You mention OJ, then you say this? Alrighty then....I continue to be unshaken in my belief that Ruiz is a scumbag of the highest order.
You mention OJ, then you say this? Alrighty then.
As for AMD paying too much for ATI, not really. Look at how much Skype has been purchased for, twice. The only reason people say AMD overpaid for ATI is because AMD has always been so cash strapped. ATI@ 5-6 billion was actually quite a bargain when you factor in what they brought to the table. Intel spent at least a billion dollars to make a discreet graphics card that never made it to market.
I agree, all we ever hear about is Intel's anti-competitiveness. When in reality you have to question AMD's leadership (during those years) after learning about his actions.Early in 2006, AMD hit over $40 a share. Just a few months later within days of the $5.4B ATI purchase announcement, the stock plummeted to $18.26. By the time the full doldrums of the recession hit in late 2008, AMD stock was well under two bucks and the market cap was a billion and change. Only Ruiz could take a company worth 40 billion and add it to a company worth over 5 billion and end up with a company worth about a billion. IMHO after the full blown scam he was running with Raj he doesn't deserve kudos, but a nice jail cell alongside Conrad Black. Maybe we could sell tickets for people to gape at them through bars and throw rotten eggs at them. Get me the first ticket!
I agree, all we ever hear about is Intel's anti-competitiveness. When in reality you have to question AMD's leadership (during those years) after learning about his actions.
AMD Exec's Loose Lips Help Sink Galleon
The alleged chain of events is a good read.
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Report: Former AMD CEO, GlobalFoundries Chairman Ruiz Ensnared in Insider Trading Case
bridito, Ruiz stole your wife, didn't he.
I do believe that there is a future for handheld devices when it comes to convenience and ease of use to the end user. I myself would find it convenient to have them around from time to time to read some .pdf and browse through the internet wherever there is internet connectivity.... and the overall personal computer paradigm. I for one have zero interest in handheld zoomy thingies that you pinch and swoosh. I sit bolt upright in front of a 27" screen and type 90 wpm, many days for 10 hours+. What am I gonna do with a smartphone or tablet and why do I care? I have a $39 pay as you go cellphone that only gets used when I'm at the store and my wife forgot to put milk on the shopping list. So currently the "really exciting" (snooze) area of CPU development where ARMs and Atoms and C50s battle it out to see which one can sip the fewest milliwatts is as relevant to me as Weight Watchers is to Steve Jobs (ouch... that was in such bad taste it even surprised ME!)
IDC, how did you know? Just wait until that lyin' cheatin' bastid shows up tonight... just think Loreena Bobbit! :biggrin:
Actually last time I checked I was a guy but with all the hormones in the food these days that might have changed. :hmm: The reason for my participation in the Hang Ruiz Club is that IMHO AMD's competitiveness in the consumer high end is hanging by a single thread called BD. This is the make it or break it CPU as I'm sure that no one but the most wild eyed AMD fanboi could continue to insist that "the Intel Killer" is just around the bend if BD lays an egg (as is increasingly likely). I despise monopolies and the wholesale decimation of AMD as the only legitimate competitor of Intel's consumer high end CPU market again IMHO does a vast disservice to:
Enthusiasts
Power Users
Gamers
Non-Corporate Workstation Users
... and the overall personal computer paradigm. I for one have zero interest in handheld zoomy thingies that you pinch and swoosh. I sit bolt upright in front of a 27" screen and type 90 wpm, many days for 10 hours+. What am I gonna do with a smartphone or tablet and why do I care? I have a $39 pay as you go cellphone that only gets used when I'm at the store and my wife forgot to put milk on the shopping list. So currently the "really exciting" (snooze) area of CPU development where ARMs and Atoms and C50s battle it out to see which one can sip the fewest milliwatts is as relevant to me as Weight Watchers is to Steve Jobs (ouch... that was in such bad taste it even surprised ME!)
Not that I would disagree with such a viewpoint, but are you basically saying that your position here is that in the David versus Goliath parable, were David to turn out to have had insurmountable personal issues to the point that his tendonitis prevented him from slinging that fateful rock to its mark, failing to fell Goliath, that you would reserve your blame for David and his common-man weaknesses rather than project that anger towards the fact that a Goliath exists in the first place?
I do believe that there is a future for handheld devices when it comes to convenience and ease of use to the end user. I myself would find it convenient to have them around from time to time to read some .pdf and browse through the internet wherever there is internet connectivity.
However my only gripe would be it's dismal battery life and I could bet that I couldn't get the iPhone 4 to last me more than a day. I can't help but feel that these devices also dehumanize us. I lost count the number of people meeting in public with their friends and family just so they could sit down and stare at their smartphones and tablets. I seem to have a love hate relationship with handheld devices. :hmm:
Not that I would disagree with such a viewpoint, but are you basically saying that your position here is that in the David versus Goliath parable, were David to turn out to have had insurmountable personal issues to the point that his tendonitis prevented him from slinging that fateful rock to its mark, failing to fell Goliath, that you would reserve your blame for David and his common-man weaknesses rather than project that anger towards the fact that a Goliath exists in the first place?
I put no little amount of blame on the fact that Ruiz blocked the AMD/nVidia merger. If that had gone trough, AMD would have had enough money to keep it's fabs during the worst part (G80 hit it big at the same time core 2 crushed AMD), and perhaps more importantly, a competent CEO.
I will once again point out that Ruiz orchestrated the ATI purchase, which turned out to be one of the most important things AMD has ever done, it was vital to their survival.
Too bad Hector made so many other blunders during his tenure. BTW, Ruiz was never charged with any crime.
I vacillate over taking the position that Hector was not a good CEO which resulted in AMD's downturn versus taking the position that Hector could have been an unsung Steve Jobs but we'd never know it because the deck was just so stacked against AMD that no one on earth could have done much better at the time.
Obviously we'll never know, as is the case with macro-economics, we can't put this into a closed-loop test system in the lab and rerun the experiment while tweaking the boundary conditions and initial conditions to see how things could have played out differently.
You mention OJ, then you say this? Alrighty then.
As for AMD paying too much for ATI, not really. Look at how much Skype has been purchased for, twice. The only reason people say AMD overpaid for ATI is because AMD has always been so cash strapped. ATI@ 5-6 billion was actually quite a bargain when you factor in what they brought to the table. Intel spent at least a billion dollars to make a discreet graphics card that never made it to market.
I put no little amount of blame on the fact that Ruiz blocked the AMD/nVidia merger. If that had gone trough, AMD would have had enough money to keep it's fabs during the worst part (G80 hit it big at the same time core 2 crushed AMD), and perhaps more importantly, a competent CEO.
I don't understand this position at all. The guy failed miserably. As I mentioned above, the ati purchase was a disaster. Was it all or even mostly hector's fault? I don't know, nor do I care. He was the captain of the ship and he left it in worse shape than it was when he got there. Also, he didn't exactly have a great track record of great leadership/results at his other companies past/present/future, so there's no reason to think that he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
No GPU tech would mean AMD has no future. It's that simple.Yeah, it was a great way to spend $5 billion that could have been better spent on things like improving their cpu designs, more mobile research, arm designs, etc..
No GPU tech would mean AMD has no future. It's that simple.
In hindsight, I don't see an AMD/Nvidia merger a good fit. There would have been a cultural clash, not to mention JHH would have walked in with the attitude, my way or no way. So yes that left ATI as the only real option.
As for AMD doing well without ATI, I find this notion absolutely absurd. No chipsets, nothing for x86 mobile graphics, no Fusion. In 3 years, it will seem even more preposterous that AMD would have been fine without any graphics tech.