Wednesday, November 13th 2024
AMD to Cut its Workforce by About Four Percent
According to CRN, AMD is looking to make some cuts to its workforce of approximately 26,000 employees. The company hasn't announced a specific number, but in a comment to the publication AMD said that "as a part of aligning our resources with our largest growth opportunities, we are taking a number of targeted steps that will unfortunately result in reducing our global workforce by approximately 4 percent". In actual headcount numbers that should be just north of a thousand people that the company will let go. It's not clear which departments or divisions at AMD will be affected the most, but the cutback appears to be a response to AMD's mixed quarterly report.
AMD's statement also doesn't make it clear on exactly what the company will be putting its focus on moving forward, but CRN seems to suggest that the embedded and gaming business is where AMD is struggling. That said, it's not likely that AMD will put an increased focus on those businesses, but instead the company is more likely to invest more into its server products, least not to try and catch up with NVIDIA in the AI server market. According to CRN, AMD has also seen a strong demand in AI PCs, such as the Ryzen AI 300-series of mobile SoCs, so it's possible AMD will put an extra effort into is mobile product range. The Ryzen 9000-series is thankfully also doing well, so it's unlikely there will be any big cutbacks here. We already know that AMD is not going after NVIDIA with a new flagship GPU to compete with NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5000-series flagship SKU, so it's possible that the company will cut back on some people in its consumer GPU team for the time being, but this should become clear come CES in January.
Source:
CRN
AMD's statement also doesn't make it clear on exactly what the company will be putting its focus on moving forward, but CRN seems to suggest that the embedded and gaming business is where AMD is struggling. That said, it's not likely that AMD will put an increased focus on those businesses, but instead the company is more likely to invest more into its server products, least not to try and catch up with NVIDIA in the AI server market. According to CRN, AMD has also seen a strong demand in AI PCs, such as the Ryzen AI 300-series of mobile SoCs, so it's possible AMD will put an extra effort into is mobile product range. The Ryzen 9000-series is thankfully also doing well, so it's unlikely there will be any big cutbacks here. We already know that AMD is not going after NVIDIA with a new flagship GPU to compete with NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5000-series flagship SKU, so it's possible that the company will cut back on some people in its consumer GPU team for the time being, but this should become clear come CES in January.
73 Comments on AMD to Cut its Workforce by About Four Percent
Maybe AMD took note and equated laying people off with success on stock market! Who needs good financial results, just throw people on the street!
What a joke.
Have you ever tried to create a game profile when a game is running? Try to change the fan curve - all five fan values to the maximum or minimum - it is not applied. Quite the game / sometimes restart windows -> start the game again the fan curve is applied from the game profile
W11 PRO 24h2 -> some warm boots necessary -> to show the graphical user interface from the amd gpu driver to change game profiles or to see anything (happens very, very, very often)
User interface offers to not check for updates. But that option is ignored. Regardless if that option is turned on or turned off. Long term bug.
Memory bug for Radeon 6800 non xt (exists for 5000 radeon cards also)
Hole settings are very often lost when updating the windows gpu driver. No option to save the hole config and revert everything from a single file
installer does not remember location for installs. files are cluttered everywhere and are not in c:\amd -> as i always use.
so many lint files in so many files
no temporary files cleanup
driver update issues
installing only a part, not hte full windows package, causes some side effects in the windows 11 pro driver. I do not want the streamer feature in a gpu driver.
~800MB gpu driver size (this is a joke) - was around 300 MB I think a year ago.
Just for information. I'm a long term gnu linux user. I only use Windows for Gaming. I do not really care for anything except UEFI updates, the regular update windows package from computerbase.de/downloads -> monthly windows update package + wlan + amd gpu driver update package, i sometimes updates the browser. nearly no other software on the windows box. This windows 11 installation was installed as i bought my hardware in may 2023.
There are more, but I have to think about them ... just a small fast list which i instantly remember.
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gnu linux no fan curve control, no voltage control, no software -> the gnu linux driver is a joke. 6600XT / 6800 non XT / 7800xt
Tell me why I am not allowed to set the fan curve always to 30%
There exists no user interface for anything from amd - which works - 3 months ago.
barely any support for gnu linux
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wrong edid values are read out which causes wrong settings which causes in windows 11 pro and in gnu linux high memory clocks always which causes too high idle consumption. creating a modeline fix or a custom config for windows 11 pro is a nasty hack.
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cpu bugs -> see all those CVE (i think we do not need to discuss what a cve is and why it's important)
They don't even have the staff to test their new products before they get released to the public! Zen 5%
Funny thing is that rolling back to 24.8 works as intended, but fan control doesn't work with this version anymore. I didn't try to use an older version of fan control, but it should work. I'll test it later.
So yes, there are bugs, not everyone has them or the same ones. This is the first time since I got my 6750XT in 2022 that I've had such a weird and annoying bug.
On the subject, I think, as others have said, given the "low" percentage, that it could be a reorganisation of the workforce following the recent acquisition. And it makes sense to make some changes while you're doing great, rather than in a rush to save money.
Some known NVIDIA software bugs include: issues with the OpenGL compiler causing high GPU usage, problems with shader compilation in Vulkan, bugs related to smoothstep function calculations, potential inconsistencies in Python header lines during script execution, driver failures to set priority for specific communication protocols, and vulnerabilities that could allow privilege escalation for attackers in the GPU display driver, often detailed in NVIDIA security bulletins.
Specific examples:
Bugs in the NVIDIA Vulkan driver compiler leading to issues with compiling shaders in certain applications like Chrome.
Discrepancies between how the "smoothstep" function operates on the GPU compared to the CPU, potentially causing visual glitches.
Potential issues with the shebang line in Python scripts depending on the Linux distribution.
Cases where the driver fails to set the correct priority for specific communication protocols like DCT, potentially impacting performance.
Security issues in the NVIDIA GPU display driver that could allow attackers to escalate their privileges on a system
All hardware and software has bugs. ALL OF IT!!!
CPU division is gaining marketshare of an ever shrinking pie. ARM is going to take more and more. Such a niche group of gamers care about the 9800X3D. Professionals buy Macbook Pros. I don't want a plastic monstrocity with a dragon logo, RGB, discrete GPU lasting 1hr on battery, and an inferior screen from a company I don't trust. Apple is growing marketshare and so will Qualcomm's ARM chips. I'm not even talking about Nvidia yet. AMD is stagnating big time in CPUs. Zen 5 is a failure. 5%-10% increases? That's unnoticable in the real world. Where are the NPU cores that Apple, Qualcomm and no doubt Nvidia will have? AMD better get going on the ARM side of CPUs. Windows just released an ARM version. Regardless of the sold out stories online, there are dozens of 9800X3Ds in stock all around me in stores.
Segment Summary
Broken AV1 encoding, making it impossible to record 1080p video, 1082/1086p is the best the encoder can do.
No profiles for any encoding format, making software like OBS and the rest have terrible quality while actually having good hardware encoders.
Bad RT performance.
Bad compute performance.
Crashes on critical new releases, like the new season of Fortnite.
Absolute lack of support for 24-bit depth formats and no fallback option.
Subpar HDR performance, sometimes limiting max nits to 500.
ROCm support is a joke, only runs on 3 cards, and it's absolutely unstable. Windows support lacking.
FSR 3.1 is the worst option available for scaling.
On top of other management issues like terrible pricing and only focusing on trying to compete with CUDA with a 17 years handicap.
And to add insult to injury, they take the luxury of firing people, as if it will solve any of this. Glad to see your support for the decision.
It is her who is responsible for the most important decisions, and the grand strategy of the corporation. Besides the Ryzen CPUs, nothing at the company is worth it.
The GPU division is from bad to worse. When a team plays bad, it's not the players who get dismissed, but the manager in charge.
Gaming: X3D
Productivity with Power: Dual CCD
IGPU: 8700G
None of that is conjecture. Lisa Su has been at the helm for all of that. She also took from the Company that would promise the Earth and deliver the Moon to a Company that kept it's info close to the vest. Should we start the inevitable comparison to what Intel have done in the same space?