So this is an Intel conspiracy?
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AMD CEO Lisa Su rumored to leave, eyeing CEO role at IBM
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defaultluser
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Yeah, it's a lot easier to shift things at smaller company that has no real competition: AMD continues to sell GPUs even when Nvidia is superior, and Intel has stopped trying on CPUs. And AMD really has no competition for the PlayStation or Xbox designs wins (until Intel's discrete graphics ships next year).
Even though IBM is a lot smaller than it used to be, it's still pulling 80 billion in revenue a year, so it would take a lot more effort to right the ship. Also, the tech services sector has a lot of competitors, so finding untapped markets is going to be hard. And Power recently heard it's death knell with the announcement of the N1 server architecture by ARM Inc in February (core counts are competitive, and we will just have to see how performance scales).
I don't see this happening. She likes being more hands-on, and therer's too much shit to dig through in the IBM pool.
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DeathFromBelow
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It's not quite as bad as when they conspired to keep AMD out of OEM PC's for years, but it looks like they're playing mind games on social media. I guess that's to be expected from marketing department goons these days.
As an aside, I wonder where things would be if IBM had bought AMD a decade ago... or if something like that happened now. IBM has cash, AMD has talent. I'd love to see Lisa run that juggernaut.
Her first job out of school was explaining tech to IBMs then CEO Louis Gerstner, who came from AMEX and had no clue. She was not long after made the head of IBMs experimental chip research division. Her masters thesis was on the use of Copper interconnects.... IBM hired her to head the team that made it work. She was also the IBM project lead on the Cell processor... that is where she got to know the people at Sony.
So small industry true.. but she also worked for IBM for a long time. I am sure she knows a lot of IBMs current leadership. Her leaving for IBM is a believable rumor, cause it would be more returning to IBM.
She already publicly said this rumor is BS.
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Zarathustra[H]
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I don't know why anyone in her position would want to join IBM.
IBM is in a death spiral I don't think they are going to be able to get out of.
Their acquisition of Red Hat is just one last desperate attempt to turn things around and get into the hybrid cloud business, but it is too little too late.
That said, if you had asked me a few years back, this is what I would have said of AMD as well...
AMD's comeback has really been a quite stunning upset. I doubt it is all CEO related though, and that she could just do it again at IBM.
IBM is in a death spiral I don't think they are going to be able to get out of.
Their acquisition of Red Hat is just one last desperate attempt to turn things around and get into the hybrid cloud business, but it is too little too late.
That said, if you had asked me a few years back, this is what I would have said of AMD as well...
AMD's comeback has really been a quite stunning upset. I doubt it is all CEO related though, and that she could just do it again at IBM.
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IdiotInCharge
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AMD has been in the position to be extremely lucky. On the CPU side, Intel's 10nm fumble has created an opening that they haven't seen since Intel foolishly bet on Netburst and then IA-64. AMD saw their greatest marketshare increase right up until Intel released a reworked P6-based CPU (Core 2) to the desktop and server space, and then it was game over. AMD's K7-based lineup ran out of steam and their followon architecture was a hard miss.
IBM is rolling in Cloud, and now they control the top-tier US-based OS developer that isn't Microsoft. Being able to develop their hardware and software solution in parallel is a big thing. No idea if they'll be successful, but they do have the tools.
It seemed pretty predictable to me. That Zen is moderately competitive does buck AMDs trend a bit, but otherwise as above Intel left an opening.
"Just for the record, there is zero truth to this rumor. I love AMD and the best is yet to come!," Dr. Su wrote...
3 months later Lisa Su announces her departure...isn't this the way it usually works?...reports got leaked early but the guy who broke the news has got a good track record...
Zarathustra[H]
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Partially agreed.
Both times AMD had been compatitive it has in part been because of a miss by Intel. First time it was Netburst, now it is 10nm.
They haven't been sitting on their hands though. They were ready and able to take advantage of that opening.
You gloss over some of the main reasons AMD did t succeed the last time they had an opening. It wasn't just because their follow on was a dud. It was in large part because they couldn't capitalize on their success with the K7 and K8 architectures because Intel illegally cock-blocked them out of the OEM market. As a result they didn't have the income necessary to properly fund R&D Phenom and beyond to the point where they could keep up.
Amazon is rolling in cloud. IBM is a distant third place also ran after Amazon and Microsoft. Their acquisition of Red Hat was a desperate attempt to rejuvenate their "Hybrid Cloud" approach, but by all indications its way too little too late.
IdiotInCharge
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It really was- while Phenom, still K7-based, was moderately competitive, instead of reworking it as Intel did with the P6- an even older architecture that dates back to the Pentium Pro!- they dropped that line and made the same mistake as Intel did in taking up Netburst. Instead of learning from history, they went out and repeated it. I have no slack to cut them for that decision, and neither did anyone else outside of The Faithful.
I tend not to address this as I'm a business graduate- in terms of the business world, before we get to court opinions and emotional arguments, this reads as "AMD was less effective at cheating than Intel and spectacularly failed to capitalize on their gains when they could". In business, as in politics and in war, if you're not cheating, you're not trying. Nice guys finish last.
Perhaps- however, one advantage that IBM now has with Red Hat is USG business. They can now develop top-down and bottom-up integrated solutions using open-source technology and skip the scrutiny that say Ubuntu and SUSE would receive due to being foreign entities.
That, and IBMs long presence in the supercomputing and machine learning spaces are leverageable. Again, I make no predictions- they may just up and shit the bed- but they most certainly have the tools.
Zarathustra[H]
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This right here is all that is wrong with the world. It is possible to run an ethical business and be successful, but it can be challenging. Laws and regulations need to be changed to absolutely stomp out those who are not ethical. One of the biggest problems are the little "slap on the wrists" fines that are issued when businesses blatantly violate the law.
If I were king for a day, the minimum fine would equal all revenue gained from the illegal activity, times a factor of 3-10 for damages, depending on how flagrant the violation was. This would certainly change things. Government needs to not be afraid of killing large corporations with fines if they really want to drive good behaviors. It may hurt short term, but long term will result in a better more prosperous economy.
Rather than link you, I'll let you choose your own news source on the story, but retired superstar corporate lawyer Jamie Gamble hits the nail on the head when he identifies that currently executives and boards are legally obligated to behave like sociopaths, but that it can be stopped.
Being a sociopath is not ok just because you "are in business". Being in business is never an excuse for poor behavior or illegal activity.
I did my MBA as well. Mine was at Bentley University. I never finished it. About halfway through I realized I was spending a shit ton of money, getting in debt, killing my life studying all night after work, and wasting my time not learning anything. My assessment from that experience, an MBA at a relatively prestigious second tier school was that MBA's are for people not smart enough to get fundamental engineering principles. Everything was a light touch, and I learned absolutely nothing.
There was a professor there though, Raj Sisiodia, doing research in "Conscious Capitalism". It was a great topic. Probably learned more from that than anything else. I'm actually cited in one of his books.
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schoolslave
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IdiotInCharge
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It's a 'who watches the watchers?' question: are the regulators and the lawmakers behind them and the courts behind them ethically reliable?
Intel's fine was only US$1BN, while the case could be made that they did far more damage to AMD than that. And it was a straight money and patent licensing thing that Intel took in stride.
Government really does. Killing Intel, which what you're suggesting would more or less do, would destroy tremendous amounts of private and public American wealth, create a dearth of solutions for enterprises, and irreperably harm the US strategic-economic position.
There's a lot to consider here when we talk about 'punishing' enterprises. Where I'd start instead would be federal prison for those responsible. And I don't just mean those that actually made the decisions, wherever they are in the hierarchy, but those responsible for making sure that actually illegal market decisions don't happen. Anyone in the C-suite involved, enjoy your time and fines proportional to net worth.
Sociopathy is normal- there will always be a fraction of humanity that fall into that category. They can do good and they can do ill, and it's still their choice and their consequences to bear.
Not speaking on the specific Lisa Su case, but where AMD is at is the perfect time to leave. Always sell high.
Zarathustra[H]
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Only fine Intel got was in the EU.
The US $1B payment to AMD was an out of court settlement, Intel moved on when it became apparent that they weren't going to win the case. They had AMD over a barrel at that point. Near insolvency forcing them to more or less settle for pennies on the dollar just to avoid a long drawn out legal fight they probably wouldn't have survived.
That is a fair point, but it doesn't come to that, as long as your enforcement is credible. No one in their right mind would do that to their business. it might take a few cases to set the example, but I'd wager my left nut that once those few cases were over, shareholders globally would be demanding more ethical stewardship of their investments to avoid financial ruin.
It's the classic "moral hazard" that always winds up coming up when dealing with "too big to fail" type scenarios.
The real truth here though is that as long as you can make billions by violating the law, and get fined a tiny fraction of what you earned by doing so, the fine just becomes a cost of doing business. That is what has to end.
I think this is a good idea as well. FTC could require that as part of any settlement the corporation must turn over internal evidence so that the individuals who are responsible can be individually brought to justice. That would help as well. I don't think its an either or proposition. I think both may be required depending on the situation. Right now we are doing neither though.
In caveman times sociopaths would quickly have run afoul of the tribe and had their heads caved in with a large rock. Believe it or not, we are a social species, one that works best when everyone comes together to work for the greater good of all.
ManofGod
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The fine should have caused Intel a lot of pain, proportional too the crime committed. It did not and we saw the results, accordingly.
Edit: Oh, and what did this have to do with Lisa Su and the leaving rumor? She is not going anywhere, she is remaining as the CEO of AMD.
IdiotInCharge
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AMD should have been more competitive, but as usual, they chose not to be.
They come a long way from where they were prior to 2017. Not sure how much more competitive they could have been. They have improved massively.
Rumors of IBM's death from people were not even walking when IBM computers hit the market. The "cloud" marketing hype as it is defined now has as much staying power as hyperconverged and SVN. So tired of hearing these supposedly industry shifting concepts which everyone squawks about like clapping seals until it is replaced in five years by the next industry buzzword. Hey openstack! AWS and Azure are absolutely successful, but most enterprises will employ a hybrid solution which is known as "shit we have been doing for years anyway". So you store data and/or systems in a redundant offsite data center. Not really a ground breaking concept. Point is I think IBM has stumbled quite a bit, but has the reserves from decades of running real enterprises that it can afford to. I don't agree that RedHat acquisition was a desperate attempt. "Hybrid cloud" is definitely part of their portfolio, but it is far from the primary focus. I would say the development side of RedHat is just as large. When you think about it, the cloud concept is nothing more than the old mainframe concept but with colorful terminals instead of greenscreens.
ManofGod
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Yeah, sounds to me like he is saying AMD deserved the crime that was committed against them for, you know, reasons........
This is true. Strongest negotiating position for her is when she's riding high, not digging her way back out of the next slump.
IdiotInCharge
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They've been here before. They've failed before. I wish them the best of luck, but history is not on their side.
Not making competitive decisions with a competitor like Intel gets you suffocated. This is business. Whatever anthropomorphized feelings you have toward these enterprises need not apply.
IndyColtsFan
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Cool. The rest of the company sucks. There are isolated pockets of valuable stuff there, but their cloud offerings suck. Ginni Rometty is such a rockstar too:
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DejaWiz
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Yeah...a CEO at former company I worked for had a lunch gathering with everyone that had a 3 year anniversary (myself included), and someone asked him point blank "with all the rumors about Compaq coming in as a takeover, should we be concerned?"
He replied, with a straight face, "that's not true. We will continue on our current path of success, especially since we posted a record profit last year and this year will exceed that."
The next day...the *very* next day, a corporate announcement was sent to everyone that he had resigned and Compaq had submitted an offer that was accepted.
DrLobotomy
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Maybe she has a self review coming up.
Dreamerbydesign
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Don’t they always?
Master_shake_
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every boss needs to be at least 30 percent full of shit.
Exactly, so the boss of the bosses needs to be 90%.
All this bosses being full of shit talk makes me glad I’m in construction. I can treat my bosses however they deserve. From very poorly to great.
End result is the same, I can work in peace without them bothering me. I’ll find them if there’s a problem, not the other way around.
More on topic though, corporate can’t exactly be breaking the news of mergers and shit before it’s official. That starts getting into insider trading and shit like that. Knowing a successful CEO is jumping ship and being confirmed early would play hell with stock prices. They have a fine line to walk when addressing rumors which is why a lot of times rumors go completely ignored, or get the boilerplate “we don’t comment on rumors” statement.
End result is the same, I can work in peace without them bothering me. I’ll find them if there’s a problem, not the other way around.
More on topic though, corporate can’t exactly be breaking the news of mergers and shit before it’s official. That starts getting into insider trading and shit like that. Knowing a successful CEO is jumping ship and being confirmed early would play hell with stock prices. They have a fine line to walk when addressing rumors which is why a lot of times rumors go completely ignored, or get the boilerplate “we don’t comment on rumors” statement.
LightsOut41
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Spot on.
That's the thing. CEOs get offers all the time. Her saying today there's "zero truth to the rumor" doesn't preclude her from signing with another company tomorrow, nor does it make her a "liar" after the fact, because there's no way to prove timing and what she decided to do when.All this bosses being full of shit talk makes me glad I’m in construction. I can treat my bosses however they deserve. From very poorly to great.
End result is the same, I can work in peace without them bothering me. I’ll find them if there’s a problem, not the other way around.
More on topic though, corporate can’t exactly be breaking the news of mergers and shit before it’s official. That starts getting into insider trading and shit like that. Knowing a successful CEO is jumping ship and being confirmed early would play hell with stock prices. They have a fine line to walk when addressing rumors which is why a lot of times rumors go completely ignored, or get the boilerplate “we don’t comment on rumors” statement.
I'm thinking it might not be a bad time to buy some IBM shares.
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Rumor had been going round for about a month. Meh.
Red Falcon
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Just how dense can IBM get!Thats what ibm wants people to think.
shhh
View attachment 178990
all your base are belong to IBM. Your tech is 10 years back.
//only max throughput of 96GB/s with 460TB on a single 2u box
purple_monster
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Ryzen 4 confirmed
Red Falcon
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Far more likely than HL3 at this point.
This is business as usual in pro sports so I really hope it doesn't bleed over to tech. I would be very upset if AMD loses her leadership when things are going well. It would make me question what is going on at AMD to have this happen.
Still, really hate Tweaktown for posting this rumor. Kind of makes me think they are throwing shade at AMD for their current success instead of Intel (I didn't bother to read TT's article because I think it's clickbait).
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