered massive losses on BD.

And then there is the new generation consoles which at least will net AMD a steady flow of income, but with the company basically in financial recovery mode I wouldn't expect anything to dramatic again in the ol x86 shootout arena.

 

[gamerk316]

Hence the restructuring and refining which should see AMD on a personel and resource level operate on significantly lower overheads. It is looking more the case that Vishera and AM3+ is now retired and AMD in the pure X86 market will not be making CPU's with the advent of APU's targeting multiple markets and for all intents and purposes is a much more marketable product with plenty room for expansion on the arch. I wouldn't be at all surprised if production on Phenom II, and Zambezi and Llano is discontinued and remaining stocks are sold out on fire sales, that would also cut a lot of unnecessary expenditure. It was a mistake for AMD to still produce older tech when they released BD, not only did they suffer losses on Phenoms, they suffered massive losses on BD.

And then there is the new generation consoles which at least will net AMD a steady flow of income, but with the company basically in financial recovery mode I wouldn't expect anything to dramatic again in the ol x86 shootout arena.

Steady income on low-margin parts isn't enough anymore; AMD needs to start slashing product lines and get back to basics. If that means abandoning the desktop market, then so be it.

 

[sarinaide]

Probably will happen, with intels marketshare anywhere from 60-80% of the DT marketshare it is a waste of resources, which there is skint little of.

 

[lilcinw]

Aren't the dies for Opterons and FX chips essentially the same? I was under the impression that the consumer grade chips are most likely harvested from Optys that didn't make the cut due to leakage or some other factor (dead modules). It doesn't make much sense to kill your market for partially defective chips.

 

[fazers_on_stun]

http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2012/11/14/amd-declines-on-gpu-losses-wells-sees-hope-in-cost-cuts-consoles/?mod=barrons_msnhttp://online.barrons.com/article/BL-TB-38171.html?

Shares of chip maker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) are down 12 cents, or almost 6%, at $1.97 following a report yesterday afternoon by Reuters’s Nadia Damouni and Noel Randewich that said the company hired JP Morgan to “explore options,” which was almost immediately followed by a company statement asserting AMD is not shopping itself.

Weighing on the shares today, principally, is the concern that the company lost share to competitor Nvidia (NVDA) in the third quarter in PC graphics processors, or GPUs, according to data released by Mercury Research.

BMO Capital’s Ambrish Srivastava, who has a Market Perform rating on both AMD and Nvidia, AMD’s market share in desktop computers in the quarter decline from 40.7% in Q2 to 35.7%, while Nvidia’s rose from 59.3% to 64.3%. In notebook computers, AMD’s share fell more dramatically, from 44.8% to 34.2%, while Nvidia’s share rose from 55.2% to 65.8%.

Total “discrete graphics” chip shipments for AMD were down 14%, quarter over quarter.

As Srivastava writes, AMD and Nvidia are fighting for share in a market that is struggling:

Per the 3Q12 Mercury data, graphics shipments (discrete and integrated GPUs) were 123.9 million, roughly flat q-q. This is slightly above the 2% q-q decline in microprocessor shipments and well below the normal seasonal trend for total graphics shipments of up 13% q-q (five-year average).

On the other hand, Wells Fargo’s David Wong, who has an Outperform rating on shares of AMD, writes that he had a number of meetings yesterday with AMD management and investors.

Wong ticks off the things that he thinks the company is doing, or can do, right to improve its position across multiple markets:

AMD is taking appropriate actions to reduce costs and streamline in product development efforts. We think that AMD has done a good job in leveraging its graphics and microprocessor expertise to create its APU product lines. We think that AMD’s opportunity to design and sell chips into game consoles will very helpful in provided a near to intermediate term revenue boost as well as some nonrecurring engineering (NRE) funding for R&D costs […] We suspect that AMD has a contract to develop and manufacture game console processors for either one or two of the large game console maker (perhaps Sony (SNE) and/or Microsoft (MSFT)) systems that may be launching in the second half of 2013.

When it rains, it pours..

Of course, a lot of the mobile marketshare loss is probably due to AMD cannibalizing its low-end discrete GPU sales with APU sales instead.

 

[mayankleoboy1]

Maybe AMD has some hope with the HONDO SoC

 

[Cazalan]

Wii U revenue should be coming in for Q4 as the launch date is still November. They just did the graphics for that one but they got to work closely with IBM to integrate the eDRAM. That could help other product lines, and at a stretch perhaps an HPC win with IBM.

The PS4 is a bigger win but that's looking at a Xmas 2013 release.

Unless they get a big contract with Google/Facebook for a new type of data center they'll have to keep shedding employees. Google tends to throw around money and see what sticks. It must be nice having that kind of cash.

 

[sarinaide]

Its not doom and gloom as all prophasized, yes AMD have chosen to gamble on HSA where yes failure will probably see the company go down, but success will open up a massive niche market with plenty room for expansion, along with that wealth. Simply put AMD's tech is still to good and getting better so is the market they focus on. Often in the case of radical changes money will be strained on R&D and refinements but it levels out should it become a success for which there is enough to suggest it will.

 

[fazers_on_stun]

^ An additional positive note - the holiday shopping season is upon us, plus Win8 has finally been released (although MS is strangely silent about sales figures - I suspect they are not pleased - IIRC they were boasting about Win7 adoption rate the first week of sales).

We are halfway through Q4 so in 2 months we should see how well AMD did this quarter and get guidance for the next one as well. However I also think the fact that AMD is exploring alternative or new sources of income is worrying, esp. in light of all the bad financial news lately.

AFAIK Nintendo's Wii is something of a novelty that has come and gone already, as you can get motion-sensing add-ons & cameras for both Playstation and Xbox for a year or two now already. So the price has to be pretty cheap to motivate holiday buyers.

As for future tech like HSA, AMD needs something right now, not two years from now.

 

[sarinaide]

Well it is not like AMD's lineup cannot do what every Tom, Dick and Harry needs them to do so yes that is a product line, the APU's are something special and most of the DT market is full of those just needing a multimedia platform which the APU is well suited for, for my purposes it exceeds what I thought it would be able to still a very flexible platform to be on.

Next year will see Trinity 2.0 and Jaguar but more so trinity in the notebook market, then they will have the consoles all should yield good returns.

As for me I am settled on my setups now, still stuck with a 8350 ES chip though

 

[esrever]

Well it is not like AMD's lineup cannot do what every Tom, Dick and Harry needs them to do so yes that is a product line, the APU's are something special and most of the DT market is full of those just needing a multimedia platform which the APU is well suited for, for my purposes it exceeds what I thought it would be able to still a very flexible platform to be on.

Next year will see Trinity 2.0 and Jaguar but more so trinity in the notebook market, then they will have the consoles all should yield good returns.

As for me I am settled on my setups now, still stuck with a 8350 ES chip though

not enough good options to buy AMD laptops or ultrathins. The OEMs just don't want to give AMD products a chance and consumers don't know AMD as a brand. It ends up with even tho AMD has competitive products that are often great for a market segment, they still can't sell anything.

 

[jdwii]

Well it is not like AMD's lineup cannot do what every Tom, Dick and Harry needs them to do so yes that is a product line, the APU's are something special and most of the DT market is full of those just needing a multimedia platform which the APU is well suited for, for my purposes it exceeds what I thought it would be able to still a very flexible platform to be on.

Next year will see Trinity 2.0 and Jaguar but more so trinity in the notebook market, then they will have the consoles all should yield good returns.

As for me I am settled on my setups now, still stuck with a 8350 ES chip though

Then i guess those same people wont be buying products from them at all and i also guess OEMs will take them even less seriously when they cant get products out on time or supply enough of them when they are available.

 

[noob2222]

^ An additional positive note - the holiday shopping season is upon us, plus Win8 has finally been released (although MS is strangely silent about sales figures - I suspect they are not pleased - IIRC they were boasting about Win7 adoption rate the first week of sales).

wouldn't suprise me one bit if windows 7 was outselling win 8 2:1. W8 was designed for tablets and touchscreens, ill stick with android os for that. People who buy new DT and hate w8 will likely look to downgrade to win 7 just like early vista users to xp.

 

[jdwii]

wouldn't suprise me one bit if windows 7 was outselling win 8 2:1. W8 was designed for tablets and touchscreens, ill stick with android os for that. People who buy new DT and hate w8 will likely look to downgrade to win 7 just like early vista users to xp.

I had lots of people try it out at staples and Wow was it funny. 5% of people said they liked it 10% said they can get used to it and most people think its not needed on a laptop or desktop.

Most people could not do many things such as go to the control panel or documents or even shut off the PC.

I'm currently going to college and even a lot of techs cant do these simple tasks i think its quite weird since my friends step mom can use it decently she told me she could get used to it but doesn't like it and she also said she prefers her android over 8 as well.

But what do numbers say anyways LOL