Thursday, April 2nd 2015

AMD Faces Securities Fraud Lawsuit

Over-promising and under-delivering with its very first accelerated processing units (APU), codenamed "Llano," is coming back to haunt AMD, with a US District Court ruling that the company must face claims from investors over potential securities fraud. Launched in Q3-2012, AMD's A-series "Llano" APUs went largely unsold due to various factors including lack of product appeal, competition from Intel, forcing AMD to pull in its second-generation "Trinity" APU too soon. The related development first took shape in January 2014.

The swelling unsold "Llano" inventory forced an inventory writedown of $100 million, reducing the company's worth by nearly that much overnight, and tanking the value of the AMD stock. While AMD talked about the concept of an APU for years, Intel was the first to come out with a processor that integrates a graphics processor, with its Core i3 and Core i5 "Clarkdale" processors. The suit claims that AMD misrepresented production of "Llano" chips to its investors despite supply issues from its foundry partner GlobalFoundries, artificially inflating the value of the company in 2011-12. By the time production finally caught up, it ended up overproducing resulting in unsold inventory, and in consequence, the $100 million writeoff.
Source: Reuters
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61 Comments on AMD Faces Securities Fraud Lawsuit

#51
Thefumigator
RejZoRAlso not sure why everyone was shitting over these early APU's. I have a second generation (Zacate) and it's pretty good. CPU is a bit weak, but that was the target anyway. GPU is what allows you to even run games that don't work on any other such CPU.
Those were successful, they were not llano APUs
FrickThe E-350 and its ilk were terrible. Not to mention the C60 and whatever they were called. Absolutely terrible. They weren't exactly cheap, and slow.
I own a C60 motherboard that I used as a micro server for over 2 years, it cost me 60 $ brand new 2 years ago, and it was included in the motherboard. The thing eats 8watts peak. The power consumption of the entire system was so low that the ampermeter couldn't detect any ampers going through. Also the C60 includes a Radeon 6290, and guess what, it didn't need a fan cooler. Now it has been replaced with an AM1 Athlon 5350 and yes, the performance is up to the hills right now.

The E-350 and E-450 were exactly the same as the C60 but had more clock Ghz. The were meant for low power super low cost machines. Facebook - skype - gmail - word and excel. And that's it.
NC37Investors are idiots. First gens of anything, never are as super as the 2nd or 3rd.

Llano wasn't bad. Heck I built a Llano rig for a relative that is still in use today and runs well. Only major downside is that AMD changed the socket for the next gens so it has no real upgrade path.
I had a A6-3400 laptop. I now have an AMD FX7500 laptop, which is much faster. But I would reverse back to the A6 all the way before touching a Pentium DC or celeron laptop ANY day.
xviI had a machine with a E1-1200 which is a very similar processor. It wasn't a powerhouse, but it seemed like enough for what it was for. Ran Google Earth surprisingly well. Easily overwhelmed though. Seemed inexpensive enough too.
The E1-1200 is quite low, but its graphics were ok for google earth
qubitAMD is already so much weaker than Intel and NVIDIA and now this to crush them even further? Not good. :shadedshu: We really need competition in the market.

Unfortunately, I see no future for them unless the likes of Samsung buys them out and gets around that x86 licence clause that prevents the bought out company from using it. Perhaps anti-trust laws could apply to this clause, too?
There will always be AMD. Their processors are not the disaster people describe. Why whould a 20% difference in performance between intel and AMD make me change my mind when I have to pay more for the Intel Processor? Look, I own an Intel Bay Trail tablet (the HP stream) and its a huge deal. But in the rest, the big deals come from AMD, just to mention the FX8320 at less than 150$ is quite a bargain for what you get.
arbiterI know someone with one those e1 cpu powered laptops, its like 2 years old i think, that cpu is Slow as CRAP. My 8+ year old core duo laptop its not core 2. Its lowest end core duo chip was made matches the thing in performance. Even using his laptop core duo in mine is faster.
core duo performance is very respectable even today, but its power consumption was higher, its platform didn't support more than 2GB of RAM (depending on the chipset) and it was, at the time, quite expensive. Not to mention that without a dedicated graphics you cannot watch HD videos smoothly, intel gma was the one to blame.
arbitercore duo t2050, its lowest end core duo mobile chip made. at time it was cheapest dual core intel was being sold when i bought it and still 750$.

um if you did same test i did, just cpu test alone, my 4770k scored just under 11000. so 4000 you said is um well you can guess.

I was talking a core duo cpu that was made in 2006 vs a cpu from mid 2013.
I had the same core duo, the T2050, I poped in a T2500. I'm very happy with the result, specially because I just spent 10 bucks in the T2500. Socket M for laptops. Improved its performance and I use it for work. Its still quite slower than my AMD FX7500 laptop. But still the core duo its very respectable.
theoneandonlymrkThat said a well balanced fx 8350 system with win 10 and a reasonable gpu is set for years to come

Interestingly I ran performance passmark test a test not endorsed by amd due to its intel bias and scored 4063 beating most intel pcs out there sooo can my bias ass definitely say mines better no but its still not a bad buy a few years ago for 157 £.;-)

I said at the time they were to far ahead of the software curve to show it usefully in products sometimes like mantle and hsa now there's limited actual wares.
The FX 8000 line is very respectable. People were disappointed because it couldn't reach intel's performance. So the chip got bad press and people were against it. But in practice, its the best processor for the money.
WaroDaBeastSo, basically, you're complaining that a 31 W CPU is faster than a ~15 W CPU. How very remarkable.
Even lower, the E1 he mentions is 8 watts.
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#52
TheinsanegamerN
ThefumigatorI had a A6-3400 laptop. I now have an AMD FX7500 laptop, which is much faster. But I would reverse back to the A6 all the way before touching a Pentium DC or celeron laptop ANY day.
If I may ask, where did you find a fx7500 laptop? Ive been unable to find anything with a cpu faster then the a10, and my 10-4600m is feeling a little slow.
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#54
WaroDaBeast
ThefumigatorEven lower, the E1 he mentions is 8 watts.
Wow... That's really bad. Maybe he expects AMD's CPU to actually produce power while outperforming Intel's CPUs by 200%.
Posted on Reply
#55
Frick
Fishfaced Nincompoop
ThefumigatorThe E-350 and E-450 were exactly the same as the C60 but had more clock Ghz. The were meant for low power super low cost machines. Facebook - skype - gmail - word and excel. And that's it.
And they're too slow for it. They were faster than the Atom netbooks, but not that much faster to make it worth it. It's sort of pointless to argue about them now, but they were a dissapointment, and they were generally not that cheap, at least not here. They put them in €400 laptops and that just damaged AMD's name no matter the OEM.
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#56
Thefumigator
TheinsanegamerNIf I may ask, where did you find a fx7500 laptop? Ive been unable to find anything with a cpu faster then the a10, and my 10-4600m is feeling a little slow.
Oh, well I live in Uruguay. I almost bought the Dell Inspiron with the A10-7300 which is very close to the FX 7500, but I've got the HP because it had the FX and touchscreen.
The Dell was new while the HP I've got is refurb. It came with English keyboard layout so I can imagine they imported from USA.
here it is . Note: I replaced its hard drive with an SSD drive and going to expand its RAM soon.
FrickAnd they're too slow for it. They were faster than the Atom netbooks, but not that much faster to make it worth it. It's sort of pointless to argue about them now, but they were a dissapointment, and they were generally not that cheap, at least not here. They put them in €400 laptops and that just damaged AMD's name no matter the OEM.
The C60 was ok for ms office.... c'mon....
Posted on Reply
#57
cyneater
AMD need to pull there head out of there backside.

APU's work. But there numbering scheme is confusing. Have less on offer and just make it better.
They work pretty well. A friend as an C-60 netbook it plays 720P content with out any issues. But other than that is pretty slow. And over priced.

Another problem is Australia I cannot get any AM1 mobos with 4 x sata ports.

If amd could make an AM1 mobo with 6 or more sata ports make it work with freenas ... you would start moving APU's..

I don't think AMD know there head from there arse. APU's work.
AMD need an intel style site. I get most of my info on AMD chips off 3rd party sites as there documentation sucks. Intel has there ark and it works.
Posted on Reply
#58
WaroDaBeast
cyneaterIf amd could make an AM1 mobo with 6 or more sata ports make it work with freenas ... you would start moving APU's.
While I agree that 2 SATA ports might be too few, isn't ECC RAM recommended for FreeNAS? The only current AMD platform that supports ECC is AM3+... And even then, it's just Asus (maybe Gigabyte, too).
Posted on Reply
#59
Frick
Fishfaced Nincompoop
ThefumigatorThe C60 was ok for ms office.... c'mon....
Sure, but most people don't edit a single Word page at a time and nothing else. Some music service is running in the backgorund, and since it's a laptop it will be taken to bed and streaming movies/series, Farmville will be played. Seriously, browsing the web without adblock on those machines is painful for real. You can't watch flash videos in more than 720p, if even that.

The breaking point came last year IMO, now you can do all those things without much noise and for a low price, but the early low power APU's didn't.
Posted on Reply
#60
Aquinus
Resident Wat-man
WaroDaBeastisn't ECC RAM recommended for FreeNAS?
Only when using ZFS RAID modes from what I've heard.
cyneaterAnother problem is Australia I cannot get any AM1 mobos with 4 x sata ports.

If amd could make an AM1 mobo with 6 or more sata ports make it work with freenas ... you would start moving APU's..
I think the point of 2 ports is to keep the SoC lean. If you really need more, there is usually a 4x PCI-E slot that you can put a RAID controller into if that's really important to you.
Posted on Reply
#61
ntgamers
jmcslobE-350 10.6" laptops were an awesome bargain for the Facebooking public at about $199 when a crappy celeron based craptop cost about $299...
I didn't realize that line was such a flop...You'd think that they could have used those chips for education Donations worldwide and come out as a PR hero bringing in some name recognition.

As I see it the only problem here is people looking to make a quick buck are being heard...
Seriously shut the fuck up!
Invest for the long term...it should be law...quick trades, short sales or whatever its called now almost took out all of our economies...giving these people a voice sends the wrong message....which is if you're rich and whine enough you get more money regardless...

I know their has been but I haven't seen anything really groundbreaking in software for a loooong time...
Perhaps you just aren't looking hard enough? For example, I recently released a library that enables function level parallelism and multi-threading in javascript so moving forward I wouldn't be surprised to see websites taking advantage of those extra cores and thus making single threaded performance even less applicable.
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