AMD on it's last journey ?

AMD designed HBM w/ other companies, nVidia has to pay AMD to use HBM.

 

HBM2 yields are not ready for full deployment, neither was HBM, or the Fury wouldve been significantly cheaper.

That is not the problem, the actual point is that all fabs capable of producing HBM2 memory

are booked out aka no production weeks available.... for a few reasons, one of them is Nvidia having them booked out for whatever they think needs to pass that production line.

Second reason is that those who could produce HBM2 memory do not favour AMD as their first and primary option anymore as they potentially wont exist when the HBM2 trucks are ready to leave the company..aka...who will pay the bill for those HBM2 produced. Some of that money is up front, as usual, and now it will be even more UP FRONT for AMD as "they" dont seem to trust AMD longer than next quarter.

It's not AMD owning HBM2, the own it, sure, but if they cant get it on the streets its all invain.

For MS, I personally dont think they will take over the whole bunch and try to mimic Apple, that

would be a disaster I guess.

From a strategic partner view, the absolut worst MS could do regarding Hardware partnerships is owning and running their own fabs. 100% that would massivly hurt Dell, HP and many many others...resulting in many of them turning slowly away from MS.

No one needs MS, there are plenty substitutes that can take its place in a few years if boosted by big Brands like IBM, HP and Dell.

Microsoft is tightly webbed into those companies, and all of them sell their partners products crosswise. MS sells with Dell, Dell sells MS, MS uses Dell, HP sells MS, IBM uses it,etc etc.

You dont spoil a partners soup or he will spit in yours on first occasion. I dont think, for those reasons, that MS will take over the whole thing and try to be like Apple, actually even more than Apple, they are clever enough to NOT OWN the fab, they design in Cali and produce and Shengzen, get a bill, pay it and DONE.

MS would have to solve all those UNSOLVED problems AMD carries along in the deal, making it impossible to jumpstart with a Hurra Hurra, here we are. It will be more like patent wars again, court dates, unsolved legal issues and partners revolting.

Honestly, I see a chance for APUs and tablets, smartphones, maybe smaller laptops too, but they wont rival Intel, their best partner ! They shoot their own knee if they dare.

I used to be an AMD fan, especially in the good old days of the original Athlon and the later Athlon XPs etc. The issue for them came when they simply couldn't compete on performance with Intel, no matter how cheap they made their CPU's. That of course only encouraged a race to the bottom price-wise, compounded by them selling off their fabs.

I'd say that AMD are probably doomed at this point, which would be a disaster at this point as Intel would then feel free to start charging INSANE amounts for their top-end CPUs as they used to do a few years ago.

It's a shame, and a bad thing for us consumers, but unfortunately I think AMD has made too many stupid business decisions to survive long-term at this point.

I used to be an AMD fan, especially in the good old days of the original Athlon and the later Athlon XPs etc. The issue for them came when they simply couldn't compete on performance with Intel, no matter how cheap they made their CPU's. That of course only encouraged a race to the bottom price-wise, compounded by them selling off their fabs.

 

I'd say that AMD are probably doomed at this point, which would be a disaster at this point as Intel would then feel free to start charging INSANE amounts for their top-end CPUs as they used to do a few years ago.

 

It's a shame, and a bad thing for us consumers, but unfortunately I think AMD has made too many stupid business decisions to survive long-term at this point.

They were never given a free R&D budget to design a chip after K6-II either, Everything from Athlon 64 to Current chip re used parts of generation before it.

K6-II was given an open budget and Jim Keller... look what happened. spanked Intel for years, Keller left, AMD slashed R&D budget, and then Intel dropped the bomb on them by discontinuing Socket7 Use, forcing AMD to continue to Squeeze from Socket 7 while they Developed their own. From that point forward AMD was constantly behind, the Athlons were close, but still below Intel (Cept that One Pentium 4 Line, lol).

Modular Chip was ten years too early, no real software outside of studio platforms took advantage of it, games hated it, and it had its fair share of poor design choices as a result of a small budget, plus it was 2 years LATE due to performance and fab issues.

Its not just AMD vs Intel.

Its AMD vs Intel and nVidia.

AMD goes under, Prices for GPUs and CPUs go through the roof.

Microsoft isnt the only company to give AMD an offer.

 

Microsoft isnt the only company to give AMD an offer.

No, is not the only one and is not even something desirable for us. Just they already started that discussions with AMD :)... so they have the start advantage.

They were never given a free R&D budget to design a chip after K6-II either, Everything from Athlon 64 to Current chip re used parts of generation before it.

 

K6-II was given an open budget and Jim Keller... look what happened. spanked Intel for years, Keller left, AMD slashed R&D budget, and then Intel dropped the bomb on them by discontinuing Socket7 Use, forcing AMD to continue to Squeeze from Socket 7 while they Developed their own. From that point forward AMD was constantly behind, the Athlons were close, but still below Intel (Cept that One Pentium 4 Line, lol).

 

Modular Chip was ten years too early, no real software outside of studio platforms took advantage of it, games hated it, and it had its fair share of poor design choices as a result of a small budget, plus it was 2 years LATE due to performance and fab issues.

 

Its not just AMD vs Intel.

 

Its AMD vs Intel and nVidia.

 

AMD goes under, Prices for GPUs and CPUs go through the roof.

 

Microsoft isnt the only company to give AMD an offer.

Good points, I'd forgotten about the K6-II and K6-III! I used to have a K6-III at one point! I remember it being the ultimate CPU for playing Quake 2 back in the day. Good times...

I agree about the GPUs as well, although didn't AMD very recently spin off ATI to be their own company again? I may be wrong in fairness. The board of directors at AMD really need to get someone in as CEO who knows their stuff from a business perspective AND someone who knows their stuff from an engineering perspective. It's probably the only thing that would save them by this point.

Not sure what benefit Microsoft would get from purchasing AMD. If they had retained their wafer fabs I could absolutely see the point, but at the moment all MS would be getting would be a patent portfolio and some distinctly mediocre chip designs. Unless Microsoft wants to emulate Apple in terms of having their own R&D team to create in-house custom silicon. Don't know, maybe MS feels that the engineering talent at AMD is strong but that the company has been tanked by their business decisions.

They were never given a free R&D budget to design a chip after K6-II either, Everything from Athlon 64 to Current chip re used parts of generation before it.

 

K6-II was given an open budget and Jim Keller... look what happened. spanked Intel for years, Keller left, AMD slashed R&D budget, and then Intel dropped the bomb on them by discontinuing Socket7 Use, forcing AMD to continue to Squeeze from Socket 7 while they Developed their own. From that point forward AMD was constantly behind, the Athlons were close, but still below Intel (Cept that One Pentium 4 Line, lol).

 

Modular Chip was ten years too early, no real software outside of studio platforms took advantage of it, games hated it, and it had its fair share of poor design choices as a result of a small budget, plus it was 2 years LATE due to performance and fab issues.

 

Its not just AMD vs Intel.

 

Its AMD vs Intel and nVidia.

 

AMD goes under, Prices for GPUs and CPUs go through the roof.

 

Microsoft isnt the only company to give AMD an offer.

I remember AMD chips being generally superior up until Intel's Core series. There were cases where AMD did poorly on synthetic benchmarks, solely due to cheats implemented in Intel's compiler.

lol,

I had no problems with PhenomIIs..

My Builds contained the following Chips:

Cyrix 486, 33MHz/66MHz

WinChip 486, Same

AMD 486, Same,

Intel 586/Overdrive, 100MHz,

Intel Pentium 200MMX

AMD K6, 233MHz

AMD K6II, 300MHz

AMD K6III, 500MHz

--Finally retired Socket 7 Mobo--

AMD Athlon Socket A, 750MHz

AMD Athlon Socket A, 1.1GHz

AMD Sempron 1.8GHz

AMD Athlon64 2.2 GHz

AMD AthlonX2 6000+, 3.0GHz

AMD Phenom II 555, 3.2GHz

AMD Phenim II 955, 3.2GHz

AMD FX8150, 3.0 GHz

AMD FX8350, 4.0GHz (Overclocked to the edge of insanity)

That would be a catastrophy, there wouldn't be any concurence anymore so gpu tech would advance much slower. Probably intel would try to find it's way in that marked but this needs time and is risky.

I never liked amd products, driver issues with gpus and the cpus are inferior to them intel counterparts since a lot of time. Really enjoyed my hd 6950 which i could flash in order to enjoy a 6970.