Is AMD finally starting to have hope?

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monsterrocks

monsterrocks

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Sep 19, 2007
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I found this little article at the tech report:
http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/13700

I think this is a great step for AMD. They were always lacking in R&D, but now it looks like they are starting to actually do some good here. I don't know about the rest of you, but this seems to be a ray of hope for AMD. The reason I say this is because it means they will be able to work out bugs faster due to the extra R&D team; which could translate into products being released on time, and not having your flapship cancelled the day it was supposed to come out... Any thoughts?
 
This R&D center won't impact AMD's productivity in a meaningful way for quite a few years. You can't just put together an R&D center in a developing country and have it produce. New engineers don't have any idea as to what they are doing. Since you won't just be exporting Indian natives back from developed countries, there will be a significant experience shortage at this center. As a result, they will learn slowly and they will learn the hard way.

Further, the education system in India is very inconsistent. They will be employing many second rate engineers. To some degree that will be OK, because I doubt the US government will allow AMD to export any microprocessor or vector processing expertise anyway. This R&D center will probably be confined to working on chipsets and the like.

This move is probably a good long term plan, however it isn't going to suddenly make AMD competitive with Intel in R&D. Even in the US or Europe you wouldn't be able to just add a lot of R&D head count and expect quick results. This is going to take quite a bit of time.
 


Long term results? Definetly. Short term results? I think so...With two R&D teams, you can spread the work out more efficiently between the groups, and you can give the high experience teams the most important projects so that they can work on those, and unload the rest on your extra R&D. I understand that AMD is still far behind intel in R&D, but what I was saing is that this is the first step in the right direction I have seen from AMD in a long time. And according to Tech Report, they are also about to release their 2.5Ghz Barcelona, which will help them keep some ground in their number one market; the server market. AMD has done a lot of stupid things recently, but a new R&D team will not be a mistake.
 
I agree with both of you. Long term wise, this is definitely a good move for AMD. They're starting to lose advantages in their server arena, and AMD's desperate in finding an innovation that will keep them competitive in this market. As we're already seeing this time around, aside from Barcelona's multi-socket capability, AMD doesn't really have anything competitive, besides pricing:

Barcelona is still not good enough to compete head to head with Harpertowns; Phenom is still few hundred megahurtz short; 790FX has almost nothing new besides quad-GPU capability, which there is still no driver available; and RV670 cannot compete directly with G92, even with CFed, let alone G80 GTX/Ultra.

This R&D center will be very crucial for AMD to retain their drive of innovation, and give AMD more flexibility in researching and developing. It starts to look like AMD finally realize their position on the market, and how far it must go to maintain that position.

However, fidgewinkle also got it right. In the short term, this research center will serve as nothing but a money draining machine. Since all of the engineers are assembled locally, it will take time for them to relearn AMD structure, synchronize with design team in US, integration within the corporate, and such. We're talking about 6months to 1 year here. So it is likely they will start new projects, and leave the current projects to their developers, the US team.

I still think AMD's survivability still does not look too good. They're about 5 billion in debt, and their stock just fell around 10 bucks. Their market cap is just a little more than what they paid to buy ATI. Their current architecture doesn't fair well against their counterparts, and it doesn't look like it will be corrected within a short time frame. The next architecture will come in 2009, and that's well after Nehalem's debut.

Time will tell I guess, but TBH, I don't have high hopes for AMD in the near future.
 
engineering farms-that's what we have here in india.i am a byproduct of such a farm--here u have everything that's taken and drilled into ur head and then nicely tested in exams and then ur let loose in the market.u have hordes of colleges churning out hordes of engineers every year in india.i will be let loose after a year with an engineering degree.here recruitments for software firms happen when ur in the third year of engineering.microsoft recruits engineers from my college as trainee engineers--AMD,Intel go in for people with loads of experience.hope AMD's new R&D center does some good R&D for AMD's sake and ours.
 
Very interesting. This might be the edge that AMD needs. Keep in mind that these products are sold globally, so having your staff spread out globally is more than acceptable, it's expected.

Sharikou the big racist might have an issue with it though...
 


Just who is that? I heard about him almost as much as BM, but I have actually never seen him post anything...
 
They are number 2 because they are only 2 businesses that produce x86 chips as far as I know.

ATi need to deliver a good card soon since the GeForce 9 series is out in Febuary. AMD need to deliver a chip to complete with the Core 2 range, I'm an AMD fanboy and I wouldn't buy a Phenom. Well, perhaps since it already fits in my motherboard, and the 9900 doesn't out perform my 6000+ in day to day tasks...
 


Well, we have an unwritten rule that we don't link to his blog from here.

You know how I feel about BM; we don't get along.

With that being said, let's just say that I have for more respect for Baron than I do Sharikou.
 



BM is BaronMatrix(he posts under his real identity on Sharikou's blog, but I'll keep his name private out of respect of privacy). He is very supportive for AMD. He knows that AMD keeps Intel honest, in a sense. However, many of us feel that BaronMatrix sometimes takes ridiculous stances and makes ridiculous claims all if defense of AMD; as if AMD was his child or something.

Sharikou is a kook with a blog. If you were to take all the things I don't appreciate about Baron, and multiply them by infinity, you'd get Sharikou. Unlike BaronMatrix, Sharikou claims that Intel is going to bankrupt because of the ferocious AMD.
 
Wow. A BM buy infinity? Sounds bad.

All I will say is that AMD needs to let ATI do what they do best and make a video card that will spank the crap out of anything NVidia has now like they did back in the R300 days.

I loved my 9700Pro. RIP old budy.
 


That is saying a lot. :pt1cable:
 


I think the 3870x2 (or whatever it is called) will be lot more competetive with the nVidia 9xxx xeries than the HD 2900 was to the 8800 series.
 


do u really know this for sure, is it really being released in febuary?
 
I think it can only be a good thing for AMD Get some more brains on the situiation! As for doubts as far as India is concerned.. Who's the World chess champ at the moment ?? (-; . And as for 45m dies being pushed through in the near future.. That would be a fantastic eventuality. I figured it was a good couple of years away for AMD. Though I may be reading that "into" the article..
Ryan Adds
 
Interesting strategy. Talking to many people in the computing industry, I've heard less than steller things about India's R&D abilities. India is fantastic at providing call centers and doing coding projects where all the requirements for the code are perfectly laid out. However, if you're seaking creative thought and actual innovation, India has been referred to as extremely lacking. I wonder what AMD's thinking is here. I'm sure someone will try to point to the large population of Indians in the American technical workforce, but go talk to them. Most get their undergrad (i.e. basics) in India, but then come to the US for graduate study and then for permanent employment.
 
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