AMD-AMMIT! Hundreds face axe at chip maker as PC, graphics crash Following a grim earnings report on Thursday, AMD has announced a restructuring plan that includes axing seven per cent of its workforce by the end of the year. The plan will see AMD issuing layoff notices to about 710 employees worldwide, and is expected to cost the chipmaker $57m in severance payments. "While decisions that …
A recent review I carried out to purchase hardware for Molecular dynamics, saw us decide that Nvidia was GPU of choice - the AMD hardware may be better (published cash of 5TFlops DP Linpack , for example), but their software is sadly lacking.
Nvidia pitched in some cash I think to cuda-ise gromacs, and now it *screams* on $500 graphics cards - oh , because we can use SP and simply accumulate in DP.
Then we come to CPU's and Intel is inside of so many HPC machines (probably as accelerator, but hey) and the new Knights Landing is looking rather cool. Ok only 3 TFlops (DP they say) but the architecture is recompile and go.
Intel realeased the E5-2697(?) and I saw a Linpack number of 700GF - that is impressive if true. Though knowing Intel it will be 3x anything AMD could put together - only they haven't.
If AMD could get the Radeon to be cheetah not an albatross, perhaps there would be some competition in the industry. As it is finding benchmarks is nigh on impossible...
We need competition to ensure the future is on time...!
P.
Oh dear is right. I've been a long time nVidia loyalist but went for a W7000 a time back for the single-slot price performance and it's still nice albeit in the W2012R2 machine now where it's pretty nice. The supercomputer-workstation is all CUDA as it's for modeling & simulations. It's the software side that hurts AMD and staff cuts are going to kill them. Sad.
... when all those ex-mining high end GPUs that are no longer profitable flood out onto the second hand market.
And the posters above are right - ATI suck particularly badly when it comes to software, even down to the drivers. Things like drivers causing BSODs when used on motherboards with NF200 bridges (but only with R9 GPUs, earlier ones are fine), long standing bugs in desktop stretching across multiple monitors, endless feature removal (no more custom, non-EDID modes) and the fact that after years of virtualization their drivers still don't reinitialize GPUs properly when the guest VM being given the GPU restarts are nothing short of disgraceful.
I would love to buy am ATI card, but dont down to shitty drivers and software.
Although mind you eyefinity almost got me to go down the AMD route, they seem to multimonitor better than Nvidia in fullscreen apps.
I buy AMD cpu's just due to the fact you get more bang for your buck so to speak, but would be tempted to go ATI next just to try and keep them afloat.
If ATI die who else have we got ?
I've always been an AMD fanboy through thick and thin, and even I admit that they just cannot compete right now.
In the CPU market Intel are shupping them, to the point where AMD don't even seem to be trying high end anymore, insead aiming at all in one solutions with their jaguar 8 core chips with built in graphics. It's all well and good, but it's not where the money really is, right now Intel are beating them senseless in both power (watts) and power (speed) while matching them on price / performance level, if not beating them.
At the same time they keep making jumps to catch up to nVidia, and hardware wise I'd often argue that ATI cards are better, but the drivers are a huge let down it seems. It almost feels like for every step forward AMD/ATI make, the competition takes two.
Intel really needs a decent graphics architecture to integrate with its CPUs.
If AMD is in serious trouble, Intel might be tempted either to buy the whole company in order to acquire ATI, or ...
I've speculated before that Intel knows it needs AMD to keep itself from (a) becoming a government-regulated monopoly and (b) becoming complacent and lazy. If that's the case Intel might license ATI technology, and thereby throw AMD a lifeline.
To quote the article: "The plan will see AMD issuing layoff notices to about 710 employees worldwide, and is expected to cost the chipmaker $57m in severance payments"
That equates to about US$80K/per head.. sure it doesn't divide up as simple as that, but sometimes VSP (Voluntary Severance packages) can be an unwelcome blessing..
When I worked at Intel in 2001, one new college graduate signed his letter of appointment a week before VSP's were announced. He walked out with US$23K after two weeks of work! Not shabby...
It seems to be an American thing, pay up and scale down...
The UK story sounds right in my experience.
The last time I was shown the door through compulsory redundancy (about 10 years ago) I think we all received the statutory minimum plus, wait for it, a bonus of £75 for each [complete] year of service.
As you can imagine we were all knocked sideways by that kind of generosity.
AMD has struggled and will continue to struggle for awhile as they totally re-invent the company. While they still have good products, execution and time-to-market has always been challenging. Hopefully the new CEO who is a doctor of engineering will be able to use good engineering and technology to bring AMD back to where it needs to be so consumers can buy the best or equal products from AMD for less then the extortionists and convicted criminals who desire a monopoly, now charge.
While InHell may offer some faster CPUs, mainstream consumers do not buy the over-priced top of the line CPUs, only a small group of enthusiasts do. AMD's FX series are very good CPUs and competitively priced. They also OC very well. All in all they are an excellent value/performance proposition as many have learned from firsthand use. AMD's APUs are two years ahead of InHell's so if you need an APU, there is only one choice - AMD. Real life use confirms this.
Those who prefer to deal with a scrupulous company have only AMD to chose from as InHell has been convicted numerous times of violation of law to prevent consumers from purchasing AMD products. InHell has also been convicted numerous times for other crimes. Why would any ethical person support InHell?
Hopefully the future is much brighter for AMD because without them consumers will be raped as in the past when InHell had a total industry monopoly. I vote my conscience when I make PC purchases and other's would do well to think before they make a purchase. Supporting convicted industry criminals will cost you dearly in more ways than you might understand right now.
"While InHell may offer some faster CPUs, mainstream consumers do not buy the over-priced top of the line CPUs, only a small group of enthusiasts do. AMD's FX series are very good CPUs and competitively priced. "
One thing that is hurting AMD is the lack of paralelism on software. To ilustrate:
We all know that Intel floating point is better than AMD - no point denying. BUT, the FX series has (about) 50% MORE cores than Intel (Hyperthreading helps a little, but not even close). So, I found out that my FX6300 is about 20% faster than an 40% expensiver (does this word exist?) i5 - doing the official PovRay benchmark. I found out, too, that it encodes mkv very well - giving even an i7 a run for its money.
Problem is: a lot of software is mostly single-threaded - or dual threaded. In this scenario AMD is left behind. This is a problem, since where do we find a benchmark that isn't engineered towards that profile?
"so consumers can buy the best or equal products from AMD for less then the extortionists and convicted criminals who desire a monopoly"
God what a load of whingy cobblers. I remember paying AU $1,600.00 for a 486 66. Now I buy a 3.6 GHz i7 for AU $378.00. What is extortionate about that?
Any why on earth would Intel want a monopoly? They would be broken up like Ma Bell was. The US and just about all other Gov's do not like monopolies.
Thirdly, have you seen just how much it costs to set up a fab? I think that given that it cost $5B just to set up a factory to make your product and then you still have to design it, test it and do further research into the next Tock iteration suggests that the price we pay for Intel chipper is very reasonable indeed.
As to AMD making the best product? The market says that they don't.
So it seems the nails are finally going in the coffin after everything Intel did (and done) to shutdown AMD with anti-competitive practices when AMD really were far better/cheaper/faster. And though Intel eventually got some fines, none of that money went to AMD. Now it seems despite what the politicos like to tell us, being outrageous in your anticompetitive actions really does pay off. Well done Intel! So, ARM next?
amd was lucky today shop person was trying to sell a A6 amd laptop (proberly 1.5ghz A6 dual core that really is a signal core)to one of my customers i just flat out stated no as it be slower then then £100 laptop i borrowed them, the shop then showed an A8 (the newer one running at 2ghz with turbo of 2.4 ish) that was ok, seemed ok (did not hang around to wait for the 70 updates to start ( HDD was mostly active when doing the downloading part)
the problem with with buying a AMD laptop is you can buy something that is slower then a Core2Duo if its a E type AMD cpu is a lot slower then Intel ATOM with out HT, AMD need to disallow Netbook CPUs that are not ment for full size laptops or any CPU bulldozer type and its later siblings that is lower then 2Ghz and Cida 4 core as well (realistically they are dual core not quad) as they plain suck
as to why i cant be bothered with AMD any more as i am not with the customer normally when getting a laptop so its far easier to just say if it has AMD on it ignore it (unless its an A8 maybe) and get an intel one (not ATOM) as you really cant go wrong with an intel cpu (ideally an haswell celeron will do most are now any way even at 1.4Ghz they are as fast as a 2.5Ghz AMD cpu, battery life is amazing on them, easy 4 hours)
Bottom line, vision is lacking at AMD. Buy a PC manufacturer, and use your hardware. Apple got good by selecting good hardware to match their software, and vice versa. It would also give AMD other avenues to peddle it's wares. I use AMD exclusively. I get the most bang for the buck. Celeron is trash. Although, I still have an Asus mobo with an Atom 330 dual core cpu with Nvidia Ion graphics with a raid 0 array running Opensuse. Yep, AMD needs to quit sulking and get on the ball. The world is full of opportunity.
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