If AMD survives long enough then yes they should have some better offerings but the delays they incur along with the constant losses one wonders if they will still be around in a year or so.
But perhaps only allow voting up, and flagging. The upvote/downvote system makes it too easy to turn the comment section into an echo chamber, and people often just vote down to disagree.
I don't think they are bad, I have one myself, but they just don't bring a whole lot to the table and are basically equal to celeron/pentium/i3 in price/performance. And when the important metrics are roughly equal, people end up buying intel due to brand recognition/reputation.
That whole "gaming on APU" is a big joke, so for all intents and purposes, the GPU portion is there to do DXVA. And intel can do DXVA just fine too.
The only reason I have an APU with FM2 socket, is because I wanted a cheap mobo with 8x native SATA ports for a NAS build, and intel only has a maximum of 6xSATA.
Actually, I've found differently. AMD is more willing to put resources into its low-end laptops, so a 2012 AMD A8 and 2012 Intel i7 perform equally in MOBAs at the same screen resolutions. Given that one was $400 and one was $800, and that i3 laptops are slowly crawling up in price or disappearing for higher-priced i5s, it shouldn't be surprising that AMD has a niche available to it.
The biggest problem is that AMD ends up in really "cheap": notebooks with very little expandability and quality items that it does not do any justice to it.
They are saddled with 720p screens, poor keyboard, cheap build quality, 5400 RPM mechanical HDDs as well as downright 4 cell battery.
And for a cheaper price you will see an equally cheap/cheaper celeron model [with the same characteristics]. So if somebody goes by price they can go either way. If somebody wants quality they would avoid the AMD model altogether and go with the expensive i7.
It was pretty much a given that they'll have no 20nm products ,except maybe for console and they don't actually state that they won't have anything on 20nm, just that some products planned on 20nm will go smaller. The financial part is far more interesting though (if you actually look at it). Q1 was 1.03B revenue with Computing and Graphics segment revenue 532 million, while Console,embedded and server was 498 million. So if you assume Q2 revenue some 950 mil and console flat (could be better than flat but lets say server is down and console up so all in all flat), computing ends up at 450 million so some 15% down on quarter.The compute and graphics segement would also be 46% down on year and 55% down vs 2 years ago (994 million). And this is CPU, APU , GPU while Nvidia does 2x just from GPU. With Zen rumored to arrive in oct-nov next year and APUs with Zen only in 2017 things will keep going downhill for them for quite some time no matter what. Zen expected to be just 8 cores and perf somewhat unknown is not very encouraging. If Intel can do 4 cores with 8MB L3 is some 60mm2 on 14nm,then AMD Zen better have 12-16 cores at same per core perf and 300$ price tag or much better perf per core than Intel if they only have 8 cores. Costs at 14nm might be high compared to 28nm but 28nm is cheap because it's old and if 14ff has good yields ,there is no reason not to give us big chips. Zen could catch Intel with it's pants down but only if AMD gives us perf and core count. With Intel wasting die on a GPU ,AMD could do much better if Zen is competitive. Look at Broadwell desktop , 160mm+ die with more than 100mm2 for the GPU and eDRAM interface when they could have fitted 12 cores with 24MB L3 and wider memory interface with no GPU in the same die. At this point Zen is the last design they can afford given their revenue by the time it launches and they better get not only the core right but the products right. They'll really need a huge jump in revenue with Zen to be able afford 10nm designs.
There is no point having 12 or 16 cores. Few things even take advantage of 4 cores at this point, even 8 will already be overkill. AMD needs better single threaded performance, not just throw in more cores. If their single threaded performance is bad then they are screwed either way.
Anyway, I think everyone basically agrees that Zen is AMD's last hurrah. Either it's good and turns the company around, or stick a fork in them.
There is a niche there if the product is competitive, and they could take back some of the server market. But the vast majority of consumer, enterprise, and education users certainly dont need 8 cores. And having no igp will narrow the market dramatically. Plus the market is moving to mobile, where no one is going to want an 8 core 95 watt TDP monster. The only hope i see for AMD to become relevant in the mainstream is a Zen apu with HBM.
Are gamers still a driving force behind the CPU performance market? I thought good enough was hit awhile ago with playable frame rates always GPU limited.
But the ability to use more cores does NOT give a performance increase. You only get an increase in performance if using more cores removes a CPU bottleneck that existed when fewer cores were used. That's why the i5 can i7 typically give the same performance at the same clock, even when a game scales to 8 cores, because even though the i5's cores are more burdened, they aren't bottlenecked, and thus no performance disadvantage exists.
This is a very simple concept in SW design, but one that keeps getting ignored. The ability to use more cores only gives more performance when a bottleneck is removed. No bottleneck, no performance impact.
but can amd last till 2016-2017 (zen release) when they are losing tens of millions per quarter? hell by then, skylake will be mature, nvidia's Pascal will be out, and ddr4 will be common place.
they are just too far behind, and didnt spend the money on smart engineers. amd is getting talent from the bottom barrels of society.
AMD's debt repayments dont begin until 2018, which is when their balance sheets are going to get strained.
Zen is AMD's last shot; with total debt equaling their total valuation, and large debt repayments on the horizon, AMD simply can't afford a miss. If Zen misses, things could get bad an a hurry.
You can go ahead and buy fewer cores then, at a much much lower price. Just because you don't need more computing power doesn't mean that people that do must pay thousands of dollars for more cores. Intel is abusing the lack of competition and AMD can exploit that. There are lots of people that need as many cores as they can get.The only reason we don't have more cores is because Intel can sell whatever garbage they want, in a competitive market the landscape would be very very different. Sure Intel's marketing will try to convince you that you are better off paying for a small die where 2/3 of it is something you don't need. Intel screwed everybody with Gulftown in 2010 and since then things only got worse and worse. Everybody that was around back then is still waiting for a reasonable number of cores at a sane price. As for single threaded , i never asked for less perf , you just failed to get the point that they can offer a lot more than Intel and they really should, they can't afford to miss opportunities. Intel could offer 4 cores today well bellow 100$ in retail,easily and AMD (if competitive) can force them to.If yields are very good they could even do 50$ for 4 cores no GPU.
Now if only shoving more cores in a CPU, while still sticking with a competitive power and thermal budgets, and then selling it CHEAPER, was as simple a matter as you make it sound, AMD would be all set.
There is no 10 nm technology, and GlobalFoundries use the same process as Samsung's fabs as they collaborate on process (IBM and Chartered was part of that collaboration too before being absorbed into GloFo the collaboration has roots in the old AMD days and should still contain elements that AMD developed, Charted fabbed some AMD processors around 10 years ago). So it's likely that they will split 14/16nm production between GloFo (which has fabs in US, Germany and Singapore both US and Germany has leading edge foundries) and TSMC. No one even has real trial runs of 10 nm yet, it's still only "in the roadmap". Most products will skip 20 nm here.
From what I see nobody as taped out any 10 nm projects yet for their trial run at TSMC, after that they must do risk production and after that volume production. So it's still years off. New designs will be out long before that. 2016 products will use 16FF+ at TSMC or 14 nm elsewhere.
Also risk production on 16FF+ has been around since Q4 2014 or so. Yet no products on the market use it. Snapdragon 820 isn't out yet for example, and isn't expected to be in phones until 16.
This is the reason why Intel is ChipZilla. They truly have an advantage in process nodes despite what other companies tell, such as Samsung. I still think Samsung's 16nm process doesn't have the scale or yields yet for their own benefit or other companies.
If they keep up this downward slide, at some point they'll be within range of us, the readers of Anandtech, pooling together enough pennies (wouldn't need that many of them) found under couch cushions and purchasing the company...
... then promptly firing everyone that works there.
Anyone can buy shares, and the owner of GloFo is still invested in AMD and probably has an interest in seeing them succeed with a new product on a new process. The institutional owners hasn't abandoned them. They won't go private yet.
I think with AMD it's more likely they go bankrupt or get bought up by another tech company than go private. When a company is taken private it's usually a successful, not too indebted company that is then levered up to pay for the buy out. AMD already has a lot of debt against it, and it's not profitable. It's a bad target for being taken private.
It makes more sense for someone trying to get graphics and/or CPU tech. Like a halfway decent argument can be made for MS buying them since they won't have to pay for CPUs for their conoles.
That is really no argument at all as AMD could simply sell the rights of the SoC's, even the whole the Jaguar arch and the right to use the specific GCN part to Microsoft for them to fab it (pay the fab) and shrink the design themselves. Sony certainly would if they would be sold to Microsoft. If Intel would allow it.
A split of the GPU-business could happen, but I don't see anyone really interested in that. ATI/AMD exited several businesses and would only have desktop/workstation graphics cards if they split. Plus a minor presence in discrete cards for notebooks. No TV/STB, no handheld. Don't see why any semiconductor business would acquire them. They could only license their graphics to AMD when it comes to integrated graphics. They are not ready to compete with ImgTec, ARM, etc and the organization doesn't fit those markets.
AMD has no majority owner, they could get one without going private but that is unlikely, they would be outright bought and taken private (and probably merged – mergers are seldom successful) if anyone could make a deal to buy all the stocks including those not on the stock exchange. If they see an investment they would likely just do as before issue new stocks for those investing. Abu Dhabi owns ~18% of AMD and would be the most likely buyer as I said. They also owns Globalfoundries. I guess they could spin-off the graphics business into a separate company again and take some of that company to the stock exchange still holding some shares. But who would invest and how would that put money into the graphics business when AMD would get all the initial money for the shares? Where would all that graphics tech go? Who would use it? It would take years to develop good IP for the ARM SoC space. It's not like IBM or some other HPC company wants to buy them.
Warned about this in the E3/Fury X run-up, that it was all song and dance to trump up a stack of Rebrandeons and a flagship part that wasn't going to deliver what they promised. That, along with more rumors of buyout sent AMD stock prices soaring, but this news of course brings them back to reality. $2 price target before earnings was what I said then, and it looks like I was right. ;)
If AMD wants to make a profit... Or any OEM for that matter.
Make a 13" laptop with 8GB/128GB/1080p for $5-600 USD. If AMD can make the processor that fits in that laptop... Money!!!! Srsly. Do it. I am sick of these 15" 768p monsters.
what you want is already on the market: Asus Zenbook UX305, very good review on Anandtech, got 8GB/256GB SSD/ 1080p for $700, Microsoft store had it on sale at $600 last month and we may see similar price at other amazon sales and Black friday sales later in the year.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-radeon-r9-... Maybe you guys should do an article on AMD's pump/coil whine problems?? I mean you dedicated a 4 page article to Nvidia's .5GB being slower than the other 3.5GB on 970's. Your FuryX article mentioned pump whine being fixed, which tomshardware just proved is inaccurate at best, lies at worst. AMD is now going to assist OEMS on RMA costs.
I'd think this would merit an article as long as 970's paper change article right? LOL. Tomshardware was 4 pages on discovering what the issues are on AMD's problem. You'd think you guys could at least MENTION it and the RMA info for folks who got SHIPPED PUMP WHINERS, and possibly coil whine too. Never mind, I forgot...AMD portal site. ;) Unlike the PAPER mistake for NV that did not change the 970's results one bit from the review benchmarks (and Ryan saying he was still looking for corner cases to prove a problem!), AMD's mistake is RMA worthy and perhaps shoddy in how they're handling it as toms notes.
http://wccftech.com/amd-radeon-fury-x-reportedly-s... You can hear the coil/choke noise vid here. Pump vid too. Might want to wait for a while if a person is planning to buy one, as they are not marking which ones are FIXED on boxes. "AMD’s Antal Tungler has confirmed that the problem exists in early production units. However a fix (for the pump whine) has been applied by Cooler Master USA and it is hoped that the problem has been resolved for future R9 Fury X units."
But that doesn't resolve the coil/choke issue. Just the pump. So how many have the 2nd issue?
Zen can't come soon enough, as APU/consoles were a waste of valuable R&D. Dirk was right ~2011 when he left (was forced out really), saying they needed to concentrate on CORE GPU/CPU, not this other junk which weakens the core stuff. Same thing some other guy said when consoles came up, Jen something... :) If they put out a ZEN chip on 16finfet+ it should be able to take the perf lead if it is sized even to Intel's die size on 14nm. They dedicate 1/2 of their cpu (actually slightly more) to gpu side now, so a die size of CPU only should have no trouble taking Intel down (if IPC is what AMD says it is), at least until Intel can respond with one of their own sans gpu and enlarged (that takes time). That would give AMD PRICING POWER, finally again for at least a while. Note having a king cpu led to the last time AMD made money quarter after quarter ;) Too bad AMD didn't listen to DIRK and put out ZEN in 2011-2012 instead of going console crap in ~2010/11 or so for xbox1/ps4 designs. That is about when they gave up the cpu race of course. Bummer. Dirk wanted APU's etc to come AFTER they had a CPU/GPU king.
I wouldnt trust toms hardware with my worst enemy after they inflated Fury X benchmarks scores. Toms Fury X Scores were 30% higher than every other tech site.
they paited fury x as beating the 980 Ti in 80% of benchmarks, when it doesn't even beat the Ti in 20% of the gaming benchmarks.
Anandtech definitely needs a better, more up-to-date comments section. Is it going to happen? On T: Maybe a big Chinese company will invest (if they're allowed to by the US Govt)?
I think AMD would stand a good chance if they produced dual and quad core + IGP parts for the cheap, mass market AND IGP-less quad octa cores for the performance market, while ceasing to compete in the "extreme" market (not that the FX 9000 series was worthy of the extreme title). I'm not familiar with servers, so i'll avoid the matter.
No they don't. FXs are dinosaur old design, while athlons miss the L3 cache. PLUS, they aren't actually 8 cores. And it took them years to get to this point. If they started right off the bat with the right approach, i think they could really pose a threat to intel
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anandreader106 - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
FINALLY!!! That should give a great boost to AMD offerings :)HighTech4US - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
What earnings?All AMD does now is post bigger and bigger losses.
HighTech4US - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
Where again is that EDIT button?Saw "earnings" instead of "offerings".
If AMD survives long enough then yes they should have some better offerings but the delays they incur along with the constant losses one wonders if they will still be around in a year or so.
junky77 - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
this "if" has been around for like 7 yearsnathanddrews - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
Try 14.WinterCharm - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
Does this pertain to the CPU's or GPUs?Ryan Smith - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
Almost certainly just CPUs/APUs. dGPUs are on an entirely different schedule.WinterCharm - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Damn. I was hoping we'd see a die shrink for dGPU's already. :PFlunk - Thursday, July 9, 2015 - link
Probably some time mid to end of 2016.yannigr2 - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
Damn. Believe me. This is extremely difficult. It is extremely difficult to be a Greek AMD fan this period. Oh hell.... What next?Ryan Smith - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
For the purpose of transparency, 1 comment has been removed.Guys, could you please avoid profanity in our comments section?
StevoLincolnite - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
You need a voting system for your users to do this for you.V900 - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
That's an awful idea. Ideas and comments aren't cattle or electric kettles, that you can rate on 1-10 scale and arrange accordingly.The best ideas and most interesting comments are often unpopular ones.
The only thing a voting system would ensure, is an echo chamber of geeks with safe, uncontroversial middle class values.
cwolf78 - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
"...safe, uncontroversial middle class values."That's all that matters.
dragonsqrrl - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Ya, no. Anandtech does not need trolls and fanboys abusing a comment voting system. That's pretty much all it's ever used for on tech sites.nikaldro - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Guys, it was me. Sorry.I was just saying:
I feel you. Italy has huge economic trouble too.
D. Lister - Wednesday, July 8, 2015 - link
Exactly. Case in point - Tom's. Voting encourages sock puppets, where fanboys make several fake accounts, to use them to upvote their own agendas.WinterCharm - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
+1 on the voting system. I'd love to see that.But perhaps only allow voting up, and flagging. The upvote/downvote system makes it too easy to turn the comment section into an echo chamber, and people often just vote down to disagree.
meacupla - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
APU sales are bad? you don't say...I don't think they are bad, I have one myself, but they just don't bring a whole lot to the table and are basically equal to celeron/pentium/i3 in price/performance. And when the important metrics are roughly equal, people end up buying intel due to brand recognition/reputation.
That whole "gaming on APU" is a big joke, so for all intents and purposes, the GPU portion is there to do DXVA. And intel can do DXVA just fine too.
The only reason I have an APU with FM2 socket, is because I wanted a cheap mobo with 8x native SATA ports for a NAS build, and intel only has a maximum of 6xSATA.
lmcd - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
Actually, I've found differently. AMD is more willing to put resources into its low-end laptops, so a 2012 AMD A8 and 2012 Intel i7 perform equally in MOBAs at the same screen resolutions. Given that one was $400 and one was $800, and that i3 laptops are slowly crawling up in price or disappearing for higher-priced i5s, it shouldn't be surprising that AMD has a niche available to it.rocketbuddha - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
The biggest problem is that AMD ends up in really "cheap": notebooks with very little expandability and quality items that it does not do any justice to it.They are saddled with 720p screens, poor keyboard, cheap build quality, 5400 RPM mechanical HDDs as well as downright 4 cell battery.
And for a cheaper price you will see an equally cheap/cheaper celeron model [with the same characteristics]. So if somebody goes by price they can go either way.
If somebody wants quality they would avoid the AMD model altogether and go with the expensive i7.
jjj - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
It was pretty much a given that they'll have no 20nm products ,except maybe for console and they don't actually state that they won't have anything on 20nm, just that some products planned on 20nm will go smaller.The financial part is far more interesting though (if you actually look at it).
Q1 was 1.03B revenue with Computing and Graphics segment revenue 532 million, while Console,embedded and server was 498 million.
So if you assume Q2 revenue some 950 mil and console flat (could be better than flat but lets say server is down and console up so all in all flat), computing ends up at 450 million so some 15% down on quarter.The compute and graphics segement would also be 46% down on year and 55% down vs 2 years ago (994 million). And this is CPU, APU , GPU while Nvidia does 2x just from GPU.
With Zen rumored to arrive in oct-nov next year and APUs with Zen only in 2017 things will keep going downhill for them for quite some time no matter what.
Zen expected to be just 8 cores and perf somewhat unknown is not very encouraging. If Intel can do 4 cores with 8MB L3 is some 60mm2 on 14nm,then AMD Zen better have 12-16 cores at same per core perf and 300$ price tag or much better perf per core than Intel if they only have 8 cores. Costs at 14nm might be high compared to 28nm but 28nm is cheap because it's old and if 14ff has good yields ,there is no reason not to give us big chips. Zen could catch Intel with it's pants down but only if AMD gives us perf and core count. With Intel wasting die on a GPU ,AMD could do much better if Zen is competitive. Look at Broadwell desktop , 160mm+ die with more than 100mm2 for the GPU and eDRAM interface when they could have fitted 12 cores with 24MB L3 and wider memory interface with no GPU in the same die.
At this point Zen is the last design they can afford given their revenue by the time it launches and they better get not only the core right but the products right. They'll really need a huge jump in revenue with Zen to be able afford 10nm designs.
Nagorak - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
There is no point having 12 or 16 cores. Few things even take advantage of 4 cores at this point, even 8 will already be overkill. AMD needs better single threaded performance, not just throw in more cores. If their single threaded performance is bad then they are screwed either way.Anyway, I think everyone basically agrees that Zen is AMD's last hurrah. Either it's good and turns the company around, or stick a fork in them.
OrphanageExplosion - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Virtually every modern game uses at least four cores. Even the horrific Arkham Knight utilises all eight threads on my i7 4790K.An eight-core processor 16/17 makes sense.
frozentundra123456 - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
There is a niche there if the product is competitive, and they could take back some of the server market. But the vast majority of consumer, enterprise, and education users certainly dont need 8 cores. And having no igp will narrow the market dramatically. Plus the market is moving to mobile, where no one is going to want an 8 core 95 watt TDP monster. The only hope i see for AMD to become relevant in the mainstream is a Zen apu with HBM.icrf - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Are gamers still a driving force behind the CPU performance market? I thought good enough was hit awhile ago with playable frame rates always GPU limited.gamerk2 - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
But the ability to use more cores does NOT give a performance increase. You only get an increase in performance if using more cores removes a CPU bottleneck that existed when fewer cores were used. That's why the i5 can i7 typically give the same performance at the same clock, even when a game scales to 8 cores, because even though the i5's cores are more burdened, they aren't bottlenecked, and thus no performance disadvantage exists.This is a very simple concept in SW design, but one that keeps getting ignored. The ability to use more cores only gives more performance when a bottleneck is removed. No bottleneck, no performance impact.
Morawka - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
but can amd last till 2016-2017 (zen release) when they are losing tens of millions per quarter? hell by then, skylake will be mature, nvidia's Pascal will be out, and ddr4 will be common place.they are just too far behind, and didnt spend the money on smart engineers. amd is getting talent from the bottom barrels of society.
gamerk2 - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
AMD's debt repayments dont begin until 2018, which is when their balance sheets are going to get strained.Zen is AMD's last shot; with total debt equaling their total valuation, and large debt repayments on the horizon, AMD simply can't afford a miss. If Zen misses, things could get bad an a hurry.
jjj - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
You can go ahead and buy fewer cores then, at a much much lower price.Just because you don't need more computing power doesn't mean that people that do must pay thousands of dollars for more cores. Intel is abusing the lack of competition and AMD can exploit that. There are lots of people that need as many cores as they can get.The only reason we don't have more cores is because Intel can sell whatever garbage they want, in a competitive market the landscape would be very very different.
Sure Intel's marketing will try to convince you that you are better off paying for a small die where 2/3 of it is something you don't need. Intel screwed everybody with Gulftown in 2010 and since then things only got worse and worse. Everybody that was around back then is still waiting for a reasonable number of cores at a sane price.
As for single threaded , i never asked for less perf , you just failed to get the point that they can offer a lot more than Intel and they really should, they can't afford to miss opportunities.
Intel could offer 4 cores today well bellow 100$ in retail,easily and AMD (if competitive) can force them to.If yields are very good they could even do 50$ for 4 cores no GPU.
Spacewolf - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Somebody lives in unicorn fairy land..D. Lister - Wednesday, July 8, 2015 - link
Now if only shoving more cores in a CPU, while still sticking with a competitive power and thermal budgets, and then selling it CHEAPER, was as simple a matter as you make it sound, AMD would be all set.Oxford Guy - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
Six cores would be enough.behrangsa - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
Why they don't skip 20nm and use Samsung or other fabs' 10nm technology?Penti - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
There is no 10 nm technology, and GlobalFoundries use the same process as Samsung's fabs as they collaborate on process (IBM and Chartered was part of that collaboration too before being absorbed into GloFo the collaboration has roots in the old AMD days and should still contain elements that AMD developed, Charted fabbed some AMD processors around 10 years ago). So it's likely that they will split 14/16nm production between GloFo (which has fabs in US, Germany and Singapore both US and Germany has leading edge foundries) and TSMC. No one even has real trial runs of 10 nm yet, it's still only "in the roadmap". Most products will skip 20 nm here.behrangsa - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
Duh! I replied to myself...Looks like TSMC's 10nm line will be ready by 2016: http://wccftech.com/tsmc-promises-10nm-production-...
Hopefully AMD can use it when it becomes available for mass production.
Penti - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
From what I see nobody as taped out any 10 nm projects yet for their trial run at TSMC, after that they must do risk production and after that volume production. So it's still years off. New designs will be out long before that. 2016 products will use 16FF+ at TSMC or 14 nm elsewhere.Penti - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
Also risk production on 16FF+ has been around since Q4 2014 or so. Yet no products on the market use it. Snapdragon 820 isn't out yet for example, and isn't expected to be in phones until 16.16FF+ volume ramp up was to begin around July, but it takes months to produce the ASICs. http://www.tsmc.com/tsmcdotcom/PRListingNewsAction...
They won't skip doing 16/14 nm products.
testbug00 - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
No. 2018 for sub 100mm^2 at best. Well, or if you sell chips to a cost insensitive market maybe also in 2018.behrangsa - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
Looks like TSMC's 10nm line will be ready by 2016: http://wccftech.com/tsmc-promises-10nm-production-...Hopefully AMD can use it when it becomes available for mass production.
behrangsa - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
And not necessarily TSMC's...zodiacfml - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
This is the reason why Intel is ChipZilla. They truly have an advantage in process nodes despite what other companies tell, such as Samsung. I still think Samsung's 16nm process doesn't have the scale or yields yet for their own benefit or other companies.mrdude - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
If they keep up this downward slide, at some point they'll be within range of us, the readers of Anandtech, pooling together enough pennies (wouldn't need that many of them) found under couch cushions and purchasing the company...... then promptly firing everyone that works there.
Penti - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
Anyone can buy shares, and the owner of GloFo is still invested in AMD and probably has an interest in seeing them succeed with a new product on a new process. The institutional owners hasn't abandoned them. They won't go private yet.Nagorak - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
I think with AMD it's more likely they go bankrupt or get bought up by another tech company than go private. When a company is taken private it's usually a successful, not too indebted company that is then levered up to pay for the buy out. AMD already has a lot of debt against it, and it's not profitable. It's a bad target for being taken private.It makes more sense for someone trying to get graphics and/or CPU tech. Like a halfway decent argument can be made for MS buying them since they won't have to pay for CPUs for their conoles.
Penti - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
That is really no argument at all as AMD could simply sell the rights of the SoC's, even the whole the Jaguar arch and the right to use the specific GCN part to Microsoft for them to fab it (pay the fab) and shrink the design themselves. Sony certainly would if they would be sold to Microsoft. If Intel would allow it.A split of the GPU-business could happen, but I don't see anyone really interested in that. ATI/AMD exited several businesses and would only have desktop/workstation graphics cards if they split. Plus a minor presence in discrete cards for notebooks. No TV/STB, no handheld. Don't see why any semiconductor business would acquire them. They could only license their graphics to AMD when it comes to integrated graphics. They are not ready to compete with ImgTec, ARM, etc and the organization doesn't fit those markets.
AMD has no majority owner, they could get one without going private but that is unlikely, they would be outright bought and taken private (and probably merged – mergers are seldom successful) if anyone could make a deal to buy all the stocks including those not on the stock exchange. If they see an investment they would likely just do as before issue new stocks for those investing. Abu Dhabi owns ~18% of AMD and would be the most likely buyer as I said. They also owns Globalfoundries. I guess they could spin-off the graphics business into a separate company again and take some of that company to the stock exchange still holding some shares. But who would invest and how would that put money into the graphics business when AMD would get all the initial money for the shares? Where would all that graphics tech go? Who would use it? It would take years to develop good IP for the ARM SoC space. It's not like IBM or some other HPC company wants to buy them.
KenLuskin - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
AMD's CEO Hints at BUYOUT!https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/amds-ceo-hints-buyo...
chizow - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
Warned about this in the E3/Fury X run-up, that it was all song and dance to trump up a stack of Rebrandeons and a flagship part that wasn't going to deliver what they promised. That, along with more rumors of buyout sent AMD stock prices soaring, but this news of course brings them back to reality. $2 price target before earnings was what I said then, and it looks like I was right. ;)Down to $2.13 in after hours trading, expect more of the same once markets open tomorrow AM.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=amd&fr=uh3_financ...
doggface - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
If AMD wants to make a profit... Or any OEM for that matter.Make a 13" laptop with 8GB/128GB/1080p for $5-600 USD. If AMD can make the processor that fits in that laptop... Money!!!!
Srsly. Do it. I am sick of these 15" 768p monsters.
Penti - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
You can fit a dual-core Haswell/Broadwell/Skylake into a 500-600 USD laptop no problem. There's 1080 15-inch E-IPS panels in 600 dollar laptops.BMNify - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
what you want is already on the market: Asus Zenbook UX305, very good review on Anandtech, got 8GB/256GB SSD/ 1080p for $700, Microsoft store had it on sale at $600 last month and we may see similar price at other amazon sales and Black friday sales later in the year.TheJian - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-radeon-r9-...Maybe you guys should do an article on AMD's pump/coil whine problems?? I mean you dedicated a 4 page article to Nvidia's .5GB being slower than the other 3.5GB on 970's. Your FuryX article mentioned pump whine being fixed, which tomshardware just proved is inaccurate at best, lies at worst. AMD is now going to assist OEMS on RMA costs.
I'd think this would merit an article as long as 970's paper change article right? LOL. Tomshardware was 4 pages on discovering what the issues are on AMD's problem. You'd think you guys could at least MENTION it and the RMA info for folks who got SHIPPED PUMP WHINERS, and possibly coil whine too. Never mind, I forgot...AMD portal site. ;) Unlike the PAPER mistake for NV that did not change the 970's results one bit from the review benchmarks (and Ryan saying he was still looking for corner cases to prove a problem!), AMD's mistake is RMA worthy and perhaps shoddy in how they're handling it as toms notes.
http://wccftech.com/amd-radeon-fury-x-reportedly-s...
You can hear the coil/choke noise vid here. Pump vid too. Might want to wait for a while if a person is planning to buy one, as they are not marking which ones are FIXED on boxes.
"AMD’s Antal Tungler has confirmed that the problem exists in early production units. However a fix (for the pump whine) has been applied by Cooler Master USA and it is hoped that the problem has been resolved for future R9 Fury X units."
But that doesn't resolve the coil/choke issue. Just the pump. So how many have the 2nd issue?
Zen can't come soon enough, as APU/consoles were a waste of valuable R&D. Dirk was right ~2011 when he left (was forced out really), saying they needed to concentrate on CORE GPU/CPU, not this other junk which weakens the core stuff. Same thing some other guy said when consoles came up, Jen something... :) If they put out a ZEN chip on 16finfet+ it should be able to take the perf lead if it is sized even to Intel's die size on 14nm. They dedicate 1/2 of their cpu (actually slightly more) to gpu side now, so a die size of CPU only should have no trouble taking Intel down (if IPC is what AMD says it is), at least until Intel can respond with one of their own sans gpu and enlarged (that takes time). That would give AMD PRICING POWER, finally again for at least a while. Note having a king cpu led to the last time AMD made money quarter after quarter ;) Too bad AMD didn't listen to DIRK and put out ZEN in 2011-2012 instead of going console crap in ~2010/11 or so for xbox1/ps4 designs. That is about when they gave up the cpu race of course. Bummer. Dirk wanted APU's etc to come AFTER they had a CPU/GPU king.
Morawka - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
I wouldnt trust toms hardware with my worst enemy after they inflated Fury X benchmarks scores. Toms Fury X Scores were 30% higher than every other tech site.they paited fury x as beating the 980 Ti in 80% of benchmarks, when it doesn't even beat the Ti in 20% of the gaming benchmarks.
Lolimaster - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
AMD, if you don't release an 896-1024 Zen APU by 2016 (better with 2GB HBM 2.0), just sell yourself to someone else.TesseractOrion - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Anandtech definitely needs a better, more up-to-date comments section. Is it going to happen? On T: Maybe a big Chinese company will invest (if they're allowed to by the US Govt)?ThomasS31 - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
Probably the console APU/SOC products... and other custom SOCs they produce for partners.nikaldro - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
I think AMD would stand a good chance if they produced dual and quad core + IGP parts for the cheap, mass market AND IGP-less quad octa cores for the performance market, while ceasing to compete in the "extreme" market (not that the FX 9000 series was worthy of the extreme title).I'm not familiar with servers, so i'll avoid the matter.
nikaldro - Tuesday, July 7, 2015 - link
* i meant quad AND octa cores.silverblue - Wednesday, July 8, 2015 - link
...but, they do...nikaldro - Wednesday, July 8, 2015 - link
No they don't.FXs are dinosaur old design, while athlons miss the L3 cache.
PLUS, they aren't actually 8 cores.
And it took them years to get to this point.
If they started right off the bat with the right approach, i think they could really pose a threat to intel
nikaldro - Wednesday, July 8, 2015 - link
Not to mention that their iGPUs suck, being based on an outdated design.NvidiaWins - Wednesday, July 8, 2015 - link
Sucks to be AMD these days, first their stock takes a 16% tumble(yesterday)- http://www.morningstar.com/news/market-watch/TDJNM...Their new FuryX gpu already is seeing several customer complaints about a whistling/buzzing noise coming from the pump/radiator fan- http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-furyx-pump-no...
Not been a good year for AMD