[Digitimes] Kaveri delayed

[CHADBOGA]

This raises the obvious question: why did AMD ever agree to a horrible deal like that in the first place? What was in it for them? Was Hector Ruiz really that stupid, or was there some reason to think this would be a good idea at the time that just didn't pan out?

Hector Ruiz at the very least, received large bonuses for structuring this great deal.

Quite obviously his main concern was making sure that the deal happened so that he could get his bonus, he wasn't concerned about the mess he was leaving behind for AMD.

Hector the Wrecker.

Wrecked Motorola, Wrecked AMD.

 

[cytg111]

AMD is currently structured to basically have none of the benefits of being fabless (negotiating power, choice of foundry, flexibility in commitments to production capacity, etc) while still having all the downsides of being an IDM (contractual obligations to subsidize R&D, contractual obligations to pay for a fab whether they use it or not, etc).

In short their current business structure is exactly the kind of structure you would expect to be a recipe for economic disaster in an industry where its competitors are free to enjoy the benefits of being fabless or to take full advantage of being an IDM.

AMD gets to do neither, but does still have to deal with the worst of both worlds.

So filing for chapter 11 might just be the best option for them? What would that do to their x86 license? And ATI division?

 

[Idontcare]

This raises the obvious question: why did AMD ever agree to a horrible deal like that in the first place? What was in it for them? Was Hector Ruiz really that stupid, or was there some reason to think this would be a good idea at the time that just didn't pan out?

It panned out as expected. Shortly after selling off GloFo, Hector Ruiz became chairman of GloFo.

Hector Ruiz isn't stupid but those in charge of AMD at the time certainly were

Weren't they pretty much forced into it by debt from the ATI acquisation? I was a big fan of the purchase at the time, but the benefits have been slow to materialize. At best they paid way too much and were slow to market with products that utilized the tech. If I recall correctly, Intel even was first out with an igp, although admittedly a lousy one. And we still don't have a true HSA chip until Kaveri, which looks like sometime in 2014 now.

Hector Ruiz was really that stupid, and greedy too.

Hector Ruiz at the very least, received large bonuses for structuring this great deal.

Quite obviously his main concern was making sure that the deal happened so that he could get his bonus, he wasn't concerned about the mess he was leaving behind for AMD.

Hector the Wrecker.

Wrecked Motorola, Wrecked AMD.

JDG1980, the other posters quoted above capture the salient points well.

If you look at it historically, Hector first orchestrated the financially disastrous ATI acquisition, draining AMD's cash reserves, loading it up with debt, and forcing AMD to starve both its CPU development teams as well as its process node R&D teams...thus setting AMD up for assured failure when those anemic CPU designs and woefully ill-equipped (and late) process nodes finally came to market years later.

This left AMD in no position to continue to own its fabs. So it was forced to sell them off...yet again another masterminded strategic shift of Hector.

And Hector made out big in terms of financial compensation for doing it.

Continuing with his sense of self-preservation and personal enrichment, he ensured that as part of the fab spin-off he would get to jump ship and leave AMD to sink post-spinoff without him onboard by way of crafting the GloFo deal to appoint himself chairmen of the board of GloFo. (with a nice bonus for himself for doing so)

And the final touch was basically making sure that his stint at GloFo was setup to have the best chance of looking good by way of enslaving AMD through 2024 with an exclusivity contract and take-or-pay contract that basically guaranteed GloFo a revenue stream in parasitic fashion regardless the damage to AMD's chances of surviving.

Why was AMD put into this position? Hector Ruiz is the answer.

So filing for chapter 11 might just be the best option for them? What would that do to their x86 license? And ATI division?

I probably would be, if it could get them out of the contract with GloFo. But bankruptcy courts are not hip to the notion that a business might dodge into bankruptcy just to get out of a contract that was inconvenient.

No idea what would happen to their x86 license, they'd probably lose it but be able to negotiate for it again.

 

[ElFenix]

This raises the obvious question: why did AMD ever agree to a horrible deal like that in the first place? What was in it for them? Was Hector Ruiz really that stupid, or was there some reason to think this would be a good idea at the time that just didn't pan out?

when abu dhabi bailed them out by buying off their fabs and investing money in amd, abu dhabi made them sign the deal. it gave abu dhabi a revenue stream and a partner.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Although it's been a painful road, Hector Ruiz saved AMD by buying ATI. Otherwise AMD would have been left to battle Intel in processors and have nothing else worth mentioning in their arsenal.

Ruiz was basically a terrible manager and let his ego cloud his decision making, but credit where credit is due it took a lot of guts and foresight to realize that the CPU/GPU marriage would eventually become THE device.

 

[AtenRa]

Actually it was Dirk Meyers that forseen the importance of the GPUs and started the talks with NVIDIA and later ATI.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Granted APU tech got amd the console wins. But that is the first real payoff from that hugely overpriced purchase of ati. In the CPU area, the superior igp of amd's chips hasn't exactly gained them dominance. It is impossible to say of course, but one wonders if the CPU division would be more competitive today if they had been able to utilize the resources devoted to the ati purchase.

 

[frozentundra123456]

Although it's been a painful road, Hector Ruiz saved AMD by buying ATI. Otherwise AMD would have been left to battle Intel in processors and have nothing else worth mentioning in their arsenal.

Ruiz was basically a terrible manager and let his ego cloud his decision making, but credit where credit is due it took a lot of guts and foresight to realize that the CPU/GPU marriage would eventually become THE device.

Really, an apu is "THE device"? Is so why is amd at about 20% market share, still losing money, while Intel still makes a huge profit each quarter?

 

[Third_Eye]

Really, an apu is "THE device"? Is so why is amd at about 20% market share, still losing money, while Intel still makes a huge profit each quarter?

The first APU was Llano. It was in great demand, but GloFo could not supply it due to yield issues. AMD lost Apple as well as burnt bridges. GloFo bcame the Albatross around AMDs neck. Brazos too was a low-end APU and AMD sold it like hot cakes.

Remember GF 28nm was supposed to be ready in 2012 and AMD had Krishna and Wichita planned for that. Instead due to inavailability, they had to pay Mubadala to get out GF, fabbed Brazos 2.0 variants same 40nm planar process as Brazos 1.0.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Really, an apu is "THE device"? Is so why is amd at about 20% market share, still losing money, while Intel still makes a huge profit each quarter?

20%? Try 15%!

 

[ShintaiDK]

The first APU was Llano. It was in great demand, but GloFo could not supply it due to yield issues. AMD lost Apple as well as burnt bridges. GloFo bcame the Albatross around AMDs neck. Brazos too was a low-end APU and AMD sold it like hot cakes.

Remember GF 28nm was supposed to be ready in 2012 and AMD had Krishna and Wichita planned for that. Instead due to inavailability, they had to pay Mubadala to get out GF, fabbed Brazos 2.0 variants same 40nm planar process as Brazos 1.0.

Llano was so great they had to do a huge writeoff.

 

[Vesku]

Although it's been a painful road, Hector Ruiz saved AMD by buying ATI. Otherwise AMD would have been left to battle Intel in processors and have nothing else worth mentioning in their arsenal.

Ruiz was basically a terrible manager and let his ego cloud his decision making, but credit where credit is due it took a lot of guts and foresight to realize that the CPU/GPU marriage would eventually become THE device.

Keep in mind that AMD could have merged with Nvidia but Ruiz wanted to keep the CEO title. The AMD BoD certainly has had plenty of mediocre or terrible decision moments but not overriding Ruiz and creating AMD+Nvidia with Jen-Hsun Huang in the CEO slot is probably the biggest missed opportunity of AMD's existence. Buying Ruiz's bluster that they didn't need to invest as much in their foundry because they were a generation ahead of Intel, A64 vs P4 time period, is also another "Is this Board of Directors asleep?" moment.

Which is one of the reasons I have no interest in reading Hector Ruiz' book on the era.

Llano was so great they had to do a huge writeoff.

It was quite nice in terms of the physical product, but it did not get much OEM support. I know because I was interested in replacing my Core 2 notebook with a Llano model at the time but was disappointed with the models being sold.

 

[frozentundra123456]

The first APU was Llano. It was in great demand, but GloFo could not supply it due to yield issues. AMD lost Apple as well as burnt bridges. GloFo bcame the Albatross around AMDs neck. Brazos too was a low-end APU and AMD sold it like hot cakes.

Remember GF 28nm was supposed to be ready in 2012 and AMD had Krishna and Wichita planned for that. Instead due to inavailability, they had to pay Mubadala to get out GF, fabbed Brazos 2.0 variants same 40nm planar process as Brazos 1.0.

And why is GF, the albatross around AMD's neck? Partly because of poor/self serving management but also partly because of the financial bind they put themselves into by overpaying for ATI. Your arguments actually reinforce my point.

I know I seem anti-APU now, but I had great hopes for the AMD/Ati merger when it first came out. But it has been underwhelming and late to market from day one. I was terribly excited by the thought of being able to go to a big box store and buy a gaming box with an APU and not need a discrete card. But it is what 5 or more years later, and any apu can still be beaten in gaming by a factor of 2 by a low end discrete card such as a 7750, while for normal use any igp since sandy bridge is more than adequate. There is a place for APUs in a very limited segment of SFF or AIOs with the added capability of light gaming, but otherwise on the desktop, they are in limbo between better than needed for normal use, and still easily beaten by a cheap discrete card.

 

[NTMBK]

Really, an apu is "THE device"? Is so why is amd at about 20% market share, still losing money, while Intel still makes a huge profit each quarter?

If you include Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge and Haswell under the umbrella of APU then yeah, it's THE device. They had the right vision, of combining the CPU and GPU for a more efficient platform. But they just didn't execute fast enough. By the time they had it, Intel already had Sandy Bridge.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Keep in mind that AMD could have merged with Nvidia but Ruiz wanted to keep the CEO title.

True, but back then the legalities prevented Nvidia from buying AMD and also retaining the x86 license, so the only thing that could have worked was for AMD to purchase Nvidia. And if you think Ruiz has a big ego, enter JHH. Not necessarily a bad thing, but there is no way JHH would have tolerated giving up his company (I honestly don't blame him, he is the co-founder).

 

[Idontcare]

If you include Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge and Haswell under the umbrella of APU then yeah, it's THE device. They had the right vision, of combining the CPU and GPU for a more efficient platform. But they just didn't execute fast enough. By the time they had it, Intel already had Sandy Bridge.

Why bring up Sandy Bridge as the example? Intel was late to the party as well.

Not that Sony was the first, but they definitely had the vision probably a full decade before AMD got their bright idea.

Mass production of the Emotion Engine began in 1999

The Emotion Engine consists of eight separate "units", each performing a specific task, integrated onto the same die. These units are: a CPU core, two Vector Processing Units (VPU), a graphics interface (GIF), a 10 channel DMA unit, a memory controller, an Image Processing Unit (IPU) and an input output interface.

The CPU core is tightly coupled to the first VPU, VPU0. Together, they are responsible for executing game code and high-level modeling computations. The second VPU, VPU1, is dedicated to geometry-transformations and lighting and operates independently, parallel to the CPU core, controlled by microcode. VPU0, when not utilized, can also be used for geometry-transformations.

And of course Microsoft did the same, with IBM, at 45nm in 2010.

 

[Vesku]

True, but back then the legalities prevented Nvidia from buying AMD and also retaining the x86 license, so the only thing that could have worked was for AMD to purchase Nvidia. And if you think Ruiz has a big ego, enter JHH. Not necessarily a bad thing, but there is no way JHH would have tolerated giving up his company (I honestly don't blame him, he is the co-founder).

Which is why I said it was out of the question because Ruiz was unwilling to give up the CEO slot.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Which is why I said it was out of the question because Ruiz was unwilling to give up the CEO slot.

I could be wrong, but I highly doubt JHH would have allowed Nvidia to be assimilated even if he became the CEO.

 

[Idontcare]

I could be wrong, but I highly doubt JHH would have allowed Nvidia to be assimilated even if he became the CEO.

I don't really know what you mean by assimilated, nor do I understand why that would have been a good or bad thing in AMD's case considering how well the reality of buying ATI turned out, but this discussion of JHH running AMD comes up often and generally speaking the reason people say they would have loved to have seen AMD run by JHH is because they view JHH stepping into AMD as being the closest thing possible to Steve Jobs grabbing the reigns at Apple the second time around.

Not saying JHH is a Steve Jobs, just saying of all the driven personality types that the AMD BoD could have put into the CEO position, putting JHH into AMD's driver seat would have surely kickstarted AMD in ways that Ruiz/Meyers/Read simply could not for lack of personal traits and capabilities (not a one of those CEOs has ever started or managed a business successfully, whereas JHH has).

Considering how disastrous the ATI acquisition has been to AMD's bottom line, I suspect AMD's shareholders and the employees who have lost their jobs in the following years would have accepted the tradeoff of a bit of corporate culture shock with an NV merger if the tradeoff came with the upside opportunity of coming out any better positioned against Intel and Arm than how AMD currently sits.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Assimilated means acquired in this case, the Nvidia name is either no more or becomes a division of.

Not sold on the bravado of JHH and how it would help if was the AMD CEO, I see this as more of potential liability when you're up against Intel. But it would be fun to see JHH at the head of AMD just for the sheer entertainment value.

 

[Fox5]

Assimilated means acquired in this case, the Nvidia name is either no more or becomes a division of.

Not sold on the bravado of JHH and how it would help if was the AMD CEO, I see this as more of potential liability when you're up against Intel. But it would be fun to see JHH at the head of AMD just for the sheer entertainment value.

My feelings are that AMD was foolish for pursueing big dies that cost more than the Intel competition for so long.

Native quad core? They should have been shipping native dual core at the time and under cutting Intel in price. L3 cache should never have been included on budget consumer cpus.

 

[Dresdenboy]

@APU:
Way back there was Cyrix MX...

@AMD - lifetime net income:
What we are looking at is the remaining net income of a company many shareholders are invested in. But a lot unnamed receivers were on the winning side with AMD so far - and this even has some socialistic touch

• employees
• banks
• construction companies
• energy, water, etc. companies
• wafer providers (where would SOITec be today w/o AMD?)
• tool vendors
• the markets (more choices and diversification)
• hundreds of execs benefiting from AMD as a ladder
• academia
• stock traders
• Jerry Sanders III.

To name a few winners.

 

[I4AT]

Why aren't there any performance previews of Steamroller/Kaveri? Is that a bad sign of its performance relative to today's chips? Just because they can't keep schedule doesn't mean we shouldn't be allowed to see preliminary benchmarks, right?

Last article I remember seeing on AT "detailing" Steamroller architecture was from August 2012. It's been almost a full year and we haven't seen a single benchmark, that I'm aware of anyways.

Well I'm mainly interested in seeing how much power consumption has improved with the shift to 28nm, if at all. Dual core is no longer viable for modern games, and I find Intel's quad core offerings to be overpriced personally. It's not AMD's inferior performance to Intel chips that keeps me from buying their CPU's, it's the through the roof power consumption because their process is so far behind.

If they got back to the basics and released a 28nm quad chip without the integrated graphics core they could meet a pretty large demand for budget conscious gamers like myself that want at least 4 cores in the sub $100 range without having to use a toaster oven of a chip. With Intel, either you get a locked down dual core in the $100 range, or you have to spend like $180 to move to a locked down quad.

 

[Idontcare]

@AMD - lifetime net income:



What we are looking at is the remaining net income of a company many shareholders are invested in. But a lot unnamed receivers were on the winning side with AMD so far - and this even has some socialistic touch

• employees
• banks
• construction companies
• energy, water, etc. companies
• wafer providers (where would SOITec be today w/o AMD?)
• tool vendors
• the markets (more choices and diversification)
• hundreds of execs benefiting from AMD as a ladder
• academia
• stock traders
• Jerry Sanders III.

To name a few winners.

Legalized Ponzi-scheme. Hector made out rather well too.

Last article I remember seeing on AT "detailing" Steamroller architecture was from August 2012. It's been almost a full year and we haven't seen a single benchmark, that I'm aware of anyways.

That was before AMD internally reorganized their priorities and externally published this:

Where do you see steamroller (a big-core produced on bleeding-edge technology) sitting in the above infographic? On the left or on the right?

That tells you where it sits as a priority within AMD, which should also give some indication of why AMD isn't making it a huge priority to get preliminary results or much in the way of leaks/previews/marketing about it into the public domain.

 

[unon]

That was before AMD internally reorganized their priorities and externally published this:

Where do you see steamroller (a big-core produced on bleeding-edge technology) sitting in the above infographic? On the left or on the right?

That tells you where it sits as a priority within AMD, which should also give some indication of why AMD isn't making it a huge priority to get preliminary results or much in the way of leaks/previews/marketing about it into the public domain.

iirc we didn't have much info on jaguar or the gpu families either. We might get hard numbers some time soon though. If steamroller is another 15%(including clocks) there is no need for AMD to go about advertising it as such. Also that pic seems like the design goals of the big cores have been changed after bd release. And they aren't even using soi now, it isn't bleeding-edge.