AMD Hires Two Chip Veterans

[HardOCP News]

Good news for team AMD?

Charles Matar, with expertise in low-power and embedded chip design, joined as AMD's vice president of System-on-Chip Development, two sources said. Matar most recently worked at Qualcomm. Wayne Meretsky, who has worked at Apple on processors used in the iPad and iPhone, was named vice president, software IP development, they said. Meretsky will lead software developments for AMD's chips.

 

[pxc]

Good news if you want to see AMD dumping x86. Those are the second and third high-profile ARM industry hires AMD has made in the last few months.

 

[sviola]

Good news if you want to see AMD dumping x86. Those are the second and third high-profile ARM industry hires AMD has made in the last few months.

Well, considering Qualcomm was a division of AMD, I'm more inclined to believe AMD realized they made a mistake in the past and is trying to undo it.

 

[pelo]

Well, considering Qualcomm was a division of AMD, I'm more inclined to believe AMD realized they made a mistake in the past and is trying to undo it.

No, Qualcomm was a separate entity that purchased AMD's Adreno to strengthen their IP stack and have a GPU foundation for their handset business.

But, yea, Qualcomm certainly got the better end of that deal. Now AMD is forced to play catch up in the mobile/ultramobile segment.

 

[pxc]

Well, considering Qualcomm was a division of AMD

Qualcomm wasn't a division of AMD. It did buy some of AMD's mobile IP when Hector and Meyer were busy destroying/dismantling the company. Most notably, Qualcomm purchased AMD's handheld disivion, including embedded graphics (Qualcomm's Adreno, based on that, is an anagram of Radeon ).

 

[ballistic90]

....Yes, that sure is a thing.

Sorry, I'm a fan of AMD, but the directions that the industry has taken over the last few years seems to have left me behind. I love the AMD APUs, but every indication is that the AMD CPUs are struggling to keep up. I hope something like this can give them an edge (you never know where the big evolution in desktop hardware comes from), but I'm about as lost as ever when it comes to CPU specifics.

 

[Azhar]

Matar was probably embarrassed by Qualcomm's CES show that he jumped ship to AMD.

 

[Stimpy88]

Smacks of too little, too late.

They lost it when they said they would not go for the mobile SOC market, which they had great potential with.

Then to rub it in, and to ensure they go down, they gave up on Desktop CPUs.

All they have left now is the console contracts, and a stagnating GFX division without the means to innovate.

 

[bbenz33]

Smacks of too little, too late.

They lost it when they said they would not go for the mobile SOC market, which they had great potential with.

Then to rub it in, and to ensure they go down, they gave up on Desktop CPUs.

All they have left now is the console contracts, and a stagnating GFX division without the means to innovate.

Last I checked the AMD GFX cards are either neck and neck with nVidia, so not sure how that equates to stagnate and failing to innovate.

 

[FearTheCow]

Last I checked the AMD GFX cards are either neck and neck with nVidia, so not sure how that equates to stagnate and failing to innovate.

I think "innovate" means making a bunch of crap proprietary so it only works on AMD cards like Nvidia like to do.

 

[octoberasian]

I highly doubt AMD is stagnating or going the way of eToys.com.

I would say restructuring and refocusing their products is a better way of describing them at the moment.

They are still going to release desktop and mobile products (tablets and laptops). These are going to be released between now and 2014 (albeit behind delayed):

• Richland APU - Piledriver cores plus GCN Radeon cores
• Kabini - Ultrabook processor
• Temash - Tablet processor
• Kaveri APU - Steamroller cores plus GCN (2.0?) Radeon cores
• Radeon HD 8000 and 8000M series (OEMs are getting rebrands of 7000 series, and consumer release of the actual HD 8000 series.)

Still pending:

• Excavator

 

[[Tripod]MajorPayne]

As badly as AMD has bungled some things lately, I'm surprised they didn't accidentally hire a Frito Lay executive as a "chip veteran."

 

[pelo]

Richland is actually VLIW4. It's essentially a Trinity refresh with BIOS tweaks and a more mature process.

The hiring of Qualcomm and Apple engineers signals that they're looking to enter the smartphone space.

 

[cdr_74_premium]

That's when being smaller than Intel brings some perks. They're into a better position to enter the ARM race than Intel.

 

[Stimpy88]

That's when being smaller than Intel brings some perks. They're into a better position to enter the ARM race than Intel.

You're right, but the problem is that AMD is several years late to the party. By the time they have any ARM products out there, everybody else will be selling higher performance custom core parts. AMD said previously that they are not doing any re-designing of the ARM cores, as they don't have the time and resources. They will just add server specific logic to the SOC.

They could have kicked Intels butt if they had taken the Cortex A9 core and did what Apple did to it and the memory controller. AMD would be on the brink of releasing their first custom A15 part within the new few months...

Just imagine if they had done a custom A9 & A15 core, with ATI GPU tech thrown in for good measure. They would have been a major player in mobile now, and Intel couldn't have done a thing about it.

 

[odditory]

I would say restructuring and refocusing their products is a better way of describing them at the moment.

That sounds like excellent rhetoric to get you out of almost anything: "I'm not unemployed, I'm just restructuring and refocusing". "I'm not done with the homework - I'm just restructuring and refocusing.."

 

[octoberasian]

That sounds like excellent rhetoric to get you out of almost anything: "I'm not unemployed, I'm just restructuring and refocusing". "I'm not done with the homework - I'm just restructuring and refocusing.."

Most companies do that all the time.

"Oh, we're not going bankrupt, we're restructuring and refocusing our company into more prospective markets." -said by every company ever.

 

[rat]

That's when being smaller than Intel brings some perks. They're into a better position to enter the ARM race than Intel.

Keep in mind that Intel made the same mistakes... They dumped StrongARM (and XScale which came after) which was snapped up by Marvell... and Marvell spearheaded modern low power computing with the SheevaPlug computer.

People are nuts up over the Raspberry Pi and may know about earlier boards like the GumStix and BeagleBoard... but SheevaPlug was where it all started.

 

[odditory]

People are nuts up over the Raspberry Pi and may know about earlier boards like the GumStix and BeagleBoard... but SheevaPlug was where it all started.

Anything with a fruit logo is going to bring in the numbers, you know that.

 

[Pieter3dnow]

Keep in mind that Intel made the same mistakes... They dumped StrongARM (and XScale which came after) which was snapped up by Marvell... and Marvell spearheaded modern low power computing with the SheevaPlug computer.

People are nuts up over the Raspberry Pi and may know about earlier boards like the GumStix and BeagleBoard... but SheevaPlug was where it all started.

Okay but Intel is the dinosaur of the industry doesn't know doesn't care looks at stock price looks at x86 market and rubs it tummy

And now it looks like AMD is moving away from the same situation if they can. They have way better products coming up Kabini and Temash are awesome .