My trip to AMD's HQ in Austin, Texas.

M

mpcamer1220

[H]ard|Gawd
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Oct 2, 2003
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First, I know that the HQ isn't in Austin.. - Yet - but that is where their CEO/President, etc are.. So, just go with it. :p


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On Thursday, June 21, 2007, I had the opportunity to visit AMD's Austin location. I was able to meet with several people, including Division Brand Managers and PR personnel, among many others. I had to meet with an AMD lawyer before I could do anything else. After meeting with the lawyer for a little bit, I went and met with someone from Public Relations. He works with the NPRP. (New Product Review Program..) He is the guy that sends Kyle all of the new hardware. Right across from where he is, was someone who used to work at 3dFX. After talking to them for about half an hour, I went and toured the Server/Workstation Department. After that, I went and saw the Mobile Division. The head of the Mobile Division was the main contact I had in getting into AMD's building. I was shown a PowerPoint presentation that Hector Ruiz was shown exactly one day before I was. It was a fairly lengthy presentation and I can't go into the details about it. I then toured the Desktop Division and met with the Marketing Manager for the desktop side.----------------


After I spent time in the Desktop Division, I went and spent about an hour in AMD's Performance Labs. This was probably my favorite part of the trip. They had a single server with $2.5 Million of hard drives - just to supply enough bandwidth to test their processors. There were countless processors/motherboards being tested, and not all of them were AMD processors. ;) I then went back to the Server/Workstation department and then back to the Mobile Division, and there was some other stuff I did.. But that about sums it up.

It was a great experience - I learned a lot, not just about upcoming products, but about AMD in general as well as the whole industry.

There is a lot that I can't say/repeat; however, if you have questions, I will try my best to answer them.


Pictures:

http://mpcamer.com/
 
Master_Pain said:
lol, I love the 5 o'clock somewhere clock :D
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One of the things that I first noticed, was the sense of humor that was displayed.. A lot of the cubicles had Dilbert comics posted everywhere.. There were Mac stickers on filing cabinets, "Inhell" posters..

and this:
8.JPG



Also, the PIB boxes in the second and third pictures look like any other PIB box.. look for the red thing in those pictures, that is a hat. These boxes were huge, I wish I had one. In the third picture, you can see a normal PIB on the far left bottom corner.
 
What is that is the last picture it looks like a socket F chip hmmmmm maybe.
 
damn you and your phenom!

Cool pics though :D

Did you get to keep the used silicon wafer? :D
 
0mega said:
damn you and your phenom!

Cool pics though :D

Did you get to keep the used silicon wafer? :D
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200mm/130nm Sledgehammer. :cool:

That is the one pictured in the car, the others were fully completed Clawhammers - not that much of a difference between them though.
 
Glad you enjoyed it :D It's a bit of a hassle going from buildings to buildings, as they are kind of spaced far apart, especially the Sierra Tech building. Hopefully moving to the new campus will help soon.
 
Did you make it to Sugers or the Yellow Rose, while in Austin? :D

Nice write up. Link is dead alteast for me anyways :(
 
morfinx said:
Glad you enjoyed it :D It's a bit of a hassle going from buildings to buildings, as they are kind of spaced far apart, especially the Sierra Tech building. Hopefully moving to the new campus will help soon.
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Hey, what is at 5204 E. Ben White? Which building do you work at? I was at the one off of Burleson, the old [SIZE=-1]Lockheed Martin building - or some kind of company of that sort..


I wish I didn't have this NDA about everything I saw, I don't know how you do it. :eek:

[/SIZE]
debello_64 said:
Did you make it to Sugers or the Yellow Rose, while in Austin? :D

Nice write up. Link is dead alteast for me anyways :(
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Nope.. [edit] Just looked up Yellow Rose.. I just got out of high school and my parents went with me.. so no... no, we didn't go there at all. :p [/edit]

The domain just got switched to my brothers server today, so the DNS will take a while. Once it updated for me, and I got permission from someone at AMD, I posted it. It might take a while longer (Days.. ) for it to update everywhere.. :(
 
mpcamer1220 said:
Hey, what is at 5204 E. Ben White? Which building do you work at? I was at the one off of Burleson, the old [SIZE=-1]Lockheed Martin building - or some kind of company of that sort..
[/SIZE]
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Couldn't tell ya, I don't work at the Austin campus (even though I'm from TX, go figures) :p


mpcamer1220 said:
I wish I didn't have this NDA about everything I saw, I don't know how you do it.
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I know how I do it - the desire to keep my job :D
 
I live in austin too! can you take me intot he AMD building to see all the cool waffers, and whatnot?
 
No comment. :)


edit - I will say this, I heard that it was decent. But, do you think that AMD would release a product that is 50% slower than their current products?
 
morfinx said:
mpcamer, what do you do? And why were you touring the Austin campus?
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I do nothing.. Just got out of high school and went for fun..


I've been in contact with quite a few from AMD for about 3-4 years now. (Vice President of Sales for North America, different Division Brand Managers, etc..)

A couple of people tried to get me in last year, but we didn't have enough time to get the NDAs lined up..
 
Those processors on the 200mm wafer are huge! Be careful with that lead...
 
[SIZE=-1]Sledgehammer Core:
- Socket 940
- 1mb L2 Cache
- Process 130nm

Hope that clears things up for everybody :D
[/SIZE]
 
ICE_9 said:
Those processors on the 200mm wafer are huge! Be careful with that lead...
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Lead is the least of the his worries, its the arsenic, iodine or bromine that you have to worry about. Best thing todo is just frame it, a broken wafer will screw your day up in more then one way.
 
And then they ditch 754 and 940 for 939 a year later. Two years later after "939 will be around for years..." they spring up AM2 on us, without offering the higher speed-grades for those who have already dropped down for the appropriate hardware.

Coming soon: AM2+ and AM3!
 
Mr. Bluntman said:
And then they ditch 754 and 940 for 939 a year later. Two years later after "939 will be around for years..." they spring up AM2 on us, without offering the higher speed-grades for those who have already dropped down for the appropriate hardware.

Coming soon: AM2+ and AM3!
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:rolleyes:

AM2+ and AM3 processors will work with your AM2 motherboard..
 
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