Displaying items by tag: CPU

A couple of days ago we published an article on the state of AMD and what their immediate (next 18 months) looked like. In that article we looked at the state that AMD is in right now with what they have on the table…. It seems that a few readers did not like what we had to say. Oddly enough, yesterday a number of articles popped up on the internet that supported much of what we had to say including many of the time lines (14nm by Q3 2016 etc.) Let’s take a look at some of the information out there.

In the last couple of months we have talked a lot about AMD and the direction they are trying to move to. Most of what we have reported is not good news and centers on the fact that AMD’s R&D/production budget is dwindling to the point where they cannot push multiple projects at one time. They have had to consolidate their efforts to the point that they do not really have products to bring to market to make them more money. An example of this is the lack of a new GPU for the normal launch cycles. AMD does have some products in the pipeline, but these might not be enough to win them back any marketshare from Intel or NVIDIA.

Although you would not think it possible, AMD is still having issues that stem back from their purchase of ATi all those years ago. As most of you are sick of hearing the details of that acquisition and the gradual fall out we will not bore you here. What we will talk about are some of the issues that AMD now faces and what they mean for the consumer and AMD themselves.

When it comes to competing in the CPU market, one of AMD’s big issues has been trying to get to the same process as Intel. Ever since the purchase of ATi by AMD they have always been one (and in some cases two) processes behind. What made this even worse was when AMD hit such bad financial times that they had to sell off their FABs just keep the lights on. They now had to deal with a fledgling foundry company that still had some of the same old managers. This has meant that even when AMD might have a design they were still going to be behind Intel when it came to performance per watt.

AMD can be a confusing company. Over the years they have made more than a few choices that just do not seem to make sense, but we are not going to dive into that right now. Instead we are going to focus on a recent decision that seems both ill-conceived and sure to confuse AMD supporters.

When I first started truly reporting on the tech world there were two power houses making CPUs. You had AMD on one side and Intel on the other. There were a few other companies that were making x86 compatibles, but no one was close to putting out processors in the numbers that AMD and Intel were. Intel was the king with a massive chunk of the market share. After a few deals with DEC and Samsung AMD came up with a CPU and chipset that changed the mind of many enthusiast and started the era of real performance competition between the two.

CES 2015 Las Vegas, NV – Intel Suite
Today we met up with the Intel crew to see what they are bringing to the market in 2015. Unlike previous years where the “big” news was about big CPUs and processing power, this year was about getting more power in a smaller package and also finding ways to compare products across multiple platforms.

If you were to look back over the years and pick one seriously mismanaged tech company it would probably be AMD. Even going back into the K6 days we find that AMD just did not know what it wanted to do or what direction it intended to go. The marketing message was confused both internally and to the market as a whole. This confusion hit “Office Space” like proportions in the late 90’s when it was rumored that there were more managers and project leaders than they were actual people doing the work.

In any technology based company there is a need for strong leadership. The problem comes in finding the right person to take the role of leader. We have seen how much of an impact the right and wrong choices can make in companies like Apple and AMD. As current CEO Rory Read prepares to step down we are taking a look at AMD and their leadership over the years. With AMD they have fought the battle of leaders ever since the tenure of Hector Ruiz. Ruiz is possibly one of the most universally disliked CEOs that AMD has ever had. Most will put AMD’s current situation squarely in his lap.

AMD has been something of an unusual company ever since they first decided to dive into the x86 market with their purchase of NexGen. The would-be CPU maker had an interesting knack of building CPUs that performed well, but were always just a pace behind their rivals. That was the case until AMD pulled off a minor miracle in the form of the Athlon and Athlon64 CPUs. AMD seemed to have stolen the crown from Intel and looked likely to keep it for a long time.