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AMD's Plan To Recover From Its Perfect Storm
An anonymous reader writes "TG Daily has an interesting write-up on AMD's big Q1 loss and how the company plans to get back into the black. AMD admitted that Q1 was a meltdown and not just a miss. Looks like cost cutting, including layoffs, may be on the way. But the company says it won't change its overal direction. The CEO Hector Ruiz is quoted as saying, 'We are not going to change our strategy because of one lousy quarter.'"
"It's to early, we are going to wait for a lousy year"
The "stay the course" strategy?
tar -xvf recover.tar
The fact that Intel could go to the C2D architecture from low-end to dual-socket server in the space of 6 months is the killer here. Even if 65 nm Barcelonas can give AMD parity on the high-end and mid-range, it'll be 9-12 months before they're all over AMD's lineup. In graphics, it's the same story. By the time R600 gets out the door, G80 will be all over Nvidia's line-up. AMD has a lot of work to do to catch-up on the speed/specs front.
Keep in mind that AMD recently greatly increased the clock frequency of their CPU's (as noted on slashdot), thereby also increasing the performace of single-thread applications and games.
This may help them get back on track.
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
Yeah, AMD and co's all will eventually succumb to that one corporate stressor...the Lemon Effect. why spend money to engineer a sweeter Kiwi fruit when you have enough copper channels on silicon to call it a good pom...okay, my analogy is a little TOO perfect, I admit...but you all had easy lives growing up in a suburb, I bet, and can't relate to me. I was confused as a child getting affection and torment from the same source, my generic brand microprocessor manager/boss/dad. don't judge.
Why don't AMD switch to using Intel for their processors?
Look at how much good its done for Apple.
liqbase
When the new fabs come online and people are getting hit with blazing 4x4's...
you will know Hector was right all along and you were FOOLS to doubt him!
Fanboi's... Kill this man quietly.
Yes, by all means, let's hear it for Corporate Pride.
Question of curiosity: Where's the DOJ on enforcing antitrust acts? Intel with an 80%+ market share seems to run afoul of the normal calculations used by antitrust rules to determine if a monopoly exists in a particular market and therefore merit a splintering. Has Intel already beat away attempts to do this?
and the decision to with intel.
I was at AMD during the ATI merger and I totally called layoffs in the upcoming quarter. This is what happens when MARKETING runs the company instead of the engineers. AMD makes processors, not "solutions." The moment they start to focus on the meat and potatos again and not the "whatever Intel is doing but with a green palette" the better.
Why did AMD start to eat Intels lunch? Compare the products at the time. Athlon vs. P3. Roughly equiv but the Athlon scaled, and scaled. Intel got scared and made the P4 which tanked because it was slow, drew way too much power, etc. Now that Intel has grown up a bit and caught up, AMD's answer? a 3GHz 120W core. Quad-cores in the future, etc. Where is the power savings? Where is the cheaper process? etc.
The core2 already pretty much beats the AMD64 in every measurable way. It's roughly the same in IPC, has a faster FPU, more cache, takes less power, runs cooler, etc. The only saving grace right now is HT which can help in certain applications.
Where are the lower power AMD64's for desktops/mobiles? Where are the 2MB/4MB cache parts? Where's the faster FPU? (the latter bit is coming up this year iirc)...
This isn't to say the AMD folk are bright people. The Athlon was a fairly performance driven design for the day, and the improvements in process have kept it in the running (anyone remember how hot the K7's ran?). But sadly I see AMD lagging behind Intel in both design and process for the fair length of future. Which is a shame because I've been a fanboi for a long time and would love to see AMD processors in my workstation in the future (right now it's a E6600 core2).
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
The big problem with AMD is not their processor lineup, it's their business process. They lost $600 mil on $1.2 billion on revenue. That means they needed almost two billion dollars *pinky finger to mouth* to break even. Sure, R&D is expensive, but not that expensive. They need to cut back on expenses to stay in the game.
... for a lousy half-dollar, then?
"How many lousy quarters does it take, Hector, before it becomes wrong? Hmm? A thousand, fifty thousand, a million? How many quarters does it take, Hector?"
FTA- "Looks like cost cutting, including layoffs, may be on the way" AMD has already frozen hiring this year.
I would change one thing. AMD should come out against DRM and refuse to make products that limit what the user can do with his/her own media.
It it just one bad quarter thought? It should be clear to slashdotters that AMD's in deep shit now (no serious advances in processors, total lack of new graphics cards), but IIRC AMD posted a ~$550 billion loss in Q4 2006, so this isn't "just this one quarter".
1. Get rid of people.
2. The beatings will increase until morale improves.
3. ???
4. Profit!
I've got some real serious problems with capitalism. I don't have a solution, but I recognize feces when I smell it.
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
In the very specific and narrow subset of "processors only used in computers (laptops, desktops and servers)".
BUT overall, the ARM is probably the most widespread architecture by far, once you exist the computers market and look for all produced processors.
In fact, if you count it as a processor, maybe the PICs are being even much more widespread than the rest.
On those markets, although Intel is also a producer of embedable RISC CPUs, it isn't the only producer.
Never underestimate the modern world of electronics where even a fridge is microprocessor-controlled.
In fact several components inside a PC or connected to it have their own RISC CPU :
- on-board target controller on harddrives, may use generic RISCs.
- most advanced host controller with real hardware acceleration (true hardware RAID) use small embed CPUs.
- Highend hardware monitor
- Advanced network card with either accelerator or even-when-turned-off-diagnosis
- Protection handling of optical drivers.
- WiFi card.
- Pretty much everything else inside your computer that has a firmware.
- the printer and its Postscript or PCL interpreter (except if it's WinPrinter)
- external enclosure with advanced functions
- the DSL router
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
>> "We are not going to change our strategy because of one lousy quarter."
Without the benefit of insider knowledge, that statement wasn't hugely informative. There are so many changes afoot that it's almost impossible to forecast anything at all concerning the CPU companies at the present time.
The acquisition of ATI really complicated things, not only for share speculators but from a tech standpoint too. And while it doesn't necessarily mean that Intel will hitch up with nVidia (it seems not, given that the GMA965/X3000 competes with nVidia's lower-end offering), it does mean that both of those companies will have to respond very strongly to whatever develops from the joining of AMD and ATI. This whole area will become even more hectic than usual I think, once we start to see the fruits of the acquisition.
One of the things that will undoubtedly be on many Linux user's minds is whether the legendary disinterest of ATI in properly supporting Linux will change for the better. Once Microsoft shed nVidia in favor of ATI on going from Xbox 1 to Xbox 360, the likelihood of any such improvement plummetted drastically for obvious reasons, but the influence of AMD could of course be the exact opposite, since AMD can't afford to alienate the Linux market, one imagines.
But while we can hope that AMD will have a positive effect on ATI's attitude towards the FOSS community, what if the opposite happens, and by being tightly coupled to GPU hardware, AMD's CPUs start to lose the openness that has been traditional among CPU manufacturers until now? It's certainly a possibility, and a matter of enormous concern.
Which brings me back to the quote from TFA. It would really help AMD I think if the company removed some of the uncertainty or ambiguity in its position w.r.to FOSS as a result of the ATI thing. "No change" is a rather meaningless statement when their CPU and GPU divisions have diametrically opposite tendencies.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
1. Issue press release decrying DRM and refuse to support it at a hardware level.
2. Announce and develop proper linux support for the ATI range.
3. ???
4. Profit!
"No, no, no, don't tug on that! You never know what it might be attached to."
But remember, the CPU space is extremely competitive. And AMD is enduring some serious pain absorbing ATI right now. Horizontal mergers like this rarely go very well, because it's extremely difficult to reconcile the business cultures. OTOH, AMD really needs ATI's chipsets so they can build up a completely power optimized mobile lineup. Laptops are where all the growth is these days, and AMD just hasn't been competing too well in that space. Not to mention their long term integration plans.
Anyway, I'd expect AMD's road to be pretty rocky for a while longer. ATI merger plus limited fab capacity plus Intel no longer fucking up equals more pain than you can imagine. Can they survive and get back to their awesome execution that carried them through K7 and K8? I sure hope so. We need this competition to keep the pace of technology improvement up.
I'm not sure if I speak for anyone else, but the reason I stopped buying amd is because of the merger with ati.
/that/ bad, right?" wrong. Therefore, if AMD is going to force me to buy an ATI chipset, while still neglecting ATI support for linux, I'm going to go elsewhere.
ATI has consistently made horrendous linux drivers. They don't keep up to date, and they completely abandon "legacy" cards. Nvidia cards, however, have excellent drivers for linux, and always have. For that reason, I buy Nvidia cards over ATI ones.
With this new merger, however, it's become nigh-impossible to find a decent, small laptop which has an amd processor and an nvidia graphics chipset. I ran into this problem when buying my current laptop and thought "well, they're owned by amd now, they can't be
Intel, on the other hand, has an excellent driver for their graphics chipset, and it's even open-source. They might be the monopoly, but as far as linux is concerned, they actually seem to listen. My next laptop will be all Intel for that reason.
AMD, I've used your processors religiously for years, but if you're going to forsake your linux guys by forcing us to use ati graphics hardware with crummy drivers, don't wonder why your market share is going down. I know I'm not the only one.
"I was at AMD during the ATI merger and I totally called layoffs in the upcoming quarter."
Damn! They fired the janitor. Now I'm pissed!
How will AMD recover if they lose the business of 1 Linux geek out of a potential market of 50 million per year?
$550 Billion in a quarter!
No wonder the American economy is in trouble. At this rate, in a year AMD will have blown 1/6 of the country's GDP!
A few dozen slashdot sales aughta fix their financial woes right quick.
Perhaps it is just bathing time? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_bath/
I used to like AMD but in the last 2 years all they have accomplished is messing things up for themselves. And when they bought ATI I knew they where going to mess that up also. Thats what they get for their nickle dimeming their user base with their incremental rip-off speed boosts when intel was down they had their chance and they wasted it. I have been waiting for an new DX10 ATI All in Wonder since last Dec and ATI still hasn't released an new card in any form. So soon im going to buy a Nvidia if AMD/ATI cant get thier act together they deserve what they get.
The stock is right at where it ended the year in 1999. A great many other tech companies from that era are no more, or are trading at pennies on the dollar. Since 2000 AMD has handed Intel their hat time and again. Ruiz is doing great work.
That said, his engineers had better pull a rabbit out of their hat. Today he's getting stomped by a very angry Chipzilla, and Chipzilla looks like the type that holds a grudge for a looong time.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Captain Smith is quoted as saying "We're not going to change direction because of one iceberg."
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The Core is great for everything. A high end Core 2 Duo is really fast, and fairly efficient. However that's not the only place it's good. A Core Solo is downright killer for low power laptops. It's still pretty zippy on modern apps, yet uses a very minimal amount of power. And everything in-between is covered.
That's the big thing. It's not just on the high end market AMD is having problems, it is the whole lineup, at least when it comes to processors. The Core series just rules, doesn't matter what level you are interested in them for.
It worries me. I'm an Intel fan, and have been for a long time, ever since having massive problems with Athlons back in the KT133 days, but AMD is the thing that's been forcing Intel to develop new technologies so fast. I sure don't want a single processor vendor out there for desktops. However unless they get their act together, we could be looking at that.
It's not like they have to beat Intel at every level, either. They could go the higher performance, without so much regard to power consumption route or something. But when Intel is beating you at basically everything, that just won't work.
"'We are not going to change our strategy because of one lousy quarter.'"
If you have a lousy quarter, it means you might have a lousy strategy and that you failed to learn from business management 101 that if you take a loss, you have to change the strategy so next quarter you won't take a loss.
In other words, if you take a loss, something is wrong. It is like having a 104 degree Fahrenheit temperature, and then doing nothing about it. Seriously, WTF?
Oh I am AMD, I have a 104 fever, so I'll do nothing about it, oh gosh, now its 105, still doing nothing maybe it will go away next quarter.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Is that recently AMD's best chipsets for desktop systems have come from nVidia. AMD themselves seems to be unwilling or unable to make desktop chipsets, and thus relies on third parties. Of those, nVidia is constantly cited by AMD heads as the one to get. This is even more the case now that nVidia owns ULi and thus the market is reduced by one.
Well, though they haven't said anything, I bet nVidia has kind of a "fuck you" attitude after the ATi buyout. This seems to be confirmed by the fact that nVidia's latest, greatest chipset is currently for Intel only, and has been for some time.
This could screw AMD over if ATi doesn't get good chipsets out the door for them. You can make the most bitchin processor you want, if you don't have a good chipset for it to run on it isn't going to be something worth buying. This is especially true for OEMs. Hobbyists might be ok with a board that doesn't really follow specs and crashes to save some dollars, but the OEMs won't have any of it.
Intel has at least one 45nm fab going online now, and they are producing engineering samples. That means that while AMD will get some gains from going 65nm, they are probably not going to be worth much since Intel will be getting similar gains from a better process.
It seems like this need a better architecture, not just a size shrink. The size shrink will just keep them at where they are now, in relation to Intel, not gain any ground.
And it's been all downhill since.
Question: if you are an underdog in a hypercompetitive industry, when a little success comes your way and you are finally climbing out of debt, do you:
(a) Stop what you are doing and deeply indebt yourself in order to enter another cutthroat industry largely outside of your expertise?
(b) Freaking invest in your core competencies while you have the chance?
AMD did a lot of the former and a little of the latter. How long will it be until they spin off ATI at a multi-billion dollar loss?
To be fair, Intel got their act together in short order. However, I have to wonder if AMD could have maintained their lead if they weren't gathering wool. For at least 25 years, the market has continually payed through the nose for leading edge general purpose computing power, and AMD was finally beginning to grab a share of that high-margin turf - from a competitor an order of magnitude larger!
And they gave it all up for socket compatible GPUs, which, unlike the core2, are nowhere to be seen.
*sigh*
Time to add 0.50 SGI advantage-squandering units to AMD's tally... I hope that their accelerator gambit pays off. I hope even though I know better.
Seriously, how did you guys plan to put 512mb of multilinked DDR3 on a die + an entire video accelerator? Did you plan on doing UMA? Please tell me this isn't the unmitigated disaster it appears to be...
AMD has never been entirely "on top", but as long as they were beating Intel, they were hot, and enthusiasts wanted AMD. Now that Intel's Core 2 is beating the Opteron in nearly every test, the speed freeks have jumped ship. The fact is, Intel is on top no matter what. So for AMD to have any kind of fighting chance at a share of the market, they HAVE to be better and faster than Intel. The underdog must beat the top dog or die.
So, if AMD's planned direction doesn't involve a CPU that beats the Core 2, I don't know how they're going to reverse their negative growth.
It might suggest that. It might suggest they expended too much juice trying to float the Itanic, leaving so little for innovation in the 2-8 processor server space and desktops that AMD caught up and earned some props. Whichever, AMD is about to pull a Cyrix if they don't find the magic shortcut to 32nm without going through the intermediate steps.
The law does not prohibit monopoply. The law prohibits the abuse of monopoly to stifle competition. Intel is going to have to take great care to avoid the appearance of abuse of monopoly. The best way (and the one I expect, hurrah!) is to continue to innovate at such breakneck speed that poor little AMD just can't keep up. I hope they leave AMD enough share to limp along behind them. It might be hard to justify huge R&D budgets to the stockholders when you're completely alone in the field, and we'd go back to no progress at all in short order.
I'll take a 8 core 16W notebook cpu as soon as I can get it. Please include the chipset with eSATA and external PCIe V2.0 x32. If they must call it Centrino, please save the pc-card slot for an add-on wireless card because even my 12 yr old knows Centrino is the ancient Aramaic word for "sucky wireless." Maybe a new notebook chipset brandname? Is it too late to call the new double-the-pins socket the "T2"? That would be cute.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Biz 101 also till you that you have the spend money to make money and to look at the long term not the short term.
The company has really been doing a good job in terms of processor technology.
Maybe a company with less than 20% market share should stop sneezing at 5%+ of the market and start aggressively supporting Linux? They could start by high quality open source support for 3D graphics. They might consider driving the adoption of Linux-ready PCs and laptops through some kind of initiative (machines with working wireless, power management, 3D with open source drivers).
A key principle in business (and armed conflict), is to reinforce success. You direct your resources to where you are strongest, and your opponent is weakest.
.. and being flexible enough to change the plan to suit circumstances. Unexpected opportunities usually have short timeframes before they get patched up - you have to strike whilst the iron is hot, and sink the boot in hard when your opponent is down.
.. witness the Intel open source graphics chips .. winning back the hearts and minds where they know they are weakest.
.. and reinforce it .. then they deserve to die.
You exploit breakthroughs and follow them through. You dont waste resources by throwing them against minefields and barbed wire in some hope to wear your oppoent down over time, especially when you are out-gunned.
Sometimes this means seeing and adapting to opportunities that arrise, which were never part of the original plan
Intel is clearly the opponent of AMD in this contest. Intel's core2duo product consistently outperforms AMD's product on just every windows centric benchmark.
However, when it comes to 64bit linux, the AMD chips are arguably better performing than the core2duo. Never mind the price - AMD already wins there - Im saying that AMD64 X2's run 64bit linux better than Intel Core2Duos. People BUY these dual core AMD CPU's because they make great linux boxes.
Linux is AMD's unplanned, surprise strength. With a good general at the helm, they should have seen this for what it was - an unexpected weakness in the opponents line - and then followed through on it. Rather than slash the price to the bone, which is equivalent to a human wave attack to break a minefield, they should have positioned the AMD64 X2 at that point as 'The 64bit Linux CPU', and done something significant to get ATi video drivers in a state which is attractive to the OSS crowd.
But no, like General Haig at the Somme, its 'one more charge across the wire and we should break through', reinforcing failure and leaving their actual advantage unsupported.
Meanwhile, it appears that Intel understand whats going down, and doing something about it
People whinge and whine about multi-core chips, claiming 'there is no software that takes advantage of it yet', which is total crap - Linux thrives on multicore chips, even as a desktop. LAMP is inherently multi threaded. Again, its Intel leading the core count here not AMD. Everything indicates that Intel is addressing it's weaknesses when it comes to being the best bang for the buck Linux platform.
If AMD are too short sighted to recognise their real strength in the market
If they lose $600 million on $1.2 billion in revenue, then $2 billion in revenue should net them a loss of $1 billion. "Losing money on every sale, trying to make it up in volume."
What they need is a shortcut past 65 and 40nm directly to 32. Where's John Titor when you need him?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
This is what it's like when you're the little guy and you ink the big deal with Dell. Dell gets all your production at less than cost and the channel you built your business on gets too little to sustain their ecosystem so they abandon you. As soon as Dell realizes they're your only friend, they want you to pay them to take your product. It's like working with Wal-Mart, except Bill Gates gets a commission on every sale.
They probably can't extricate themselves from the Dell deal. Apparently too many ATI engineers also just remembered their stock options vested a while ago. Intel seems to remember again that their job is to invent stuff that people will want, not sell people stuff Intel wants to invent. Basically AMD is screwed.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
YOU, yes you are whats wrong today. You and your attitude is what drives companies out of business, which FAR to many people have. You want immediate gratification for you stock value. Back in the old days companies were invested in, not bet upon, by people who viewed investments in increments of 5,10 or even 20 years. They looked for dividends, not windfall profits. Back when companies actualy paid dividends people made a good return on their investments. These days with every pencil pushing asshole in NYC screaming SELL SELL SELL at the top of their lungs if a company misses "The Streets" target by even a few pennies, its surprising that a publicly traded company even stays in business.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
You download driver binaries, and an open source wrapper that ties it into your kernel, but the drivers themselves are still closed source.
That being said, there is an unofficial open source nvidia driver about (X.org server uses it by default on nvidia cards), but it was considerably slower then the official drivers, and had horrible 3d acceleration, last i used it.
Still, at least there has always been strong linux support from nvidia, if only i could say the same with ati some day in the future.
To avoid criticism; Say nothing, Do nothing, Be nothing.
Those little black arrows on that graph indicate splits. I would not expect someone making such an uninformed comment to know that, so I figure I'd try to clue you in. Also, unless you missed the past 5 or so year, the Athlon hasn't done too shabby. Remember, just because the cyclic nature of the chip sector has swung back to intels favor doesn't mean AMD is or has been worthless.
I agree with you statements. My dad is of the "old days" and frowns upon the newer generation. I do too, because what I learned from him. On the other hand, it is still perfectly possible to invest in the long term and get dividends. The only difference, is that you won't get really-really-fucking-rich which is what happens when you have a lucky streak with in what you just described. The old way is to secure yourself, the new way is to have a chance to get rich quick.
Somehow the American dream (if I understood it correctly as a European) to "make it" by hard work and perseverance has been replaced by "get rich quick". I might have misunderstood though.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Oh for crying out loud. Just open up the Radeon drivers already. Release the next CrossFire chipset with LinuxBIOS. If you're going to be the underdog, you might as well get back your street cred. Maybe some researchers at some university will do something cool like a commodity grid of vector processors. Then you'll find some new, unexpected niche for high energy simulations or something like that.
That and all of us ordinary Joes will be able to get fully open source AMD laptops. Which would be cool, too.
For several years now AMD has had the lower price AND the superior product. They have always been the underdog but being both fast and cheap is a winning combination and has gained them market share. Now all the sudden Intel has turned the tides and now has the faster chip.
All those geeks who recommended and purchased AMD have turned around and begun buying intel because intel tops the benchmarks for once. I think AMD's price cuts are an excellent move, AMD had begun to be priced like Intel and this makes them more competative. If I have $200 to spend on a processor, I want the fastest processor I can get for $200, not the fastest series processor. Intel still has the fastest processor but I can get a faster AMD chip for $200.
I don't think a comeback is likely.
I love internet hysteria. I suspect AMD will continue to supply good 64-bit workstation and server parts and survive in the home-build "value" niche while working to increase their whitebox and OEM sales.
I don't quite understand how AMD are falling so far behind in the performance race.
They have what, on paper, should be a superior architecture. Core is excellent, but it's still an evolution of a 32-bit design and handicapped by the FSB. With a clean-sheet 64-bit design, Hypertransport and an on-die memory controller, AMD should easily be able to put out something competitive with Intel's offerings. As soon as their 65nm process was up and running they should have followed Intel's Lead and put 2 dies in one package to create a 4-core chip. The architecture is already designed to scale to at least 8-way (Opteron), and they have the advantage that they can link the cores internally via hypertransport. This would need very little R&D - it would just be a new configuration of proven technology.
I hear that in pure 64-bit operation things are much closer anyway, and that's obviously the way of the future.
I think that the merger was a really stupid idea. By this move, both AMD and ATI have gained a lot more competitors.
Nvidia used to make (the best) chip sets for AMD processors. But they are also competing with ATI, so they may concentrate on Intel chip sets.
Intel has just started making stand alone graphics card, that you could use with an AMD CPU. But why should they make life easy for AMD customers? I guess they may change the bus or otherwise bind the cards to an Intel CPU/chip set.
And ATI makes graphics card for Intel or AMD based PCs. But I have the feeling that it will get an awful lot more difficult to support the Intel platform.
Anticompetitive you say? Yes, probably, but so was the AMD/ATI merger. And in the end it may leave AMD fans with little choice, poor chip sets and graphics cards with poor driver support.
Ahemm, whats the third kind then?
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
I'm only 30, and I've never thought the 'American Dream' was anything but 'get rich quick.' I mean, sure, maybe 200 years ago. But even in the early 1900s, all the movies show immigrants coming to America and suddenly they have nice clothes and smiles. Just from moving here.
It's been a LONG time since the 'American Dream' was portrayed as anything but 'move to America and be fat and happy'.
As for the stock market, my Dad is caught in the middle. He watches it short term (daily, ugh!) but says he wants it as a long-term investment. He curses day-traders constantly. I just stay away from it. I figure it'll eventually settle down again and be an investment, and if it doesn't, it isn't what I want anyhow.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
YOU, yes you are whats wrong today. You and your attitude is what drives companies out of business, which FAR to many people have.
This is quite arrogant, given said companies operate with this guy's money (and other people like him). If he wouldn't initially fund the company, that company would end its life much sooner, wouldn't it.
You can't expect casual people to think 5-10 or 20 years in the future. That's also quite arrogant. If you want to make the rules, just keep your company privately owned.
If people go public, it's maybe since having those extra funds (even if volatile) is better than not having any additional funds at all. Think about that.
I can't imagine they wouldn't want to enter another market, and could certainly 'extend' x86 and modify windows to favor their extended parts.
Hector Ruiz needs to go. Would anybody have given AMD a change against Intel 5 years ago, yet they actually managed to get a performance lead and caught Intel napping. And now AMD have squandered the lead and only god knows when and if they will ever have it again. This was a historic opportunity to solidify AMD and they have botched it. Somebody needs to pay and laying off employees will not do, management needs to own up and pay the price for this historic blunder so that new heads can try to correct this and keep AMD alive and flying high.
I am just really surprised that there has not been rumors of a AMD takeover.
Let's not forget that a year ago these same wizards were telling everyone that AMD stock was the most splendid in the universe. Their perspectives are essentially meaningless. They make their money basically from the volume of trading, so every bit of advice aims at churning the market.
The real question for AMD is what their geniuses are up to, and whether management will convert that, over the time between now and "out of cash." Intel doesn't look stupid today, but it didn't look stupid a couple of years back either. What genius does is make the competition look stupid in retrospect. If AMD is working on something that will do that again, the last people to know will be the Wall Street Hooligans - because if it were that open Intel would be warned too.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Yes it is amazing how slashdot lets it's prejudices dictate it's thinking. The post you relied to is the second one complaining about DRM and Linux support.* The problems I've seen here is that slashdot doesn't understand either companies or their markets. Someone didn't even know ATI makes chipsets.
*Besides servers don't need strong graphics support.
"They might consider driving the adoption of Linux-ready PCs and laptops through some kind of initiative (machines with working wireless, power management, 3D with open source drivers)."
Like Wal-Mart did? Oh wait! That didn't work out. You OSS geeks and your obsessions.
"They could start by high quality open source support for 3D graphics."
Like Nvidia? Oh wait! Binary blob. You OSS geeks and your obsessions. Can't you all say something original for once? You're embarassing yourselves by pretending that the universe sways to your drummer. Of course if it did, then you all wouldn't be complaining.
Still, I too am afraid of people who won't look longer term then 3 weeks or 3 months. Buy and hold is a great idea!
my 2 cents
- Mike
Once you've lost your temper, you've lost the argument - Me
Gotta say, even if that was a backhanded comment, it is true that if you want to keep anything relevant or pure, you have to stay privately owned. I was having this discussion with my girlfriend yesterday. The fickleness of the stock market immediately places a company under scrutiny for decisions. You either have to be growing in market penetration, growing in market share, or cutting costs to maintain today's investors. Once you start cutting costs, it spirals downward from there.
I've noticed "going public" as the defining moment in most companies of when they take a turn for the worse. However, some companies once they go public are able to maintain their decency for a short period of time while they continue to expand in marketshare or penetration. Companies, however, once they are done growth in a particular segment are forced to either go into other market segments (generalizing their company to become a "jack of all trades") or are doomed to die a slow death, cutting costs until they have no customers left to attract a single investor.
My comments were made as I was eating at "Baha Fresh", for those of you who don't know, it's a taco-bell style chain, privately owned, partially expanded. I didn't know whether it was true or not at the time, but I said that it was probably privately owned, because it was still worth eating at. Publically owned companies eventually become gutted skeleton companies for the pleasing of the investor. People here often say that users of Google services aren't the customer, they are the product. Well, then I say to you that to most publically traded companies, the "customer" is the product as well. They are the people who the company can show as an influx of income in order to attract investors, investors being the primary concern. The business starts changes to cater to the investors, which sometimes are at odds with the customer. Often the investor isn't a customer him/herself and doesn't care about the outcome as long as his/her investment is realized. The net result: the company goes from startup hotshot, to generic buying up everything monster, to eventually gutted cost cutting operation to a worthless piece of trash that nobody would buy a stick of gum from. It happened to K-Mart, it'll happen to Walmart, it happens to all of them. McDonalds, IMO, is the primary example. Once you sell your company to the world, you are no longer a company that is interested in making a "clean, family place to eat", you begin instead selling what the investors think you should be selling.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
But Biz201 tells you that you need to take care of your shareholders and give them a return on their investments. If not, they will sell their stocks causing your company stock to be less in value. How can you do that if you have a loss?
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Remember back when Intel had no competition? Remember the shit we had to deal with like P3 and P4?
Yeah...
Here's to hoping AMD gets their act together and stays competitive -- otherwise there probably won't be any significant processor improvements for the next decade.
I'm personally happy AMD is going through a rough patch at the moment, I'm loading up on them for the long term. They've shown they can beat Intel at the x86 game and have a long-term vision. I think the next few decades will follow a similar pattern of leap-frogging and continual chipping away at Intel marketshare.
AMD is still kicking Intel's ass when it comes to power savings where it matters: Idle CPU power thanks to Cool'n'Quiet. Comparable AMD/Intel processors will have the AMD processor idling at 20-30w less than the Intel counterpart. That is a 30-40% power reduction, huge! Imagine if you have an office full of desktop computers and how much money that will save you in electricity, not to mention cooling costs in the summer.
Think about it, how much of your day is spent with your processor doing actual work compared to doing waiting for user input? If you're a typical desktop user, 70-90% of the time your computer is on is sitting there doing nothing.
Here's an article comparing to nearly identical AMD/Intel desktop systems on SilentPCReview.com:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article735-page1.ht
Performance and price of the two systems is very similar (with the AMD system being a bit cheaper and also tending to perform a bit better thanks to it's integrated Nvidia graphics card), but the power savings of the AMD is simply staggering with it idling below 50w and the Intel system idling over 75w.
AMD processors are the processor of choice for anyone looking to build a low power system that still performs well.
This is totally OT but its funny you bring up your personal experience regarding C2D and AMD.
It is the exact same thing I went through myself. I've used AMD for almost 10 years now and the C2D was the first Intel processor I have bought during that time (ever since Celeron 300).
And just to take your story one step further: I shorted AMD the day after I bought my Intel chip.
Why? Because I am a techie and a big fan of AMD. The fact that Intel had a better offering was the first time I had seen that situation in 10 years. That tells me something is very wrong at AMD.
Turns out, I was right. The stock has absolutely tanked (and I made quite a bit of hay on it)
Intel is getting ready to finish AMD off once and for all, and the only thing the crippled AMD can do is hope to pull a magic rabbit out of their ass.
But that's the thing: it's in Intel's best interest to have AMD around. Not powerful or competitive -- but around.
Let's not forget the Intel monopoly issues involved. Intel NEEDS AMD to help keep the heat off of them for anti-competitive practices. As long as AMD is there, Intel can point and say "there's your competition". If AMD goes, then Intel is definitely a monopoly.
I call on AMD frequently (in Austin). I won't say what I sell but it is advanced enough that the people I sell to are usually senior engineering types.
I can only add that most of the people I call on are "paycheck" players. That's not a judgement, just a statement of opinion after working with them for several years. So much of their corporate life (pay, benefits, company future, etc) is dictated by NOT-them, that I can't say I blame them.
I mean, even if you are the best engineer in the world, what can you do if your company has to go to the capital markets because it needs cash and can't generate enough itself? You can have the greatest product in the world and if you don't run the business like a business -- it means jack shit. All of your hard engineering work and the discipline you apply is totally wiped out because a CxO of somekind ordered too much inventory. Or didn't build a plant when he needed to. Or backed the wrong technology. Or.....(on and on it goes)
A lot of people at AMD recognize that.
Everybody loves to gamble.
Ehm, you really shouldn't generalize like that. I for one do not like to gamble and actually never do. My sister has said to be that when she hears me saying "I bet that...", she never bets with me because I only say that when I'm 100% sure that I'm going to win. There is truth in that. I think gambling is a total and utter waste of money and is not fun at all.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I'm 30 too, and I have been told that the American dream was "from dishwasher to millionaire". Now nowhere it states that you have to work hard for that, but I inherently assumed that. Probably my upbringing, I blame my parents. ;-)
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
If I may wax a bit philosophically for a minute, it's hard to live life without gambling a bit. Driving is a gamble, and you bet with your life. Even if you are the best driver in the world, that won't always protect you. Both my parents were injured in separate accidents when they were stopped at a stop sign. Eating out at a restaurant is a gamble too; a percentage, and I'm not sure how large or small it is, you could get food poisoning. I did once eating at a fast food place, bad enough that I ended up in the hospital, even though my girlfriend whose meal was in the same order did not get sick. Swimming in the ocean; well a few people each year get hurt from waves, sharks, jellies, etc. That too is a gamble. So, in the narrow sense of going to Vegas, you're right everyone doesn't gamble, but in the larger sense that any risk you take; even buying a mutual fund or a bond; hell even a FDIC insured savings account is still betting that both the bank and the US Government will be able to back your money... even paper money itself.. it's only backed by a promise... ain't no gold backing it any more... regardless of how many tons of gold are in 'ol Fort Knox... it don't come close to covering all they print!
Anyway, thanks for the excuse to take that leap of fancy. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it.
- Mike
Once you've lost your temper, you've lost the argument - Me
The Core 2 Duos may be king, but the X2 is significantly less expensive.
Cheapest X2 worth getting is something like 99$ retail (Canadian, so like 85$ USD) (the 3800+) while the cheapest Core 2 Duo worth getting is something like 210$ (Canadian again, the 1.83GHz that can be easily over-clocked) and on top of that, LGA775 mobos cost a lot more than AM2 ones too.
So going with the X2 might actually give decent performance-for-price. I know I'm buying the X2 3800+; I don't have the extra 150$ for a mighty Core 2 Duo, and no matter how great it is, that 150$ BURNS.
AMD needs to bring open-source ATI drivers, and plan better AMD & ATI devices. I promise you that in the long term, those three decisions will lead to a better AMD, and so a better Intel, basicly making the whole market (Except VIA) skyrocket.
Just be patient fellow Slashdotters!
-- Jorophose, too lazy to log in
Oh, I understand how you mean gambling now. I call that "the risks of life". When I read "gambling" is has a co-notation of monetary involvment. So playing roulette is gambling, playing the lottery is gambling, uninformed investment in stock is gambling, but driving is not, taking the plane is not.
So, no I wasn't trying to be funny... It was all in the definition. And yes, I need to lighten up, but it's hard. My wife has been hospitalized since last friday. This has of course no place here, but you're right that I need to lighten up, but not for the reasons you think.
Oh, and paper money is based on debt, that's why it isn't backed by gold anymore. ;-)
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Well, all I can say is that I hope your wife gets better soon.
And hopefully to make you laugh, I'll quibble over one thing you wrote; about the money being based off of debt. It's still a gamble because we believe that the government will be able to pay off that debt; if we didn't then it wouldn't be worth anything. Again, betting that they will be able to pay off that debt, is a risk, taking said risk, a gamble, even if it's a very safe risk.
The core of my argument is that taking a risk, any risk no matter how minor, is a gamble. Admittedly, that core may be rotten, but as Obi Wan told Luke, "Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view." I always like to bring the Trilogy into my arguments. (sarsasm) It really adds weight to them. (/sarcasm)
- Mike
Once you've lost your temper, you've lost the argument - Me
Hey, I took a risk when I married her.... You can write off that as a gamble. :-)
As for the debt part, it isn't the government: the banks create money using debt.... There is no backing, I know....
Our currencies only survive on trust and proper financial policy. If any of those goes, it's a lost bet... OOPS? Have I been caught gamlbing?
Thanks for the well-wishes for Mrs Shark. :-D
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)