AMD CEO Talks Of Long-Term Turnaround

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AMD's CEO Lisa Su had some interesting things to say about what it takes to turn things around at AMD.

“I think our challenge is not related to whether we’re public or private,” she said, “it’s more related to the fact that we’re in an industry that takes three to five years to really fully evaluate — you’re not going to know whether I’ve done a good job until five years from. However, everybody wants to keep score every quarter. And you know, that’s life.”
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Rare you see a CEO with long term vision. Still have to deal a short term quarterly driven world though.

Hopefully this will work.
 
So why was the latest release all rebrand with the only new silicon being the half baked fury x... if this is how she plans to get amd out of the hole she is in zen is going to have to blow everything away.
 
Heard a rumor today that Microsoft may be interested in buying out AMD. It'll never happen but I think that would be a GREAT idea for AMD's turnaround.
 
Yep she's right. Design to final product on large designs (cpus,gpus,socs) is quite long.

You have a year of architecting/exploration, year or 2 of design, year or so of silicon testing and bug fixing while iterating on steppings and then finally a product. That can be compressed into 3 years if you overlap architecture with design and you are reusing a good amount of things. However for drastically different designs or something bug ridden because of poor design and it could extend out quite a bit longer. In contrast, I believe Intel works on CPUs for 5-7 years with only the last 1-1.5 or so being silicon. Hence why it took so long to get off pentium 4. They actually got lucky with that because their mobile cpu (banias/dothan/yonah) was good and could be scaled up/extended to conroe.

About the only thing she can change is the short term is shutting down/canceling projects. Anything new or drastically different is years away. She can shift resources from one project to another to try to speed up some higher priority items but you can't really squeeze too much time out of any of the before mentioned phases. Just like 9 women can't make a baby in 1 month. Shit takes time. So she could have cancelled fury but there was no making it better. It was what it was.
 
I am more interesting in this part:
[Lisa Su] said, however, that AMD plans to stay away from developing for the personal computer market because of its volatility. Instead, the company is looking to play where AMD’s strengths intersect with growing demand while trying to engender investor confidence with a steady release of new products that highlight progress for the long term.
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Steady release of new non-PC products?
 
Taldren said:
I am more interesting in this part:


Steady release of new non-PC products?
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Didn't some exec at AMD say the same thing a while ago in the aftermath of the Bulldozer flop then AMD releases branded RAM and SSD products? Pure desperation move to try to gain revenue and profit...
 
AMD only ever did well when their processors were better than Intel processors. Those days were brief and are long gone.

(The BX chip set still put everything else to shame in memory handling. Even when AMD had the fastest processor Intel was in the fastest machines.)
 
Does the CEO even matter in a company like AMD? AMDs sales and profits are determined by how fast its CPUs and GPUs. If they offer decent performance they'll sell and if they don't they won't. It seems to me what matters is the engineers rather than the CEO and in AMDs case they're not doing so well.

What went wrong for AMD? Around 2000-2004 they were destroying Intel on overall overall performance, price, performance per watt, performance per clock, performance per dollar. They were getting everything right while the NetBurst architecture in the Pentium 4 was a joke.

I had AMD in all my computers for quite some time, but things all went terribly wrong and AMD CPUs started delivering poor performance and using a lot of power. Where did the engineers who made the Athlon XP go?
 
Mr Milquetoast said:
Does the CEO even matter in a company like AMD? AMDs sales and profits are determined by how fast its CPUs and GPUs. If they offer decent performance they'll sell and if they don't they won't. It seems to me what matters is the engineers rather than the CEO and in AMDs case they're not doing so well.

What went wrong for AMD? Around 2000-2004 they were destroying Intel on overall overall performance, price, performance per watt, performance per clock, performance per dollar. They were getting everything right while the NetBurst architecture in the Pentium 4 was a joke.

I had AMD in all my computers for quite some time, but things all went terribly wrong and AMD CPUs started delivering poor performance and using a lot of power. Where did the engineers who made the Athlon XP go?
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The CEO is the person who helps decide how much money they will give to engineers. IMO a lot of AMDs problems stem from them constantly trying to cut engineers to save money and that is a CEO mistake.

AMD has always had poor silicon, yield and quality have always been way behind intel and IBM and now probably Samsung. You cant make efficient good chips if your silicon is crap and you cant sell cheaper than other people if you are throwing out half your product or burning out 1 core. This is something they should have and could have worked hard to turn around in a shorter time frame many times before. Instead I guess their solution was to cut the fab business loose and say well its their fault now!

AMD has a reputation for having poorer quality drivers than NVidia, once again this is a great example of a place where immediate investment could pay off. Programmers for drivers do not take 5 years to get working. And there are lots of people myself included whom will take an NVidia GPU over an AMD GPU because of this and recommend it, especially to newer people if most other issues are equal. This helps NVidia survive in times when their GPUs are beat by AMD.

Implementing an HDMI 2.0 solution into their highest end GPU is probably another example of something that could pay off right away.
 
Lunas said:
So why was the latest release all rebrand with the only new silicon being the half baked fury x... if this is how she plans to get amd out of the hole she is in zen is going to have to blow everything away.
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I'm sure that decision was made long before she took the helm.
 
She said, however, that AMD plans to stay away from developing for the personal computer market because of its volatility.
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So they are giving up on the PC market. :eek:

I never thought they would actually come out and say it. I miss the old AMD (pre-2008), now they are trying to become more like VIA I guess.
 
psimitry said:
Heard a rumor today that Microsoft may be interested in buying out AMD. It'll never happen but I think that would be a GREAT idea for AMD's turnaround.
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Unlikely. I doubt it would pass the federal trade commission due to monopolistic situations.
 
PRIME1 said:
So they are giving up on the PC market. :eek:

I never thought they would actually come out and say it. I miss the old AMD (pre-2008), now they are trying to become more like VIA I guess.
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Are you kidding? You? This is what you've always wanted! Your precious Intel and Nvidia can dominate the market, you've worked hard for this! Celebrate, the day you wished for is soon to come!
 
I'd just like clarification on "stay away from developing for the personal computer market". That sounds terrible for the personal computer market.
 
Wow. If they stop producing for the PC market... this cannot go well haha.
 
auntjemima said:
Wow. If they stop producing for the PC market... this cannot go well haha.
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Intel and NVidia will basically just be competing against their old products.

Much cheaper than trying to invest huge amounts in making your new products better, you can simply make your current products less reliable while removing support for legacy products. Oh, you have a three year old video card? And you want driver updates? HAHAHAH! Not.

Watch gameworks new mission to be ensuring that old NVidia cards run like poop, lol!
 
No kidding! I'm still blown away ever time I downloaded drivers and they still support my 8800gtx's.

I was around when 3dFX was in this boat and it would be a shame to see another company go the same route.
 
Isn't the mad dash for quarterlies part of why Dell went back to being private?

Michael Dell said:
Privatization has unleashed the passion of our team members who have the freedom to focus first on innovating for customers in a way that was not always possible when striving to meet the quarterly demands of Wall Street.
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Great to see they have long term goals. However, looking at their continued downward trend financially they are running out of time and this long term vision may never happen if things don't turn around in the short term. This bullshit of on again, off again has been going on for decades. Admittedly, some of it wasn't their fault as proven by the Intel Anti-trust lawsuits, but in the end it won't matter if the company shutters its doors anyways if they can't succeed when they don't have that type of situation occuring anymore.

This article translates to nothing more than "We are currently looking for investors because we are capable of delivering kick-ass product due to past successes even though the current market situation dictates otherwise".
 
For the mental health of many people here AMD needs to deliver a solid win soon.
 
Ducman69 said:
Intel and NVidia will basically just be competing against their old products.

Much cheaper than trying to invest huge amounts in making your new products better, you can simply make your current products less reliable while removing support for legacy products. Oh, you have a three year old video card? And you want driver updates? HAHAHAH! Not.

Watch gameworks new mission to be ensuring that old NVidia cards run like poop, lol!
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I think you (and many here) are mistaken here in thinking that these companies are all about desktop market.

Intel have been developing their architecture with objectives that spans across multiple market, from high performance server to low power SoC. nVidia is doing the same, when they develop their architecture, it includes meeting the requirements of low power SoC as well as professional applications.

None of these companies can survive if they product hardware for desktop segment only. Regardless of what happens on the desktop segment, they have plenty of competition in other segment and hence the need to continue developing new architecture to fulfill those segment, and desktop will tag along.

If AMD are not able to focus on multiple market segment like Intel and nVidia can, then they will have to pick the area they think is more profitable to them, and it's not surprising that they are not picking desktop segment.
 
KENNYB said:
For the mental health of many people here AMD needs to deliver a solid win soon.
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Well they already blew this year's wad with Fury X. Unless they do something absurd like selling the dual GPU card at a loss, next chance won't be for another year.
 
Lunas said:
So why was the latest release all rebrand with the only new silicon being the half baked fury x... if this is how she plans to get amd out of the hole she is in zen is going to have to blow everything away.
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Maybe because a cash and resource-strapped AMD couldn't see any point in producing three or four entirely new GPUs at 28nm to begin selling in mid-2015, just in time for the curtain to come down on 28nm. The same crowd currently whining about re-brands would then undoubtedly start bitching about those chips as soon as the industry transitioned to a smaller process.

I don't think ZEN has to "blow everything away." It only needs to be a good performer, at a fair price. Something mainstream, not some freaky piece of Cylon technology with a breathtaking price tag.

I think this Lisa Su is pretty bad-ass. I hope she has enough time to get her plans realized.
 
If Lisa Su is so "bad-ass," then why didn't she make sure the Fury X launched with HDMI 2.0 and a more competitive price?
 
AMD plans to stay away from developing for the personal computer market because of its volatility. Instead, the company is looking to play where AMD’s strengths intersect with growing demand while trying to engender investor confidence with a steady release of new products that highlight progress for the long term
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This makes no sense. So they will "stay away from the PC market"?
Then why even release fury, or the 300's?
Something not jiving here, first they get the console deal that brings PC and consoles closer together, then they push mantle, that pushes DX12 and vulcan, while touting VR, freesync and 4k gaming. But now they are focusing on their strengths, getting away from PC? Here's some investor confidence for you, drop the price of the 300's and fury by $100, because they are not worth the current price, or release a product that beats the competition. They need to get back to the Dirk Meyer Hammer Days!
 
Sovereign said:
Isn't the mad dash for quarterlies part of why Dell went back to being private?
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It forced them to bring out a lot of things that was half-baked or go into markets they really wasn't interested in competing in (Android tablets, Ditty, etc) When shareholders want your answer to the latest fad by the next quarter it makes it hard to think long term. That's probably is what she was getting at. Turning on a dime is bad in the long run and is largely why they are in the position they are in right now
 
Quix said:
She's not the one who ran AMD into the ground, she'd have to be a magician to save it now.

P.S. I'm not suggesting she ISN'T a magician.
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It's not in the ground ... yet.

AMD needs a visionary and Lisa is not it. Rebranding hardware is so, COO, which is what she used to be there.
 
cptnjarhead said:
This makes no sense. So they will "stay away from the PC market"?
Then why even release fury, or the 300's?
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Well she said stay away from "developing". So R&D money will no longer be spent on the PC market. The 300 series was just a rebadge so zero R&D there and Fury looks a lot like Tonga so they did not spend a lot there either. (they did not even design the cooler).

It's possible we may still see Artic Islands since that was already in the pipeline, but moving forward it looks like they are done in the PC market.
 
psimitry said:
Heard a rumor today that Microsoft may be interested in buying out AMD. It'll never happen but I think that would be a GREAT idea for AMD's turnaround.
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now wouldnt that be something?

i cant say its something id wish for, that would make the next xbox potentially very interesting. MS could design custom hardware in-house, if they wanted, and produce it at a discount. it could certainly give them the hardware edge over the PS5...
 
Seeing someone with deep pockets could be just what AMD needs, but would be a risk for our community as there is a risk they simply would see PC gaming as a niche without much upside.

And then we'd have NVidia and Intel only, and watch prices increase and innovation slow down massively. :(
 
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