AMD bowing out?

Well I'm already on record with my medium-long term view.

Has anyone checked that this Mike Silverman isn't a disgruntled sacked employee whose credentials weren't revoked ? :D
 
Well I'm already on record with my medium-long term view.

Has anyone checked that this Mike Silverman isn't a disgruntled sacked employee whose credentials weren't revoked ? :D


oh no, not at all, Mike is very gruntled. :rolleyes:
I don't give any credence to this or anything at this point. they are going to be full mis-direction obfuscation mode until they have some semblance of a plan. I think you can ignore any comments/press releases/roadmap slides for the time being.
 
Way ahead of you. I don't place any credence in anything that eminates from the Sunnyvale bunker at the present time :suspiciou
 
Wonder if we'll see the FX-8170, probably not in any meaningful numbers in any case. That's not based on this article, but with regard to the ongoing supply issues with the current 8 core chips. This past week you could only buy an FX-8120 as part of a combo deal on newegg and it still sold out.

Sure hope for AMD's sake that the HD 7000 graphic cards live up to expectations, however have seen a number of reports that all but the high end parts are re-branded models. Where would AMD be today without the ATI acquisition?
 
Wonder if we'll see the FX-8170, probably not in any meaningful numbers in any case.
The $64 question. Another being is the 8170 a higher binned BD, or is it the first Piledriver SKU?

AMD seem to busily seeding stories about Trinity -including this gem courtesy of Xbit...yet Piledriver, which is the basis for Trinity is absent from discussion.
The Xbit article states that production for Trinity starts in May, and since no mention is made of PD as CPU, it seems a reasonable bet that the timeline for its production starts further out than this

That's not based on this article, but with regard to the ongoing supply issues with the current 8 core chips. This past week you could only buy an FX-8120 as part of a combo deal on newegg and it still sold out.
Hardly surprising. GloFo's yields are in the toilet. I read in various articles that the usable die yield from GloFo's 32nm wafers sits at 50% or less (counting salvage parts) - for a new process ramping and a large die area, it should follow that AMD have a hard job keeping the channel stocked

Sure hope for AMD's sake that the HD 7000 graphic cards live up to expectations, however have seen a number of reports that all but the high end parts are re-branded models.
There's supposed to be a(nother) press release/slide deck presentation regarding HD7000 on December 5. Looks like the 7850/7870 (Barts successor based on 6950/6970 Cayman arch) will be first desktop model out of the gate. 79xx (GCN arch) maybe closer to Feb-March from my understanding and probably depends on TSMC's yields and AMD's wafer allocation.
Where would AMD be today without the ATI acquisition?
Phenom III and no future probably.
 
Hmmm, I wonder as far as the desktop parts, if they are abandoning, or merely setting expectations. Hard to believe that they would abandon five years of architectural development.
I also wonder if the SoC is a direction change, or a hastening of an existing plan. Remember the conversation we had when I thought AMD was on a time-line for Soc?
(of course you do...you probably remember the thread number:haha:)
 
If AMD get into SoC now, I'm guessing they are still a few years away from having the parts ready for retail. None of the ARM licencees have had particularly fast ramps, so it's probably unrealistic to think that AMD are going to jump in and produce a workable SoC in the immediate timeframe.

I don't think anyone is expecting AMD to drop desktop/server CPU in any immediate future -at least not until they have APU and the SoC's earning revenue, and that is going to take time. My thinking is that if AMD's R&D is financially constrained (likely, no?) then how do you divide up research? If AMD are moving to SoC as seems lightly they need to apportion R&D funding...where is the cash coming from? AMD can't strip the graphics division (since it is both profit and is tied to APU), that pretty much means desktop/server starts losing development funds* -so I would think it a logical leap to see AMD mirror K8/K10 progression with Bulldozer/Piledriver/Steamroller etc. i.e. squeeze/refine the existing design as much as possible without requiring a major redesign and influx of research funding. As far I'm aware, AMD's future announced CPU's are all based on the Bulldozer architecture, so it would seem that incremental gains are more the future for AMD than major overhauls and ground-up redesign.
AMD's own literature talks about a 40-50% performance improvement between BD and Excavator -assuming 0% hyperbole- how likely is that to be competitive against what Intel are likely to be fielding extrapolating from what is here, and what is known re: performance (single/multi thread)**, power envelope, die size.

Intel have the luxury of cash and a vision of x86 on itty-bitty chips. Sandy Bridge (new arch)-> Ivy Bridge -> Haswell (new arch) -> Broadwell -> Skymont (new arch) ->Skylake...whether or not that x86 SoC do-able this way -or with Atom, who knows? what is known is that Intel can be fairly relentless in pushing tech (particularly anything originating from themselves) and they have the marketshare to shape the market to a fair degree. I think AMD realize that they can't match Intel design-for-design, especially when you take into account that Intel have such a large lead in perf/mm and perf/watt...and one huge advantage in that Intel's foundries and process are tailored to Intel's design. At the present time, AMD have to contend with Intel on a µarch-to-µarch, whilst simultaneously being reliant upon GloFo to match or beat Intel in foundry process while having to migrate to gate last and play catch-up with FinFET or any other esoteric transistor optimization...and of course the longer they stay on this road, the harder it will be if they fail and have to start from too far back against ARM.
Reasonable assumptions ? I'm open to hearing other theories, so hit me!

*Assuming profit lines, marketshare and ASP's/margins stay relatively stable
** If AMD knew that BD was going to almost entirely multithreaded dependant, why didn't/hasn't AMD's Gaming Evolved program pushed/funded development of games to use BD's strength? (i.e. not just the occasional MT game but full x64 .exe's and coding that fully utilizes BD's ISA's)
Remember the conversation we had when I thought AMD was on a time-line for Soc?
(of course you do...you probably remember the thread number:haha:)
This one ?
 
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