[jimbo75]

Originally Posted by Silent_Buddha

And how long between 580 and 680? Versus 6970 and 7970? Or between 280 and 480 and between 4870 and 5870?

If you're going to cherry pick some numbers, at least show the other side as well.

Regards,
SB

I wasn't cherry picking - all of those you mentioned are on different nodes.

AMD have had a TTM lead at a new node recently and it is being eroded halfway through. This time around they look likely to have lost the TTM and die size lead, which combined with Nvidia's other benefits can't be good. In fact if you want to look at it in black and white, it's the worst state of affairs AMD have had in a long time. They are likely to be faster (slightly) and nothing else.

That's assuming Charlie is right and both new series will be ready in March, of course. I should also add that it will only count for the high-end as well, as Nvidia appears to be even further behind in TTM at the low end and midrange so it's not all bad.

[UniversalTruth]

The most expensive AMD Vishera processor (Socket AM3+) will not exceed 200$

http://chinese.vr-zone.com/38117/amd...9-us-10172012/

• FX-8350 (4.0/4.2 GHz, eight cores) -> $ 199;
• FX-8320 (3.5/4.0 GHz, eight cores) -> $ 175;
• FX-6300 (3.5/4.1 GHz six-core) -> $ 135;
• FX-4300 (3.8/4.0 GHz, quad-core) -> $ 125.

[karlotta]

When they sold the Fabs they lost their balls. When they bought ATI for 5B$ they lost their mind(but good for ATI guys), when they agreed to ONLY 1B$ from Intel (should have been 10B$) they lost their soul. And all of that has nothing to do with the engineers, it has everything to do with the Board and the primary investors... Their products are fine. Perception is out of wack (thanks Apple).

[caveman-jim]

Originally Posted by UniversalTruth

Posted, no?! I'm taking popcorn and bacon, it's gonna be interesting season.

AMD to reduce previous-generation APU prices

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20121015PD217.html

After announcing its latest FM2-based A series APUs (Trinity) on October 1, AMD is set to reduce prices of its previous-generation APUs with the FM1-based A4-3300 to be reduced from US$46 to US$30, according to sources from motherboard players. AMD Taiwan declined to comment about its price strategy.

In addition, AMD will also reduce its A4-3400 from US$48 to US$35. As for its newly launched FM2-based A4-5300, AMD plans to reduce the CPU's price from US$53 currently to US$30 a quarter later to strength its competitiveness against the Intel Pentium series, the sources noted.


Now, please, the videocards too.

This isn't true.

[boxleitnerb]

How so? After having to write off those 100 million bucks for unsold Llanos, how else would AMD sell them if Trinity is here now? Who would buy them if they are not dirt cheap?

[AlexV]

Originally Posted by caveman-jim

This isn't true.

AMD's PR claims it isn't true, but generally these statements tend to be...fluid, as you well know.

[silent_guy]

So I'm reading through the transcript of the AMD conf call, and other than discussing the pretty awful numbers, there's a ton of chatter about embedded solutions which will eventually account for 20% of revenue and how their IP and semi-custom technology is going to be a key differentiator there.

http://m.seekingalpha.com/article/934141

The thing is: I have no idea what they're talking about. Which market is this exactly? How do they expect it to go from 5% to 20% of revenue? How do they expect to do this with a reduced work force? (Embedded is more customized and requires more hand-holding.)

I'm pretty sure the analysts on the conf call didn't get it either.

[3dilettante]

Originally Posted by silent_guy

The thing is: I have no idea what they're talking about. Which market is this exactly? How do they expect it to go from 5% to 20% of revenue? How do they expect to do this with a reduced work force? (Embedded is more customized and requires more hand-holding.)

The 5% stays stable and the rest drops massively?

[silent_guy]

Originally Posted by 3dilettante

The 5% stays stable and the rest drops massively?

Yeah, great minds think alike. :wink.

[Alexko]

Originally Posted by 3dilettante

The 5% stays stable and the rest drops massively?

Ouch!

Originally Posted by silent_guy

So I'm reading through the transcript of the AMD conf call, and other than discussing the pretty awful numbers, there's a ton of chatter about embedded solutions which will eventually account for 20% of revenue and how their IP and semi-custom technology is going to be a key differentiator there.

http://m.seekingalpha.com/article/934141

The thing is: I have no idea what they're talking about. Which market is this exactly? How do they expect it to go from 5% to 20% of revenue? How do they expect to do this with a reduced work force? (Embedded is more customized and requires more hand-holding.)

I'm pretty sure the analysts on the conf call didn't get it either.

Maybe they hope third parties will license their IP and do most of the work?

[Pete]

Are gaming consoles considered embedded solutions? 20% of $1.3bil quarterly revenue is $260mil. How much of that could be console royalties, assuming all three consoles launch by 4Q13 and AMD is rumored to supply 5 out of 6 next gen CPUs/GPUs (up from 2/6)?

[silent_guy]

Originally Posted by Pete

Are gaming consoles considered embedded solutions? 20% of $1.3bil quarterly revenue is $260mil. How much of that could be console royalties, assuming all three consoles launch by 4Q13 and AMD is rumored to supply 5 out of 6 next gen CPUs/GPUs (up from 2/6)?

Good point. Though that wouldn't exactly be a shift in focus. But it's possible that it's 'only' this.

[Alexko]

AMD mentions having working silicon for Kabini: http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/dis...bini_Chip.html

That's good, of course. But they don't say anything about Kaveri, which is very worrying. If they don't have silicon by now, I doubt they'll have anything out by mid-2013.

[jimbo75]

We won't see Kaveri until 2014 I fear. When you think about it, Llano was 6 months late, Trinity was held back 3 months because of Llano inventory and Kaveri will probably be the same at best.

Add that up and they've lost a whole year to intel in 3 series. To be fair, intel also lost ground with Ivy Bridge and Haswell could be a bit late as well.

[Farid]

I've made this to summarize the situation with AMD stock:



71% of stock value lost in 6 months. Liabilities ain't going nowhere but up. Income and equities going down. A lot of strategic assets already sold (mobile, plants). CPU market getting murkier with the entrance of ARM in the Windows ecosystem. Intel having much better products, and taking care of their lack of competitiveness with the Atom line, by having more development cycles and thus more iterations. It's really an uphill battle for AMD the underdog.

On the positive side, AMD still has excellent desktop graphics products. Now, can that market alone bring in the big bucks they need to get out of this downward spiral?

[silent_guy]

Originally Posted by Farid

A lot of strategic assets already sold (mobile, plants).

It's debatable whether or not the plant was an asset.

[entity279]

ATIC's move is pending ?

[Pete]

Originally Posted by Farid

I've made this to summarize the situation with AMD stock:

I object to your axes not starting at 0. That's right, axes.

silent_guy, reading down to the Q&A shows a lot of Qs trying to suss out how much console wins will affect that embedded figure. AMD's As were basically no comment until the consoles are released.

[3dilettante]

Originally Posted by Pete

I object to your axes not starting at 0. That's right, axes.

silent_guy, reading down to the Q&A shows a lot of Qs trying to suss out how much console wins will affect that embedded figure. AMD's As were basically no comment until the consoles are released.

Will it help if the graph eventually ends at zero...?

Snark aside, the console revenue could push forward 5% to 20% share that the embedded products are meant to take up.

The exact arrangements would be interesting. If the two high-end consoles use x86 cores, the relationship between the console manufacturer and AMD would not be the same as what happened with the current gen, since AMD can't grant the same rights to the CPU cores.
That does pose the possibility of something higher than the money earned on Xenos, but with the responsibilities and costs invovled in having to make the chips themselves. The penalties for failure could be ruinous on top of the usual destructive effect of struggling projects at AMD, and if it gets into a Llano or Bulldozer scenario, the efforts to overcome systemic problems that are now on another powerful corporation's dime could make it a net loss.

Any console manufacturer using AMD's chips in this scenario may be uncomfortable with the latest turn of events, with an AMD that may not be around in a capacity to work on die shrink.
If there were an argument for not having an APU, it would be that at least a GPU could be licensed and shrunk separately, but an APU leaves two big swaths of silicon bound together with little opportunity to optimize costs.

I'm wondering at this point where some of the cuts may be, and if the depth of the cuts may have to do with maintaining the company or matching any covenants on its debt deals that could break the bank prior to actually running out of money--at least until the hopefully on-time console rollout.

[rpg.314]

I think the best case hope is that AMD's staff is locked up in console projects and once it's out the door, execution will improve somewhat.

But like I said, it's my hope.

[I.S.T.]

Vishera reviews are out, and it seems to be finally at the same level roughly as the Phenom II X6 1100T or the X4 980 models. In cases where the code is highly multi-threaded and integer heavy, the top end model beats quadcore Core i5s and i7s much more often, though if it's due to the mild IPC enhancements, the 400 MHZ higher base clock or both isn't known yet.

For most applications, especially if they're lightly threaded, single threaded, or FPU heavy, you'll still want a quad core i5 or a quad/six core i7, of course.

Well, the six core i7s are still better than AMD's new stuff.

So, why am I bringing this up here? The internet in general seems to be reacting with a bit of hope as they didn't expect the new Visheras to be as "good" as they. This could lead to increased sales on top of the higher sales due to the lower price of the highest end version.

[Alexko]

Originally Posted by I.S.T.

Vishera reviews are out, and it seems to be finally at the same level roughly as the Phenom II X6 1100T or the X4 980 models. In cases where the code is highly multi-threaded and integer heavy, the top end model beats quadcore Core i5s and i7s much more often, though if it's due to the mild IPC enhancements, the 400 MHZ higher base clock or both isn't known yet.

For most applications, especially if they're lightly threaded, single threaded, or FPU heavy, you'll still want a quad core i5 or a quad/six core i7, of course.

Well, the six core i7s are still better than AMD's new stuff.

So, why am I bringing this up here? The internet in general seems to be reacting with a bit of hope as they didn't expect the new Visheras to be as "good" as they. This could lead to increased sales on top of the higher sales due to the lower price of the highest end version.

According to Hardware.fr's tests, there's a ~10% IPC increase (at 4GHz). A little less in general applications, a little more in games, but that's more or less the average.

It's a really good CPU for a cheap workstation, provided that power isn't much of a concern. Still not really worth considering for a gaming rig, though.

[Exophase]

Originally Posted by Alexko

According to Hardware.fr's tests, there's a ~10% IPC increase (at 4GHz). A little less in general applications, a little more in games, but that's more or less the average.

hardware.fr themselves say 7.7% average below the table, and I'm going to assume they did the math correctly. Of course, the gains are all over the place. Pretty nice overall, but I was right to expect that the 17% numbers THG were promoting several months ago for Trinity wouldn't be an average or even typical.

Of course, despite being clock normalized and utilizing the same number of cores this doesn't strictly represent an IPC increase. It's possible that a higher IPC gain is offset by a worse module sharing penalty - that is, since the big front-end bottlenecks haven't really been improved (L1 icache aliasing, shared decode too narrow for two threads, etc) increasing utilization on the individual cores will make the sharing penalty more apparent. So it's possible that the average improvement for scenarios w/o module sharing is higher, assuming that the clock improvement isn't lower (someone will have to remind me if BD running 4M/4C can still only hit 3.6GHz)

The 11% base clock increase really helps sell things for the multithreaded loads they already did well on. I wonder how much base clock Intel could eke out if they increased TDP to 125W. My impression is that it's not that much, not for Ivy Bridge anyway :/

[Alexko]

Originally Posted by Exophase

hardware.fr themselves say 7.7% average below the table, and I'm going to assume they did the math correctly. Of course, the gains are all over the place. Pretty nice overall, but I was right to expect that the 17% numbers THG were promoting several months ago for Trinity wouldn't be an average or even typical.

They say the average is 7.7% for "applications" (i.e. the red bars), but 13.5% in games (green bars); which is why I said 10%.

[Squilliam]

Bulldozer would be pretty decent if it was on an Intel process, wouldn't it?

Anyway I think the recent problems AMD has had are due to the fact that Intel has realised they don't need to keep AMD around any longer due to competition from the ARM sphere and the hypothetical gloves have indeed 'come off'.