[AT] AMD Executive Shakeup

[Ramses]

They don't even have a catchphrase.

Hey I found the catchphrase lololol.....


"This is FXing Serious.​"


http://www.amd.com/en-us/products/processors/desktop/fx


They weren't trying to court the young gamer/enthusiast crowd.. no...

 

[mrmt]

True, but it takes a REALLY special marketing group to keep you competitive in the eyes of the consumer after almost a decade of inferior products (CPUs). GPUs have been more competitive, obviously, but AMD has all but forgotten the discrete mobile sector which is a huge growth area for DGPUs.

It doesn't have to be competitive, it must have value even after accounting for the inferior product. AMD has been selling itself as a bleeding edge, top notch performance CPU maker while has been unable to deliver one of it for almost a decade, that hurts branding. What if from the start it started to sell itself as perf/money king (which we know they aren't in most market brackets) and actually kept this promise? There would still be value in AMD's offers and the AMD brand would be seen in another way compared to now.

But marketing is much more than that. Marketing is about predicting what kind of products will have greater acceptance on the market, it is about predicting *new* products, it's about building relationships with other companies, and about building a corporate identity, among other things. And that area isn't going really well for AMD:

The screw ups that decided that the market would accept high TDP products when in fact the market was moving towards small TDP products? Marketing. The screw ups that decided that dGPU for mobile PCs are dead? Marketing. That unprofessional website? Marketing. The guidelines that allow clowns like Richard Huddy to break other company's NDA? Marketing.

They really need a change here, and Ms. LaForce couldn't change this.

 

[ShintaiDK]

The screw ups that decided that the market would accept high TDP products when in fact the market was moving towards small TDP products? Marketing. The screw ups that decided that dGPU for mobile PCs are dead? Marketing. That unprofessional website? Marketing. The guidelines that allow clowns like Richard Huddy to break other company's NDA? Marketing.

Thats also how I think about it.

 

[Dribble]

Well you'd expect an executive shake-up about now after new CEO has come in so this is hardly some great shock. Not that is makes AMD's current position any better, but I wouldn't say this in particular is a warning of impending doom.

 

[lamedude]

They don't even have a catchphrase.

AMD Me
That campaign so was so successful Google barely remembers it.

 

[RussianSensation]

I think a lot of people on our forum have unrealistic expectations. On one hand they try to portray an understanding of finance, supply chain, economies of scale and manufacturing advantage, but on the other hand they go haywire and anti-AMD when AMD fails to compete and/or beat market leading firms who all have superior cash flow, asset base, supply chain management relationships, economies of scale and manufacturing advantages.

Not only that, but major and I mean major points are brushed aside as if they didn't cost AMD billions, like when Intel faked benchmarks, was proven to have bribed OEMs to prevent Athlon CPU sales or how now Intel is 'contra-revenueing' low power products to get design wins. Does anyone realistically expect AMD to beat Samsung, NV, Intel, Qualcomm? It's actually incredible that AMD's graphics have held up to NV for so long given that they have a fraction of its competitor's financial, human capital/engineering and marketing resources. And let's face the truth here: Not 1 company except for AMD has ever beaten Intel in the high performance CPU market, not IBM, not Samsung, not Apple, not Qualcomm, not TI, etc.

Furthermore, even though I am not an engineer, it doesn't sound that easy to overcome Intel's 2 generations more advanced manufacturing node advantage by "simply designing" a more efficient and superior IPC CPU architecture. When you design a CPU architecture like Bulldozer, but you miscalculated the timing of how quickly software becomes well-threaded, it becomes a 4-5 year costly mistake until you have a chance to start over. Unlike a large firm that can sustain major losses due to failures (Intel with Pentium 4/D), smaller firms cannot as easily brush off business failures of such magnitudes. Couple that with the ATI debt which requires constant payouts to service it, and it's not surprising that even good marketing can't easily return AMD to the Athlon XP+ days.

AMD really needs to just hire smart people and try to do the best they can with the resources given and hope to slowly start regaining consumer confidence. They did really well in gaining up to 25% in Professional Graphics from 12%, which means with a good product and good customer relationships, they can still become a profitable business. They don't necessarily need to outright beat NV or Intel to become more successful. But I think it must start with good products which require smart and experienced engineers, not middle and upper management heavy hierarchy.

Can't forget that it takes a long time for consumer bias to disappear. Not long ago companies like Ford or Cadillac were in the deep, but now they are doing a lot better. These types of turnarounds don't exactly happen overnight. Since truly new CPU architectures take so long to design, the next shot AMD will have is Zen. They just need to survive until late 2016 with console design wins and Radeon 300 series and execute on Zen better than Phenom and Bulldozer.

Even if AMD miraculously makes a better product than NV or Intel, it would still depend on consumer bias/beand preferences and considering how loyal Intel and esp. NV users are, this in itself is a mountain to climb. If consumers are not open-minded though, then even a great product will fail.

 

[Flapdrol1337]

Furthermore, even though I am not an engineer, it doesn't sound that easy to overcome Intel's 2 generations more advanced manufacturing node advantage by "simply designing" a more efficient and superior IPC CPU architecture.

But they weren't that far behind when they had the phenom II, they could maybe make a 2500K-ish chip now. Of course they'd still be at the mercy of intel's pricing policy, but at least they'd have a product worth buying.

 

[mrmt]

I think a lot of people on our forum have unrealistic expectations. On one hand they try to portray an understanding of finance, supply chain, economies of scale and manufacturing advantage, but on the other hand they go haywire and anti-AMD when AMD fails to compete and/or beat market leading firms who all have superior cash flow, asset base, supply chain management relationships, economies of scale and manufacturing advantages.

I have to questions for you:

- How about AMD actually delivering what they promise? They don't need Intel levels of resources to deliver, a lot of smaller companies do, why can't AMD?

- Do you think AMD does a good job in managing consumers' expectations?

 

[Enigmoid]

Enter my Microcenter, right at the front door the CPU display with giant Intel logos, big shiny blue boxes, and then the AMD boxes (perhaps it's a cost saving issue, but physical package size actually looks skewed in Intel's favor when the display stands are 70% blue).

Swing around to the OEM/Pre-Builts, Intel logos, Intel deals, and in the back AMD. But I have no inkling that at least my Microcenter is Intel bias.

My local Best Buys, have a similar trend. Mostly because of the bigger/popular Apple sections that have their own Intel logos. The opposite "PC-Side" is mostly Nvidia logos. They don't even sell AMD Radeon's pass R7-grade at my local Best Buys but they sure do have plenty at eye level over priced Nvidia branded GTX 760s.

In the SSD/RAM section they don't sell AMD branded anything, and this applies to Microcenter too.

Microcenter stocks what sells. AMD doesn't sell well. Furthermore Intel Chips are more expensive and have better brand value (most stores, especially higher end stores, stock highly branded and expensive items in the front door display boxes).

 

[railven]

Microcenter stocks what sells. AMD doesn't sell well. Furthermore Intel Chips are more expensive and have better brand value (most stores, especially higher end stores, stock highly branded and expensive items in the front door display boxes).

I'm well aware of that. Which was my counter to someone's argument that AMD has good/strong market presence.

In actual stores, AMD doesn't seem to exist beyond the corner/bargain bin where the product is specifically sold as "cheap." My boss just gave me his laptop to fix. Turns out it's a dead drive. Ordered a M550 256GB for $90. The AMD equivalent is $140. Woof.

 

[CHADBOGA]

I think a lot of people on our forum have unrealistic expectations. On one hand they try to portray an understanding of finance, supply chain, economies of scale and manufacturing advantage, but on the other hand they go haywire and anti-AMD when AMD fails to compete and/or beat market leading firms who all have superior cash flow, asset base, supply chain management relationships, economies of scale and manufacturing advantages.

I think you are looking at it the wrong way.

What you get are people with little to no understanding of the issues you mention above, constantly insisting that AMD are about to drop the bomb on Intel.

When people who do have an understanding of those issues you mention above, point out to the exuberant AMD fans why AMD dropping the bomb on Intel is quite unlikely, these people get improperly called Intel fanboys.

So is it any wonder when things pan out the way they have, that some people will be saying, "I told you so"?

 

[Owls]

I'm well aware of that. Which was my counter to someone's argument that AMD has good/strong market presence.

In actual stores, AMD doesn't seem to exist beyond the corner/bargain bin where the product is specifically sold as "cheap." My boss just gave me his laptop to fix. Turns out it's a dead drive. Ordered a M550 256GB for $90. The AMD equivalent is $140. Woof.

What do you mean by AMD equivalent? There's a AMD SSD?


Personally, I think Samsung will end up buying AMD as it will fill out their portfolio nicely.

 

[Ramses]

Were there ever any pre-built big name PC's with FX cpus?

 

[cbn]

Were there ever any pre-built big name PC's with FX cpus?

Yes, there are 63 entries (if I include all sellers) on Newegg with FX cpus:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...96%20600218180

If I include only units sold strictly at Newegg, the number drops to 34:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...CE&PageSize=30

EDIT: Keep in mind some units are "open" box or "refurb" listings.

 

[Ramses]

interesting if uninspiring. $500ish probably?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Intel has had far more design wins with Baytrail than AMD has had with Beema and Mullins, and why?

I see their "Contra-revenue" program has been sucessful.

 

[cbn]

interesting if uninspiring. $500ish probably?

They start at $399 with FX-6300, 4GB, 500GB HDD and R7 240 video card.

 

[Ramses]

Yeah those are pretty uninspiring. And all but HP and Asus dressed up like drunk in Shanghai. Funny they are still selling too, I clicked on one that had ten reviews inside the last six months. I guess glitz still sells to the gpop.

They should have quit selling a lot of that stuff awhile ago and saved the ill will generation. I suppose it's not up to them after lots of chips are sold to oem's.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Criticizing the failings of AMD is like kicking a dead corpse at this point. This "executive shakeup" looks more like a house of cards falling, hopefully not but things look very grim for AMD.

 

[exar333]

Even on their website when one tries to check features of GCN, they have outdated info comparing HD7970 vs. 6970. The current website looks unprofessional, difficult to find good info, and presentation is awful especially compared to their primary competitor NV. Marketing also means providing reviewers with product samples making sure they have sufficient SKUs to test. In AMD's case this has generally involved sending reference hot and loud, performance-throttling products, while NV sends after-market factory pre-overclocked cards almost like clock work with proper reviwers guides that are targeted at making their cards look great based on their testing.
All of these little details matter in portraying the final brand image as launch reviews matter a great deal.

I think Lisa's focus should be to replace expensive executives that haven't done a great job with technically strong engineering leaders. This is one of those times where AMD needs to produce better products and non-technical execs can't do that. Hopefully something good will come out of it.

I totally agree, but I am skeptical this will happen. First, AMD continues to shrink R&D, so getting more technical leaders may be the opposite of what they are doing. Second, when companies get in trouble, they often either double-down on a new product they will tie their fortunes to (don't see this as an option) or they focus on sales and marketing to polish the products they have.

I think the latter is what they will do. This makes sense with the marketing head leaving...Lisa will be putting a huge focus on marketing to get their products to as many vendors as possible, knowing not a lot of new, innovative stuff is coming. It makes sense, just not super-exciting for us 'enthusiasts'...

 

[Ramses]

I can't help but feel like we're seeing one piece of a multi faceted object with this sort of thing. That there is more we don't know than we do. It's easy enough to see desktop/consumer cpu sales/performance is crappy but there are so many questions about a business like that. How many engineers do they have? What are they working on CPU wise? Last year they got 32 million dollars in grant money to work on exascale supercomputing(so did nvidia intel and others to a lesser degree), if I had the choice of having my 20 or 50(?) engineers work on an FX replacement, and spending grant money for what "could" be a crazy lucrative gov contract, I think I might let what I had ride for awhile and do some developing on the gov's dime. I have more questions than I see answers about AMD. No excuses, just questions. I don't think any company or venture this size and age can be as cut and dry as it's often made out to seem. I don't think they have a secret win plan or something or that they haven't screwed up in the areas I'm exposed to, but I sure wonder if there isn't more going on that isn't scooped by the tech news sites.


http://energy.gov/articles/departme...n-next-generation-supercomputing-technologies

http://news.softpedia.com/news/AMD-...ake-Extreme-Scale-Supercomputers-465095.shtml

etc, etc, lots of stuff online about it.

 

[shady28]

I think AMD has been kind of two-faced about their enthusiast marketing. They don't have what enthusiasts want, they went for what the OEMs want.

The OEMs want as few parts to assemble into a PC as possible for as low a price as possible (these are related). APUs at the higher end are a decent option here - better iGPU performance vs Intel at a lower price point.

All these really really cheap / crappy APUs with 3 or 4 different generations being made at the same time confuses that, which is beginning to backfire on AMD and OEMs.

Enthusiasts want none of that. Enthusiasts, even non-gaming types, want CPUs that are distinct from their dGPUs. AMD hasn't done that in what, almost 4 years now?

If AMD wanted to engage the enthusiast market, they needed to introduce a 28nm Excavator core FX series chip. 20% more per core IPC with 8 cores / 4 FPUs would put them back on the map. That's all it would take. But they didn't do that, and it's probably too late now.

They are just going for being a good partner for low end OEMs now. Makes them irrelevant to me and most enthusiasts.

 

[monstercameron]

Criticizing the failings of AMD is like kicking a dead corpse at this point. This "executive shakeup" looks more like a house of cards falling, hopefully not but things look very grim for AMD.

and makes for a spectacular viewing not unlike its television namesake.

 

[AnandThenMan]

I think AMD has been kind of two-faced about their enthusiast marketing.

You lost me at marketing. In all seriousness AMD doesn't have marketing to speak of, they just don't.

 

[thilanliyan]

What do you mean by AMD equivalent? There's a AMD SSD?

I believe they do now.