AMD CEO Dirk Meyer Resigns 123
angry tapir writes "Advanced Micro Devices has announced that Dirk Meyer has resigned from the post of CEO, and that the company is beginning to search for a new chief executive. Meyer resigned in a mutual agreement with the board of directors, and the company has appointed Thomas Seifert, the company's chief financial officer, as the interim CEO. Meyer was installed as CEO in 2008 as a replacement to Hector Ruiz, just as the company was making its way out of rough financial times. In October, AMD posted a third-quarter net loss of US$118 million."
AMD CPUs all over the place (Score:3)
Re:AMD CPUs all over the place (Score:4, Insightful)
Dirk Meyer: Engineer who made marketing mistakes (Score:5, Informative)
"Remember, Dirk Meyer's three deadly sins were:
1) Failure to Execute: K8/Hammer/AMD64 was 18 months late, Barcelona was deliberately delayed by 9 months, original Bulldozer was scrapped and is running 22 months late.
"2) Giving the netbook market to Intel [AMD created the first netbook as a part of OLPC project] and long delays of Barcelona and Bulldozer architectures.
"3) Completely missing the perspective on handheld space - selling Imageon to Qualcomm, Xilleon to BroadCom."
There is a comment at the bottom of this poor-quality article in the Inquirer [theinquirer.net] that says Dirk Meyer "was the lead engineer who designed the Athlon, Opteron and the DEC Alpha. Let's not forget that from 1999-2006, AMD actually had better processors than Intel, and this was due to Dirk Meyer's technology."
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1) Dirk wasn't CEO til 08, well after AMD64 and Barcelona. Bulldozer was scrapped *by* Dirk IIRC
2) AMD had nothing to compete with the atom in that market. Sure, they were first, but with a Geode IIRC slower than an Atom which is already pathetically slow.
3) This is arguable, it falls under the strategy where AMD needed to focus on core business. Whether or not you buy that or you believe they should've switched core business or whatever is where its arguable. I think from AMD's fiscal performance, Dirk
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AMD doesn't make laptops or netbooks, they make processors. Go Intel if you want to pay twice as much for a moderate increase in performance.
AMD does make processors and chipsets intended for use in netbooks. Intel doesn't make netbooks either but you suggest I "go Intel if I ant to pay twice as much". I went with an AMD-based netbook and I got a machine that only works 100% with Vista. It's actually faster than the cheaper Intel-based netbook I bought around the same time, but it's also a pain in my ass. The part that works worst is the graphics hardware, of course. ATI is the Taco Bell of graphics. I love my AMD CPUs (I have an Phenom II X3 72
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Sure thing. ATI is a horrible company, they just had some of the top performing hardware released earlier and for cheaper than Nvidia and better drivers recently than Nvidia.
Better drivers? By what metric?
You are letting one failure color all your future consideration of AMD/ATI in the portable market and that is just plain stupid
One deliberate failure. AMD produced the architecture and then abandoned it. I am still paying for this failure. I still own the hardware. They're still not bringing out updated drivers that work properly.
especially in light of the fact that its based on a Microsoft problem (i.e. domination of the market with inferior crap software that manufacturers have to cater to since people are stupid and keep buying windows).
Oh, so now AMD's failure to bring out newer, properly working drivers for newer Microsoft operating systems than Vista is Microsoft's fault? It's Microsoft's fault that they fucked up power management under Linux?
I have had other not entirely similar problems with Intel on desktops, so should I just swear off Intel because they failed me once even though their i3's i5's and i7's are a generation ahead?
Haha roflsnort "a generation ahead" uh no.
I can make purchase decisions based on my income and price/performance which in my opinion AMD wins right now
Sure, for budget desk
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OK, I should not feed you, but go forth and see how you like getting any Athlon L110/R690M netbook that is A) not heavily based on the same design B) all functionality working on some other operating system than Vista. Go!
Re:AMD CPUs all over the place (Score:5, Insightful)
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Ahead in manufacturing tech, maybe. Architecture? Who made x64? Who has one of the lowest power draw/highest performance CPU/GPU combo for mobile systems that would shit all over tons of current in-service desktop systems, with an even better revision coming soon?
When it comes down to it, none of the hardware companies are really that impressive. The hardware right now is enough to do WAY BETTER performance-wise, the problem is that programs are becoming so bloated and unoptimized.
It's coming down to where
Re:AMD CPUs all over the place (Score:4, Insightful)
Ahead in manufacturing tech, maybe. Architecture? Who made x64?
That's a bit like saying ford is the worlds greatest motor company because of the Model T, and then neglecting to notice the failures of it's recent business practices. x64 was something AMD did right 8 years ago. In the last 8 years however, things haven't gone as well for the business....
Who has one of the lowest power draw/highest performance CPU/GPU combo for mobile systems that would shit all over tons of current in-service desktop systems, with an even better revision coming soon?
Intel ATOM and Nvidia ION?
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That's a bit like saying ford is the worlds greatest motor company because of the Model T, and then neglecting to notice the failures of it's[SIC] recent business practices.
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"Intel ATOM and Nvidia ION?"
Not even close. Have you even seen the latest AMD Fusion? It shits all over Intel+ION.
"That's a bit like saying ford is the worlds greatest motor company because of the Model T, and then neglecting to notice the failures of it's recent business practices."
During the auto bailout and financial crisis, Ford was the only company actually able to afford to give loans to people. AMD isn't Bankrupt.
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Have you even seen the latest AMD Fusion?
Unfortunately not. I requested an engineering sample from AMD about 2 years ago, and am still waiting......
It shits all over Intel+ION.
Whether it shits over ION or not entirely misses the point. I'm sure Fusion *could* shit all over ION, but the problem can be summed up with a quick glance here [scan.co.uk]. Where are these fabled Fusion netbooks? It's ATOMS, ATOMS, ATOMS and nothing but ATOMS in that market sector.....
So returning to your original question:
Who has one of the lowest power draw/highest performance CPU/GPU combo for mobile systems that would shit all over tons of current in-service desktop systems, with an even better revision coming soon?
The ATOM/ION has been available for over 18 months. It has one of the lowest power/high
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http://liliputing.com/2011/01/31062.html [liliputing.com]
I was testing this LAST YEAR. Oh look, it's available TODAY.
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Sorry, wrong link:
http://blog.laptopmag.com/deal-of-the-day-hp-pavilion-dm1-with-amd-fusion-for-424 [laptopmag.com]
Re: The imbecilic Ford analogy (Score:2)
Ahead in manufacturing tech, maybe. Architecture? Who made x64?
That's a bit like saying ford is the worlds greatest motor company because of the Model T, and then neglecting to notice the failures of it's recent business practices.
That's a spectacularly ignorant statement.
Ford is the only one of the "Big 3" US-based auto manufacturers that has not been put through a bankruptcy backed by government financing. They took steps well ahead of the financial meltdown to turn as much of their non-performing assets into liquidity (e.g. the blue oval trademark is collateral for a big fat loan, or put more harshly: they hocked the family jewels.) Bill Ford recognized that his name didn't mean he was the best strategic manager for the company
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Your problem is twofold. First, the vast majority of users don't need anything beyond the Intel integrated graphics. AMD has had superior chips in the past (Pentium 4/X2 days) and they didn't "take over" anything, and not because of mean old Intel cheating.
This leads is to your second problem - AMD doesn't have the manufacturing might to make chips at the same price Intel does. AMD's only choice is to cut prices to the bone, and Intel can still match them and make good margins.
I expect some design wins f
Re:AMD CPUs all over the place (Score:5, Informative)
What does volume matter if you don't have margins?
1. Intel has always been ahead on processing tech, often a generation in front or if not on a more mature process. That means AMD has bigger dies and lower yields, which directly inflate cost.
2. A lot of the expense is R&D, and with Intel having ~80% of the microprocessor market each AMD chip has to carry at least four times as much of the cost as each Intel chip.
3. Intel got a processor to match every one of AMDs, the reverse is not true. Intel makes high margins where they are alone and squeezes AMDs margin where they compete.
Seriously, take a look at something like 3D rendering [anandtech.com] performance, which is usually extremely multi-threading friendly. The 2500K which sells for less than the 1100T is beating it in everything but the POV-ray test. Never mind that it's much faster and better for everything that doesn't take advantage of six cores. The Opteron vs Xeon battle looks the same, AMD had the advantage a while but they're struggling badly now there too. On the low end Intel has the Atom which is raking in money meaning AMD is losing a lot of low-end sales. They're boxed in and in every market they deliver "value" processors. That means in other words low income processors. So with low income and high costs, you post a loss.
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Not always. The pentium pro line of processors had a heat problem that Intel "solved" by adding latency layers, and AMD began beating them in benchmarks. Right up until the Core2 processors, when Intel had solved the problem.
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Yes, in benchmarks but not processing technology - litography size and yield. Also you mean the Pentium IV, not the Pentium Pro from the mid 90s.
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What AMD CPUs left and right? My work laptop is Intel, my Netbook is Intel, both my Cell phones have Qualcomm ARM chips.
I don't even buy AMD chips at home now, since whilst Intel remained more expensive, AMD chips always ended up seeming to require excessive cooling, and AMD chips never seemed to give the performance I'd expect, yet the first Intel chip I bought in 15 years for my home PC did straight out the box.
Apart from extremely low margin budget PCs and laptops from your local electronics superstore I
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I'm really not sure what you've been smoking, but I suggest you stop.
The last "hot" AMD chip I had was back in the original 1GHz Athlon days, circa 2000 or 2001. It got that reputation mostly because it was about the point of the time that Intel added on-chip thermal regulation and AMD hadn't yet. So if you pulled a heatsink off a Intel chip, it would clock itself downward to compensate. The AMD chips, which didn't yet have that feature,
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It's a shame you didn't apply this logic to the person I was responding to, else you may not have completely and utterly missed the point of the paragraphs in my post that you are apparently struggling with.
The OP stated that AMD processors are left and right implying that he believes they are common and perhaps even hold a majority marketshare. I gave a counter example of a personal anecdote with an illustration of my own circumstances where it's not the case that AMD processors are "left and right" demons
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The OP stated that AMD processors are left and right implying that he believes they are common and perhaps even hold a majority marketshare.
Actually, I don't think that was the point. The point is that when you make anything by the million, it's not obvious why you'd nevertheless post a loss. (It's possibly to occupy a relatively small part of a market and still make a decent living. Indeed, it's also possible to do that and make a lot of money - see Apple.) I guess the answer to this naive question would be - RTFA :)
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With AMD CPUs left and right, how is AMD posting a loss?
They aren't. AMD's quarterly report is on the 20th of January for it's 4th Quarter. The 3rd Quarter reference is 3 months old.
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It's called "making it up on volume", did you sleep through the dot-com boom or something?
Sorry.. (Score:1)
Musical chairs (Score:3)
Hey, that's one clever way to get your mind off the recession: Play musical chairs with the company execs. Did you see the job open up at Microsoft? Time to apply Dirk! Where she stops nobody knows....weeeehheeeeee! You poor schleps can lose your jobs, we'll just keep going round and round!
Re:Musical chairs (Score:5, Informative)
Personally, I don't blame him, I blame it on Intel and its successful attempts to bribe major equipment integrators to not use AMD chips.
Re:Musical chairs (Score:5, Informative)
No amount of bribes in the world can account for the fact that Intel's latest processors have been significantly outperforming AMD's for the last few years now.
Yet AMDs significantly outperformed Intels for quite a few years.. but only managed 50% market share at its height because of Intels illegal (no "questionable" about it) practices.
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No amount of bribes in the world can account for the fact that Intel's latest processors have been significantly outperforming AMD's for the last few years now.
Really? Your sure about that? You're sure that if Intel lost out badly during the P4 versus Opteron era, they would not be behing on their R&D (due to less money) and AMD would not be ahead (due to more money)?
And Intel underperform on price/performance. They only win in the performance region that AMD don't enter, which is the very high end, and
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Thing is though that for most users, per-thread performance is the key; and despite AMDs processors being cheaper they still lose on the price/performance in most applications.
It's not even about performance. I got bitten by instability issues after building an AMD 1800+. I still have the machine, but it never got used for anything important. Never again. Intel might be the devil, but they're the stable devil.
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NReally? Your sure about that? You're sure that if Intel lost out badly during the P4 versus Opteron era, they would not be behing on their R&D (due to less money) and AMD would not be ahead (due to more money)?
Intel has a vast amount of business interests, not only in the processor market (at the time of Pentium iv I remember reading somewhere that the processor business was only 20% of all the Intel business), while most of AMD's was only in the processor market. So when Intel saw that they were losing a good market (specially because of the reputation provided) they started investing immense amounts of money from other markets. So, no they could will not remain behind for a long time.
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Yet AMDs significantly outperformed Intels for quite a few years.. but only managed 50% market share at its height because of Intels illegal (no "questionable" about it) practices.
Exactly. And I was a big fan of AMD at that time.
But at the time of Prescott processors AMD began to decline in innovation. It stuck with Athlon XP (Barton) architecture
And the Athlon 64 was not much better
AMD needs a 'push' like the one it gave Intel at the P4 days
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AMD needs a 'push' like the one it gave Intel at the P4 days
Such as Fusion? I predict a significant increase in AMD's share of laptop and ultraportables market in the near future.
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Fusion is very interesting, maybe this is it
But I was thinking more about architectural improvements (for example hyperthreading http://www.anandtech.com/show/2594/8 [anandtech.com])
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Re:Sorry.. (Score:4, Insightful)
I for one an sorry to see him go. I think he has brought the company well through some rough times.
Some CEO's that are great for riding through the rough times aren't the CEO's that you want when that stretch is over.
Re:Sorry.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Winston Churchill, meet Clement Atlee.
Except I think that involved winning a war, not just surviving in a currently tenuous second position...
Re:Sorry.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I've noticed a few netbooks with AMD Bobcat cores appear at CES, and has enough performance and power efficiency to give both Atom and Ion some serious competition.
While Llano doesn't appeal to me personally, it's nice to see Fusion reaching the desktop shortly. I'm also anxious to see how the Bulldozer will perform once it's released in a few months.
With the delay of Intel's Ivy Bridge into 2012, AMD has a lot of potential to make this year a profitable one.
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I'll agree with this. AMD's been seeing some triumphs lately- their graphics division has been very successful, even despite a minor delay with the Radeon HD6900 GPU. Nvidia might have the performance crown this generation, but their previous generation has been shaky and their 40nm chips haven't been as available as AMD's, allowing AMD to gain considerable marketshare.
I've noticed a few netbooks with AMD Bobcat cores appear at CES, and has enough performance and power efficiency to give both Atom and Ion some serious competition.
While Llano doesn't appeal to me personally, it's nice to see Fusion reaching the desktop shortly. I'm also anxious to see how the Bulldozer will perform once it's released in a few months.
With the delay of Intel's Ivy Bridge into 2012, AMD has a lot of potential to make this year a profitable one.
so the guy that brought AMD to a position where they're successfully launching 3 products in one year (which they've never done before) is not someone you want to keep around? Are you kidding? It's about momentum and inertia, this is a silly time to do something like this to a visionary like him.
This is the same board that kept that dolt Hector Ruiz around for years while he ran the company into the ground. Color me unsurprised.
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Re:Sorry.. (Score:5, Informative)
so the guy that brought AMD to a position where they're successfully launching 3 products in one year (which they've never done before) is not someone you want to keep around? Are you kidding?
Are you honestly asking this question? If you are going to pretend to know anything about the business world, then you should at least pretend to also know that some CEO's are specialists at bringing companies out of financial trouble and even bankruptcy.
For example (from my industry) there is Scott Butera, a CEO that has brought more than one casino out of financial trouble, who has just been picked up by the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut because of its very serious financial troubles (billions in debt, defaulting on loans..)
Often what these specialists bring to the table is their trusted contacts in the financial industries. The primary goal is often to maintain a credit line while the problems are resolved (because no large business can run without credit, regardless of how much cash they have.)
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The primary goal is often to maintain a credit line while the problems are resolved (because no large business can run without credit, regardless of how much cash they have.)
That doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Large companies like Google, Microsoft, and Apple have billions in cash reserves, and can probably operate for a year or two by spending just cash.
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But the companies mentioned don't pay dividends, don't *need* to acquire companies (and can afford to do so anyways and still operate on cash), and don't *need* credit if they have cash to spend. Remember the person I responded to said "no large business can run without credit, regardless of how much cash they have". It just isn't true.
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What I do know is that Foxwoods problem was expanding their operations on debt one to many times. It was already the largest casino in the country but still in debt from its previous expansions when they chose to build the billion dollar MGM wing.
After intel's sandy bridge launch... (Score:2)
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I would resign too, AMD is always the bridesmaid never the bride.
Their best run was with the Athlon64 vs Netburst, but even though they had the superior product they didn't have the OEM deals.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously it's to get the jump on their competitor (Score:1)
Any word yet (Score:4, Insightful)
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No, he's comparing extremely out of date jabs to an extremely out of date jab. Maybe you want to complain about the Apple III not having sufficient cooling in an article about Dell desktops.
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I agree with the Anonymous Coward. Bashing Intel for a 1994 flaw? Come on. It's 16 years later.
By the way, it's not like AMD never makes mistakes [google.com].
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I suspect his golden parachute will look like a knotted napkin compared to the ones failed bankers get.
Then again a banker would probably lose 100 times as much so it stands to reason he deserves more...
Hard call for GPU selection (Score:3)
I'm just getting going on GPU programming. I was thinking to go with OpenCL (pushed by AMD/ATI ) over CUDA (pushed by nVidia) because I thought AMD looked more likely to survive in the long term. But now it's getting harder to tell which company is safer to rely upon.
Re:Hard call for GPU selection (Score:5, Informative)
I'm just getting going on GPU programming. I was thinking to go with OpenCL (pushed by AMD/ATI ) over CUDA (pushed by nVidia) because I thought AMD looked more likely to survive in the long term. But now it's getting harder to tell which company is safer to rely upon.
OpenCL works on both AMD and nVidia GPUs , so you should be safe there.
Re:Hard call for GPU selection (Score:5, Insightful)
I predict that Cuda will quickly become irrelevant and die a long, slow death (ie- just legacy support, no new features). Much like Cg did, after GLSL and HLSL matured. No one wants to be stuck on a single hardware platform, despite performance advantages.
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Intel has also promised OpenCL support on Sandy Bridge and later integrated GPUs.
As far as I'm aware, Intel promised that they'd get OpenCL running on the CPU (for Sandy Bridge) as opposed to the GPU after Apple pressured them for OpenCL support. OpenCL on GPU is scheduled for Ivy Bridge.
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Remember, in the end, it's just a language, albeit a language that's biased slightly towards Nvidia's architecture. But as like all other languages, there's nothing stopping them from making that same code run on any platform.
It's also somewhat easier to use than OpenCL from what I've heard.
Unification under DirectX (Score:2)
Someday MS might give us a standard wrapper for both.
Oh, who am I kidding? MS only cares about their own DirectX product as te be-all/end-all. But they might need it as bait for coders in your same dilemma, as XP and DirectX9 are still their own strongest rival for DX10 and upcomig DX11 adoption.
In other words, if corporate America finds a killer app for CUDA "soon," MS could start selling the idea that XP/DX9 upgrades to Windows 7 and 8 are their only upgrade path to gain built-in CUDA-like support.
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Isn't the MS-only analogue of OpenCL/CUDA "DirectCompute" [wikipedia.org]?
OpenCL is clearly the portable choice, but I presume Microsoft will try to gimp that on Windows to encourage people to use DirectCompute.
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Re:Unification under DirectX (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft has actually been the innovator on this one.
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CUDA was announced November 2006 [ixbtlabs.com], so Microsoft wasn't that far ahead. But mass-market GPGPU [gpgpu.org] really got started around 2000, culminating in the Brook project [stanford.edu] in 2004. Microsoft didn't start this trend, though they did jump on it quickly.
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Microsoft is only an innovator where it has a monopoly.
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LOL, yet, time and time again, nVidia does the same stunts with their drivers as they did at the release of Vista, or did you forget all of that?
We won't even go into having to use our ovens at home to re-flow the shitty soldering on their video cards.
Mobile Failure (Score:4, Informative)
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Dirk, we miss you already (Score:1)
I'm no silicon engineer... (Score:2)
I'm no silicon engineer, but I have to imagine that AMD has SURELY got something big in the works.
Think about it. They've essentially had three chips in ten years. Athlon, Athlon64, and Phenom. Everything else is minor variation and process evolution. That's not a lot, really.
As I see it, AMD is either biding their time, holding their market segment down with their really-stretched-to-the-limit Phenom architecture, while perfecting the next generation product...
OR
They've just been fucking off for the past t
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You forgot Opteron. Where else can I get twelve physical cores per CPU? Not Intel, that's for sure.
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Re:I'm no silicon engineer... (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, those are AMD 48-core system at #1... and #2... and #3
Then there is the old performance per dollar metric where AMD has the top 7 chips on the market right now.
Intel definitely has some good chips, but aside from a small group of them, they are terrible value (rip off) and also not something they are selling a whole lot of (if you are throwing down $1000 for the CPU, you are probably in the market for a server chip with significantly better memory bandwidth than that i7-980 offers)
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I am a silicon engineer and you do an amazing job of referencing one graph that shows AMD leading.
Does AMD have a comfortable performance lead at the very high end? http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html
How about in OC systems? http://www.cpubenchmark.net/overclocked_cpus.html
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In price per retired instruction, AMD is the clear winner, even when you have to use more processor packages to get more speed than an intel solution. Who cares what you say after that? The situation is even more clear when you bring in Intel's flagship, where they're not following AMD's lead vis-a-vis instruction sets, Itanium. Which is a fucking dog.
AMD is leading the value proposition today.
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might depend on market - for regular desktops it's not really true anymore.Intel still does the "hey are you EXTREME?!?! pay $1000 for this" thing but the Phenom 970 is about $185 bucks and so is the similar performing intel i5 750. and the new sandy bridge processors are performing very well even against their 6 core gulftown cousins for bout half the price or less ($300 )
at this point in time the bang/buck isn't favoring AMD like it used to and when spending so much on a PC sliding $20-$50 for a much bett
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I agree with you.
Now, if only Dell and HP,etc. would start making AMD based systems which were not 'entry grade'. You know, the shitty cheap systems with few upgrade options, no redundant PSUs, etc.
I'd suspect the AMD/ATI chipsets of not being as good, but I'm not really sure what the root cause is.
Still an AMD fanboy (Score:5, Insightful)
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1) Bulldozer will beat Sandy Bridge on integer performance (clock for clock) but will lag badly on floating point performance (clock for clock.)
2) Nobody will complain about DRM in AMD processors because they dont have any.
Re:Still an AMD fanboy (Score:4, Interesting)
AMD has been the clear leader for consumer choice and value since the K6/3, which is a complete monster. Actually, the K6/2 is a beast as well, but it has a crap fpu still. Not that I expect anyone to do this today, but if you actually compile your full system for K6 (hello, Gentoo!) then you will beat the pants off a Pentium II of the same clock rate and cache... not to mention that a K6/3 system with external cache has an L3 cache because of the integrated L2. Unfortunately they were saving their pennies for the upcoming K7 launch so they didn't have the money to do a fully rebranded K6/3 launch as a new product which could actually compete with the P2 in the x86 market.
New intel processors are always astoundingly expensive until the next AMD processor comes out, so IMO it is safe to say that you should always wait for AMD to bring out a processor before a new purchase even if you don't plan to buy AMD. And if more people did that, Intel would drop their pricing and a new equilibrium would be found, but a lot of people who didn't understand (or won't forgive) the K6 FPU debacle will never forgive AMD for their one (very real) failure. If you look back at AMD's list of attempts to rival or even surpass intel they are all massive successes, including 40 MHz 386s, low-power 486s, the oddly competitive yet overlooked 586...
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Yes, the K6/2 was an incredible system.
I remember doing just that - beating the pants off friends and their Intel 233Mhz machines with my same-clocked K6-2 - even with a worse graphics card, I got higher FPS in games like Quake. Windows operation was visibly better and more responsive, as well. AMD had the edge in this department all the way up to the current, Nehalem based Intel systems, IMO. Unless I'm doing server wrok, I'll take an AMD Athlon64 CPU over a 5200 Xeon or similar.
Amd paid thier best engineers poorly (Score:3)
Re:Amd paid thier best engineers poorly (Score:5, Interesting)
As someone who was able to compare salaries when AMD bought ATI, I've got to take issue with that comment... AMD actually paid *very* handsomely compared to ATI (and that pay disparity still exists, and causes some resentment... but that's a separate issue). And of course, there are tons of highly competent, skilled, and creative engineers still in the company.
A lot of "top" ex-ATI talent has gone elsewhere (also starts with 'A'), but that phenomenon is almost exclusively limited to Silicon Valley. In general, the hop from job-to-job culture is far less practical when there are only a handful of ASIC jobs to be had in certain areas. Many "top" CPU guys are still around too, so far as I can tell (not my department).
The thing that I notice from all of these moves is that ex-ATI people are on the move upwards, largely displacing the CPU side. The poor execution of the latter group is a large part of that, no question. The trouble is, most of the moves upwards are being made by people in (you guessed it), Silicon Valley. The headquarters is still in Austin, but it's becoming little San Fransisco. The reason this is a problem? Well, it's building resentment in almost the entire remainder of the company, which is a rather large organization. The CPU guys are annoyed that everything is moving under formerly-graphics ownership (add that to the irritated sentiment that AMD overpaid for ATI...), and two-thirds of the GPU guys are annoyed that everything is moving under Silicon Valley ownership. Some changes are viewed as being unfair (such is life) and some are clearly undeserved (ATI had some big screw-ups too). The politics is actually pretty bad; it's much worse than any other place I've ever worked.
We've got a group meeting about this announcement this afternoon. I wonder what the spin will be...
captcha: tantrum
haha...
Talk to the Oracle. (Score:4, Interesting)
Considering their market cap, and Oracle's interest in chip companies, It wouldn't surprise me if Larry Ellison isn't their next CEO.