Discussion: AMD's last hope for survival lies in the Zen CPU architecture

[TechyInAZ]

Man AMD is in a ton of debt. Zen is indeed their last hope unless they find another area to start producing in, like motherboards, PSUs, laptops etc.

Zen will have to work, without a doubt zen is the companies last hope.

 

[amdgraphics]

Man AMD is in a ton of debt. Zen is indeed their last hope unless they find another area to start producing in, like motherboards, PSUs, laptops etc.

Zen will have to work, without a doubt zen is the companies last hope.

AMD had been around so long. It would be kinda sad to see them go. But how are the Radeon graphics doing for them?

 

[TechyInAZ]

Man AMD is in a ton of debt. Zen is indeed their last hope unless they find another area to start producing in, like motherboards, PSUs, laptops etc.

Zen will have to work, without a doubt zen is the companies last hope.

AMD had been around so long. It would be kinda sad to see them go. But how are the Radeon graphics doing for them?

I heard somewhere that the Radeon graphics sales only provide around 50% of the income needed. If Zen is a failure, then I suggest AMD to do a MAJOR downsize and just work on selling good GPUs and getting out of debt.

 

[amdgraphics]

Man AMD is in a ton of debt. Zen is indeed their last hope unless they find another area to start producing in, like motherboards, PSUs, laptops etc.

Zen will have to work, without a doubt zen is the companies last hope.

AMD had been around so long. It would be kinda sad to see them go. But how are the Radeon graphics doing for them?

I heard somewhere that the Radeon graphics sales only provide around 50% of the income needed. If Zen is a failure, then I suggest AMD to do a MAJOR downsize and just work on selling good GPUs and getting out of debt.

What is the percentage of CPU's?

 

[synphul]

My only point was there are many avenues that would allow the government to continue running their pc's/contracts with or without amd's existence. If amd goes under the world won't cease to spin and regardless of the solution it will be business as usual.

 

[jaguarskx]

AMD had been around so long. It would be kinda sad to see them go. But how are the Radeon graphics doing for them?

I don't know how much the Radeon GPUs contributes to AMD net income. But based on a study done by Mercury Research, they have lost a lot of ground to nVidia. As of Q2 2014 they had a 36.2% of the desktop discrete GPU marketshare. As of Q2 2015 that has dropped to 23.2%; that means they lost 35% of the marketshare they had in one year.

http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/nvidias-discrete-desktopgpu-market-share-hits-highest-level-ever-mercury-research/

 

[amdgraphics]

My only point was there are many avenues that would allow the government to continue running their pc's/contracts with or without amd's existence. If amd goes under the world won't cease to spin and regardless of the solution it will be business as usual.

The problem is that Intel will be the only good chip maker and ask way too much for them. They'll have a monopoly.

 

[TechyInAZ]

Man AMD is in a ton of debt. Zen is indeed their last hope unless they find another area to start producing in, like motherboards, PSUs, laptops etc.

Zen will have to work, without a doubt zen is the companies last hope.

AMD had been around so long. It would be kinda sad to see them go. But how are the Radeon graphics doing for them?

I heard somewhere that the Radeon graphics sales only provide around 50% of the income needed. If Zen is a failure, then I suggest AMD to do a MAJOR downsize and just work on selling good GPUs and getting out of debt.

What is the percentage of CPU's?

Not sure. AMD is in other stuff too so it can't be an exact 50%.

 

[amdgraphics]

I suppose.

 

[InvalidError]

The problem is that Intel will be the only good chip maker and ask way too much for them. They'll have a monopoly.

x86 PC and laptop sales projections for 2015: ~260 millions, falling by ~8%/year.
Tablet, smartphone, netbook, etc. sales projections for 2015: over one billion and still growing annually, albeit slowing down, most of it using ARM-based CPUs

Intel might be a monopoly on the x86 desktop but desktops are slowly falling out of favor. Both of my sisters and their boyfriends do practically everything on their phones and tablets instead of their laptop or PC.

Unless Intel manages to carve a significant market share in mobile computing, they could be in trouble a few years from now when the majority of personal computing will have moved to ARM-based platforms.

 

[amdgraphics]

The problem is that Intel will be the only good chip maker and ask way too much for them. They'll have a monopoly.

x86 PC and laptop sales projections for 2015: ~260 millions, falling by ~8%/year.
Tablet, smartphone, netbook, etc. sales projections for 2015: over one billion and still growing annually, albeit slowing down, most of it using ARM-based CPUs

Intel might be a monopoly on the x86 desktop but desktops are slowly falling out of favor. Both of my sisters and their boyfriends do practically everything on their phones and tablets instead of their laptop or PC.

Unless Intel manages to carve a significant market share in mobile computing, they could be in trouble a few years from now when the majority of personal computing will have moved to ARM-based platforms.

What can AMD do with Mobile products? Intel has it's Atom CPU, but I doubt desktops/laptops will really ever go out of business. As games get higher quality graphics and need huge amounts of RAM and Processor Speed with powerful Graphics Cards to play, gamers will still want to use actual desktops or laptops, not a Phone or tablet. They can't keep up in terms of power for the average gamer. Sure desktops and laptops are getting less and less common, but literal PC's will probably always be ahead in terms of power.

 

[jaguarskx]

Not sure what AMD can do with mobile products.

In 2014 Intel basically lost $4 billion in the mobile arena just to increase it's presence there; meaning they were selling at chips below cost to grab marketshare.

 

[amdgraphics]

Not sure what AMD can do with mobile products.

In 2014 Intel basically lost $4 billion in the mobile arena just to increase it's presence there; meaning they were selling at chips below cost to grab marketshare.

How are they doing now? Personally I would rather have a Snapdragon or Nvidia Tegra mobile product. What AMD should do is make motherboards like Intel. I sure hope Zen will get them back on track. Is Zen the codename or is it the real name?

 

[Reaper_7799]

Since price gets brought up a lot, something I find interesting. Things like the pentium overdrive p166 was around $499 in 1997. Amd's k6-233mhz was $469. The amd k6 2-350 was $317 in 1998. Their k6-3 380 was $349. The p3 era xeons at 733mhz were $826. The p3 733 was $776 while amd's 750mhz athlon was $799.
http://processortimeline.info/proc1998.htm

Misconception number one, that amd's have always been cheaper or better bang for the buck than intel, not true. Misconception number two, that intel charges 'quite a lot' for their cpu's again not true. Even after 17yrs of inflation, intel cpu's are much cheaper than they used to be at face value. Amd's cpus are priced right in line with intel's current chips comparing performance to performance.

Not sure where people think that suddenly cpu's cost 'so much'. If anything, consider gpu's. The 8800 gt/gts were considered fairly high end cards back in 2007 and they were around $200-250 when they came out. Now a relatively high end card like the gtx 980 was around $550-600 when it came out. So all in all, while both gpu's and cpu's have grown substantially more powerful over the years, cpu's are 25-50% of what they used to cost while gpu's are more than double what they used to cost. Yet it's cpu's people complain about the most when it comes to high prices.

Good points except gpu's are around the same boat as cpu's. I remember my geforce 6800 ultra in 2004 was around $500 or maybe even $550. I still have that card and it still works lol.

 

[jaguarskx]

Hard to say how Intel is doing in the mobile market segment since Intel decided to merge the desktop and mobile divisions together.

It seems low cost laptops using Atom CPUs are popular because they are cheap thanks to Intel willing to take a loss and Microsoft selling Windows 8 / 10 licenses in devices that cost less than $250 (or so) for around $10. Chromebooks has been doing quite well n the education market so MS is willing to practically give away Win OS so that they do not loose that market segment to Google.

Intel Atom CPUs are also used in Windows tablets which I am guessing is growing in popularity. I was thinking about buying one myself, but was disappointed that the Cherry Trail Atom CPU had basically the same processing performance as Bay Trail. Only the integrated GPU performance was increased; probably around 50%. Hopefully Intel's Willow Trail will provide better processing performance when it is released in 2016.


I don't think making consumer motherboards is a good idea for AMD since they are up against stiff competition. However, I think they should be more stringent on a reference motherboard design for their APUs / CPUs.

 

[InvalidError]

They can't keep up in terms of power for the average gamer. Sure desktops and laptops are getting less and less common, but literal PC's will probably always be ahead in terms of power.

While I agree that PCs are unlikely to completely disappear, most of the low to mid-range non-gaming/non-professional range on the other hand might become extinct.

Gamers and enthusiasts might be very vocal about the PC supremacy but they need to remember that they only represent ~10% of the market. The other 90% is mundane PCs like point-of-sale terminals, office PCs, digital signage and other non-gaming machines with modest CPU and GPU power requirements that could easily be met by modern smartphones, tablets, PC-on-a-stick, etc. In many cases, people and companies do exactly that: adopt smartphones and tablets to replace office PCs and terminals, some even letting their employees install their work applications on their personal mobile devices.

Losing a large chunk of that ~90% low/mid-range PC applications to mobile devices is not going to do AMD and Intel any good if they fail to gain mobile market share first. Another tough pill to swallow is that to compete with ARM, Intel has to price their chips well below $50 and cannot double-dip by selling chipsets separately for an extra $20-40 like they do on the desktop.

With many schools teaching classes on iPads and Android-based tablets these days, there is a whole generation of kids coming that might not give much of a damn about traditional PCs and the wintel legacy.

 

[utgotye]

I have said it before and I'll say it again, if AMD didn't exist, Intel would create them. As much as we all hope that Zen is a home run for AMD, at this point, I think AMD would settle for a ground rule double. I'm not in the market for a new build at the moment, nor will I be in the time between now and when Zen comes out, probably not even afterwards. I have C2D and C2Q CPUs still doing their jobs along with a G3258 that's not currently in a system. Throw in my Sandy and Devils Canyon rigs and I'm set for a while for myself. That said, I will be watching, listening and reading with keen interest when the time comes. We are all better off, even Intel to a great a extent, when AMD has a competitive product and the fact of the matter is that unless you are on a bit of a budget and/or want to overclock and have fairly specific needs, you are simply better off buying Intel for 10-15% more since AMD chips always come with hidden costs for cooling or noise.

 

[amdgraphics]

Hard to say how Intel is doing in the mobile market segment since Intel decided to merge the desktop and mobile divisions together.

It seems low cost laptops using Atom CPUs are popular because they are cheap thanks to Intel willing to take a loss and Microsoft selling Windows 8 / 10 licenses in devices that cost less than $250 (or so) for around $10. Chromebooks has been doing quite well n the education market so MS is willing to practically give away Win OS so that they do not loose that market segment to Google.

Intel Atom CPUs are also used in Windows tablets which I am guessing is growing in popularity. I was thinking about buying one myself, but was disappointed that the Cherry Trail Atom CPU had basically the same processing performance as Bay Trail. Only the integrated GPU performance was increased; probably around 50%. Hopefully Intel's Willow Trail will provide better processing performance when it is released in 2016.


I don't think making consumer motherboards is a good idea for AMD since they are up against stiff competition. However, I think they should be more stringent on a reference motherboard design for their APUs / CPUs.

I'm confused what you mean by being more stringent on reference motherboard design for their APUs and CPUs.

 

[TechyInAZ]

Not sure what AMD can do with mobile products.

In 2014 Intel basically lost $4 billion in the mobile arena just to increase it's presence there; meaning they were selling at chips below cost to grab marketshare.

How are they doing now? Personally I would rather have a Snapdragon or Nvidia Tegra mobile product. What AMD should do is make motherboards like Intel. I sure hope Zen will get them back on track. Is Zen the codename or is it the real name?

Intel I think has recovered.

BTW...Intel has officially stopped making motherboards. Which makes sense because all the other manufactures do a way better job at making motherboards anyways.

Nvidia has also said they will stop making tegra chips. They are pulling out of the mobile market completely according to one of NVidia's blog posts, way to much competition for them to make it a worthy investment.

 

[InvalidError]

Nvidia has also said they will stop making tegra chips. They are pulling out of the mobile market completely according to one of NVidia's blog posts, way to much competition for them to make it a worthy investment.

I do not remember reading anything about Nvidia canning Tegra. What they did give up on though is portable mobile devices - the K1 draws too much power and puts out too much heat to comfortably fit in tablets and netbooks, so they ended up pitching the X1 at the automotive, digital signage and other industries that aren't as sensitive to power draw, weight, thickness and heat.

 

[TechyInAZ]

Nvidia has also said they will stop making tegra chips. They are pulling out of the mobile market completely according to one of NVidia's blog posts, way to much competition for them to make it a worthy investment.

I do not remember reading anything about Nvidia canning Tegra. What they did give up on though is portable mobile devices - the K1 draws too much power and puts out too much heat to comfortably fit in tablets and netbooks, so they ended up pitching the X1 at the automotive, digital signage and other industries that aren't as sensitive to power draw, weight, thickness and heat.

I might be wrong, I saw that blog post a long time ago...

 

[naturesninja]

I think the company who would have the most interest in seeing AMD stay alive would be Valve. Just an opinion.

 

[jaguarskx]

^^^

Why?

 

[NightAntilli]

I think the company who would have the most interest in seeing AMD stay alive would be Valve. Just an opinion.

Sony and Microsoft have more interest I think. If AMD goes out of business, what will happen to their consoles?

@jaguarskx AMD is building a lot of systems that could be considered steam boxes. And Valve wants to use Vulkan for its main games, meaning they can run on more platforms since Vulkan supports both Linux and Windows apart from SteamOS.

I think AMD staying alive is in the best interest of everyone. Ironically, it would be the best thing for the nVidia fanboy crowd. Right now nVidia is screwing everybody over, and AMD is the only one that can at least decrease the grade of exploit.

 

[naturesninja]

I'm just referring to lost sales with Steam. A 2% loss for example would equate to $120-160 million dollars a year in lost revenue if people thought there were no more "affordable" desktop builds and went to consoles.