AMD Restructuring: What You Need To Know

[kewlguy239]

In an official statement to Tom’s Hardware, AMD clarified the details of its restructuring goals, which included the development of several new key positions and teams, a new focus on enterprise and a 5 percent reduction to the company's workforce.

AMD Restructuring: What You Need To Know : Read more

 

[uglyduckling81]

I doubt 500 workers will be taking it with a grain of salt or if they care whether its a small or large amount compared to other companies.
This might also be a move to increase share value for the inevitable sale.

They really need a miracle to get their CPU's back to the forefront. That would revitalise the company. Their engineers seem to be quite lacking though so I don't expect a turn around for them.

 

[pug_s]

AMD put too much effort in making APU's but they didn't put any effort on making general CPU's without powerful GPU's. They could've make cheap 8 core cpu's or power powerful cpu's that could've competed with Intel I3/i5/i7

 

[FearfulSPARTAN]

I dont blame their engineers as much as how many they have employed is minuscule compared to Intel and Nvidia.

 

[MasterMace]

3 fab plants go up for sale with guarenteed business and the agreement includes getting paid to take them, and the fabless AND doesn't take it, the graphics launch flops, they ship out the jobs to India, and rip apart a standard structure of enthusiast-enterprise, embedded-graphics and completely flop that around after a long time of losses? Seems like the strategy has shifted from falling apart to swan diving into an empty pool. Next thing you know they'll be telling us the swim is great

 

[whassup]

AMD put too much effort in making APU's but they didn't put any effort on making general CPU's without powerful GPU's. They could've make cheap 8 core cpu's or power powerful cpu's that could've competed with Intel I3/i5/i7

Making an APU with powerful GPU doesn't make sense without having HBM, eDRAM like technologies present. AMD's Kaveri's IGP were already bottlenecked by RAM bandwidth. Yes they could have made 6 or 8 core APU's though.

 

[dstarr3]

Who knows, Intel may bail them out before long. It's probably in their best interest that AMD survive, lest they go under and suddenly Intel is a monopoly.

 

[kenjitamura]

The next big blow to AMD will be when their Zen cores come out 3-4 months late at which time Intel will have already had Kaby Lake out the door and will be ~6 months away from releasing Cannonlake.

It will be disastrous if Zen doesn't somehow outperform Kaby Lake in an aspect that attracts consumers because then it will see only moderate sales for that ~6 months which will drastically drop to abysmal levels when Cannonlake comes out and everyone's clamoring over 10 nm.

AMD needs to do two things:
1. Get Zen out on time.
2. Make sure Zen is decisively more attractive than Intel's Sky lake and Kaby lake offerings.

Honestly, I don't put too much faith in either of those happening.

I'd love to be surprised though because Intel has had the exact same core/thread/pricing model since Sandy Bridge and it has never appealed to me. I don't want to have to pay $200 just for a true quad core or settle for a dual core with hyperthreading even if it is at an attractive $120 price point. Give me my dang $150 quad core >.<

Intel's only real killer deal for a while has been its Xeon's with 4 cores and hyperthreading at $240 and even though that's extremely tempting I don't want to splurge on it.

 

[Tuishimi]

We are never going to see another new CPU out of them again, are we...

 

[knowom]

AMD put too much effort in making APU's but they didn't put any effort on making general CPU's without powerful GPU's. They could've make cheap 8 core cpu's or power powerful cpu's that could've competed with Intel I3/i5/i7

Making an APU with powerful GPU doesn't make sense without having HBM, eDRAM like technologies present. AMD's Kaveri's IGP were already bottlenecked by RAM bandwidth. Yes they could have made 6 or 8 core APU's though.

AMD put too much effort in making APU's but they didn't put any effort on making general CPU's without powerful GPU's. They could've make cheap 8 core cpu's or power powerful cpu's that could've competed with Intel I3/i5/i7

Making an APU with powerful GPU doesn't make sense without having HBM, eDRAM like technologies present. AMD's Kaveri's IGP were already bottlenecked by RAM bandwidth. Yes they could have made 6 or 8 core APU's though.

AMD's memory controller is also a bit on the weak side though compared to Intel/Nvidia both for CPU/GPU they just don't support fast enough modern memory standard speeds. That's part of their problem when everything is so memory bandwidth driven today.

They also have failed to capitalize on multi-socket APU's entirely which could have had the potential to have been a major success. They'd have directly benefited from both APU and motherboard platform chipset sales.

Really who the hell wouldn't go for a modular hyper-transport interconnect 2-4 socket APU board that could crossfire with each other to form bigger APU clusters that work together transparently? Forget buying a discrete GPU buy another APU and kill two birds with one stone.

 

[AS118]

Well, I hope they do better in the future. I don't want to see a world where Intel and Nvidia are monopolies. Sure they're making good products at reasonable prices NOW, but part of the reason for that is AMD (and ATi) competing with them in the past and right now in the present.

If they both became monopolies who could collaborate, things could get really dicey for us PC consumers, and also for console players. I feel like people forget that the newest consoles are so cheap and powerful (well, for consoles) because of AMD. Microsoft and Sony should be grateful to AMD. Nintendo should be too, especially if their next console is a full AMD APU as opposed to PowerPC + an AMD GPU.

 

[SteelCity1981]

how many times have we heard amd restructuring itself for the better to help reduce spending to invest in the future just to turn around and lose money and restructure itself again, this is an on going issue with amd. now they are down to 10,000 employees. how many times are they going to try to pull the wool over their investors eyes, before their investors just give up completely and abandon amd's ship. amd better hope that Zen will save them because if it ends up to be another bulldozer they are done.

 

[crisan_tiberiu]

Unfotunatly, people have TO HIGH expectations from AMD ("omg, Zen needs to be better than SkyLake, or else...").
AMD does not have the FINANCIAL POWER to beat Intel or Nvidia, it is simple as that. Not even in the glory day of Athlon 64, when AMD washed the floor with Intel performance wise, they didnt even come close in market share or sales.
i am giving the example of my country (witch probably is small ), but in every public institution, every school, every private company's office is equiped with INTEL based PC's, i havent interacted in the private sector nor public with an AMD based SERVER, NONE (and it is my job). Intel, at this moment has monopoly in one way ot the other.
For me it is simple to make o decision for AMD. Make up your freakin mind AMD, do you want to compete with nVidia or with intel? YOU CAN'T WITH BOTH, you will LOSE!

 

[hannibal]

It will be disastrous if Zen doesn't somehow outperform Kaby Lake.

Well AMD can not outperform Kaby Lake in any way. It is just impossible, but Zen can be good enough. Intel has to do something very wrong, like Pentium IV and even if they do, they can make new architecture in the same time that will not blow. They just have so much more resources.
But if Zen is good enough (only 20-40% slover than Kaby Lake), it will be just fine. It can compete in APU sector and even be faster is some graphic intensive works.

AMD can compete in APU sector, because it has better GPU than Intel and Nvidia does not have CPU for Windows usage. So that is the sector, where they have to put resources in!
In GPU it has been swing win and lose between AMD and Nvidia, so in that department I am not too concerned about, but it is just impossible to beat Intel in CPU platform.
The Problem is that they just need a huge lot of money, to keep on being competative and that may be problem in the longer time-frame. Intel monopoly in CPU and Nvidia "Monopoly" (Intel also make GPU, so not complete monopoly) would means slow development and increased prices to customers. Even now, Intel is putting sub standard thermal paste to CPU, just because they can and keep the 6+ core versions in very high priced sector. It can only goes to worse situation from that...

 

[expunged]

Usually when you see a company dump big numbers of jobs, they are just trying to reflect "savings" in costs , so that the companies interested in buying them have more incentive to buy. It is artificially inflating the share cost. Almost always it is the highest paid people that are not "officers", and usually their best talent. I dont buy AMD, I'm Intel/Nvidia but I really hope they make it just so that there is some competition in the market.

 

[Hotthuizen]

AMD really make very good products ! but there number 1 problem is very bad marketing !

for example if you have a AMD GPU X that is 1% faster then a Nvidia gpu Y and 50$ cheaper 90% of the people will go for the Nvidia card, because it feels more "premium"

 

[alextheblue]

They also have failed to capitalize on multi-socket APU's entirely which could have had the potential to have been a major success. They'd have directly benefited from both APU and motherboard platform chipset sales.

Really who the hell wouldn't go for a modular hyper-transport interconnect 2-4 socket APU board that could crossfire with each other to form bigger APU clusters that work together transparently? Forget buying a discrete GPU buy another APU and kill two birds with one stone.

Are you serious? Multi-socket systems are niche to begin with. At a minimum the boards for them are more expensive and require large cases (again niche/enthusiast). Not to mention that on the graphics side you'd be advocating Crossfire on systems with limited bandwidth, which is just silly.

Not even counting Intel solutions, you'd be better off with an 8-core FX and a discrete GPU, rather than a pair of 4-core APUs. Even looking at their top-line Kaveri and Carrizo designs, you're looking at 512 cores per APU. A lowly 265/370 matches the shader count of TWO of those, plus beats it in terms of clocks and bandwidth (even counting the combined 4 memory channels of two APUs). Not to mention the reduced complexity of a single GPU.

Anyway, back on topic. Nobody is questioning that they have made blunders. Additionally, competing with the budget of giants like Intel is very challenging. They appear to be making every effort to stay alive. They're reforming and refocusing their Radeon unit to execute faster - vitally needed move. From what I'd read, Jim Keller finished his design work on Zen and they're on the path to deliver a much better CPU core next year. All that remains is to see if they can deliver, and there's little point in speculating all that much further until TH and others have hardware in hand.

 

[astonerii]

I never like AMD or ATI, even when they were at their Zeniths and the top dogs. I just never liked the culture of their companies. Much like I detest the Apple culture. They just do not exude professionalism. Intel is the epitome of professionalism, and with the exception of one stupid action that I recall (the Pentium launch with bad math), always seems to provide a perfect product. NVidia, while not as high in stature as Intel, provides such a consistent product, time after time after time, that I always feel confident with their products and their ability to work well far into the future. About the only product I ever bought with NVidia branding that I did not like was a laptop with a 6800 GTX graphics card in it.

 

[MisterZ]

I "need" to know about AMD's restructuring? Why, exactly? None of my desktop PCs in the last 20+ years have contained an AMD chip, nor will they ever in future.

 

[aznguy0028]

I "need" to know about AMD's restructuring? Why, exactly? None of my desktop PCs in the last 20+ years have contained an AMD chip, nor will they ever in future.

Then don't click the article to read it? This might be shocking news but not everything revolves around you. There are other people out there who wants to read this article regardless of what CPU they own.

 

[dimar]

Can't AMD sell some GPU tech to Intel, in return get some CPU tips/tech?

 

[turkey3_scratch]

If Zen plans to be 8 cores 16 threads (so I heard, Zen may hyperthread) Intel will likely up their normal Cannonlake I7 CPUs to 8 cores 16 threads to compete. Right now only Haswell extreme and Xeons are that many. Or maybe they'll go to 6-core 12 threads, considering Intel will have much higher IPC anyway.

 

[CircuitWIzardry]

AMD has not been a real competitor for Intel, for quite some time. ARM, Samsung and Apple pose more competition to Intel than AMD does right now. ARM and variants of that architecture are being used by Samsung and Apple in portable handsets and tablets. Intel is rightfully worried that the market will go the direction of ARM and they will lose the business. This is even a worry for Intel in the enterprise server / storage markets.

 

[SkyBill40]

As an AMD fan, one can only hope they can continue on fighting and keeping the microprocessor game from becoming a monopoly (as it very nearly is already). What is needed is some of the innovation they had during the K7/8 days and when they were beating Intel hand over fist in terms of straight performance as well as cost vs performance.

It truly is disheartening to see them struggling so. The loss of Keller is huge, for sure. I'm confident they'll get things back on track, but I doubt they ever reach the truly competitive days of yore.

 

[megamanx00]

AMD's problems go back to when they decided to delay their 65nm process to sell more 90nm chips while also cutting 90nm capacity and pissing off customers. The delay contributed to shipping the Phenom late and with the TLB bug. From then there have been bad management decisions that have pilled up to the situation they are in now. Pushing bulldozer rather than making a Phenom III, abandoning AM3, re branding old chips that cost more to make and use more power than the competition, and on and on.....

AM4 and Zen can help turn things around, but AMD needs to live long enough to launch it and make it successful.