PC sales are down to 2001 levels so with Intel sales also down and Intel idling numerous Fabs, i.e. laying off thousands, it's no surprise at all to me that AMD is cutting their work force by thousands also.
Before long Bama will anounce that we are in an economic recession. This announcement will come the day after the elections as will the reports of widespread layoffs including GE cutting 22,000 in the U.S. GE's CEO is Bama's job creation Czar... Really.
The market is just bad overall. Many HDD and memory vendors were either bought or dropped like flies. Now with Win8 not being a product that everyone will rush out to buy (the verdict is still out), it's not helping PC sales. Furthermore, most people can squeeze more performance by upgrade their HDD to SSD and prolong the life of their old machines. And news games seem to do just fine with video cards that are two generations old.
We just need some kind of blockbuster breakthrough on the x86 side in order to revive the good old golden days.
That's pretty much about it.. take everything they've learned over the past five years bundle it all together and then ad on a huge jump in performance. We are missing out on that because A: Intel isn't being challenged, and B: Amd hasn't had that break-thru.
Well, so much for all the BS RussianSensation was spreading.
I'm convinced the amd fanboy crew will near immediately ignore all this and return to extolling the great and profitable virtues of amd and spew how amd can drop prices like a rock and beat nVidia out of existence.
Next some freak will moan I don't want competition. LOL
When amd graphics drivers suck ever more Q4 and beyond, we will all know why, but the amd fan boy will of course never, ever admit it.
Im not a amd fanboy but their drivers dont suck like they did 2 years ago and I dont think layoffs will magically make their drivers and future drivers suck
AMD and nVidia drivers have more lines of code than the old Windows NT kernel so you are BOUND to run into issues with drivers at one point or another, nVidia isn't immune to this.
However, if you truly want bad graphics drivers, look no farther than Intel.
At the moment you sound like the angriest most rabid fanboy there ever has been. Sorry to break it to you and all that :)
And yes the drivers are unlikely to "just get worse" just as the company's financial status is unlikely to get "much better" just because of this lay-off.
@Beenthere... you said "PC sales are down to 2001 levels so with Intel sales also down and Intel idling numerous Fabs, i.e. laying off thousands, it's no surprise at all to me that AMD is cutting their work force by thousands also."
You have been going all around the net saying this a lot and it just isn't true. PC sales are not down to 2001 levels. You are confusing a headline that read something to the affect "PC sales will drop for the first time since 2001" and have twisted into sales have dropped to 2001 levels.
Gartner estimates that shipments will drop from 2011 of 352.8 million units to 348.7 million in 2012. This is the first time since 2001 that the year over year number of PC units shipped has dropped.
Sales in 2001, were on the order of 120 million or so. One magazine tracked all of Gartners numbers to poke fun of Steve Balmers ridiculous predictions. This data is actualized through 2010: http://www.theopensourcery.com/keepopen/2012/ballm...
In fact, Intel's quarterly revenue in the 2001 era was around 7 to 8 billion per quarter (Intel had never broke the 10 billion quarter mark until just a few years ago). If PC sales were, in fact, at 2001 level revenues would have been hit much much harder especially considering ASPs are much lower today than in 2001.
Next you say Intel is laying off thousands, though I have not seen that headline. You seem to imply that Intel is idling fabs where Anand said they were idling capacity, this sound more like Intel is simply not loading the fabs as high to avoid ballooning inventories. This doesn't mean Intel won't lay off as well, but something like that would certainly be news worthy and get headlines and that just hasn't occurred.
You really should stop exaggerating and spreading false information.
He always defends AMD and keeps saying the same stupid things on every site. Like for example SSDs are unreliable and he quotes Anand for that (taken out of context, of course).
No he's another commenter just like everyone else. I read his link and the whole deal stinks, so glad I saw it, however this is not for near straight politics and his link is only slightly related when stretching it quite a bit. I don't mind at all if it's directly related or very pertinent.
At this point it just pisses me off that amd cannot handle it. Pete sakes pull one out of your magic rabbit hat already !
We've got all these rubes babbling that amd just cannot compete directly with Intel and THAT'S A PILE OF CRAP !
They've done it TWICE in the very recent past. I'll tell you who I can't stand more than political off topic hack postings... the blind monkey boy babbling fools and doofs who repeat some frikkin mantric tantrum toodle talking point some other totally clueless set of morons spewed at them, and pretend and present it as if they are saying something they know and believe, when pathetically it is entirely incorrect, period.
Good grief...I'm sorry, but PCs had been around just a LITTLE bit in 2001, so the fact that we're selling multiple times that NOW seems like the market is...actually awesome. I suppose the difference though is CPUs cost way less than they used to, and we didn't used to have semi-decent <$1000 notebooks and whatnot.
At any rate, I really hate that AMD's having issues, although like the guy said, Intel is too, I'm just more worried about AMD, since obviously we need them too!
And regarding llano, it's not like those are bad chips now or anything.
I believe his point was no one can count on any help from the gov for saving any amd jobs, and in fact implied the gov may be pushing the jobs off US soil in the back round.
Yes it was a vague relation, but I got the point that the bailout theory for AMD is just not going to happen. I suppose the other chance would be the gov moving on some lawsuit monopoly or something like that issue, but it appears that has already been settled...
Maybe using the brain a bit before the rage attack is a good idea. :)
No, he was political trolling. There was ZERO reason to bring up the president or the election in his OP, none what so ever.
It was political trolling, and this guy basically just copy and pastes these opinions on all the sites. There is ample evidence he's a paid troll or corporate shill.
No offense, but 85% of AMD's employees are in Germany, Southease Asia or Latin America. Not sure why our president has any responsibility for their employment. As far as I'm concerned, every foreigh job cut is an opportunity for Americans to get back into the game. I am assuming Americans want these jobs. By the way I am a republican.
Take a look at Fiat and the president's bailout and making those cars in China. LOL You're not sure why, not sure anyone else is sure why either, but there it is son.
They did talk about Kabini launching in the 1st half but I don't think there was a mention of Kaveri today if I remember correctly. That is potentially worrying.
"AMD is looking to shift into high margin, fast growing markets like tablets as soon as possible."
I think AMD is right to shift there -- GPUs are very important there, and Intel doesn't have a stranglehold and nor does it look on the verge of getting one -- but 'high margin' does not seem right from the SoC vendor's perspective. Anand noted in the iPhone 4 review that $15-30 has been a typical mobile SoC price so far--a chunk of that is fabbing cost, a lot will go to paying back R&D costs, etc. AMD will have faster chips that they can charge more than $30 for. And for a while Windows 8, etc. might open up a 'laptop-replacement tablet' space (think Surface Pro) with higher prices and a good chance for AMD to compete with Intel on price without totally blowing their margin. And they can get profitable quarters and relevance out of it.
Longer term I think tablets costing 500 bucks or less, and chips cheaper than most stuff Intel sells, end up dominating. ARM is following the same Moore's Law as everything else, and users don't seem to be demanding faster clients. (Consider some ARM speed boosts in the pipeline: Cortex-A15 and Apple Swift 2.0; ARMv8 and 64-bit; process bumps galore.) Apple makes their own chip IP and Samsung fabs its own chips so there's arguably some advantage to ARM for the two most profitable mobile product makers today. Software's getting redesigned and user expectations are getting reset around today's ARM platforms. And AMD will deal with not just ARM but Intel and maybe a global economy that wants its computers cheap more than it wants them to have fast CPUs.
The server market has a much longer fuse on it, but I wouldn't assume ARM will never show up:
- Some server loads can parallelize OK across lots of low-power cores - 64-bit ARM is coming, so RAM won't be a bottleneck forever - If market forces take capital from Intel and give some to Samsung/Qualcomm/Nvidia/Apple/ARM, Intel's R&D lead could start to slip - x86 made the client-to-server transition; why not ARM someday?
So I think going into mobile is the right thing to do, and could get AMD a profitable future. I DON'T think that will mean ~$50 left over after fab costs on each consumer/office chip over the long run. AMD will need huge volume, because they'll be in a position more like, say, today's Nvidia selling Tegra than today's Intel selling Core. I wonder if they should see their key threats as PowerVR/Adreno/Mali, not Haswell/Saltwell. I wonder if they should get into mobile GPU IP or even consider ARM SoCs or core designs further out. I really wonder if they should compete more aggressively on price, even if it doesn't seem optimal for quarterly profit, to stay relevant.
Okay, that was incredibly pessimistic for AMD and Intel and very optimistic for everyone tied to ARM. I'd love to peek a decade out to see what I got and missed.
Wow, does nobody remember AMD/ATI sold their Imageon/Adreno mobile GPU IP to ... Qualcomm?
This was during Windows Mobile's last days when nobody seemed to care about mobile GPUs until Apple came along and told everybody to sit in the corner.
AMD said it was so they could focus on their core disciplines after the ATI merger.
Now that Nvidia has an out of the PC market with their high flying Tegra3, what are the other big ARM GPUs? PowerVR, Mali, and ... Adreno.
Even if AMD could enter the ARM SoC market, they have to restart the GPU IP from scratch without infringing their own Adreno IP.
Boy, that focus of AMD was actually cutting their lifeline.
Ha, yeah, you're right, I didn't know! Kids these days.
Maybe they have a fighting chance still--mobile SoCs are aspiring to laptop-like performance, so maybe with enough effort to scale down power use of their integrated GPUs they could be competitive with Qualcomm's attempts to scale up Adreno, sort of how Intel is trying hard to scale laptop IVB down to much lower power points for Haswell. Not that either one of those is easy, but they're strategies at least.
LOL - it's so freaking bad it must be so terribly embarrassing for the AMD insiders.
They don't listen to any good advice, then they cut their own throats, over and over again.
When they finally trash the last bit of ATI employee backbone left in Q4, that part of AMD will crumble into complete disrepair as the rest of AMD.
Whatever the real story behind the scenes is concerning the success of the K6-2 and even the 64x2, AMD had better wake up and try emulate it. I suppose that FIX would upset so many inside the company clinging on for dear life, that it will never, ever come.
"Leadership", or even internally the right stuff, is just not there, even though their 69xx and 79xx series cards hung tough, it just was not a win like the 580 was, so there's just nothing and even less of course in the cpu division.
I know, I remember saying in class that amd could have a chance of out lasting intel in the worst possible situation simply because of their graphics division. They could design gpus for mobile, and then i read a year later they sold their ultra mobile gpu group to qualcomm a few years back O_O. I cant help but laugh a little bit, I want amd to survive but its just funny when you read things like this and it seems like their just killing their mobile chances or however you want to put it.
To be fair, Nobody knew mobile would take off like this. I didn't like the deal when they did it as it seemed a bit rash to sell of a profitable business when they were losing money but I'll give them R&D costs. It really was a bad time for them and they REALLY were about to go under, and had Asset Light not have happened, they would have been gone by now. It's just the way the dice rolls sometimes...
But that's absolutely no excuse for their performance recently. Their brazos and/or Trinity processors would have been PERFECT for Win8 pcs, and the fact that we haven't seen them is a joke, especially considering that their CEO came from a laptop company. We should have at least seen some models by now. In fact, their probably shouldn't even be an Arm Surface, but just one x86 version with a Amd apu.
Amd doesn't need adreno, that was the beautiful thing about brazos. It was a chip that gave them a serious entry into the tablet market with one die shrink, but they had to push the roadmap out for a few months. Amd missed the boat on that one big time, and it looks like again they'll be fighting for relevance.
The basic problem is ARM is so cheap - instead of spending hundreds on your cpu, you now spend $15 for the whole soc. The ratio [cost of cpu silicon : total device cost] has drastically changed and this doesn't suit Intel or AMD at all.
You also sell more of them though, and looking at Qualcomm a company can become pretty sizeable off of ARM parts. People may buy one desktop what, every five or six years now for non-enthusiasts maybe, while they may buy a smartphone and a tablet every two years or so, and with individual devices for the whole family.
Most of you must by now realize that the cpu market has kinda hit a wall.. Sure we are seeing higher performance but for the most part the industry is taking steps to the side.. looking at cheaper manufactuering costs, better power consumption .. more integration etc.
All well and good.. I am glad to see that.. but when you have machines happily trucking along from 2007-09 that's going to hurt sales. In my opinion, we got a huge boost with the X2 from AMD and then later another huge boost from Intel with the Core2 but since then? No must haves. Many are just fine on their 6600-Q9500s PIIs Early 1366 stuff (etc..) with no major incentive to jump. Nope.. they just add more ram, change out a psu, upgrade the os.. get a better video card .. stuff like that.
We really haven't gotten to the next big jump yet.. just taking baby steps to the upwards and alot of leaps to the side. That a key reason for lagging sales as well.
Yeah, good point, and it could apply to servers too. It's hard to figure out exactly what 'old servers are good enough longer' means for future sales, but it means something.
Also, I wonder if we'll see a larger share of server chips bought by a few big 'cloud' companies with bargaining power, and if that's enough to change Intel/AMD's income per server substantially. Google may be the world's fifth-biggest Xeon buyer if you ask Intel, for instance (http://slashdot.org/topic/datacenter/google-the-fi...
Unfortunately, much of that is purely perceived. Having went from a Q6600 to a Core i5 2500k, it absolute is a MUST HAVE. It's a massive upgrade.
The problem is that it's not perceived to be, because the second generation Core CPU's were so amazingly good.
The question isn't whether it's a huge upgrade (it is), it's whether you NEED that upgrade. Only a sliver of the PC market actually needs the power a modern CPU can provide. That's the issue. It's not that modern CPU's are all side grading (they aren't), it's that 90% of your market long ago stopped needing more power.
I don't think they are massive upgrades though. Their "ok" but they don't blow you away and that's why their not a must have. I constantly pop back and forth between systems going from a Q6600 (not overclocked) to a 8400 to a PII920 to a i7 920 to my own two personal setups a i72700 and a Trinity based 5800. Their all good.. you never sit there going omg this is sooooo slow.. because none of them are.
Then I look around me seeing what others are using and most haven't even passed the C2D/PII stage yet and are still stuck in 2009 with no compelling reasons to upgrade.
I disagree. My Core 2 Quad Q6600 held it's own for many years. I only recently upgraded because i wanted a new motherboard with new tech (SATA 6Gbps, USB 3.0). Then again, I made a few rockin upgrades along the way (GF 8800 GT -> GTX 275, 4 -> 8 GB RAM, SSD, etc.) My new machine (Core i7 2600k, 16 GB, SSD) is definitely faster, but it wasn't the jump from the athlon 64 x2 4200+ to the Core 2 Quad that i did many years ago. I used to upgrade machines quite often, now i'm upgrading them once ever few years. Tech isn't progressing like it used to. Think about it. HD space was doubling every 3-6 months, CPU speeds almost equally so, GPU speeds, etc. All of a sudden, everything stopped. All at once. SSDs came along and are destroying the HD market. ARM came along and they are killing the x86 market. Same with mobile GPU. Intel and AMD don't need to adapt, they need to get back to creating kickass CPUs/GPUs. Create the technology and the developers will come.
You're all wrong. People are just buying new machines instead of upgrading and repairing old machines. It's only a couple hundred more for a brand new machine than it is for one decent tech call with any decent upgrade, so people are buying new, and they're cheap. That's what it going on outside all 3 or 4 of you and your closed sourpuss worlds.
these clowns at Microsoft are taking the PC down the wrong path. things were going great with XP then who knows what happened. They started shifting focus to xbox which hasn't made them shit compared to their PC products which rake them in billions yet they still try to push the Xbox. really? and now tablets where they are irreverent. they stopped making PC games altogether. what is up with that? they should be luring people to use the PC not move them away. fools.
Don't see your point at all. MS moved in the direct where the consumers are going. Whats the use of all that power on the PC? Where is that killer app? None, this makes all that excess power wasted. Servers can use them. Bench-markers and other enthusiasts are spoiled snobs who whine about more and more performance. I used to do it when I was younger, nice fun times but the novelty wears off quick. They don't represent the mainstream in the slightest. At one point their views carried weight and could sway opinions. They said tablet and smart phones where a fad look where they are now? They are a joke no one can take their words or views seriously anymore. AMD is late to this game atleast now they focusing on what they can do best. They will never win the battle with Intel head on if they want to try and match them on all fronts. They need to find their own niche while they still can and capitalize on it. What we need to see now is that all these layoffs and grand come back plans, can they actually execute? If they do, AMD will emerge as a fearsome company once again on a different front.
The burden of finding the killer app is not Microsoft's, its the developers who want to make apps. They are the lazy ones. They are the ones refusing to put into the R&D efforts and budgets to improve utilization of multi-core PC systems we have today. Some do it, vast majority are like meh. Every company out there is greedy they want to do minimal effort and maximize profit. This ain't an ideal world. but then again one was never promised.
Wow, two twits making it all up as they go along. Every comment is stupid just like every company out there is greedy.... LOL I hope you two enjoyed each others tardathon. I certainly did.
I provided plenty, you responded twice already, once happily in agreement.
BTW, it's "then" not "than". Furthermore, I pointed out twice including the last response, that some people just repeat total crap they've heard some other idiot spew, which is what these two did, and there's a lot of it.
Ah the troll from other websites, aliases Warriro24x7, chris, Jesse lee etc etc you should go back to the dump cleaning that you are only capable of, poorly at that. ;) Its too easy to identify low IQ trolls.
That must a poor attempt at a joke? What does Value make? Ermm Numbers? Don't bother you wont find it very inspiring they are not Microsoft and they are puny in comparison. Even MS sees the need to dive into the ARM market because they see the bigger picture. You are probably a benching enthusiast in denial. The market wont miss benching enthusiasts. The real enthusiasts are the ones who are interested in tech in general not in pointless number fads.
AMD does say "a workforce reduction and site consolidations. " and it's not that hard to figure out what sites matter less to them or need to be closer to home.
Uhh....wow maybe wall street should hire you to help pump stock.
The sad and the bad of it is after the major unprecedented workforce hacking over and over again, here comes another 15% AXE job !
Now, if you add up all the recent axings and this one hanging over the heads now, you've got an ASTOUNDING amount of absolute inefficiency, or a dangerously shrinking company.
I believe it's the latter, the former appears to be managerial incompetence, poor internal structure, and criminality.
AMD "released" and showed the Brazos E2-1800 for desktops over 6 months ago. Sapphire even showed us a mITX board. It's now almost end of the year and this product is not available. Why spend money showing such a product so early? The effect is completely gone.
Also.. they even have Desktop Trinities, showed months ago but still not available.
Even if you still have LLano's packed up and need to sell those first, AMD clearly doesn't have a clue how to prepare a market for a new product.
I have been waiting on a replacement for my 780G HTPC, should be completely silent. A Brazos is my *only* option then.. since Intel alternatives are slower and have other downsides. But damn.. had I known this, I would have bought the E-450 earlier this year.. the E2-1800 was already announced and should arrive in Q2.. yeah right.
I used to be a big AMD fan, and I really dont care their CPUs dont match with Core i7, a Core i3/i5 is more then enough for 90% of the mainstream market. So AMD can snoop away a big market share. But damn they have become so stupid with their marketing timings..
Since the "opressed" and loser company gets all the crybaby tears, we won't hear an answer that has any sense when it comes to your question.
I can certainly give my answer though. AMD products are messes, and when they're big messes, it takes forever for their tiny stupid staffs and people to straighten it out enough that they can launch their beta crap into the market.
So obviously, their crap is mired in internal crashes, incompatibilities, no certified drivers, BSOD's, and thus, no partner is going to roll out the trash until the garbage only stinks so much, and they can line up a strategy for having all the reviewers cover up the barfing pig sty enough so that the fanboys go whack and buy it, then live with the enedless troubles telling themselves they didn't do so bad and boy are they ever a good techie after crunching through the endless days of fixes that still leave the bleeding pile not quite ready to be released.
On the upside, a few years down the road, when it's old and slow and incapable, amd will have finally patched it enough that it will work, for the most part... kind of, most of the time, for most of those things it was originally bought for, but none of the new stuff that has hit in the years since.
Every once in a while they shatter that broken mold and press out a beauty, like the K6-2 and 64X2, but .... that beauty is long overdue...
Ryan I thought tablets were a low margin business?
Biggest problem at Amd is still probably stability. Not good for business when you have CEOs cycling through every few years. It was a big mistake to get rid of Dirk Meyer. Having said that, Amd has a couple of outs, but the biggest one is almost totally dependent on Microsoft. Microsoft is moving to tablets, but because they don't want to put their foot down on x86 or Arm most vendors are slowly shifting to Arm based systems. Worse, Msoft seemed to totally ignore Amd for an Intel solution instead for their surface. Probably big mistake for both of them (you could have a tablet priced x86 pc...).
The other is becoming a primarily graphics company. It's a growing industry, especially with trends like 3D printing and cloud, but they are a bit behind Nvidia on this one (and Nvidia has the mind share right now).
Overall they need money. At this point you just can't compete in any of these industries unless you can create viable solutions. That was the whole reason they sold Imageon.
I'm sorry that I didn't get to read all the comments first. It's always interesting. But this is not the first time that AMD has had layoffs to become a break even company at some point of sales. Doing that just shows that they are not expecting to be competitive. Competitiveness is when you attempt, at least, to better the competition, and grow into more marketshare. It's looks like they are just trying to keep their heads above water.
But each time this happens, they become less competitive. What really worries me this time is their intention to reuse components in an effort to cut back in R&D. Once that happens, they will fall behind further. It's an impossible situation. The difficulty is that Intel's R&D equals all of AMD's sales right now. In order to be competitive, to need to equal what the competition is doing in R&D. Not necessarily in equal spending all round, but in the areas in which you need to compete the most. If AMD feels that they won't need to do that in SoC's, for example, as one area mentioned, they will be surprised. This is the product category that is advancing the most, and the quickest. Performance may double each year for the next two to three years. As this will be a new area for them, how do they think they can equal what's out now, much less outperform next year, and the year after that?
I'm concerned that this is their last gasp. It may take several more years, but if things don't improve in a big way soon, they will be on their way out.
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Beenthere - Thursday, October 18, 2012 - link
PC sales are down to 2001 levels so with Intel sales also down and Intel idling numerous Fabs, i.e. laying off thousands, it's no surprise at all to me that AMD is cutting their work force by thousands also.Before long Bama will anounce that we are in an economic recession. This announcement will come the day after the elections as will the reports of widespread layoffs including GE cutting 22,000 in the U.S. GE's CEO is Bama's job creation Czar... Really.
http://patriotaction.net/profiles/blogs/ge-job-cza...
The more you know, the more you'll know that you're being duped by the gov ment.
gamoniac - Thursday, October 18, 2012 - link
The market is just bad overall. Many HDD and memory vendors were either bought or dropped like flies. Now with Win8 not being a product that everyone will rush out to buy (the verdict is still out), it's not helping PC sales. Furthermore, most people can squeeze more performance by upgrade their HDD to SSD and prolong the life of their old machines. And news games seem to do just fine with video cards that are two generations old.We just need some kind of blockbuster breakthrough on the x86 side in order to revive the good old golden days.
just4U - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
That's pretty much about it.. take everything they've learned over the past five years bundle it all together and then ad on a huge jump in performance. We are missing out on that because A: Intel isn't being challenged, and B: Amd hasn't had that break-thru.CeriseCogburn - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
Well, so much for all the BS RussianSensation was spreading.
I'm convinced the amd fanboy crew will near immediately ignore all this and return to extolling the great and profitable virtues of amd and spew how amd can drop prices like a rock and beat nVidia out of existence.
Next some freak will moan I don't want competition. LOL
When amd graphics drivers suck ever more Q4 and beyond, we will all know why, but the amd fan boy will of course never, ever admit it.
FearfulSPARTAN - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
Im not a amd fanboy but their drivers dont suck like they did 2 years ago and I dont think layoffs will magically make their drivers and future drivers suckStevoLincolnite - Saturday, October 20, 2012 - link
AMD and nVidia drivers have more lines of code than the old Windows NT kernel so you are BOUND to run into issues with drivers at one point or another, nVidia isn't immune to this.However, if you truly want bad graphics drivers, look no farther than Intel.
CeriseCogburn - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
LOL - 15% more amd layoffs won't be the "magically worse" drivers... you see how the amd fan boy cannot handle reality ?
A 15% layoff is no magic when it comes to drivers getting worse, it is a certainty.
Next we have to hear of course nVidia, then Intel really sucks.. LOL
It's like clockwork, the little loyal minds are trained perfectly.
Alucard291 - Thursday, October 25, 2012 - link
At the moment you sound like the angriest most rabid fanboy there ever has been. Sorry to break it to you and all that :)And yes the drivers are unlikely to "just get worse" just as the company's financial status is unlikely to get "much better" just because of this lay-off.
But you can keep raging all you want.
CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - link
LOL - another IDIOT with personal attacks.I am correct, and that's the end of the lying stories you idiot fanboys blow out your stupid pieholes.
CeriseCogburn - Friday, October 26, 2012 - link
LOL - "it's just the bad market overall" - LOL (amd fan boy dream)
JumpingJack - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
@Beenthere... you said "PC sales are down to 2001 levels so with Intel sales also down and Intel idling numerous Fabs, i.e. laying off thousands, it's no surprise at all to me that AMD is cutting their work force by thousands also."You have been going all around the net saying this a lot and it just isn't true. PC sales are not down to 2001 levels. You are confusing a headline that read something to the affect "PC sales will drop for the first time since 2001" and have twisted into sales have dropped to 2001 levels.
http://www.bgr.com/2012/10/10/worldwide-pc-shipmen...
Gartner estimates that shipments will drop from 2011 of 352.8 million units to 348.7 million in 2012. This is the first time since 2001 that the year over year number of PC units shipped has dropped.
Sales in 2001, were on the order of 120 million or so. One magazine tracked all of Gartners numbers to poke fun of Steve Balmers ridiculous predictions. This data is actualized through 2010:
http://www.theopensourcery.com/keepopen/2012/ballm...
In fact, Intel's quarterly revenue in the 2001 era was around 7 to 8 billion per quarter (Intel had never broke the 10 billion quarter mark until just a few years ago).
If PC sales were, in fact, at 2001 level revenues would have been hit much much harder especially considering ASPs are much lower today than in 2001.
Next you say Intel is laying off thousands, though I have not seen that headline. You seem to imply that Intel is idling fabs where Anand said they were idling capacity, this sound more like Intel is simply not loading the fabs as high to avoid ballooning inventories. This doesn't mean Intel won't lay off as well, but something like that would certainly be news worthy and get headlines and that just hasn't occurred.
You really should stop exaggerating and spreading false information.
cosminmcm - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
He always defends AMD and keeps saying the same stupid things on every site.Like for example SSDs are unreliable and he quotes Anand for that (taken out of context, of course).
toyotabedzrock - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
He is not a fanboy, he is a hired political troll.CeriseCogburn - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
No he's another commenter just like everyone else.I read his link and the whole deal stinks, so glad I saw it, however this is not for near straight politics and his link is only slightly related when stretching it quite a bit.
I don't mind at all if it's directly related or very pertinent.
At this point it just pisses me off that amd cannot handle it. Pete sakes pull one out of your magic rabbit hat already !
We've got all these rubes babbling that amd just cannot compete directly with Intel and THAT'S A PILE OF CRAP !
They've done it TWICE in the very recent past.
I'll tell you who I can't stand more than political off topic hack postings... the blind monkey boy babbling fools and doofs who repeat some frikkin mantric tantrum toodle talking point some other totally clueless set of morons spewed at them, and pretend and present it as if they are saying something they know and believe, when pathetically it is entirely incorrect, period.
God I can't stand that.
Wolfpup - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
Good grief...I'm sorry, but PCs had been around just a LITTLE bit in 2001, so the fact that we're selling multiple times that NOW seems like the market is...actually awesome. I suppose the difference though is CPUs cost way less than they used to, and we didn't used to have semi-decent <$1000 notebooks and whatnot.At any rate, I really hate that AMD's having issues, although like the guy said, Intel is too, I'm just more worried about AMD, since obviously we need them too!
And regarding llano, it's not like those are bad chips now or anything.
toyotabedzrock - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
Take your politics to another site troll.CeriseCogburn - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
I believe his point was no one can count on any help from the gov for saving any amd jobs, and in fact implied the gov may be pushing the jobs off US soil in the back round.Yes it was a vague relation, but I got the point that the bailout theory for AMD is just not going to happen.
I suppose the other chance would be the gov moving on some lawsuit monopoly or something like that issue, but it appears that has already been settled...
Maybe using the brain a bit before the rage attack is a good idea. :)
Brainling - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
No, he was political trolling. There was ZERO reason to bring up the president or the election in his OP, none what so ever.It was political trolling, and this guy basically just copy and pastes these opinions on all the sites. There is ample evidence he's a paid troll or corporate shill.
CeriseCogburn - Saturday, October 20, 2012 - link
Works for the braindead, "brainling".medi01 - Sunday, October 28, 2012 - link
Take your idiotic fanboi comments to another site please.Or better ask your doctors to disconnect your clinic from the internet, your illness seems to be worsening.
Ibertkc1 - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
No offense, but 85% of AMD's employees are in Germany, Southease Asia or Latin America. Not sure why our president has any responsibility for their employment. As far as I'm concerned, every foreigh job cut is an opportunity for Americans to get back into the game. I am assuming Americans want these jobs. By the way I am a republican.CeriseCogburn - Friday, October 26, 2012 - link
Everyone knows amd is a traitor company.CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - link
Take a look at Fiat and the president's bailout and making those cars in China.LOL
You're not sure why, not sure anyone else is sure why either, but there it is son.
codedivine - Thursday, October 18, 2012 - link
They did talk about Kabini launching in the 1st half but I don't think there was a mention of Kaveri today if I remember correctly. That is potentially worrying.twotwotwo - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
"AMD is looking to shift into high margin, fast growing markets like tablets as soon as possible."I think AMD is right to shift there -- GPUs are very important there, and Intel doesn't have a stranglehold and nor does it look on the verge of getting one -- but 'high margin' does not seem right from the SoC vendor's perspective. Anand noted in the iPhone 4 review that $15-30 has been a typical mobile SoC price so far--a chunk of that is fabbing cost, a lot will go to paying back R&D costs, etc. AMD will have faster chips that they can charge more than $30 for. And for a while Windows 8, etc. might open up a 'laptop-replacement tablet' space (think Surface Pro) with higher prices and a good chance for AMD to compete with Intel on price without totally blowing their margin. And they can get profitable quarters and relevance out of it.
Longer term I think tablets costing 500 bucks or less, and chips cheaper than most stuff Intel sells, end up dominating. ARM is following the same Moore's Law as everything else, and users don't seem to be demanding faster clients. (Consider some ARM speed boosts in the pipeline: Cortex-A15 and Apple Swift 2.0; ARMv8 and 64-bit; process bumps galore.) Apple makes their own chip IP and Samsung fabs its own chips so there's arguably some advantage to ARM for the two most profitable mobile product makers today. Software's getting redesigned and user expectations are getting reset around today's ARM platforms. And AMD will deal with not just ARM but Intel and maybe a global economy that wants its computers cheap more than it wants them to have fast CPUs.
The server market has a much longer fuse on it, but I wouldn't assume ARM will never show up:
- Some server loads can parallelize OK across lots of low-power cores
- 64-bit ARM is coming, so RAM won't be a bottleneck forever
- If market forces take capital from Intel and give some to Samsung/Qualcomm/Nvidia/Apple/ARM, Intel's R&D lead could start to slip
- x86 made the client-to-server transition; why not ARM someday?
So I think going into mobile is the right thing to do, and could get AMD a profitable future. I DON'T think that will mean ~$50 left over after fab costs on each consumer/office chip over the long run. AMD will need huge volume, because they'll be in a position more like, say, today's Nvidia selling Tegra than today's Intel selling Core. I wonder if they should see their key threats as PowerVR/Adreno/Mali, not Haswell/Saltwell. I wonder if they should get into mobile GPU IP or even consider ARM SoCs or core designs further out. I really wonder if they should compete more aggressively on price, even if it doesn't seem optimal for quarterly profit, to stay relevant.
Okay, that was incredibly pessimistic for AMD and Intel and very optimistic for everyone tied to ARM. I'd love to peek a decade out to see what I got and missed.
NuShrike - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
Wow, does nobody remember AMD/ATI sold their Imageon/Adreno mobile GPU IP to ... Qualcomm?This was during Windows Mobile's last days when nobody seemed to care about mobile GPUs until Apple came along and told everybody to sit in the corner.
AMD said it was so they could focus on their core disciplines after the ATI merger.
Now that Nvidia has an out of the PC market with their high flying Tegra3, what are the other big ARM GPUs? PowerVR, Mali, and ... Adreno.
Even if AMD could enter the ARM SoC market, they have to restart the GPU IP from scratch without infringing their own Adreno IP.
Boy, that focus of AMD was actually cutting their lifeline.
twotwotwo - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
Ha, yeah, you're right, I didn't know! Kids these days.Maybe they have a fighting chance still--mobile SoCs are aspiring to laptop-like performance, so maybe with enough effort to scale down power use of their integrated GPUs they could be competitive with Qualcomm's attempts to scale up Adreno, sort of how Intel is trying hard to scale laptop IVB down to much lower power points for Haswell. Not that either one of those is easy, but they're strategies at least.
CeriseCogburn - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
LOL - it's so freaking bad it must be so terribly embarrassing for the AMD insiders.
They don't listen to any good advice, then they cut their own throats, over and over again.
When they finally trash the last bit of ATI employee backbone left in Q4, that part of AMD will crumble into complete disrepair as the rest of AMD.
Whatever the real story behind the scenes is concerning the success of the K6-2 and even the 64x2, AMD had better wake up and try emulate it. I suppose that FIX would upset so many inside the company clinging on for dear life, that it will never, ever come.
"Leadership", or even internally the right stuff, is just not there, even though their 69xx and 79xx series cards hung tough, it just was not a win like the 580 was, so there's just nothing and even less of course in the cpu division.
FearfulSPARTAN - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
I know, I remember saying in class that amd could have a chance of out lasting intel in the worst possible situation simply because of their graphics division. They could design gpus for mobile, and then i read a year later they sold their ultra mobile gpu group to qualcomm a few years back O_O. I cant help but laugh a little bit, I want amd to survive but its just funny when you read things like this and it seems like their just killing their mobile chances or however you want to put it.Mishera - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
To be fair, Nobody knew mobile would take off like this. I didn't like the deal when they did it as it seemed a bit rash to sell of a profitable business when they were losing money but I'll give them R&D costs. It really was a bad time for them and they REALLY were about to go under, and had Asset Light not have happened, they would have been gone by now. It's just the way the dice rolls sometimes...But that's absolutely no excuse for their performance recently. Their brazos and/or Trinity processors would have been PERFECT for Win8 pcs, and the fact that we haven't seen them is a joke, especially considering that their CEO came from a laptop company. We should have at least seen some models by now. In fact, their probably shouldn't even be an Arm Surface, but just one x86 version with a Amd apu.
Amd doesn't need adreno, that was the beautiful thing about brazos. It was a chip that gave them a serious entry into the tablet market with one die shrink, but they had to push the roadmap out for a few months. Amd missed the boat on that one big time, and it looks like again they'll be fighting for relevance.
Dribble - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
The basic problem is ARM is so cheap - instead of spending hundreds on your cpu, you now spend $15 for the whole soc. The ratio [cost of cpu silicon : total device cost] has drastically changed and this doesn't suit Intel or AMD at all.NuShrike - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
That was DEC's argument about microcomputers. Where are they now?CeriseCogburn - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
Yes the doubly dribbling pretense is expected technological progress to come to a halt.LOL
Man duh duh duh duh da dooof !
tipoo - Sunday, October 21, 2012 - link
You also sell more of them though, and looking at Qualcomm a company can become pretty sizeable off of ARM parts. People may buy one desktop what, every five or six years now for non-enthusiasts maybe, while they may buy a smartphone and a tablet every two years or so, and with individual devices for the whole family.just4U - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
Most of you must by now realize that the cpu market has kinda hit a wall.. Sure we are seeing higher performance but for the most part the industry is taking steps to the side.. looking at cheaper manufactuering costs, better power consumption .. more integration etc.All well and good.. I am glad to see that.. but when you have machines happily trucking along from 2007-09 that's going to hurt sales. In my opinion, we got a huge boost with the X2 from AMD and then later another huge boost from Intel with the Core2 but since then? No must haves. Many are just fine on their 6600-Q9500s PIIs Early 1366 stuff (etc..) with no major incentive to jump. Nope.. they just add more ram, change out a psu, upgrade the os.. get a better video card .. stuff like that.
We really haven't gotten to the next big jump yet.. just taking baby steps to the upwards and alot of leaps to the side. That a key reason for lagging sales as well.
twotwotwo - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
Yeah, good point, and it could apply to servers too. It's hard to figure out exactly what 'old servers are good enough longer' means for future sales, but it means something.Also, I wonder if we'll see a larger share of server chips bought by a few big 'cloud' companies with bargaining power, and if that's enough to change Intel/AMD's income per server substantially. Google may be the world's fifth-biggest Xeon buyer if you ask Intel, for instance (http://slashdot.org/topic/datacenter/google-the-fi...
twotwotwo - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
Fail posting the link; it was http://slashdot.org/topic/datacenter/google-the-fi...Brainling - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
Unfortunately, much of that is purely perceived. Having went from a Q6600 to a Core i5 2500k, it absolute is a MUST HAVE. It's a massive upgrade.The problem is that it's not perceived to be, because the second generation Core CPU's were so amazingly good.
The question isn't whether it's a huge upgrade (it is), it's whether you NEED that upgrade. Only a sliver of the PC market actually needs the power a modern CPU can provide. That's the issue. It's not that modern CPU's are all side grading (they aren't), it's that 90% of your market long ago stopped needing more power.
just4U - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
That's part of it to B..I don't think they are massive upgrades though. Their "ok" but they don't blow you away and that's why their not a must have. I constantly pop back and forth between systems going from a Q6600 (not overclocked) to a 8400 to a PII920 to a i7 920 to my own two personal setups a i72700 and a Trinity based 5800. Their all good.. you never sit there going omg this is sooooo slow.. because none of them are.
Then I look around me seeing what others are using and most haven't even passed the C2D/PII stage yet and are still stuck in 2009 with no compelling reasons to upgrade.
betam4x - Sunday, October 21, 2012 - link
I disagree. My Core 2 Quad Q6600 held it's own for many years. I only recently upgraded because i wanted a new motherboard with new tech (SATA 6Gbps, USB 3.0). Then again, I made a few rockin upgrades along the way (GF 8800 GT -> GTX 275, 4 -> 8 GB RAM, SSD, etc.) My new machine (Core i7 2600k, 16 GB, SSD) is definitely faster, but it wasn't the jump from the athlon 64 x2 4200+ to the Core 2 Quad that i did many years ago. I used to upgrade machines quite often, now i'm upgrading them once ever few years. Tech isn't progressing like it used to. Think about it. HD space was doubling every 3-6 months, CPU speeds almost equally so, GPU speeds, etc. All of a sudden, everything stopped. All at once. SSDs came along and are destroying the HD market. ARM came along and they are killing the x86 market. Same with mobile GPU. Intel and AMD don't need to adapt, they need to get back to creating kickass CPUs/GPUs. Create the technology and the developers will come.CeriseCogburn - Friday, October 26, 2012 - link
You're all wrong. People are just buying new machines instead of upgrading and repairing old machines.It's only a couple hundred more for a brand new machine than it is for one decent tech call with any decent upgrade, so people are buying new, and they're cheap.
That's what it going on outside all 3 or 4 of you and your closed sourpuss worlds.
cyberserf - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
these clowns at Microsoft are taking the PC down the wrong path. things were going great with XP then who knows what happened. They started shifting focus to xbox which hasn't made them shit compared to their PC products which rake them in billions yet they still try to push the Xbox. really? and now tablets where they are irreverent.they stopped making PC games altogether. what is up with that?
they should be luring people to use the PC not move them away. fools.
Vini - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
Don't see your point at all. MS moved in the direct where the consumers are going. Whats the use of all that power on the PC? Where is that killer app? None, this makes all that excess power wasted. Servers can use them. Bench-markers and other enthusiasts are spoiled snobs who whine about more and more performance. I used to do it when I was younger, nice fun times but the novelty wears off quick. They don't represent the mainstream in the slightest. At one point their views carried weight and could sway opinions. They said tablet and smart phones where a fad look where they are now? They are a joke no one can take their words or views seriously anymore. AMD is late to this game atleast now they focusing on what they can do best. They will never win the battle with Intel head on if they want to try and match them on all fronts. They need to find their own niche while they still can and capitalize on it. What we need to see now is that all these layoffs and grand come back plans, can they actually execute? If they do, AMD will emerge as a fearsome company once again on a different front.The burden of finding the killer app is not Microsoft's, its the developers who want to make apps. They are the lazy ones. They are the ones refusing to put into the R&D efforts and budgets to improve utilization of multi-core PC systems we have today. Some do it, vast majority are like meh. Every company out there is greedy they want to do minimal effort and maximize profit. This ain't an ideal world. but then again one was never promised.
CeriseCogburn - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
Wow, two twits making it all up as they go along. Every comment is stupid just like every company out there is greedy....LOL
I hope you two enjoyed each others tardathon. I certainly did.
FearfulSPARTAN - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
And what have you provided to this conversation, nothing, so if you have nothing to say than shut upCeriseCogburn - Saturday, October 20, 2012 - link
I provided plenty, you responded twice already, once happily in agreement.BTW, it's "then" not "than".
Furthermore, I pointed out twice including the last response, that some people just repeat total crap they've heard some other idiot spew, which is what these two did, and there's a lot of it.
cyberserf - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
smart ass, u don't know shit.Vini - Wednesday, October 24, 2012 - link
Ah the troll from other websites, aliases Warriro24x7, chris, Jesse lee etc etc you should go back to the dump cleaning that you are only capable of, poorly at that. ;) Its too easy to identify low IQ trolls.CeriseCogburn - Friday, October 26, 2012 - link
Another paranoid delusional amd fanboy looking for conspiracies in all the wrong places.Tsk tsk !
betam4x - Sunday, October 21, 2012 - link
Valve's Steam generates a ton of revenue every year. The market for awesome PCs is there, even if you don't want to admit it...Vini - Sunday, October 21, 2012 - link
That must a poor attempt at a joke? What does Value make? Ermm Numbers? Don't bother you wont find it very inspiring they are not Microsoft and they are puny in comparison. Even MS sees the need to dive into the ARM market because they see the bigger picture. You are probably a benching enthusiast in denial. The market wont miss benching enthusiasts. The real enthusiasts are the ones who are interested in tech in general not in pointless number fads.jjj - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
AMD does say "a workforce reduction and site consolidations. " and it's not that hard to figure out what sites matter less to them or need to be closer to home.toyotabedzrock - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
Compared to the recent past that is a small loss for them.CeriseCogburn - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
Uhh....wow maybe wall street should hire you to help pump stock.
The sad and the bad of it is after the major unprecedented workforce hacking over and over again, here comes another 15% AXE job !
Now, if you add up all the recent axings and this one hanging over the heads now, you've got an ASTOUNDING amount of absolute inefficiency, or a dangerously shrinking company.
I believe it's the latter, the former appears to be managerial incompetence, poor internal structure, and criminality.
HOODY - Friday, October 19, 2012 - link
2 words for you AMD that bear some responsibility for your loss's."DRIVER SUPPORT" !!!!
(does "Enduro" come to mind?)
zilexa - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
Can any expert please explain this to me:AMD "released" and showed the Brazos E2-1800 for desktops over 6 months ago. Sapphire even showed us a mITX board. It's now almost end of the year and this product is not available.
Why spend money showing such a product so early? The effect is completely gone.
Also.. they even have Desktop Trinities, showed months ago but still not available.
Even if you still have LLano's packed up and need to sell those first, AMD clearly doesn't have a clue how to prepare a market for a new product.
I have been waiting on a replacement for my 780G HTPC, should be completely silent. A Brazos is my *only* option then.. since Intel alternatives are slower and have other downsides. But damn.. had I known this, I would have bought the E-450 earlier this year.. the E2-1800 was already announced and should arrive in Q2.. yeah right.
I used to be a big AMD fan, and I really dont care their CPUs dont match with Core i7, a Core i3/i5 is more then enough for 90% of the mainstream market. So AMD can snoop away a big market share. But damn they have become so stupid with their marketing timings..
Still waiting for a mITX E2-1800 board..
CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, October 30, 2012 - link
Since the "opressed" and loser company gets all the crybaby tears, we won't hear an answer that has any sense when it comes to your question.I can certainly give my answer though. AMD products are messes, and when they're big messes, it takes forever for their tiny stupid staffs and people to straighten it out enough that they can launch their beta crap into the market.
So obviously, their crap is mired in internal crashes, incompatibilities, no certified drivers, BSOD's, and thus, no partner is going to roll out the trash until the garbage only stinks so much, and they can line up a strategy for having all the reviewers cover up the barfing pig sty enough so that the fanboys go whack and buy it, then live with the enedless troubles telling themselves they didn't do so bad and boy are they ever a good techie after crunching through the endless days of fixes that still leave the bleeding pile not quite ready to be released.
On the upside, a few years down the road, when it's old and slow and incapable, amd will have finally patched it enough that it will work, for the most part... kind of, most of the time, for most of those things it was originally bought for, but none of the new stuff that has hit in the years since.
Every once in a while they shatter that broken mold and press out a beauty, like the K6-2 and 64X2, but .... that beauty is long overdue...
Mishera - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
Ryan I thought tablets were a low margin business?Biggest problem at Amd is still probably stability. Not good for business when you have CEOs cycling through every few years. It was a big mistake to get rid of Dirk Meyer. Having said that, Amd has a couple of outs, but the biggest one is almost totally dependent on Microsoft. Microsoft is moving to tablets, but because they don't want to put their foot down on x86 or Arm most vendors are slowly shifting to Arm based systems. Worse, Msoft seemed to totally ignore Amd for an Intel solution instead for their surface. Probably big mistake for both of them (you could have a tablet priced x86 pc...).
The other is becoming a primarily graphics company. It's a growing industry, especially with trends like 3D printing and cloud, but they are a bit behind Nvidia on this one (and Nvidia has the mind share right now).
Overall they need money. At this point you just can't compete in any of these industries unless you can create viable solutions. That was the whole reason they sold Imageon.
melgross - Monday, October 22, 2012 - link
I'm sorry that I didn't get to read all the comments first. It's always interesting. But this is not the first time that AMD has had layoffs to become a break even company at some point of sales. Doing that just shows that they are not expecting to be competitive. Competitiveness is when you attempt, at least, to better the competition, and grow into more marketshare. It's looks like they are just trying to keep their heads above water.But each time this happens, they become less competitive. What really worries me this time is their intention to reuse components in an effort to cut back in R&D. Once that happens, they will fall behind further. It's an impossible situation. The difficulty is that Intel's R&D equals all of AMD's sales right now. In order to be competitive, to need to equal what the competition is doing in R&D. Not necessarily in equal spending all round, but in the areas in which you need to compete the most. If AMD feels that they won't need to do that in SoC's, for example, as one area mentioned, they will be surprised. This is the product category that is advancing the most, and the quickest. Performance may double each year for the next two to three years. As this will be a new area for them, how do they think they can equal what's out now, much less outperform next year, and the year after that?
I'm concerned that this is their last gasp. It may take several more years, but if things don't improve in a big way soon, they will be on their way out.