Three AMD Execs Leave The Company Following Management Reorganization

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Creme

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Sounds like some people couldn't stand Lisa Su anymore.

I hope AMD turns around anyway, it's about time, but I don't know if this new CEO will be good. It's still puzzling why the A10-6700T Micro didn't end up anywhere.
 
Again? AMD really need to get their shiz together.
- Step 1 - make beefy/efficient cpu to compete with intel
- Step 2 - get a contract to put that, and its gpu's, in all Apple desktops and get it recognised as a "premium" product.
- Step 3 - Now recognised, the average joe consumer might now not be fearful to buy something with "AMD inside" and AMD can finally sell their chips and actually make a profit rather than continually cutting prices.
I think that could work.....
 

baseline

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Um ya AMD would do just as well to use the Underpants Gnomes business model than to try and hitch themselves to Apples bandwagon.

Phase I - Collect underpants
Phase II - ?
Phase III - Profit
 

srap

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Again? AMD really need to get their shiz together.
- Step 1 - make beefy/efficient cpu to compete with intel
- Step 2 - get a contract to put that, and its gpu's, in all Apple desktops and get it recognised as a "premium" product.
- Step 3 - Now recognised, the average joe consumer might now not be fearful to buy something with "AMD inside" and AMD can finally sell their chips and actually make a profit rather than continually cutting prices.
I think that could work.....
Yes. Because it's easy just like that, right?

AMD designer Advanced Joe walks up to the desk, draws up the new processor design with hand, all X billion transistors at it's exact place, circuits, cache, whatsoever. When finished, he passes it up for Enhanced Joe who tests it first with his mind and then a crystal ball. After it has been approved by both E. J. and the Printed Circuit Board Druids Alliance, Superior Joe starts printing the chips with a redesigned HP LaserJet 9001, circumventing the unreliable semiconductor manufacturers and guaranteeing cheap and efficient implementation.
 

Joe Black

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I''ve actually toyed with the idea of running an APU system for most of my computing needs. See if I can get away with < 300W total system power usage and still play Dota2, Hearthstone and the games I play regularly. Just keep my beast for the tough stuff.

With an eye to sticking around in the APU world long term. I just find the whole notion compelling. $2k+ monster machines have kinda lost their appeal for me.

I just hope they keep the new APUs coming... I'm waiting for the next big iteration when Carrizo gen or beyond comes to the desktop. Then it will be time come hell or high water.
 

bit_user

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Sounds like some people couldn't stand Lisa Su anymore.
That hardly seems fair. She's not even been in the job for 6 months and has very impressive credentials. Unless you have some inside gossip to share, I think it takes a lot longer than that to reach any conclusion about her performance. Especially in a semiconductor company, which probably has the second-longest product development times behind auto makers.
 

bit_user

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APUs will always disappoint in the graphics department, unless/until they get a bigger chunk of on-chip RAM (like XBox One) or some faster off-chip RAM (like PS4's GGDR5) or perhaps quad-channel DDR4. Preferably both. Until then, don't give up your discrete GPU.

I also suspect yield problems have been preventing AMD from utilizing the latest process node due to the comparatively large size of their chips (relative to the ARMs and various mobile SoCs, I mean). Adding more GPU muscle will make this worse - not better. As long as APUs are relatively lower-margin parts, serving the lower-end of the market, I don't see this situation changing.
 


haha, yeah i know. But thats not what exec's do! they just give the engineers a task, "here make this happen". and if it doesnt happen they employ a new batch of exec's.....maybe fire some engineers....keep churning till some magic voodoo happens, like with the first Athlon cpu's. To be honest, im still a fan of ditching the inefficient bulldozer core design, taking back that old Phenom II core and tewaking it within an inch of its life.
 

amk-aka-Phantom

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I''ve actually toyed with the idea of running an APU system for most of my computing needs. See if I can get away with < 300W total system power usage and still play Dota2, Hearthstone and the games I play regularly. Just keep my beast for the tough stuff.

... you don't need an APU for that. Just change to a Maxwell card. (And an Intel CPU if you haven't already)
 

bit_user

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Execs have the job of finding the right strategic direction for the company, keeping the investors happy, hiring the right managers to make the organization productive (and good managers hire & retain good engineers), and keeping the money flowing. It's not easy to do all of those things well, again and again. Especially in a highly competitive market.

Put another way, even the best engineers will see their efforts go to waste under bad management. They will become disheartened and probably leave (or at least stop putting in so many nights & weekends).

That said, I do think execs are overpaid. They should get a respectable professional salary, and everything else should come from stock options priced at market value (not discounted), that vest over a long period of time. That's the best way to incentivize long-term health and success of the company. But a lone company can't just start doing that on its own, because it's competing for talent with all the companies playing by the old rules. Part of the solution is to change SEC rules to give investors full control of the board, and end the cozy relationship between boards and CEOs (who currently get to nominate the board members). Boards are supposed to represent the investors' interests.
 

Eximo

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Athlon era dominance only really occurred because of an Intel strategic blunder. They assumed they could take the Pentium 4 architecture to 10 Ghz. They limped along making Pentium H/T and Pentium D for a while. And don't forget Rambus exclusive chips. An entire ecosystem that died very quickly. Then the Core 2 series came out and Intel became a cost effective choice again. Core2Quad really put Intel back on the map. They never really lost the top performance slot, just that during that time AMD's chips were very cost-compelling. Then AMD released the poorly received Phenom series. Twice the cores, but slower single core performance. Phenom II was their last great chip series.

A Phenom II Thuban re-built on a smaller process would be pretty cool.
 

InvalidError

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I would not really call them "cost-compelling" when AMD was every bit as guilty as Intel for charging ~$1000 for their top-bin chips. They did have generally better performance per buck and performance per Watt than the P4s though.

The way Intel was so successful at merging the best from the P3 with the best from the P4 to create the Core2 and leap-jump AMD was impressive.
 

childofthekorn

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Rory Reeds main prerogative was to get AMD back to about neutral. Once the losses were sustainable it is up to Lisa Su in order to get back to financial gain. From the mishap of bulldozer (and server accompanied with it) it sounds like theres a chance they can really bounce back now, but it'll be a long road before they are direct competition with Intel/ARM as both on the PC space and server space there is a bad taste in many a mouth in regards to AMD.
 

xaephod

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AMD needs to make a new FX series CPU which will give Intel a run for its money in the enthusiast market. Maybe a 12 core chip running at 4-5Ghz. Come on AMD! I still have my FX-60 sitting in a box somewhere!
 


An fx cpu with 12 cores is going to use 300-350w of power and require refridgerated cooling. They need a new architecture (or bring back a revamped/tweaked, higher ipc phenom II core).
 

alextheblue

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To be honest, im still a fan of ditching the inefficient bulldozer core design, taking back that old Phenom II core and tewaking it within an inch of its life.
Phenom II was starting to run into issues hitting higher clocks, power efficiency was not very good and IPC had stagnated. Just as an example look at the tweaked K10.5 Llano-based chips. They were 32nm SOI - same process as Trinity/Richland which were based on Piledriver. At those TDPs (100W and below) K10.5 wasn't any better than PD... worse at most TDPs actually. K10 only shone at very high TDPs.

I'm NOT saying BD/PD/et al was the best answer (at least for consumer desktop systems) but their K10 architecture was pretty long in the tooth. A die shrink would only take them so far against Intel. A major overhaul would be required and at this point they've already got a new architecture in development for 2016.

I do think they should have kept K10-based chips around for a bit longer, at least for the high-TDP enthusiast AM3 platform.
 

alextheblue

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quote]Then AMD released the poorly received Phenom series. Twice the cores, but slower single core performance. Phenom II was their last great chip series.[/quote]
What? Phenom (K10) didn't have slower single core performance than previous dual-core Athlons (Brisbane). The fastest Brisbane at the time Phenom launched was the 5200+, which despite it's significant clockspeed advantage was roughly equal to the lower-clocked K10 on single core performance. No, that's not what was wrong with the original Phenom CPUs.

The two biggest faults of the first B2 Phenoms was the TLB bug (which didn't affect typical desktop end-users anyway) and issues with per-core frequency adjustments, which could cause stuttering when threads got shuffled to a down-clocked core until it spooled up. B3 stepping fixed the TLB bug in hardware (which resulted in a very slight performance penalty but not as bad as the software disable fix).

However that did not fix the stuttering. I have heard from several sources the stuttering could be solved by tweaking power management options in the BIOS or in Windows. But alas I do not own a classic Agena Phenom to test this. This was dealt with for the Phenom II/Athlon II.
 

f-14

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YES! ANOTHER ATI EXEC FOULING UP AMD IS GONE!!!!!!!!!!!!
https://www.linkedin.com/pub/john-byrne/20/b17/966
Founder and CEO
Advanced Technologies Inc and VML Ltd
1995 – 2007 (12 years)United Kingdom
Co-founder and CEO of three highly successful Sales, Marketing and Technical Representation companies based in Europe over a 12 year period. Major companies we represented included ATI, Cyberlink, Nvidia, Powerchip Semiconductors, Vanguard Corporation amongst others.

Annual revenues consistently in excess of $150M for the manufacturers represented, resulting in dramatic share growth.

In 2007 and I sold Advanced Technologies Inc. to AMD before I joined as VP of Global Graphics sales.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/colettelaforce
(LOOK WHAT SHE DID TO DELL AND HOW DELL IS FINALLY STARTING TO RECOVER)
Chief Marketing Officer & Global Vice President, Services
Dell Inc.
April 2008 – May 2012 (4 years 2 months)Austin, TX
Served in key leadership positions at Dell, culminating in role as Global Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of the $8 billion Dell Services division. As CMO of Dell Services, spearheaded new cloud, cybersecurity and app modernization marketing, resulting in record revenues and highest Net Promoter scores. Other leadership roles at Dell included leading product marketing for LOBs that accounted for half of Dell's revenues; running marketing for the top 500 global accounts; and managing all of CEO Michael Dell's executive communications and influencer programs.

the only one worth a dam i am sad to see leave is Rajan Naik, he's a pretty damn good engineer, not sure about his strategy leadership but hey when your just the tool reporting to CEO Rory Reed, whose career at Lenovo leaves alot to be desired and can by argued about his success track record at Lenovo being similar to JCPenny CEO Ron Johnson's restructuring rescue.

Senior Vice President, Retail
Apple
January 2000 – October 2011 (11 years 10 months)
Before coming to jcp, Ron spent 11 years on the Executive Team of Apple, where he was responsible for the development and execution of its retail strategy. Under his leadership, Apple opened more than 300 stores worldwide that are heralded for superior design, customer service and store productivity. Ron envisioned a new kind of retail store with lots white space and sean, uncluttered displays where people could experience Apple's products. Ron is credited for many of the in-store innovations that have defined the Apple retail experience, including the Genius Bar, One to One Personal Training and Personal Set Up.

alextheblue.....However that did not fix the stuttering. I have heard from several sources the stuttering could be solved by tweaking power management options in the BIOS or in Windows. But alas I do not own a classic Agena Phenom to test this. This was dealt with for the Phenom II/Athlon II. [quote\]

it was a major pain in the arse to deal with and it could only be done in vista and win7 power management options and forcing windows to run all cores at full throttle as well as in the bios and with added voltage essentially it was just better and easier to overclock them and turn off windows power management. i got rid of mine when win8 came out and had only kept my intel core2 series chips and only upgrading to intel i series thereafter. i only sell amd systems to senior citizens or misers pinching pennies on their electric bills now until AMD get's their memory/fsb bus controller solved.
everything went downhill when AMD bought ATI and put ATI execs in control of AMD. ATI was not a leader or innovator and was in extremely piss poor shape about to go out of business with their X series GPU's and driver nightmares. all the ATI merger contributed was the spread of that plague into AMD's successful cpu area and divert everything necessary from the CPU department to the 2nd rate GPU department. all ATI execs should be handed pink slips and packed off in animal crates to apple.
 
Again? AMD really need to get their shiz together.
- Step 1 - make beefy/efficient cpu to compete with intel
- Step 2 - get a contract to put that, and its gpu's, in all Apple desktops and get it recognised as a "premium" product.
- Step 3 - Now recognised, the average joe consumer might now not be fearful to buy something with "AMD inside" and AMD can finally sell their chips and actually make a profit rather than continually cutting prices.
I think that could work.....

Lets just shrink the processing node to 4nm while we are at it too right?
 

Barantos1

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Seriously the guy that said put them in an apple should think a little bit before responding. Firepro's were in the new mac, and it did nothing. Because no one is gaming on a Apple. They need the benchmarks and the boutique pc places like origin or ibuypower to start featuring equal parts AMD machines. However right now their CPU's can;t compete. Their GPU's did have a great push for a bit, but they are failing to follow up with it and keep things rolling. AMD need to build some CPU's with Horspower again and continue to push GPU power rather than power efficiency. Let the benchmarks speak for themselves.
 
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