AMD Cuts Its Workforce by 10% to Fund New Strategies

[danwat1234]

I don't like it when I hear that many Ivy Bridge desktop chips will have a TDP of 77 watts (an article a few days ago on this site). Makes me think that Intel isn't in any hurry to release an 8-core desktop chip or a 6-core laptop chip. They better still offer high end chips to consumers that dissipate as much power as they need to to perform.

Hoping that AMD Piledriver can renew AMD..

 

[ta152h]

[citation][nom]beenthere[/nom]Actually Bulldozer/Zambezi/FX series is a nice upgrade for many people with older model CPUs. It may not be what many folks had hoped for, but it's still a very good CPU and will serve those looking to upgrade, well.[/citation]

In a word, horseshit.

You're so full of crap, that even you don't believe yourself. Bulldozer sucks horribly. It's a total piece of crap. It's way worse than the Pentium 4, which at least beat the Athlon for quite some time, and beat the Athlon 64 in at least a few benchmarks. The Bulldozer plain sucks at everything. Sure, blame it on software, say it's really good but misunderstood, etc..., it's all a falsehood meant to misrepresent reality.

The skinny on it - it's really big, it's really slow, and it uses a lot of power. It's a complete and utter failure. It's the worst x86 processor ever made, and it's not easy to beat the Pentium 4, but they did. It's 10 shades of suck. Got it?

Hopefully, they'll iron out some of the problems with it on the next generation, which I wouldn't rule out. But, this iteration sucks. Luckily, the Bobcat works, and works well in its market. If they were relying on the Bulldozer alone, they'd be bankrupt and liking it.

 

[ta152h]

[citation][nom]WhysoBluepandabear[/nom]Unless we're going ultra cheap, the i3 in most cases hands a lot of AMD CPU's their ass. The i5 just does it ever so elegantly. You're sticking up for a company who is under performing. They could be doing much better - stop giving them excuses. They look at you, and seriously feel okay being in 2nd place - instead they need someone telling them they suck, so they can at least TRY. We clearly see how much effort they put into bulldozer.[/citation]

They aren't underperforming, you're just not seeing the big picture.

Bulldozer blows, and blows harder than the solar wind. No argument there.

But, Bobcat was a huge hit, and is WAY better than the PoS Atom. It's a little heavy on the GPU side, but it's still a very good product, in an extremely big market. It's far more important than the Bulldozer in importance, since the market is enormous. It's a winner.

ATI stuff is very competitive as well. They have great cards, and very attractive chipsets.

One miserable product doesn't mean the whole company is underperforming. If we want to be myopic, we could say the same about Intel since their Atom is pure form of suck. Their chipsets are a bit behind too. But, they have their successes in the high end, and AMD owns them in the low-end with Bobcat. It's not that different from historical patterns for a lot of years, except Bobcat gives them more strength in the low-end than I can remember. It's a superior, well-placed design.

 

[acadia11]

[citation][nom]TA152H[/nom]They aren't underperforming, you're just not seeing the big picture. Bulldozer blows, and blows harder than the solar wind. No argument there.But, Bobcat was a huge hit, and is WAY better than the PoS Atom. It's a little heavy on the GPU side, but it's still a very good product, in an extremely big market. It's far more important than the Bulldozer in importance, since the market is enormous. It's a winner.ATI stuff is very competitive as well. They have great cards, and very attractive chipsets. One miserable product doesn't mean the whole company is underperforming. If we want to be myopic, we could say the same about Intel since their Atom is pure form of suck. Their chipsets are a bit behind too. But, they have their successes in the high end, and AMD owns them in the low-end with Bobcat. It's not that different from historical patterns for a lot of years, except Bobcat gives them more strength in the low-end than I can remember. It's a superior, well-placed design.[/citation]

They bought DEC Alpha and eventually ruined it, they bought ATI and it's only a matter of time before AMD's culture of underachieving ruins it as well.

 

[airborne11b]

[citation][nom]jdwii[/nom]God you guys act like Amd cpu's are so bad no one can use them. Who really needs a I5 and a 6990 anyway that's right 3% of the whole world and below. If you guys haven't noticed Amd took 3% of Intel's market share already this Q in just APU's. Don't get me wrong i wanted BD to be good but its not the end of the world for Amd. I'm not saying they don't have worry's i'm just saying they will survive and their APU's will only get better and better. And lets face it consumers are using GPU's more and more anyways and more programs are going to be using them soon as well.[/citation]

Well it's the end of them where enthusist PCs are concerned. (though imo they've been dead for a while now in that sector imo)

Their bulldozer failed, and their ATI GPUs for past 6 years have been nothing but one failure after another (Some of the cards are "good" but their software / driver support has been abysmal).

Bottom line is that AMD / ATI just aren't competitive with Nvidia / Intel where ethusiest gaming / high end work station PCs are concerned.

AMD / ATI will still very much exist, they're not going out of business, but they're focus is most likely going to center on Laptops, ultrabooks, APUs, energy efficiency, servers, etc.

But for "Amd / ATI" where gamers are concerned, hah, bye bye.

 

[yyk71200]

[citation][nom]airborne11b[/nom]Well it's the end of them where enthusist PCs are concerned. (though imo they've been dead for a while now in that sector imo) Their bulldozer failed, and their ATI GPUs for past 6 years have been nothing but one failure after another (Some of the cards are "good" but their software / driver support has been abysmal).Bottom line is that AMD / ATI just aren't competitive with Nvidia / Intel where ethusiest gaming / high end work station PCs are concerned.AMD / ATI will still very much exist, they're not going out of business, but they're focus is most likely going to center on Laptops, ultrabooks, APUs, energy efficiency, servers, etc.But for "Amd / ATI" where gamers are concerned, hah, bye bye.[/citation]
Really? 6970 is overall just as fast as 570. 6xxx scaling in crossfire is better than SLI scaling so a tri-fire 6970s often beat tri-SLI 580s. Nvidia's 590 card had to be downclocked so much that 580s GPUs in it lost all the advantage over 6970s GPUs in 6990. And driverwise, NVidia also had aits share of driver problems.

 

[cookoy]

i don't know what AMD has relating to the cloud. They may have something planned floating in the air.

 

[tlmck]

"Reducing our cost structure and focusing our global workforce on key growth opportunities will strengthen AMD's competitiveness and allow us to aggressively pursue a balanced set of strategic activities designed to accelerate future growth," said Read. "The actions we are taking are designed to improve our ability to consistently address the needs of our global customer base and stake leadership positions in lower power, emerging markets and the cloud."

In other words, I am a typical CEO who could not find his but with both hands.

 

[spp85]

Yeah that's what needed. Its better not to dilute the available resources to everywhere and gains nothing. That's a good move by AMD. The new CEO seems to be working for the company.

 

[waethorn]

Has anyone here tried Bulldozer on Windows 8? Win 8 actually makes it shine due to the heavy multithreading support. After seeing benchmarks on it, I wouldn't call Bulldozer "weak", rather "early".

Also, don't forget about its overclocking options.

 

[metallifux]

they need to fire all their marketing team

 

[srgess]

I called it and some of you called me a jerk and a fail that need to go back to school , what ever reason they mention if they cutting job that mean they need money to cover the lost in the new product. This is just a step ahead into out of business status. To(beenthere) Sure its an upgrade but if you only looking to amd, for the price performance, overclocking ability over time to catch up competition, intel has better to offer. If you still think that amd is better option then i dunno what to stay, amd fanboism could be threated with a psychologist i guess.

 

[madm8bh]

Competition is always a good thing. Indirectly, AMD played a part with Intel's Core 2 Duo's, i3's, i7's. etc. Without CPU's like the Athlon XP's or 64's, there would have been no reason for Intel to re-engineer its thought process and design for next generation CPUs. In a nut shell, having stiff competition breathing down your neck keeps you on your toes.

That being said, I think the day's of mainstream powerful CPU's will be over in a few years (at least in the consumer areana). It'll be a niche market for gamers etc, but for the most part, low power portables will be fine for most users. In fact, most users are finding that they are using their phones more than booting up the old PC.

 

[Guest]

Itll all be ok. They are going to overclock the other 90%.

 

[captaincharisma]

Has anyone here tried Bulldozer on Windows 8? Win 8 actually makes it shine due to the heavy multithreading support. After seeing benchmarks on it, I wouldn't call Bulldozer "weak", rather "early".

Also, don't forget about its overclocking options.

LMAO yep nothing penetrates that AMD bubble the fanboi's live in. the pentium 4 Prescott CPU's had the same situation where they had to wait for new software to take advantage of the new features that were supposed to improve the performance of that CPU. even when they got the support in windows the Prescott still did not overtake AMD

and the same thing will happen here kids

 

[TeraMedia]

The AMD offices must be some of the most unhappy places to be right now. First BD gets poor reviews in the market, then the CEO announces layoffs. Problem is, it's usually not the company that chooses the 10%. Even if AMD cherry-picks the least-productive 10% of their workforce, there is no denying that morale of all employees gets bruised. And all employees question their future employment that much more. Headhunters start to swoop in like vultures, making calls to the top personnel with better opportunities, and in the end the company starts to erode their best and brightest, and not just their dead weight.

No, this isn't good. Not at all.

 

[kogashuko]

Actually Bulldozer/Zambezi/FX series is a nice upgrade for many people with older model CPUs. It may not be what many folks had hoped for, but it's still a very good CPU and will serve those looking to upgrade, well.

You would be better served for the price with an I5 or I7. There is no reason to get an AMD chip now if you have to already buy another new motherboard, processor, and ram.

 

[ta152h]

[citation][nom]acadia11[/nom]They bought DEC Alpha and eventually ruined it, they bought ATI and it's only a matter of time before AMD's culture of underachieving ruins it as well.[/citation]

Slow down there. Who bought DEC Alpha?

Are you really advancing an argument on one occurrence, and an occurrence that didn't even happen? That's a pretty weak argument.

Intel bought the manufacturing facilities from DEC, and HP owns the Alpha and all the other stuff from Compaq (Compaq bought DEC). So, if you've got a problem, blame it on HP.

The only thing AMD has to do with the Alpha is the Athlon used the EV6 bus, which was also used on the Alpha. It's not clear how using that ruined the Alpha.

Also, just so people get the right impression, the Alpha was nothing special, until it died. Then it became a legend. Most of the life of this processor it was a Pentium 4, but better. Very high clock speeds, huge amounts of power and heat, and low IPC. It eventually changed that, with lower clock speeds (relatively) and higher IPC. It changed leadership with the POWER chips from IBM all the time, and was not a clearly superior product, at all. There was nothing special about the instruction set; the processor was built by humans creating almost all the circuits instead of being done by computer. At this level of complexity, they'd never be able to do it anymore, anyway. By the time they were done hand coding it, it would be obsolete.

 

[amstech]

"Reducing our cost structure and focusing our global workforce on key growth opportunities will strengthen AMD's competitiveness and allow us to aggressively pursue a balanced set of strategic activities designed to accelerate future growth"

Translation: We overshot our expected success and need to cut back because we aren't as nearly as successful as we thought we were going to be at this point and have realized that more is not more.

 

[humble dexter]

Well I wouldn't mind AMD focusing on the ~100$ CPU market (so that dual core I3s don't end up locked) instead of the ~200$ CPU market (where unlocked K series make it too hard for AMD to compete anyway).

But I would mind if they only want to focus on the low end Fusion market (an unbalanced mix of a superior GPU and an inferior CPU).

What do they mean by "lower power, emerging markets" ? Chinese tablets ?

 

[Guest]

The new strategy they are trying is Profitability

 

[lordstormdragon]

[citation][nom]Energy96[/nom]Looks like the price of Intel CPU's will probably skyrocket in the future now that AMD admits it cannot compete and is dropping out totally. Lack of competition sucks but there is no one to blame other than the execs at AMD that keep churning out garbage. I really hope they sell off their graphics division, if Nvidia had no competition either it would be a really sad day.Pretty fail IMO but what did they expect that people would just buy them anyway even if they suck? In today's internet savvy market inferior products don't have a chance. In the past you could mask the fail with really good marketing strategies but that just doesn't cut it anymore. Especially in electronics, people are in most cases just way too well informed to fall for it and there aren't enough fan-boys to keep a company that size afloat by themselves.[/citation]

This loyalty to branding bordering on religious fanaticism is very entertaining. It's difficult to find a more uninformed post, anywhere on the internet. Don't your nostrils get sore after awhile? With Intel so far down your gullet, it's obvious you're not a mouth-breather.

 

[spacey1]

didnt amd do this 4-5 years ago and the came back with a killer cpu? im probably wrong.. what they should have done is scrap BD and did a phenom 3 with a die shrink and arch tweaks to compete. not a cpu that they probably knew would not work.. but whatever they will be around forever..

 

[captaincharisma]

didnt amd do this 4-5 years ago and the came back with a killer cpu? im probably wrong.. what they should have done is scrap BD and did a phenom 3 with a die shrink and arch tweaks to compete. not a cpu that they probably knew would not work.. but whatever they will be around forever..

yea and people thought CYRIX CPU''s would be around forever too

 

[spacey1]

true that..