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AMD To Shed 10% of Its Workforce
stress_life writes "Recent rumors about AMD firing 5% of its workforce proved to be understated. AMD just announced that the company is going to deliver pink slips to 1600-1700 workers, or around 10% of its employees. AMD needs revenue of $2 billion per quarter, but Q1'08 is expected to come in around $1.5 billion. These firings have to be complete by Q3'08, the quarter by which Hector Ruiz promised to be profitable." We most recently discussed AMD's struggles in February.
AMD dies, then Intel will jack their rates up about double.
We saw something like this with Blu-Ray when HDDVD was announced to be dead.
And Via.. Well, they're VIA. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
What is wrong with amateur ducks?
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
I guess AMD buying ATi didn't help things either (?).
They're all quacks of course.
Too bad about the layoffs, though. I think this is going to get worse (across the whole economy) before it gets better. Business is so slow that my state's tax revenues have plummeted.
People that I have talked to in the transportation business seem to think the recession already took place from around mid last year into this quarter, but now they think the economy is recovering. They are basing this on a rather dramatic falloff in freight shipments and then a recovery.
This followed a similar pattern in the early 1990s.. that is, by the time Clinton said "It's the economy stupid", the recession was already technically over. It's just now the pundits and papers need something to scare people with to sell more punditry and their papers.
This is my sig.
They can just make it up through overclocking !
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Actualy, nobody has chance against the "Intel Inside" propaganda. It's just too cool.
Once you've heard the real deal MONSTER GOLD INSULATED PRO EDITION DUCK(TM) than you can't settle for any less quality duck. I wouldn't expect a non-audio lover like yourself to understand though! Such swine is so prevalent on /. these days. Amateur ducks!
I got a catholic block.
I wonder if they will be getting rid of the people who decided to release the Phenom X3s and the energy efficient Phenom X4 with the TLB bug intact? By releasing a lot of new chips at the same time, some with the fix and some without, it seems as though AMD are trying to confuse people into buying buggy chips with awful performance.
Apparently we have to wait even longer before this mess will be cleared up. Is it any surprise that revenue is down?
I guess they are at the ass end of the competition right now. Too bad.
Child voice from the back: Is it a recession yet?
Bush administration: No
Child: Is it a recession yet?
Bush administration: No
Radio: AMD cuts workforce by 10%
Child: Is it a recession yet?
Bush administration: DON'T MAKE ME TURN THIS ECONOMY AROUND YOUNG MAN!
Compatible? Not really.
AMD states that AM2+ is downward compatible with the AM2 socket. That's not the whole truth of course. The Phenom processor is so choke full of bugs that the required microcode updates basically need an 8 meg BIOS to hold them. Most AM2 mobos only have a 4 meg BIOS chip, so that claim is a lie when it's applied to reality.
So if you want a Phenom chip, you pretty much HAVE TO buy a AM2+ motherboard which are pretty new and use the so-so ATI chipsets. Anyway, how about not changing socket every year?
AMD has been screwing itself all by itself with its bugs and other business inabilities.
My advice: don't be an AMD customer until they get their act together (if that ever happens.)
But Bluray drives dropped in price by almost half when HDDVD kicked it. They were about $250-$300 then, and are about $150 now.
If there is anything we don't need its the government trying to stop recessions from happening. Remember that recession that turned into the Great Depression? We don't need any more "experimenting" with the economy like Hoover and FDR did.
Creative Demolition
I'm not an economist, but I have a good head on my shoulders and I have a masters in business. Help me understand how AMD hopes to turn around their company by laying off 10% of their staff? They're hoping the remaining 90% demoralized, repressed, deflated staff will do it? What are the chances the 10% that walk out the door may be their best and brightest and may have the answers to turn their company around?
It drives me crazy when companies think that the only way out of their mess is to lay off the staff, when the people responsible for the mess (board of directors and executive), don't give themselves a pay cut of 10%. Chances are, knowing how US exeuctives pay themselves, it would proably equal the amount saved laying off 10% of their staff. But what do I know?
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. - Peter F. Drucker
Did anybody else have the urge to lookup Howard The Duck on IMDB after reading the parent? :)
Weird I know...
This space is not for rent.
They're firing 10% of their workforce. Not "shedding" them. Is "lay off" not enough of a euphemism? Now we're going to use "shed"?
Only because they are "obsolete".
Coincidently, just as HD-DVD died, Blue-Ray Live just came out. So the crappy old Blu-Ray drives are discounted and replaced with new ones for about $100 more than the old ones were.
At the end of the day, there's only one good Blu-Ray drive: Playstation 3 40GB.
Depending on the jurisdiction, "laying off" someone is different legally from "firing" them. Where I live, when you fire someone, you have to do it for cause, but you don't have to give notice or pay in lieu of notice; When you lay someone off, you can do it for any reason (or no reason), but you have to give notice or pay in lieu of notice.
http://outcampaign.org/
Hopefully the ones layed off will be the geniuses from ATI who made the decision to stop publishing the interface between the drivers and the card.
http://outcampaign.org/
I just bought reasonable home AMD box for $300 from Tigerdirect.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
"Dell Job Cuts to Top 8,800 as U.S. Spending Slows" (Dude! You're getting a pink slip!)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aEO1GX_CC.8U&refer=u...
"Google DoubleClick cuts 300 jobs"
http://www.newsoxy.com/google_doubleclick_cuts_300_jobs/article10671.htm
"Motorola to lay off 2,600 workers"
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-fri-motorola-8k-jobcuts-motap...
"Chrysler Slashing Tech Jobs - The latest cutbacks affect 400 technology workers"
http://www.thecarconnection.com/blog/?p=1095
In other news, according to the NYT:
> The economy shed 80,000 jobs in March, the third consecutive month of rising unemployment, presenting a stark sign that the country may already be in a recession.
> The unemployment rate ticked up to 5.1 percent from 4.8 percent, its highest level since the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in September 2005.
> The downturn has even come to San Francisco, where highly trained workers with elite degrees flock to work for some of the world's biggest technology companies. CNet Networks, the online media giant, laid off 10 percent of its staff -- about 120 workers -- this year in an effort to increase profitability and its share price. Yahoo, the search engine company, said it would cut its work force by 1,000.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/business/04cnd-econ.html?em&ex=1207540800&en=c1de4fb13c4ec4bd&ei=5087%0A
like offer 32 core CPU for the price of single quad core Intel Xeon. It doesn't have to be more powerful or anything it just has to have more cores :D.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
The first person going should be Hector
That would save a boatload of money, and the next guy (Dirk?) couldn't run the company worse. (why does Ruiz get bonuses for running the company into the ground?)
We need an investor revolt for the good of the world.
I suspect we'll see the economy get a boost whenever the next person is elected President in the U.S. Traditionally, that's been the case, again due to perception much more than reality. (We like to have a scapegoat for our problems. When they're economic in nature, the President tends to be that scapegoat. The fact he's shown the door and someone new comes in is enough to make people believe things "can get better now", even if nothing has really changed yet.)
The "trend" I've observed in the last couple years is one of businesses trying to be more efficient with the employees they keep. Instead of 3 people, they're always asking, "Can we get by with one higher-paid worker who can then be asked to do the work of those 3?" If not, then they ask "Can we do things differently so we don't need to hire a replacement for employee X who is leaving?"
The statistics I saw published a few weeks ago bore that out. Despite the 5.9% unemployment rate shown, it also indicated average pay was UP over last quarter.
I heard this story on NPR this morning. The reason for the layoffs is only slightly due to intel beating them in the market. It is mainly due to the acquisition of ATI. They are taking a loss with the purchase but are expected to be back up to par by the end of the year IIRC. They are expected to use the new acquisition to improve the graphics performance of their chips in the future. So before people start freaking out AMD DEAD INTEL MONOPOLY OMGWTFBBQ!!111one! it's just a phase. Don't worry. (well anyone that keeps their jobs don't worry...)
There is yet one dwarf in Moria who still buys AMD.
:P
Seriously, though, I realize I'm a bloody hypocrite for laughing at Mac fanboys whilst being an AMD fanboy, but I love AMD. I want to do things illegal in Texas to my Opteron.
I also realize I'm partially moronic for having brand loyalty in this day and age - but I've never had a problem with any AMD chip. They just work. Perfectly.
So the rest of you Slashdotters go ahead with your 'logic' and 'benchmarks'. I'll keep AMD afloat so you can enjoy competitively priced Intel chips.
Your examples are good, other than the Google doubleclick one. Google is not laying off these people because they are doing poorly, they're just not needed any more. It's fairly typical of acquisitions, you end up with a bunch of redundant employees and someone has to go.
Also, your link to newsoxy seems to be some kind of spammy site. A better article is here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/03/BUA2VUNAO.DTL&tsp=1
AMD's product line can't beat Intel right now but they started out that way and managed anyway. They had gotten along quite well selling a second-rate cpu that was good enough for a lot of applications whereas Intel was always pushing the performance envelope and charging accordingly.
When the Athlon came along, I think AMD was as surprised as the market was that Intel couldn't compete technically. Those days are gone, at least for awhile, and AMD is back where they started. There'll always be a market for a cheap cpu that does the job.
Working link.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Agreed on the change in leadership tending to spur an economy that is in a downturn. It's the same reason that company share prices tend to increase when a new CEO takes over an ailing company and is part of the reason that I said it was a little more complicated than just looking at the shipping industry.
I certainly hope things improve this time as well, but I have a gut feeling that, depending on who gets elected, that improvement may be very short lived.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
> Intel currently makes a better processor, plain and simple.
That is true on the high end of the CPU market, as Intel's QX9770 proves with a commanding price of $1,499.99 vs. AMD's top price of around $235 on the Phenom 9850. The problem is your lack of a definition for the word "better." In the dual- tri- and low-end quad-core market, AMD does pretty well with performance/price.
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
Shedding is still too explicit. How about "rightsizing"?
I think you are dead on. I work in a steel warehouse, and we have about a dozen less people than we did last year, but wages are way up across the board. It seems to be the same at all the local plants - trying to encourage retention of good workers and focusing on efficiency.
Computers allow humans to make mistakes at the fastest speeds known, with the possible exception of tequila and handguns
Jack Welch at GE advocated the 20-70-10 principle which says to periodically purge the lowest-performing 10% of employees to keep a company healthy. First, it gets rid of nonproductive employees. Second, *not* firing the lowest 10% is bad for the morale of the top-performing 20%.
And I got burned by the 690G of last year. Why promise all the features on a card when their own drivers do not access half (or all - in Linux) its features? Pricepoint comparisons don't mean squat when you have to buy an nVidia card to output HDTV video with an ATI onboard?
It is a telling sign when Linux users would gladly welcome an ATI restricted driver over an open source driver just to get their damn mobo to work correctly.
Right now, nothing works. But as they say over in Phoronix...just give us some time and we'll have 2d solid and some beta 3d stuff for you to try out. Two years to get a damn driver out the door to use something beside MESA? Now that is poor execution on AMD/ATI's part and a big disappointment to even the diehard fanboys. Just frikken tragic.
Is the goal of a business to take over the world, or to provide goods/services?
Why not both?
There is also this:
> "Job security for IT professionals plummeted more than 10% from January to February of this year, far surpassing the average job security declines seen nationwide in a rigorous analysis of U.S. employment patterns."
http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/edu/2008/033108ed1.html
And this:
> WSJ: "Government Quietly Changes Rules on Foreign Tech Workers"
> On Friday, DHS issued a press release saying that businesses could now hire foreign students who attended American schools for 29 months without obtaining an H-1B visa,
http://blogs.wsj.com/biztech/2008/04/07/government-quietly-changes-rules-on-foreign-tech-workers/?mod=WSJBlog#comment-18914
AMD would be so much better off if they just Open Sourced the (AMD/ATI) 3D driver. With that kind of communication they would be embrassed overnight. I remember when i first read that it was becoming open -- except they ment the 2D driver, which was already figured out anyway. how marketing/cowardly is that?
I remember when Apple first switched to x86 a few years ago and everyone was screaming about them picking Intel over AMD. Apple's response was that based on Intel's roadmap, they were the better choice.
The past few years has certainly vindicated Apple on that regard. They absolutely made the right choice.
Oh noes?
Your examples are good, other than the Google doubleclick one. Google is not laying off these people because they are doing poorly, they're just not needed any more. It's fairly typical of acquisitions, you end up with a bunch of redundant employees and someone has to go.
And that's a great example of typical StupidThink. You have employees who, although intelligent, are redundant. Do you, A) Fire these schmucks, or B) See this as an opportunity to expand into new business areas so that you can put those people back to work?
Invariably, the company will end up needing that headcount back again, and the next round of employees are probably going to cost more, as well as the obvious costs of the interview and hiring process itself. If you have employees which seem redundant, that's your fault as management, not the employee's fault. Just eliminating the employees is a sign of small thinking.
Well, not really. It is just a personal hallucination which I think would be nice. If Apple buys AMD then they will have the complete hardware sollution for the Macs. Not that I really care because I do not use apple products but it is just something that occurred to me... actually I do not know what I am saying so I will just shut up and press preview/post.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
AMD did well until recently because, with the Athlon 64, they managed to bring something new fresh, interesting and with good performance :
- x86-compatible 64bits architecture, integrated memory controller, low power and thermal
exactly at a time when intel was stuck in dead ends :
- on one hand Itanium proved not to be the optimal way to bring 64bit to desktops and was stuck in the scientific cluster market
- on the other hand the Pentium 4, which was the CPU equivalent of a hummer, and was unable to go above 3GHz although the NetBurst architecture was planned to reach 10GHz
Intel had to lose time, going back to an older generation (PentiumIII-based PentiumM) and developing a decent workstation & desktop processor out of it (Core 2 was the first decent answer to Athlon 64).
Now we are back to the statu quo. With AMD having some technologically interesting products (true quad-cores) and interesting perf/price ratio in the mid-range products, but other wise no massive advantage.
And Intel throwing tons of resources and replaying the "Gigahertz race", except this time with the number of cores bolted to the same package, offering expensive but fast processors.
*BUT*
AMD could still get some advantage in the near future.
First, the gain obtained by multiplying the number of cores will soon top (My crystal balls predict somewhere around 6-8 cores). Intel is going to hit a wall soon, just like they got stuck with their Gigahertz race.
Second, integrated design with the memory controller on the CPU and a standard bus between the CPU and the rest of the PC seems to make a lot of sense. At least that's what Intel's engineer are thinking.
Here again AMD has some advantages :
They already have such an architecture since Athlon 64, the hypertransport bus has been adopted already by several other constructor for various (FPGA and other accelerators, or simply communication between multiple chipsets on motherboard with several northbridges), their socket has stabilised (thank to the compatible family AM2 => AM2+ => AM3).
Whereas Intel will probably once again lose some time developing and perfect their Quick-Path based processors, probably changing their connector a couple of time along the way (can't technically reuse LGA775, will have to develop a new one and as usually will probably change it a couple of time before stabilising), will have to convince other constructor to adopt it (they will, of course as they are "the standard x86 cpu that every PC maker use". But it'll take some additional time), etc...
Once again we will see a transition at Intel, during which AMD has a small advantage (smaller than with the Athlon 64, but still present).
If they leverage their advantage well (partnerships around the HyperTransport, perhaps), they can achieve some success.
Of course that advantage won't stay indefinitely, and after that Intel will probably be back again with big beasts. Probably by then the technology will better take advantage of bigger multicores. And they'll also have a good advantage in the GPU / GPGPU markets by then.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I suspect we'll see the economy get a boost whenever the next person is elected President in the U.S.
I would agree with that, even though I am one of those 29%er's. Basically, Obama's supporters are all rich liberals. If he gets elected, the media will love it, there will be a big positive buzz, and all of these rich liberals will feel optimistic about america and start buying and investing again. We might have all crappy cars because of CAFE or something, but the economy will roll along...
This is my sig.
That right after college I got the rejection letter from Monolithic Memories which AMD purchased. I went to work at National Semiconductor instead.
They tend to quack up!
Here at the state university I work for, it is two very different things.
Laid off means that the university just didn't need your specific job anymore, or doesn't have the money to pay you. You get a severance package and other benefits. For example should the department that laid you off open the same (or similar) job within a year, it is automatically yours if you want it. Also you get priority for getting interviews for other jobs on campus. More or less a layoff means "Sorry, we'd like to keep you, but we just can't." You are, of course, eligible for rehire if laid off.
Being fired means you fucked up. It isn't easy to fire someone, there has to be documentation supporting it and such. When you get fired you don't get anything in parting. You are just out the door, and they are going to hire someone else to do your job. You aren't eligible to be rehired.
So yes, in many cases it can be very different.
Not necessarily, often times the redundancy comes in the administrative areas such as finance, marketing or HR. Not to imply that people who work in these fields are not intelligent, but often times their roles are less critical to the overall operation, especially if they are filling the same roles as other people.
You're right in that if the company needs the people again, they will have to hire them. But suppose that's some years down the road. Why would you pay the salaries of people you don't currently need, just so you don't have to hire them later? I fail to see how that would be more cost effective.
Don't forget that Ruiz is the highest-paid CEO in the semiconductor industry.
When you take ou a loan, "new money" is created as debt from that loan.
Even more off-topic, "new money" can be simplified into artificial gdp growth. It elegantly explains the economic expansion that took place a few years ago that had no real wage increases.
The risk is that the deflation of the asset bubble slows economic activity because the only people with any money will wait around for things to get even cheaper. Hence a downward spiral that is very hard to stop.
This is one of the rationale behind lowering interest rates and opening TAF's for any red-headed step child in the financial community. The wisdom of these moves will be argued for some time to come.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Why would you pay the salaries of people you don't currently need, just so you don't have to hire them later? I fail to see how that would be more cost effective.
My point is, make it so you DO need them. If you have employees you don't need, it doesn't mean you have too many employees, it means you aren't doing enough "stuff."
So what's happening to the big complex they were building in the Hill Country outside of Austin? Did they complete it? Are they going to move out there still? Isn't the money (and the tremendous controversy and bad-will in Austin) spent on the complex partly responsible for their troubles? If anyone remembers the debacle of the Intel building in Austin, one must wonder if Austin has a new Intel Shell on their hands.
That would be nice in an ideal world where cash flow doesn't matter. However, even if you could give them something to do, you may not be able to immediately support these employees, or perhaps they'd take away too many resources from your other projects to make it worthwhile.
I can think of tons of "stuff" our company could be doing that it's not doing enough of, but we don't have the money for it.
I think that AMD should really consider changing it's logo to a Green Mary Jane Leaf..... don't get me wrong, AMD has given us some revolutionary changes in computing, but they are making it hard for us avid oem system builders to side with them. Since Intel's C2D came out, AMD has been chillin in the background blowin bleezys. Hence, why they should change their logo. Think about it... seriously.
WWPD - What Would Picard Do?
The Smoot-Hawley Tariffs wiped out >50% of foreign trade (the foreign countries did retaliate) and helped the burst bubble become a pretty good recession.
"Atlas Shrugged" purportedly draws many ideas from FDR's administration, which is quite damning.
If concentration of wealth, a more progressive taxation code should suffice. As for rich CEOs, VPs, etc, they are close to impossible to get rid of thanks anti-takeover/poison pill laws put in by their bought off state legislatures. As for rich shareholders getting richer after taxes, that is beyond me.
my friend works there full time in the graphics (ATI) department. like nvidia, they're pretty well known to be sweatshops, and he pretty much works 7 days a week days and evenings. there really hasn't been much change since AMD took over. ATI's company culture is pretty much the same. management sucks there, both middle and upper. morale is low, but no one is addressing the layoffs at the company. you're treated like a slave there. people going to meetings are pounding away at their computers doing work. upper management come and go. how do you expect anyone having the motivation to work there? I'm surprised he hasn't left on his own terms yet.
"Yes, indeed the new deal did nothing to rebuilt the US of A and its production infrastructure to the point that it could out produce the 3 power of the axis combined."
The original stock market crash had a good deal to do with expectations of a poorer business climate brought about by increased taxes and tariffs. The New Deal prolonged the Great Depression by cartelizing key industries. In fact, it was when these policies were repealed in the 1940s that economic growth started to accelerate again.
"In fact, FDR's plans were so catastrophic that he was elected "only" 3 times, and people cried in the streets when the guy crooked."
Re-election is not a sign of good economic policy or of good character. See the re-election of GWB as a recent example. You are falling prey to the argumentum ad populum fallacy by saying that because many people thought FDR was doing a good job he must have been doing a good job.
"So let me get this straight, one of the few economic policies with a proven record of success (the new deal for example) are now framed as toxic. Whereas the insane policies that led to the gilded age, the great depression, the crash of the late 80s, the recession of the early 90s, and the current credit crunch... all those things are now gospel. Wow!"
The track record of the New Deal is a sad one indeed. For evidence look to the second recession that took place in 1937. If it was working so well why did we have yet another recession and increasing unemployment?
"No wonder that capitalism is about making dumb people part of their money, as there seems to be an infinite supply of dumb idiots...."
If believing economic individualism is superior to central planning makes me an idiot than so be it.
Creative Demolition
I am guessing that the vast majority of these layoffs are occurring in the west. Most are probably in America with EU taking a number as well. I noticed that AMD has opened a 3rd RD in India and is doing mass hiring.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I swear, I must have a perverted form of dyslexia.
Hector Ruiz has generated more bad press for AMD over the past year than almost any other CEO I've ever seen. When you're a company like Microsoft, having a raving lunatic for a CEO (Mr. Ballmer cough cough) is ok, after all, they're winning and they are constantly on an upward slope. But when you have a company that's struggling, the real man for the job is a problem solver. Hector Ruiz instead was the type of guy that during AMD's glory years, bragged and bragged (to an extent generating bad press for being a sore winner) and spit all over Intel.
In fact, Hector Ruiz did so much to annoy Intel that when the 600lb gorilla finally decided to smack around the annoying little monkey, AMD was caught completely off guard and unprepared. Imagine what it feels like to be sitting and enjoying your lunch, in the middle of the fast lane on the highway when that Mack truck just comes flying at you out of nowhere.
Hector Ruiz then started crying that old song "Intel is evil *wah* they copied our best stuff *wah wah* we invented x86-64 and they just stole it *wah wah* it's not fair *wahhhh*". I mean, this is not what I call leadership.
Yes, Intel copied AMD's best stuff. Did he really think they would not adopt technologies like that. I mean seriously, if Intel didn't copy good stuff that works... and improve on it, Intel should be sued by their shareholders. Oh, and by the way, I'm not sure if Hector Ruiz knows this, but AMD is "Intel Compatible". He should consider himself lucky when Intel adopts a little technology of their since it gives them ground to renegotiate the terms of the x86 instruction set licenses AMD pays on every chip made.
Yes Intel implemented x86-64. No matter how many times Intel tries to make a new dominant processor based on anything but x86, they bomb. Think back to the i860, the original platform Windows NT was developed on. Intel made a great RISC processor. In fact, for a RISC chip, it was equal to MIPS, Sparc and Power in every respect. Problem is, Intel can't sell RISC and Intel has always won because of backwards compatibility. I wonder if Ruiz actually thinks this was bad for his company. After all, if Intel didn't back the x86-64 instruction set, Microsoft would do the bare minimum necessary to support the instruction set (hence the REALLY long beta periods before Intel came on board). The x86-64 would have just been a wasted investment for AMD if Intel didn't support it. Sure there's Linux and the server world, but there are A LOT more personal machines out there than servers. Microsoft goes where the volume is.
If I were the Chairman of the Board of AMD, I would seriously look at bringing in a more diplomatic CEO to AMD, tell him to find a way to compete with Intel and get to it. Intel spent years "losing the CPU battle" pumping out crappy Pentium 4 era chips, but all along, they were hiding away in back rooms and quietly developing the EXTREMELY expandable architecture of Core 2, the first almost truly modular high performance CPU architecture ever. AMD lost a lot of ground and might never be able to make it up again. Of course, we've said this for many years before AMD's glory days.
It's time for AMD to get an architecture team together to really think about how to speed things up. A good idea might be to knock on IBM's door again and see what new technologies they can offer.
To me, the ATI thing is a long term piece of the puzzle. AMD needed a Centrino competitor, a CPU + Chipset that they alone owned and could optimize. Laptop sales as a percentage of computer sales are only going to go up and it's very very hard for AMD to compete there without the whole package.
IMHO, the platform for laptops of chipset + CPU are going to make the ATI purchase look real smart this year. Much further down the line, the GPU and CPU are inevitablly going to be linked much more closely than they are now. AMD needed some baseline components to make sure they were in the game in 5 years.*
But, they paid cash for the ATi shares. In hindsight, that was incredibly bad. Now, on top of poor sales from the CPU side, they've got a lot more interest expenses. But hindsight is 20/20...
* Off-topic, look out NVidia, you're getting squeezed out of the game from all angles.
There is another competitor that is killing the industry ...
Old CPUs. Just like Office 97 is 95% functional for what most people use office for.
The same way 5 year old CPUs are overkill for most computers.
All that is left is a race to the bottom. The bottom is overpopulated.
G
DAM MAD, to use just a few letters...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Layoffs make sense in a recession. At least, they make more sense than getting into debit.
Rethinking email
...here is fabrication. AMD have a terrific foundation from a technological standpoint. However, Intel have long crushed AMD in fab capability. Simply put they (Intel) survived the late 90's because they could make heaps of silicon, despite the fact that it was technologically inferior to AMD products. AMD can only hope, at this point to create an integrated CPU/GPU solution that Intel cannot. As an AMD shareholder, I'm hoping the integrated solution takes flight!
Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
"What increase in taxes?"
Do you understand the macro-economic concept of expectations? I know very well that taxes increased after. Tell me this: if you knew that taxes or tariffs were going to increase dramatically in the near future would that information impact your current decision making? Of course it would!
"As for the tariff, it was orthodox Republicanism"
How is this an argument that high tariffs didn't increase the duration of the depression along with the Fed's contraction of the money supply? Do you expect me to argue that the Republicans were somehow right in their economic policy simply because I think the New Deal had a mostly negative impact on the economy? If anything I blame Hoover more than I do FDR but that does not excuse the fact that his New Deal was a disaster.
Creative Demolition
AMD needs to start developing they're own chipset.
In case you've not been following the news lately, AMD has been producing it's own chipsets for quite some time.
They started back in the K-6 era, and then after acquiring ATI, they built quite a few more using additional technology from ATI.
Their current 790 line of chipset has received good critics.
With CPU's sitting on third party crappy chipsets, the true performance of the CPU will never be revealed.
AMD processors are much less sensitive to crappy chipsets, simpy because the high speed sensitive parts are INSIDE the processor. The CPU has direct access to memory and handles everything thanks to its on-board memory controller.
The northbridge on AMD platform is mostly a glorified bridge between the HyperTransport and the PCIe lanes.
(Not exactly. It is also in charge of providing all the "on-board" features available on the mother board. But what I mean is that it doesn't have a major impact on processing speed and, as long it is an efficient HT-PCIe bridge and provide enough PCIe lanes, it doesn't impact gaming & graphics speed).
The best part is, as the HyperTransport is controlled by a consortium, it is less tighly controlled by AMD and much more open to concurrence and 3rd party builders.
Thus you can find origial ATI/AMD chipsets, as well as chipsets from nVidia (specially for SLI enthusiasts) or VIA (for the low-segment)
Lets take for example Intel, I have not had any luck with any third party chipset manufacturer for Intel CPU's.
Intel is a bad example.
/. .
With their processors the memory is entirely handled by the northbridge. The bus between the northbridge and the CPU package is of critical importance. Specially in recent multicore systems, because they are technically separate die slapped together in the same package : They don't talk to each other (much), instead they all communicate (mostly) with the northbridge, as if they were discrete packages on a multi CPU system (with multiple sockets).
Put a crappy chipset (anything that doesn't supports the latest bus speed "du jour" from Intel and/or is bad at memory handling) and you basically have a CPU sitting idle, waiting for data to arrive. This is even more difficult, because Intel often upgrades its bus, but doesn't give licenses to all player in the field (the wikipedia article mentions that ATI/AMD doesn't have a license for the 1333Mhz bus, thus the latest series of chipsets are AMD-only).
That's also one of the minor reason why Intel engineers would probably like to move to QuickPath : they will be putting the CPU and the critical parts of the northbridge in the same package, and leave the chipset only to its "glorified bridge + features" job, thus opening the possibility of lots of Intel motherboard with 3rd party chipsets, without much impact on the performance.
This is specially more important recently. Up until recently, because of the tight relationship between CPU and the northbridge, Intel's chipset have been the single best soltuion (except during the whole Rambus fiasco back in the Pentium III era).
Now, users *have* some time to choose other chipsets. Nvidia is a rather an import player in the market for hardcore gamers. But for example doesn't license their SLI-over-PCIe technology to 3rd party chipsets manufacturer. So either gamers go for the original Intel but lose SLI OR choose to have SLI and thus must use nVidia chipset but maybe won't have the latest Intel bus OR must buy expensive monstruosities featuring both chipsets as the case with latest Intel top-level-hardcore motherboards as recently mentionned on
Also, embed graphics is starting to evolve into hybrid solutions, whereas an onboard grap
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Yes, there are nice demos of Intel platforms running on Quickpath.
On the same time Quickpath support hasn't even been announced from other constructors. nVidia aren't even sure if they'll manage to obtain a license for it (and anyway will still use HyperTransport internally and between chipsets as they've done until now).
Problems are bound to be discovered once the technology leaves the small controlled world of Intel's labs and has to collaborate with 3rd party producers.
Intel will definitely change sockets at least once in the beginning of the life time of this project. They always do. AMD hasn't been trying to do the same? Remember the hype about how AMD's 'native' quad-core would beat Intel's MCM quad-core? No. What I'm calling race is the desperate attempts to crank up the numbers whatever the cost.
Back in the GigaHertz era, this made Intel switch a different architecture (NetBurst) with an outrageously deep pipe-line, which overall enabled them to write bigger GHz number on the product's bullet list, but that didn't necessarily translate into real-world boost.
Currently in the GazillionCore race, Intel are trying the shortest path to be the first to brag about 2-, 4-, etc. cores systems. Thus the end up with crazy implementation, where they slap together 2 discreete dies in the same package, which don't talk (much) to each other, but process everything though the northbridge (which is in a different package elsewhere on the motherboard - unlike AMD's memory controller which is on the same die) over a special highspeed bus. The idea sounds stupid, it only works because Intel can afford finer manufacture process.
The interesting fact isn't that much that AMD's true quadcore didn't manage to beat Intel's Frankenstein-monster. It's that they reached even performance using a 1 generation older process.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]