Don't forget though, with consoles starting (emphasis on the starting) to fade out that market is going to be totally gone in I reckon maybe the next 15 years. Tablets is another beast though but I don't think that is enough to keep them in business
AMD will not get under.
In the cpu market they are indeed behind on intel in terms of ipc and single threaded performance. But this is basicly because AMD has betted on the wrong horse. AMD expected that applications and games would become more optimized for multithreading, but thats was basicly a bad misstake. games and applications on "windows platform" arent realy improved for decades. And intel allready saw this happening. So they still focussed on ipc and single threaded performance.
Now AMD is working on a new architecture because of that. They finaly realise that they had betted the wrong Horse for Windows platforms. Basicly the Vishera architecture is not that bad, but its just the software that does not take the advantage of it.
In the GPU market AMD is still king in my opinnion, Nvidia wasnt able to bring a 20NM die to the table The GTX970 and GTX980, are currently faster, because they had to figure out something. But if you look at it more closely then you see that the GTX9xx series are faster on 1080p, however if you are going to look at more higher res, then the diffrences arent even that big. AMD is offcourse laughing about this, because they just drop down the prices of the R9-290 series, and still be very competative, if i take Netherlands for example a GTX970 cost arround €380,- on which the Sapphire R9-290 TriX OC droped all the way down to €299,- And the Vapor X to €315,- This still makes the GTX970 a hard sell for higher res gaming in my opinnion. AMD Basicly still has the price to performance crown wenn it comes to this aspect.
BUt AMD is offcourse having fun and relaxed, because they are finishing theire new R9-300 series cards on a 20NM die, with some very nice improvements on the Vram. much faster HBM ram. I think Nvidia is allready stressing on this.
Atleast i am very excited about the rumours and specs that i have seen sofar from the upcomming R9-390X series.
AMD has focused a lot on CPU core count, maybe that will pay off in the future?
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/guidedSearch.asp?CatId=22
on this tow you can see that fx line is doing quite well, even with the 8310 and 8300, the are great values for the money and able to run safely on all 970 and even some 780 motherboards... witha dual am3+ motherboard (the only one I think that can do it is ASUS also because are the ones who still deliver high quality board for this platform) I will go all the way for a renderfarm and computing desktop!!
Anyways AMD has a big bet on HSA, if they're able to start compiling big Opencl kernels (a known issues for programs like blender) the could destroy Intel all the way [not for a long time because intel has the budget to catch up and also can do dumping (or contrarevenue tactics, again, to delay and hurt AMD, again)] hsa might have a big future and things look promissing for AMD, also AMD is working not only for consumers right now, they are on semi-custom cpu desing, something that could allow them to have a big revenue, with future consoles or specific server on both architechtures (x86 and ARM), that's why k12 is for them so important.
They also have a big patent that all computers need arround all architechtures (AMD64) for 64-bits, so they are pretty stable, specially if they can have a big impact on gaming desktops and ,even more important, laptops.
Of course it will pay off in the future, just sadly not now
I have been wondering about my current build, it may be that two years from now I may not even have to 'upgrade' the cpu as bare metal api's and proper multithreading will mean my pc will actually keep up when software gets better
it would fit extremely well, they'd would make cheap jaguar cpu's, put a new brand and sell it like it was a 2011-3 socket cpu! AND SOME AS***LES WOULD STILL BUY THEM!!!
AMD has the obligation and the sad bet to make bets on future tech, intel has the budget to deliver it just in the right time, and even to mark the time, with haswell a lot of programs make very fast AVX2 optimisations, while little it's being made to deliver multi-threaded performance (I'm pointing at you ADOBE!).
Hope you're right about the future!
its just simple logic
- most of the cores in the 8 core arent even being utilized.. once the software is there that performance 'boost' will become unlocked
- bare metal api's will allow my crossfired r9 290's to do their thing without direct x fuckery
I think they'll be alright, they all have their ups and downs.
Would be very ordinary though if shit did hit the fan for whatever reason and they scaled back their product lines to concentrate on what sections they are still profiting in.
I have my fingers crossed for them that they come back swinging with the next round of gpu's and cpu's. Someone has to keep intel and nvidia on their toes.
THe 8 cores of the amd can hardly be fully utilized because of the way the cmt architecture is designed.
It will also be good to see where the new CEO of AMD takes the company, should be interesting.
Poor memory controller iirc. If they fixed that, more cache, higher ipc, and maybe lower power, they would be competing with Intel in the enthusiast cpu game. Right now though, their performance is way behind in general.
I think its kinda funny that microsoft just spent MORE then AMD's total debt on just buying mine craft. Geez if microsoft had half a brain they would try and get into bed with AMD. Think of the craziness that would in sue. Microsoft would have access to some amazing opportunities, and AMD would have a sugar daddy lol. Think of the craziness that would come from AMD if they had Microsoft's pockets to reach into.
I am surprised that there havent been any buyout offers yet considering how cheap AMD is and their IP and technical skills.
Well Rory Read took AMD to all hardware consoles, and he's gone, so that pretty much means that the next generation of hardware consoles won't be having AMD chips in it... IF there is a next generation of hardware consoles that is, because just like traditional PC's, the hardware console formfactor is getting less popular by the minute... mobile is the next phase... oh that's right, AMD's new CEO, Lisa Su, is specialized in mobile specialty chips... well, everything's alright then I guess...
It's very simple where the market is at: traditional x86 PC's are like the pre-PC computers now... they are more powerful, but also way too expensive (to buy and to run and to buy software licenses for). People really want mobile devices with open source based software, where full software packages at most cost a few bucks, and that is super user friendly with touch controls and voice recognition that actually works, on a system that links in to their entire life. In other words, people want Android devices, and they want these devices full 64-bit, and as capable as their laptops, which are basically power-constraint low-performance desktop machines, that can easily be outrun by newer technology RISC-type mobile devices.
Intel right now has Atom cores running at about 7.5 W max in a system that is capable of basic gaming and virtualization, at about the performance level of a late generation Intel Core2Duo. In the next five years, that enveloppe will narrow down to max 1.5-2 W burst and sub 300 mW at normal operational level, and the speed of a 4790 overclocked. And it will be done, maybe not by Intel, but it will happen. Not because the consumers need these devices, even though they want them, but because the internet-based business needs these devices, to make sure the device can stay on for an entire week without recharging, and can recharge itself enough with sporadic light to function infinitely, to make sure that every gram of data is mined, and that no commercial stone is left unturned.
AMD is not really important, because it only contains x86-related IP and some ATI GPU IP that is shared with Broadcomm, but GF and ASIC, the mother companies of AMD and owners of the chip design centers and fabs, are, and they are working together with Broadcomm, Samsung, etc...
AMD is gradually open sourcing more and more, which is very atypical for a US company, but very normal for HSA Alliance companies, most of which have built their entire business on open source technologies.
It'll be interesting to see when AMD makes the transition, and it will also be interesting to see how long Intel can hang on to x86 competitively.
profit forcasts vs how much money they would lose from buying the debt
if amd can at the very least lessen their debt then they would have plenty of offers
Intel is more likely to go under than AMD honestly. AMD has more monetary assets than Intel. I feel like AMD sorta pooled their cpu resources into APUs, which actually wasn't that bad for them. APUs have done quite well in the mainstream market. But AMD left the Enthusiasts with a dead FX architecture while intel continued plowing microsoft's driveway. Just wait for AMD to launch their next Enthusiasts line of FX chips, I imagine they will have much stronger single threaded performance, more cache, and still cram some serious cores in. Intel will be playing catch-up again like they always do.
That's the thing, AMD releases stuff less than that Intel, but they're usually absolutely AMAZING when they release stuff. And then it goes and lasts for years even when Intel releases new stuff. Take the 6300 for example. That's a 6 core 3.5ghz CPU for $120. NO ONE can argue with that CPU for that price. You can't even get a Core i3 from Intel for that price. And its because it was very cutting edge when it was released, but is now slightly less cutting edge, and as a result the price is very low. That's where AMD excels, they are amazing at finding the sweet spot between great performance, great price, and still maintaining an ALMOST cutting edge. That's my favorite thing about them. The fact that a CPU from a few years ago is still being used all over the place and still does a decent job competing with brand new bleeding edge Intel CPUs that cost 3x as much is just awesome.
Intel may currently beat AMD in gaming, but take Wendell's example: he's got an 8350 running Proxmox with 16GB of RAM and he loves it. I've got a similar setup with a 6300 and a micro atx board that supports 32GB of RAM and only costs $70. AMD is perfect for this kind of thing.
Nothing really would happen. Right now there not competing on CPU's anyway. Intel will still do its own thing. So there is that. GPU Division could be sold to someone else in bankruptcy. Maybe they would be ATi again.
AMD is unlikely to go away anytime soon. At worst, they'll diminish into the status of being a small company, at which point they may be absorbed.
AMD is not as far behind Intel as people think. A lot of this impression comes from the enthusiast gamer market, who seem to be still catching on that most games depend on fewer threads but yet are somehow amazed that an I3 can perform similar to an FX-83XX in a lot of games. Meanwhile, mostly ignored is how the same 8-core processors manage to crunch numbers and encode almost as good as the i7s. Even with Intel CPUs delivering more performance, the AMD line-up still has plenty of horsepower - just because something isn't the best, doesn't mean it is a bad product. The price-points for what you get with an AMD CPU is still great.
When the current FX line-up was released, three years ago, it was a behind, in product performance, in power consumption. That deficiency is glaringly obvious today. The APUs aren't doing too bad, but, then again, they've had the privilege of updated architectures. (Richland and Steamroller.)
TL;DR - AMD is still good, and doesn't deserve the bad reputation that they currently have. I'm looking forward to what changes they bring to their line-up in the future.