AMD Piledriver rumours ... and expert conjecture

[Reynod]

We have had several requests for a sticky on AMD's yet to be released Piledriver architecture ... so here it is.

I want to make a few things clear though.

Post a question relevant to the topic, or information about the topic, or it will be deleted.

Post any negative personal comments about another user ... and they will be deleted.

Post flame baiting comments about the blue, red and green team and they will be deleted.

Enjoy ...

 

[jaguarskx]

I live in canada 40 mins from the border and somehow stuff here is 10-20% more expensive.

Well then it is basically due to the foreign currency factor since there's an open trade policy between Canada and the US unless President Obama somehow screwed that up just like he is screwing Israel.

Traditionally, products sold in Canada is priced higher than in the US. For example, a hardcore book selling for $30 USD would be sold for $40 CAD. However, that was before the financial crisis where the USD was generally around 15% - 20% stronger than the CAD. Currently, the CAD is stronger than the USD by 2% - 3% so I suppose you are getting screwed by the "old traditional exchange rate".

 

[Cazalan]

With a slowing PC market segment AMD does not need to produce both socket AM3+ and FM2 desktop processors. AMD is cannibalizing some of it's own sales by offering two processors that can more or less do the same job. Socket AM3+ CPUs are definitely more powerful in terms of CPU processing power, but socket FM2 is truly the processor that will save AMD because it currently exists for both laptops and desktops.to emerge out of bankruptcy as a leaner and more competitive company.

Agreed they don't need 2 desktop CPUs. Trinity should have been laptop only, leaving Vishera for desktop. Desktop FM2 cuts into their discrete card sales.

750 million in inventory, damn that's a lot of CPUs.

 

[davemaster84]

Ok guys so apparently there are some real benchmarks of the 8350 with liquid cooling, I read the comments and most people said it's a fake, but is it? I'll let you decide that:

http://wccftech.com/retail-amd-fx-8350-watercooling-package-pictured/

 

[jaguarskx]

Agreed they don't need 2 desktop CPUs. Trinity should have been laptop only, leaving Vishera for desktop. Desktop FM2 cuts into their discrete card sales.

Well, they simply do not have the money to pay for the production of basically 3 different CPUs: server, desktop and desktop/laptop. Based on the most recent published financial statements, the owe more money in Accounts Payable, than they have Cash in the bank.

True, but it's not as bad as you think it might be. Yes, the lowest end cards (something like a Radeon HD 6450 or HD 6550 series... we don't see Radeon HD 7xxx versions) will be cut out of the picture since both AMD and Intel processors have pretty decent integrate graphics core performance (well at least for being integrated parts). There is still a little room for something like a Radeon HD 7570 and Radeon HD 7670 (a Radeon HD 6670 with a new name) for both AMD and Intel PC; of course AMD's Trinity APU would benefit more due to hybrid crossfire (or whatever they call it now).

nVidia is the actual looser since they have basically lost the low end segment of the market.

 

[Cazalan]

nVidia is the actual looser since they have basically lost the low end segment of the market.

Funny you should say that considering NVidia is in the position AMD wants to be in.

They have 3.3 billion in cash and only 20 million in debt. And they're in tablets/phones.

 

[sarinaide]

Unfortunately and obviously through itself AMD finds itself in this financial pickle and like every company in that position downsizing in personal and infrastructure is a solution to improving financials. Simply put AMD cannot affort 11000 workers, and facilities such occupy, AMD needs to look around 5000-6000 workers and less facilities which will affect is finacials a lot. At no point has AMD said any top engineers and designers are leaving most say the top talent is locked down most retrenchments will be low level engineers, and workers in other fields like sales, client support, RMA and the works. They also hired Keller who was responsible for much of AMD's most recent good works so for that it is not a demise its a necessary course to meet operational requirements.

 

[jdwii]

Ok guys so apparently there are some real benchmarks of the 8350 with liquid cooling, I read the comments and most people said it's a fake, but is it? I'll let you decide that:

http://wccftech.com/retail-amd-fx-8350-watercooling-package-pictured/

The scores look real.

6.82 at 4.0Ghz
and 7.53 at 4.45Ghz

10.4% increase in performance for a 11.12% increase in Clock speed.


But the processor was made in 2011 in that picture which i somewhat doubt is real.

 

[Cazalan]

But the processor was made in 2011 in that picture which i somewhat doubt is real.

That's just a copyright for the AMD logo, not the year the chip was made. You see 2011 on Trinity desktop parts as well.

The most unusual part was how it was listed as a 4C/8T CPU, instead of 8C/8T.

 

[fazers_on_stun]

and the intel troll is back again.

Show me exactly how they are sinking. Are they shutting off entire divisions? Are they stopping production? Are the stocks losing 50% of value in a quarter? Simple fact that they don't make fastest CPU's alone does not mean they are sinking. Their GPU and APU divisions, like I mentioned, steadily hold their market. Consoles' chips will bring in more money. As a company, they dont "just" stay afloat.

40% isnt 50%. 5 months is not a quarter. Deal with it.

And so is the AMD finance genius..

 

[fazers_on_stun]

The other possibility will not be so popular by shareholder which is to enter into bankruptcy which allows AMD to fend off creditors that it would owe money to. It would also make AMD stock worthless, but they will be able to restructure itself under bankruptcy protection (which allows a company to immediate nullify any and all contracts) and can allow AMD to emerge out of bankruptcy as a leaner and more competitive company.

Chapt. 11 might work if AMD had some more assets they could parlay into, but those senior notes are likely backed up with collateral, and thus AMD forced to sell off enough of itself to satisfy that debt. From Wiki:

Senior debt is often secured by collateral on which the lender has put in place a first lien. Usually this covers all the assets of a corporation and is often used for revolving credit lines. It is the debt that has priority for repayment in a liquidation.

It is a class of corporate debt that has priority with respect to interest and principal over other classes of debt and over all classes of equity by the same issuer.

It's almost a certainty now that AMD's credit rating will be downgraded from its current risky status, and thus any future notes would be at even higher interest rates than the current 7.5%

 

[fazers_on_stun]

Unfortunately and obviously through itself AMD finds itself in this financial pickle and like every company in that position downsizing in personal and infrastructure is a solution to improving financials. Simply put AMD cannot affort 11000 workers, and facilities such occupy, AMD needs to look around 5000-6000 workers and less facilities which will affect is finacials a lot. At no point has AMD said any top engineers and designers are leaving most say the top talent is locked down most retrenchments will be low level engineers, and workers in other fields like sales, client support, RMA and the works. They also hired Keller who was responsible for much of AMD's most recent good works so for that it is not a demise its a necessary course to meet operational requirements.

So you're suggesting a ~50% cut instead of 15%? Doncha think that would force cancellation of, say, half of AMD's projects??

As somebody calculated, the present cuts in workforce divided into the estimated savings amounts to $109K per employee. Granted a portion of that would be things other than salary, but even if the average salary saved was maybe $90K, that is not entry-level engineer salary if that is what you meant. At my company, it takes a couple or three years to get up to that pay level for those engineers starting at $60 - $70K.

And I would doubt that sales, etc would be near what the engineers make, since engineers are generally more in demand and command higher pay scales..

 

[jdwii]

That's just a copyright for the AMD logo, not the year the chip was made. You see 2011 on Trinity desktop parts as well.

http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/cpu/amd/trinity/review/DSC_8531sm.jpg


The most unusual part was how it was listed as a 4C/8T CPU, instead of 8C/8T.

Oh that makes since then yes the benchmarks seem to be real at least to me don't know why people always say no when last year the benchmarks were clearly real.

 

[noob2222]

That's just a copyright for the AMD logo, not the year the chip was made. You see 2011 on Trinity desktop parts as well.

http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/cpu/amd/trinity/review/DSC_8531sm.jpg


The most unusual part was how it was listed as a 4C/8T CPU, instead of 8C/8T.

windows update has the included the fx patch to run the cpu as a 4c/8t for scheduling purposes (load 4 modules before 8 cores) Its been that way for ~6 months or better.

BTW, told you that BLT stupid website was just price gouging idiots who wanted to pre-order something that wasn't even priced out.

http://www.cpu-world.com/news_2012/2012101801_Prices_of_upcoming_AMD_FX_microprocessors.html

They definatly got some website hits from all the parroting of their Pre-order shennanigan.

What I find interesting is the 4300 has only 4mb L3 cache ... wonder how thats going to affect the L3 speeds.

 

[blackkstar]

I've got a few things to say.

AMD should abandon AM3+, I definitely agree with that. However, they still plan on focusing on servers. What they need to do is leave FM2 and APUs for budget oriented consumers, and open up the server sockets for use as enthusiast platforms.

Think about it, AMD has Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, ASRock all release server boards that can be overclocked with extra PCIe lanes, but don't support ECC and other necessary server features to prevent people from not buying real servers.

Suddenly, AMD has a very viable enthusiast platform, and it costs them nothing. Bin some chips as unlocked FX, let them work in the server socket, disable ECC, and call it a day. This means we could easily see AMD enthusiast platforms with two 16 core Piledrivers, and guess what? It isn't a special chip. It's AMD selling server chips to enthusiasts! They get to open up a new market to an existing product. Imagine the reviews of 16 core piledriver or 20 core Steamroller in multi-thread against Intel. It would win versus an Ivy Bridge E hex core and probably trade blows with an 8 core. Sell the leaky ones to enthusiasts for a reduced price compared to low wattage opterons.

It has baffled me why AMD still has AM3+. There are plenty of serious folders, renderers, transcoders, etc that would absolutely die to get a 2 CPU 16 core system that they could overclock. And you can still get 8 core Opterons which could be unlocked and sold as FX. IF you want an FX 4xx0 or hex, go to FM2.

As for the claims of third party IP, this doesn't mean they're going ARM. Resonant Clock Mesh was third party IP. At a time, ATI was third party IP. AMD could be on the prowl to snag up some third party IP from something besides ARM. I'm not ruling out the possibility, but "we're looking at third party IP" doesn't mean they're going to give up on x86 and build ARM.

As for x86 CPUs, I don't think AMD is stupid enough to say that they're going to abandon x86 performance literally days before they release an x86 performance CPU. Do you know what that would do for sales if Read pretty much said, "we're giving up on x86, here, buy our new performance x86 CPU!"

I hope we see AMD focus more on x86 server performance and more on the GPU side of things. Let the server performance trickle down to APUs. FX has never been a gaming chip and it never will be with that FPU, but the people who buy Bulldozer and all subsequent versions don't buy them to play games (if they're informed), they do it for their great Linux performance and their fantastic value for multi-threaded tasks. Even though Bulldozer wears an FX tag, it is a workstation CPU. Opterons are workstation CPUs. I thus, do not understand why AM3+ exists as a platform when Opterons are on a different platform.

AMD could save itself if it canned AM3+ and switched enthusiast desktop to server platform or created a unified socket for servers, workstations and enthusiasts. Did you guys see the XS leak with V-Ray? FX 8350 crushed Sandy Bridge with HT in V-Ray AT THE SAME CLOCKS, and it costs significantly less. Right there Autodesk and game studios would have a huge reason to go AMD CPUs for their workstations, and it's a market that AMD doesn't even have right now. Why is there not a platform for workstations where you can get one or two AMD Opterons and load it with FirePro cards?

Going FM2 for desktop enthusiasts is a bad idea. The chipset doesn't have enough PCIe lanes. They first need a new chipset. Why create a new chipset when they have a working one already? They need to re-use as much IP as possible, and putting enthusiasts on an overclockable server/workstation platform is the best way to retain the enthusiast platform while spending nearly nothing to keep it going, while still being able to increase x86 performance.

 

[sarinaide]

If you want to know what I think needs happen its only to obvious, AMD need a buyer, if not AMD doesn't exist unless the GPU department can free itself of the main body of the company. What AMD's non existence will likely result in, probably the end of the PC market in a couple years. Intel will have no incentive to undercut pricing particularly chasing Apple as top dog semiconductor company.

Samsung will probably be the nice option, money and resources AMD can move to TSMC and be free of Globalfloundries.....so much needs to change.

 

[Cazalan]

As somebody calculated, the present cuts in workforce divided into the estimated savings amounts to $109K per employee.

Employee overhead is a lot more than just salary. Medical/dental/401k and other benefits add up. Also there is the workplace cost. 1000 employees is a considerable about of office space, power, equipment.

 

[jdwii]

If you want to know what I think needs happen its only to obvious, AMD need a buyer, if not AMD doesn't exist unless the GPU department can free itself of the main body of the company. What AMD's non existence will likely result in, probably the end of the PC market in a couple years. Intel will have no incentive to undercut pricing particularly chasing Apple as top dog semiconductor company.

Samsung will probably be the nice option, money and resources AMD can move to TSMC and be free of Globalfloundries.....so much needs to change.

Their down 14% today WTF is wrong with people its not like this company is worthless they will be producing the graphics for all next gen consoles that alone should give these greedy stockholders some kind of hope not to mention Rory read did say he is going to lay off workers to make up from losing money not to mention they should have the Low watt APU ready for tablets by the first half of next year. I want that CEO out so badly WTF does he do except fire people and read a piece of paper when he talks to people hell chad can do that. :/

 

[Cazalan]

Their down 14% today WTF is wrong with people its not like this company is worthless they will be producing the graphics for all next gen consoles that alone should give these greedy stockholders some kind of hope not to mention Rory read did say he is going to lay off workers to make up from losing money not to mention they should have the Low watt APU ready for tablets by the first half of next year. I want that CEO out so badly WTF does he do except fire people and read a piece of paper when he talks to people hell chad can do that. :/

Investments have a mob mentality aspect that is unavoidable. If you don't move with the pack you're left carrying the losses, in this case substantial. AMD is facing all kinds of triggers with automated trading systems. Being below $4 is bad, being below $1 can get you delisted. If you see an impending train wreck do you stay on or jump, even if you're going to hit the ground hard it's better than the alternative.

 

[fazers_on_stun]

Employee overhead is a lot more than just salary. Medical/dental/401k and other benefits add up. Also there is the workplace cost. 1000 employees is a considerable about of office space, power, equipment.

Yes, which is why I guessed the salary amount might be $90K. 401Ks are generally tied to salary, and presumably AMD owns their office space in lieu of renting, so with the lower echelon workers jammed into cubicles instead of individual offices, seems like a reasonable guess to me. Plus the medical/dental coverage is probably reduced by tax writeoffs, if AMD should make a profit that is..

Anyway, seems probable that a goodly number of engineers are hitting the street, although S/A's "30%" is likely a bit on the high side..

 

[noob2222]

Yes, which is why I guessed the salary amount might be $90K. 401Ks are generally tied to salary, and presumably AMD owns their office space in lieu of renting, so with the lower echelon workers jammed into cubicles instead of individual offices, seems like a reasonable guess to me. Plus the medical/dental coverage is probably reduced by tax writeoffs, if AMD should make a profit that is..

Anyway, seems probable that a goodly number of engineers are hitting the street, although S/A's "30%" is likely a bit on the high side..

interesting calculator

http://www.provaliant.com/employee_calc.htm

according to this, 75k salary employee costs 230k/year that one seems a bit high, but not impossible

http://www.employ-solutions.com/RealCosts.asp

$8.50/hr actually costs you $13.50

Where I work, they given an annual breakdown, our approximate cost per employee is about double our hourly wage, but our insurance and 401k are above average.

90k would be really low guesstimate.

when you get into retirement plans, union labor, ect it skyrockets. look at GM's hourly wage reports. its stupid because they have retired employees that are still being "paid". It was something rediculous like $70+/hr per working employee who actually got paid ~$25 per hr.

 

[fazers_on_stun]

interesting calculator

http://www.provaliant.com/employee_calc.htm

according to this, 75k salary employee costs 230k/year that one seems a bit high, but not impossible

http://www.employ-solutions.com/RealCosts.asp

$8.50/hr actually costs you $13.50

Where I work, they given an annual breakdown, our approximate cost per employee is about double our hourly wage, but our insurance and 401k are above average.

90k would be really low guesstimate.

when you get into retirement plans, union labor, ect it skyrockets. look at GM's hourly wage reports. its stupid because they have retired employees that are still being "paid". It was something rediculous like $70+/hr per working employee who actually got paid ~$25 per hr.

Hmm, 2X the salary for the overhead costs seems way outta line. I've heard it used to be typical for 30% - 50% overhead but unless the company is Apple or Google, with free lunches, free drugs & beer and parties every weekend, I seriously doubt they would be spending that much in this economy.

AMD stock down 18% today to $2.18.

 

[jaguarskx]

Chapt. 11 might work if AMD had some more assets they could parlay into, but those senior notes are likely backed up with collateral, and thus AMD forced to sell off enough of itself to satisfy that debt. From Wiki:

Senior debt is often secured by collateral on which the lender has put in place a first lien. Usually this covers all the assets of a corporation and is often used for revolving credit lines. It is the debt that has priority for repayment in a liquidation.

It is a class of corporate debt that has priority with respect to interest and principal over other classes of debt and over all classes of equity by the same issuer.

It's almost a certainty now that AMD's credit rating will be downgraded from its current risky status, and thus any future notes would be at even higher interest rates than the current 7.5%

Yes, thank you, but I already know what Senior Notes are. People who buys Senior Notes are still vulnerable to accepting less because it is still possible to negotiate the terms of the Senior Note after purchasing them. It's not easy, but it can be done, and has been done in the past. Recently Broadview Networks (NYC) went bankrupt and Senior Note holders were owed $317 million, instead of being paid, they accepted $150 million in new notes and new stock.

 

[de5_Roy]

recap of an old leak
http://www.techpowerup.com/174033/AMD-Third-Generation-APUs-to-be-Built-on-28-nm-Process.html

AMD's third-generation performance APU, codenamed "Kaveri," will be built on the 28 nm silicon fabrication process. The chips will be built by Global Foundries.

28 nm apus! oh yea!
....
they will be built by glofo.........
....
yay....

AMD will introduce a major update to its low-power APU lineup with "Kabini." A true successor to "Brazos," Kabini features x86-64 cores built on the energy-optimized "Jaguar" architecture (which succeeds "Bobcat," on which Brazos APUs are built). It is also mentioned that Kabini will be a true system-on-chip (SoC), with integration of the FCH chipset into the APU silicon.

i wonder how motherboard vendors will react to this blatant attempt to destroy(!) the oh-so-important motherboard industry! 😛

AMD touched on its ultra low power APU, codename "Temash." Like Kabini, Temash is a single-chip SoC, but extremely power optimized (we're talking about TDP numbers under 5W)

meanwhile, hexus and legitreviews review desktop trinity a8 5600k
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/46817-amd-a8-5600k-apu/
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/2054/1/

 

[Cazalan]

i wonder how motherboard vendors will react to this blatant attempt to destroy(!) the oh-so-important motherboard industry! 😛

One less chip to buy for the mobo vendors, making it easier to lay out the board. Prices should go down slightly.

 

[sarinaide]

Their down 14% today WTF is wrong with people its not like this company is worthless they will be producing the graphics for all next gen consoles that alone should give these greedy stockholders some kind of hope not to mention Rory read did say he is going to lay off workers to make up from losing money not to mention they should have the Low watt APU ready for tablets by the first half of next year. I want that CEO out so badly WTF does he do except fire people and read a piece of paper when he talks to people hell chad can do that. :/

AMD have never had good management, but they had better at being top dog as the lineage of top management passed on so did the degree of ineptitude, management got worse with time and started making errors that ultimately were going to be costly.

As for the market, management embody the company and the market reflects it. As a long time AMD user (moreso CPU's) I will honestly tell you that things are going to get worse before they get better, if they have the chance to get better.

New management needs to be up to modern standard, the dog eat dog approach simply cannot sustain itself notably as AMD falls behind in the performance race, they cannot let the product do the talking.