AMD lays off 1400 employees, including execs

it looks like they might have layed-off the ones who were responsible for the Operation Scorpius Giveaway as well?
AMD said on or around Oct 17th the winners would be announced but still no announcement?
maybe it's delayed?
 
Cali3350 said:
TONS of competition. Just not on Desktops/Notebooks. Check out the CPU race in mobile if your bored some day.
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Oh I know what you are talking about, I'd just like to see several different manufactures back in the desktop market, like motorola, ibm, cyrix, alpha, stuff like that, but they are all either the way of the dodo or in the mobile market. I'd like to see at least six different choices. Perhaps more. We get this one minded ideology of how things should go and complete stagnation when there is no competion. And I'm not just talking about one big guy and one underdog, I'm talking about real competition.
 
ampdude said:
Oh I know what you are talking about, I'd just like to see several different manufactures back in the desktop market, like motorola, ibm, cyrix, alpha, stuff like that, but they are all either the way of the dodo or in the mobile market. I'd like to see at least six different choices. Perhaps more. We get this one minded ideology of how things should go and complete stagnation when there is no competion. And I'm not just talking about one big guy and one underdog, I'm talking about real competition.
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The biggest problem is in fabrication. No one can do 32nm as well as Intel. And when Intel produces its 22nm 3d processors it will have a several year advantage over every other manufacturer. Any new player will have to invest tens of billions of dollars to just catch up that is unless they can get Intel to fab their processors. But why would Intel do that..
 
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TSMC had (until recently?) dropped their 32nm node. Their 28nm is reasonably quick and has decent yield, which I guess is their closest "competitor" to intel's 32nm.

Intel doesn't release their technology libraries to a lot of 3rd parties, and when they do its under NDA, so unless you work there (and in the right group) or are under NDA, it's difficult to get a good understanding of how fast their technology is.

TSMC is actually the same in this regard, except there are hundreds of companies with access to this information, which effectively makes it public knowledge.
 
ampdude said:
Oh I know what you are talking about, I'd just like to see several different manufactures back in the desktop market, like motorola, ibm, cyrix, alpha, stuff like that, but they are all either the way of the dodo or in the mobile market. I'd like to see at least six different choices. Perhaps more. We get this one minded ideology of how things should go and complete stagnation when there is no competion. And I'm not just talking about one big guy and one underdog, I'm talking about real competition.
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It's practically impossible to have more than a few competitors in any really high tech industry. So these wishes might be unrealistic. I believe there was even an economics principle taught in one of my classes for why the competition ends up boiling down to just a few or a couple companies, but I forgot (I'm not actually an economics major--just took diverse classes). There's also very little competition in manufacturing civilian aircraft, for instance. It's pretty much just Boeing and Airbus, another duopoly like Intel/AMD.
 
intel should license bulldozer and produce it on it's line and market it as itanium 3.5. They could call the design something cool like Tualitin.0.
 
DaRuSsIaMaN said:
It's practically impossible to have more than a few competitors in any really high tech industry. So these wishes might be unrealistic. I believe there was even an economics principle taught in one of my classes for why the competition ends up boiling down to just a few or a couple companies, but I forgot (I'm not actually an economics major--just took diverse classes). There's also very little competition in manufacturing civilian aircraft, for instance. It's pretty much just Boeing and Airbus, another duopoly like Intel/AMD.
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I do hear what you're saying, but it's funny how whatever industry you talk about, when a corporation manages to dominate everything and buy out all the competition, it's because it's too high tech of an industry for other people to operate in.. funny but they have thousands of people working for them.. , or it's too big to fail, or we need to save jobs (that they'll downsize and get rid of later), anything not to justify competition and to justify corporate communism...
 
They devastated some long standing design teams, and that kind of thing can’t be reformed with a help wanted sign, things can take years to gel again. If you don’t think this is a big deal, one of the largest and most painful cuts was John Brüno, recent movie star and, well, lead engineer on Trinity. Cutting the lead engineer and likely a lot of his staff on your most crucial upcoming product at a very critical stage in development is abjectly stupid.
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http://semiaccurate.com/2011/11/08/looking-at-the-amd-amid-layoffs-and-new-directions/

If this is true, Trinity will be roaring success...;)
 
that article hurt my heart for numerous reasons.

I may actually buy bulldozer now, put it in a case next to my slot a thunderbird.
 
savantu said:
http://semiaccurate.com/2011/11/08/looking-at-the-amd-amid-layoffs-and-new-directions/

If this is true, Trinity will be roaring success...;)
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So, it's pretty much a sure thing that we'll get no responses to our questions in "Ask AMD about the Bulldozer" thread... Nicely done AMD, nicely done...:rolleyes:

you_fail-14145.jpg
 
ya massive layoffs and you are worried about a Q+A never getting responses.

maybe you should write them a letter outlining your outrage.
 
If you read the article you'd know what I'm getting at...
They FIRED all the people responsible for PR and reaching out to potential new customers, existing clients, and enthusiast communities such as [H]... EPIC FAIL!!!!!!!!!
 
I dont think they fired all the PR guys because theyre not interested in communicating and connecting with enthusiasts - I think they fired them because they did a piss poor job or promoting the brand. Most people I know dont have a clue who AMD is, but know the Intel jingle by heart. This makes sense to me if youre going to take a new direction - get rid of the old crew that were headed in the wrong direction.
 
I wouldn't be surprised if they do announce an ARM license. With the doodoodozer they showed they really can't compete with Intel on the desktop market. With the design of the doodoodozer I think they sent signals that they didn't care much for the desktop market and instead made a modular server chip.

The mobile market is booming and highly competitive, but i highly doubt that it's a "fad." there's a lot of money to be made there and smartphones and tablets aren't going anywhere but up
 
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lol, I suppose this is the answer to my question at the ask AMD thread, since it is reported that PR and Marketing has the most casualties

malih said:
There are opinions that the strategy of labeling Zambezi with FX label is bad marketing, since FX has always been known for top performance parts, but some real world tests has shown that it doesn't actually have significant improvement in terms of performance compared to previous offerings.

My question is, will you revisit the performance of current Head of Marketing or at least consider using different marketing strategy?
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stealthy123 said:
intel should license bulldozer and produce it on it's line and market it as itanium 3.5. They could call the design something cool like Tualitin.0.
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BD doesn't have mainframe RAS features or the same scalability which is expected for the market Itanium primarily now targets as a competitor to IBM's POWER and Oracle's SPARC. And Intel doesn't need BD for the commodity server market since it already has Xeon, which is both a smaller chip and also has higher performance (plus it lacks GF's manufacturing fleas... brace for January when GF's pricing for AMD goes back to wafers instead of "good die" on a poor 32nm process).

Tomorrow's AMD announcement should be head-desk worthy, especially since Trinity's lead engineer (John Brüno) was let go in the recent 10% workforce cut.

Put me down for 2 Internets that AMD sells off discrete graphics in the next few months, in addition to any folly with an ARM strategy. I'm sure RR will be very excited in any case. :p
 
Incredible! This man has gone mad. The GPU division MUST NOT disappear from the market.
What's going to happen to driver support? Whats going to happen to the 7000 series? Nvidia will rule with an iron fist, this is beyond awful. It's back to $1000 video cards....
 
LeviathanZERO said:
Incredible! This man has gone mad. The GPU division MUST NOT disappear from the market.
What's going to happen to driver support? Whats going to happen to the 7000 series? Nvidia will rule with an iron fist, this is beyond awful. It's back to $1000 video cards....
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Driver support will continue (they will still make integrated graphics), the 7000 series will still be released (it's already paid for).
 
PRIME1 said:
Driver support will continue (they will still make integrated graphics), the 7000 series will still be released (it's already paid for).
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LOL! Do people think they just completely destroyed their GPU division?
 
pxc said:
Put me down for 2 Internets that AMD sells off discrete graphics in the next few months, in addition to any folly with an ARM strategy. I'm sure RR will be very excited in any case. :p
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As enthusiasts, I think amd selling off their discrete gpu division would be a good thing. Maybe they could sell off their x86 CPU division while they're at it.
 
How would them selling of their discrete GPU division be a good thing, particularly when it has been profitable and instrumental (from what gather) in the success of their APU units? And how are they going to sell it in a few months when the 7000 series comes out shortly?
 
You're all overreacting and speculating wildly. AMD's graphics division is their best asset at the moment. It's not goin' anywhere.
 
Well, there seems to be a small amount of good news before Rory's announcement tomorrow: AMD is working on the 1070 and 1090FX chipset.

http://www.fudzilla.com/motherboard/item/24764-amd-working-on-1090fx-and-1070-am3%20-chipset
From Donanimhaber.

Looks like they will continue the AM3+ socket for quite some time, so there is hope that the CPU division will remain. But, in what capacity? I don't know. We have tomorrow to find out. Maybe Rory will take the CPU division in a different direction, but will probably focus solely on APUs more.
 
What's the point of having good chipset if your cpu is shit ?

Same case as 890 with thubans.
 
AMD is most likely going after the icky bottom range market of useless tablets and even more useless smartphones which is where the volume is (albeit not the profits). This is like Bobby Flay announcing that he's going to open up a fast food joint to sell 12 tacos for a dollar. Good market reaction, AMD... *FLUSH*
 
jebo_4jc said:
As enthusiasts, I think amd selling off their discrete gpu division would be a good thing. Maybe they could sell off their x86 CPU division while they're at it.
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I don't know that they can separate the GPU division because of Fusion.


heflys20 said:
LOL! Do people think they just completely destroyed their GPU division?
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There is speculation that they might be leaving the high end of the GPU market. The remainder is a necessity for AMD.
 
PRIME1 said:
I don't know that they can separate the GPU division because of Fusion.

There is speculation that they might be leaving the high end of the GPU market. The remainder is a necessity for AMD.
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So come on, when is that call starting? I'm waiting to see the next step in the immolation of AMD through sheer galling incompetence! :p

Project WIN! Shades of a stoned Charlie Sheen...
 
PRIME1 said:
I don't know that they can separate the GPU division because of Fusion.
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It wouldn't be easy. They would have to licence the GPU tech from the buyer. It would get real messy.

Maybe, finally, AMD will get to the point where it will be attractive enough for somebody like IBM to buy them, but at that point I would be afraid the makeup of AMD would change too drastically.
 
Kuurus said:
A good read
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Personally I think they glossed over the nuking Hector did to the company, but I consider him singlehandedly responsible for mad cow disease, tsunamis, and the Italian bond crisis, so I guess I'm just a tiny bit biased against him. :D
 
jstnomega said:
& what's the point of having good discrete GPU's if your drivers are shit?
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Seeing as that logic applies to both GPU brands, I guess they should both stop making discrete parts.

Which is odd, since I've yet to have a single driver problem with my first ATI/AMD card in 10 years. Didn't have problems with Nvidia either.
 
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EuphoricRage470 said:
AMD's graphics division is their best asset at the moment. It's not goin' anywhere.
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And AMD's fabs used to be its best asset. I heard the same protests when I predicted that AMD wouldn't be able to keep up with ever increasing fab costs and would go fabless. (I had been pointing out the fab cost problem here since early 2007 and it was confirmed a few months later: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1031185335#post1031185335)

Right now AMD's discrete graphics division is worth about as much as it ever will be. The same goes for nvidia's discrete graphics division, but nvidia is not in the same dire position. The graphics division is doing better than before, but just debt interest from loans used to buy ATI has swallowed up years of "profits" if discrete graphics weren't in decline.

I'm just saying don't be surprised if the dismantling of AMD continues. The board is doing who knows what with the company, other than the obvious selling off of major parts.
 
The day is half over and nothing yet on "Project Win". Perhaps the announcement will be delayed like everything else that comes from AMD. :D
 
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