[ Bloomberg ] AMD Facing Bleak Future

[KaRLiToS]

SOURCE

For decades, 45-year-old AMD’s principal business has been desktops and notebooks, and the company’s chips have often been the cheapest and most efficient. It’s never managed to take much more than 20 percent of the chip market away from Intel and has been losing ground in recent years. In its most recent quarter, AMD accounted for 5.2 percent of PC chip revenue, according to researcher IDC.

Although AMD isn’t broke yet, “we now feel required to wait for tangible signs of core business stability,” writes Matthew Ramsay, an analyst for Canadian brokerage Canaccord Genuity. As AMD’s position shrinks, the new story will be Intel vs. Samsung, each with tens of billions on the table and everything up for grabs.

 

[Phynaz]

Eh, nothing new here.

 

[Centauri]

...where have you been?

 

[monstercameron]

...where have you been?

---->> Video Cards and Graphics

 

[KaRLiToS]

The article was written 18 hours ago.

 

[hungtran]

It's the same hack article that was written in businessweek with an AMD chip in a coffin a few weeks ago.

 

[john5220]

Excavator might save AMD, there is Hope.

But even samsung cannot compete with Qualcomm in ARM. All top high end flagship smartphones and tablets are running Snapdragon.

Its a matter of time until Qualcomm exceeds value of intel which is around $100 billion US if I remember correct. Qualcomm is nearing $60 billion as we speak. At this rate they would supersede intel by 2020. I think intel's days of the richest chip giant is nearing an end as ARM overtakes most of the market.

So i am not sure why the article says the future is between intel vs samsung. If you look at the Data, both Samsung and intel are becoming the new "AMD" in the ARM world when competing against Qualcomm.

 

[tential]

Excavator might save AMD, there is Hope.

But even samsung cannot compete with Qualcomm in ARM. All top high end flagship smartphones and tablets are running Snapdragon.

Its a matter of time until Qualcomm exceeds value of intel which is around $100 billion US if I remember correct. Qualcomm is nearing $60 billion as we speak. At this rate they would supersede intel by 2020. I think intel's days of the richest chip giant is nearing an end as ARM overtakes most of the market.

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=INTC
Market cap
182.13B

Qualcomm Market Cap
Market cap
121.98B
I won't comment on where I see the two companies in the future because they aren't exactly direct competitors. I don't think one's success means anothers downfall, Intel still holds the x86 desktop/laptop/miniPC/business sector while ARM can get servers/Smartphones/other products that need a small chip. While Intel can get into all of Qualcomm's markets, Qualcomm can't get into Desktops/Laptops.

I'm not familiar with Excavator but if it's going to be the same tech in the APU that will be using HBM, I think that will be the huge think AMD needs. AMD needs a viable APU and it's so close to getting there. Then couple that with a marketing strategy that toots it's own horn about PS4/XboxOne/WiiU(doesn't matter that WiiU isn't an APU from AMD, no one freaking cares, APple would have already told the world twice over that it's in every major console every single day yet AMD, a company that also has a huge gaming customer base that is naive as anything doesn't use this? Why won't they market... Why?!)
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I think that AMD's market position is bad but that doesn't mean their future is bad. That article feels exceptionally weak and doesn't touch on any company's products. It's like the writer simply glanced at some financial highlights of each company.

If I'm not mistaken, AMD's partnership with Samsung brings 14nm to the table soon. AMD doesn't have more performance than Intel's CPUs but it's close. A die shrink and some architecture change could put them neck and neck. I'd say their future looks bleak if 14nm doesn't pan out.
Not to mention intel's "too fast" move to 14 nm has delayed some products which gives AMD some more time to get their 14nm on the table.
Then they're also moving into ARM processors with their GPU knowledge, they may have come competitive processors.

The largest issue AMD faces is convincing anyone to use their product. No matter how great a product AMD makes on the CPU or GPU side, they fail to market that product successfully to a wide consumer base. That's the largest issue they're facing right now.

So ya, I agree with the other users, nothing new posted here. Fool did some great articles on Skylake and intel's position in the market moving forward. This seems like a joke in comparison.
http://www.nasdaq.com/article/intel...s-a-bigger-deal-than-you-might-think-cm420203

 

[mrmt]

Excavator might save AMD, there is Hope.

It is quite a feat to have hope in a product that was written off by the management of the producing company.

Its a matter of time until Qualcomm exceeds value of intel which is around $100 billion US if I remember correct. Qualcomm is nearing $60 billion as we speak. At this rate they would supersede intel by 2020. I think intel's days of the richest chip giant is nearing an end as ARM overtakes most of the market.

Intel is 180 billion while Qualcomm is 120 billion.

So i am not sure why the article says the future is between intel vs samsung. If you look at the Data, both Samsung and intel are becoming the new "AMD" in the ARM world when competing against Qualcomm.

Both are vertically integrated IDM, while Qualcomm is "just" a fabless IHV.

 

[mrmt]

If I'm not mistaken, AMD's partnership with Samsung brings 14nm to the table soon. AMD doesn't have more performance than Intel's CPUs but it's close. A die shrink and some architecture change could put them neck and neck. I'd say their future looks bleak if 14nm doesn't pan out.

First the Samsung partnership is with Globalfoundries, not AMD. Second the fact that Samsung is bringing finfet to the market doesn't mean Globalfoundries will be able to follow the suit on the same time frame. Third, AMD chopped its R&D budget almost by 50%, so whatever it is coming from their R&D pipeline should be so severely scope constrained that I doubt that it will be remotely competitive for the mainstream market, they should be focusing on the low end, best case scenario, or on the embedded market, worst case.

 

[tential]

First the Samsung partnership is with Globalfoundries, not AMD. Second the fact that Samsung is bringing finfet to the market doesn't mean Globalfoundries will be able to follow the suit on the same time frame. Third, AMD chopped its R&D budget almost by 50%, so whatever it is coming from their R&D pipeline should be so severely scope constrained that I doubt that it will be remotely competitive for the mainstream market, they should be focusing on the low end, best case scenario, or on the embedded market, worst case.

You think they'll truly abandon the highperformance desktop market then?

 

[mrmt]

You think they'll truly abandon the highperformance desktop market then?

They already did. They have nothing to show for high end desktop users and for mainstream users all they have is 2012 leftovers coupled with the extremely ancient AM3+ platform. The fact is that AMD didn't bother to design a product for the desktop market, but they did bother to develop new APUs and new APU platforms, so that shows which product lines are a priority for the company.

If the Q&As say something whatever AMD is developing will be much more aligned in terms of performance with mobile chips than with high end desktop/workstation chips.

 

[Phynaz]

You think they'll truly abandon the highperformance desktop market then?

They did years ago.

 

[hasu]

Companies and its news are controlled/influenced by investors. It may make sense for some to bring down a company and take the small hit so that they can more than compensate for that somewhere else. Institutional investors' stake in AMD has risen by about (or more) than 10% in the last few months.

 

[tential]

They did years ago.

I was aware of that with product releases but according to some press releases they sounded like they weren't done with high performance desktop.
I believe that's the correct move for them moving forward to abandon it and focus on the high growth sectors like mobile/low power solutions.

I had thought though that they might focus on mobile/low power but still have a solution that scales.

 

[Yuriman]

I was aware of that with product releases but according to some press releases they sounded like they weren't done with high performance desktop.
I believe that's the correct move for them moving forward to abandon it and focus on the high growth sectors like mobile/low power solutions.

I had thought though that they might focus on mobile/low power but still have a solution that scales.

Well, they've released new models like the FX-9xxx and FX-8xxxe. No new designs though.

 

[cbn]

You think they'll truly abandon the highperformance desktop market then?

They did years ago.

It is somewhat ironic that when AMD finally reached 32nm, they launched smaller and weak cores (in the form of Bulldozer) when they finally had plenty of xtor budget to make a faster and wider quad core cpu cheap.

So instead of beefier cores we have extra iGPU instead (which most desktop enthusiasts don't really want since they use discrete cards).

I have to just wonder what an evolution of Phenom II x 4/x6 would have been like on 32nm? Xtors capable of 5 Ghz coupled to a move to four wide front end (up from three wide) probably would have been pretty exciting. (With any luck we will see a return of this evolution).

 

[soccerballtux]

it's not even worth my time to bother complaining about how hand-wavy this is in regards to Samsung

 

[geoxile]

Why are they trying to set Samsung up as some sort of competitor to Intel?

 

[Remobz]

AMD will be gone within 5 years. I am predicting it now.

 

[sandorski]

I think that's what their original motto was....

 

[rtsurfer]

I will wait & give AMD one last chance with Zen in 2016.

If they can't deliver something decent, then they are dead.

The odds are against them, but one last time...

 

[cbn]

Hopefully the Zen Big cores are big enough, but I wonder do we really need APUs with large cores (when desktop users don't really care about the iGPU size too much)?

I wonder how AMD would do with iGPU-less Big core (for enthusiast desktop and server) and use APU exclusively on cat cores? (for mobile and such)

 

[NTMBK]

Funny that the article is lining up Samsung as the next AMD, when AMD are getting closer and closer to them. I wouldn't be surprised to see the next semicustom deal come from Samsung- customised x86 part fabbed in their own foundries.

 

[rtsurfer]

Hopefully the Zen Big cores are big enough, but I wonder do we really need APUs with large cores (when desktop users don't really care about the iGPU size too much)?

I wonder how AMD would do with iGPU-less Big core (for enthusiast desktop and server) and use APU exclusively on cat cores? (for mobile and such)

I would take a more powerful iGPU less Big Core CPU any day, but the direction AMD's headed in right now, the only way we get an iGPU less CPU is if they give us the server die, kinda like Intel's Extreme series.

BTW does anybody know if 16nm is gonna be ready for Q1 2016.?
AMD has launched it's CPUs in January for a while, so I guess that is when Zen will arrive.