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Opinion: What Does AMD's New CEO Need to Fix?

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Marketing or lack of marketing. AMD really needs to grow their brand specially now that they have fusion parts in the low end where consumers will choose by brand more often than not. They need to come up with something catchy like Intel Inside...ding..ding...diing.
 
Well, if the board wanted more of a focus on tablets and smartphones, perhaps that's what they got. Maybe they're trying to tweak, chop, and hack an APU for that market, specifically to compete with Tegra.
While I sort of agree with pbrigido on #1, something can only be released when it's ready, otherwise it's a big fail. That may mean a tighter rein on the hype machine. I think people would rather have a firm date in the distance than a "next quarter" or "next month" date that keeps getting pushed back. As much as I've been anticipating Bulldozer, I sometimes think I should call it Bullpooper instead for these constant delays.
On #2, I think AMD has shown that the APU concept works well, and IS competitive from an overall system perspective. Brought to the tablet market, I think it will do well. As to owning the top spot in CPU performance, I don't think that matters to a big enough piece of the market.
 
While there are issues at AMD that need to be addressed, this story reads like sour grapes to me. It's as if some journalists are PO'ed that AMD did not explain the firing of Meyer and the journos know little about Read, so they are frustrated and want to tactfully bad mouth AMD until AMD tells them what they want to know.

Yes AMD most definitely needs to improve execution. By doing so they will also become competitive technically or once again surpass Intel in CPU performance.

What enthusiasts need to understand is that the mass market segments are what make a company profitable, not the latest bleeding edge CPUs. Thus a relatively small company like AMD (compared to a competitor like Intel), must focus it's resources on getting and maintaining the mass markets while still trying to offer enthusiasts some candy.

Read seems to have the marketing and management experience to improve the situation at AMD. You can't make the effective changes that need to be made, overnight. It will take time, like 2-5 years, not months. With AMD finally releasing Bulldozer based chips for all market segments, things should improve financially which gives AMD an opportunity to accelerate new product development and production. I see a bright future for AMD and consumers but with the horrible economic conditions in the U.S. and Europe the road will be bumpy for the next 3 years or more IMO.
 
there is no explicit smartphone / tablet product at this time.
Click to expand...
Well of course there isn't... AMD is essentially a chip-maker, not a full-scale product manufacturer. Their development focuses on individual processing components found inside full-scale products, not the product itself. Their primary competition is with Intel (and ARM, to some extent), which is also a chip-maker, and also not a full-scale product manufacturer.

AMD does not (currently) compete directly with the likes of Samsung and Apple, who are full-scale product manufacturers. If they were to go down that route, then they may actually find themselves fighting product wars on far too many fronts. We're all familiar with the expression, "spreading oneself too thin." I worry that should AMD take on full-scale product development endeavors, it could very well be their undoing.

I don't feel AMD needs to branch out and expand their products. Instead, they need to kick their current product R&D into high-gear and start competing at the top-tier again.
 
working more on software side of the development process, something competitor to nvidia physx and CUDA. also on processor's instruction set.
 
Don't fix anything. AMD is on the right track finally. They got smart and moved to other markets and stopped trying to compete with Intel in the dying enthusiest desktop market.

They shipped 15million APU's in the 2nd quarter alone and released 16core quad channel bulldozers for the server market already.

Way to go AMD.
 
They have fixed it, they have Fusion.

What they need is a fusion tablet that wins price/performance wise and wins on features... coming next year I bet.
 
GeekApproved prety much said what I was going to say. AMD is no longer the juggernaut they once were. AMD has realized that the enthusiast market is essentially a wash and is concentrating on undercutting Intel on the lower-end cores. They simply have less money for R&D and cannot keep up with Intel so it makes sense.

Whether they are milking the current tech for what it's worth or actually trying to push forward will remain to be seen. AMD needs to work on cutting deals with all the big-name laptop and desktop manufacturers to get cores in those products, and corner Intel in the lower end market to stay relevant. Although this is bad for gamers and enthusiasts (Less pressure on intel to make newer, better cores) it doesn't seem to matter as pretty much every game made nowadays is made to order for 5 year old ecksbawks and pee ess three hardware.

Anybody who says anything other than this obviously isn't thinking from AMD's point of view. They don't need to have the biggest and best, rip-roarinest data-munching processor, they just need cash, that's what makes the world go 'round after all.

And as far as the people who are saying "keep them on time" would you rather AMD dumped too much money into R&D for the new cores and had to declare bankruptcy or close up shop because of it? They can't afford to push out new cores on a tick-tock yearly schedule like Intel.

If there's one thing they need their CEO needs to fix, it's that awful stock photo of him grinning like an idiot with that dorky combover.
 
They need to get their name out their in the public arena. AMD needs exposure. It seems that everytime you turn on the damn boob tube you hear that annoying but memorable "bum bum, bum bummmmmm" tune of intels.
 
they need to reduce their prices. AMD seems to ignore the the price vs performance of their competitors and price slower parts similarly to faster competitor parts.

Don't sell a CPU for $200 if that same $200 can get me a cpu thats nearly 30% faster from intel.

AMD has done good with lowering prices for their mid range chips where you get better price to performance than from intel, but but from their higher end parts, they need too significantly bring down the prices.

The cost of making a CPU is very low, generally $5-10, and while R&D is expensive, if you want to get a better return on investment, is better to sell a CPU at $120 instead of $200 and sell 10 times as many CPU's

Remember, with CPU's, the manufacturing is cheap, the R&D is expensive.

AMD's failure is doe to them not pricing within their performance bracket. Also, while AMD may not have the fastest chips, in the area where most people buy CPU's are and where most prebuilt systems CPU's are, AMD has a wide range of equivalent CPU's for less money. The problem here is that inconsistent pricing makes it a confusing investment as you are unsure if it would be worth investing in a system where a future upgrade may cause you to get a bad price to performance ratio.
 
I Use AMD at home and Intel at work (no choice) my AMD system at home is a Athlon X2 64 3800+, my work is a Intel E8400. Both are Dual Core, the Intel uses faster ram (DDR2 vs DDR), and is 3.0Ghz to my AMD's 2.0Ghz, and i still feel that i am getting the same performance from both. I can't see a reason to favor Intel when in my "real world use" it's not faster.

AMD has my loyalty because Intel is the sneaky greedy mocher in the room.

AMD has the best price per performance.
Intel has the best "highest price".
 
Simple..

1) Create a winning desktop CPU! It must be faster than Intels!
2) Sell it for slightly less than Intels top end CPU!
3) ?
4) Profit!
 
@ coldmast, it's not fair to compare an athlon X2 64 3800+ to an E8400 wolfdale CPU (which even beats some tri/quad core CPUs in benchmarks).
 
While diversity is very good, it would be nice if they focus alot more on performance as well. For the average user, they are in a decent position. But for "gamers" they are NOT even an option compared to intel. There's just too much of a difference between the two.
 
[citation][nom]GeekApproved[/nom]Don't fix anything. AMD is on the right track finally. They got smart and moved to other markets and stopped trying to compete with Intel in the dying enthusiest desktop market.They shipped 15million APU's in the 2nd quarter alone and released 16core quad channel bulldozers for the server market already.Way to go AMD.[/citation]

It's kinda funny how one comment can be copied and pasted from news article to news article and still be relevant to each lol...

Anyway... I want to see more work on the advertising. They have great looking products like the black/red radeons, etc. They need to really field out the proper ad agency and hit it gas pedal to the floorboard and keep it straight. They could really gain broad appeal in all areas from budget to high-end with the right strategy.
 
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