Why BD failed? AMD Ex-Employee speaks out!

[Kantastic]

Read this on OCN. Main source: Click

On paper bulldozer is a lovely chip. Bulldozer was on the drawing board (people were even working on it) even back when I was there. All I can say is that by the time you see silicon for sale, it will be a lot less impressive, both in its own terms and when compared to what Intel will be offering. (Because I have no faith AMD knows how to actually design chips anymore). I don’t really want to reveal what I know about Bulldozer from my time at AMD.

What did happen is that management decided there SHOULD BE such cross-engineering ,which meant we had to stop hand-crafting our CPU designs and switch to an SoC design style. This results in giving up a lot of performance, chip area, and efficiency. The reason DEC Alphas were always much faster than anything else is they designed each transistor by hand. Intel and AMD had always done so at least for the critical parts of the chip. That changed before I left – they started to rely on synthesis tools, automatic place and route tools, etc. I had been in charge of our design flow in the years before I left, and I had tested these tools by asking the companies who sold them to design blocks (adders, multipliers, etc.) using their tools. I let them take as long as they wanted. They always came back to me with designs that were 20% bigger, and 20% slower than our hand-crafted designs, and which suffered from electromigration and other problems.

That is now how AMD designs chips. I’m sure it will turn out well for them [/sarcasm]

BTW, you ask how AMD could have competed? Well, for one thing, the could have leveraged K8 and the K8 team’s success and design techniques instead of wasting years of time on a project that eventually got cancelled using people that had never achieved any success. It took Intel years to come out with Nehalem, and AMD could have been so far ahead by that point that they’d have enough money in the bank that they wouldn’t have to accept a low-ball settlement offer in the antitrust suit and they wouldn’t have to sell off their fabs.

 

[Lionheart]

Interesting

So disappointed in AMD but what can ya do, oh wait... there's Intel

 

[micropage7]

i dunno, maybe AMD took a wrong way to design it
and its pretty sick that after a while the market wait for new stuff called BD and the result far from what we expected

 

[Melvis]

Well thats a bummer.

They better do something fast or things are going to get real bad for AMD in the future (desktop wise)

 

[Jack Doph]

They better do something fast or things are going to get real bad for AMD in the future (desktop wise)

Not just for AMD, but for us all.
If AMD goes cactus in the desktop arena, there won't be an incentive for Intel to keep pushing the technology envelope: we all lose..

 

[TIGR]

Not just for AMD, but for us all.
If AMD goes cactus in the desktop arena, there won't be an incentive for Intel to keep pushing the technology envelope: we all lose..

Exactly. Whether you prefer AMD or Intel there's good reason to want AMD to be more competitive. Solid competition means more motivation to innovate, progress, and offer better products at better prices.

 

[Kantastic]

Now guys, take all of this with a grain of salt because there's a reason this is coming from an "ex" employee. He might have been fired for being incompetent or something else work-related and is now just trying to crap on AMD. I don't see how he can lie about this though, it can all be proven since there should be a pretty wide paper trail.

 

[mrsdnf]

There are a loyal lot of people out there who would not buy Intel and will stick with AMD through thick and thin. Lets hope there is enough of them that there will continue to be a healthy rivalry for the benefit of all.

 

[Derek12]

I don't understand some things despite read many reviews, is BD superior to SB when using multithread apps or not. I know it has worse performance per core, etc..

 

[Inceptor]

What you call the main source doesn't say anything more than what you posted though. And that site, Insideris.com references a thread in the Macrumors forum from 2010 concerning Apple possibly switching to AMD...
The forum member who made those comments seems to be rather bitter, here's a message from right before the first part of the snippet above:

I think you are letting your emotions get in the way. Parting was obviously sad for you, but very rarely there is only one emotion present in an event. Otherwise mental therapy wouldn't exist.
'...always suck...' is a very subjective and emotionally filled term. If you had said, "AMD sucks now and probably will for a while" is more reflective of the truth.

Your attempts at psychoanalysis are both inappropriate and ineffctual.
AMD will always suck because it is set up so as to suck, and it has insufficient time left to remedy things Further, in AMDs very long history, it had only a single 3 year period of success. Having spent nearly its entire existence sucking, on a clear path to continue sucking, and with dwindling cash on hand and nothing left to sell to obtain one-time profits, I'd say "always suck" is accurate.
No one has stated a single factoid of objective evidence to explai why I'm wrong. I state facts about their stock, their design methodology, their inability to meet roadmaps, their quarterly losses, their loss of personel, their competitive environment. You recite only new-age psychobabble about my emotions.

That was April 2010. Actually, he didn't state facts, only claims, since we don't have any way to verify without AMD's permission to do so... but there must be some truth in some of them, outside of the obvious extreme bitterness about the design path and methodology taken.

 

[Inceptor]

I don't understand some things despite read many reviews, is BD superior to SB when using multithread apps or not. I know it has worse performance per core, etc..

In new and upcoming multithreaded apps and benchmarks it (8150) will perform on par or better than i5-2500K. In older apps and benchmarks, with older code, it will not be superior to SB, it will perform at least as well as a x6 Phenom II or better, depending on the app.
In lightly threaded apps and benchmarks (which are nearly all based on old code) it will only perform as well as an x4 Deneb or x6 Thuban, in some cases worse, depending on the workload (i.e if floating point performance is needed, it will underperform).

 

[r9]

Nooo this can`t be true also the reviews all over the net it is a conspiracy against AMD.
You want to know how I know this ? Well there is guy registered here at TPU that works for AMD he told us that there were no benchmarks before launch because it will disrupt the OEM partners, and not because new AMD cpus are garbage.
And this must be true because he would not lie to us.

 

[Recus]

Why BD failed? Let's see:

Shi**y Marketing Killed the Bulldozer Star
Shi**y Performance

windows 8 final? LOL - typical amd fanboys - always tomorow,never now

http://fudzilla.net/processors/item/24435-amd-falls-short-with-bulldozer

 

[Bjorn_Of_Iceland]

man.. so many AMD haters glorifiying themselves these days grabbing the trollin opportunity

 

[Derek12]

Many thanks Inceptor for the clarification


-------
I don't know why some people all over Internet is pleased of this, if AMD would fall, it will be bad even for Intel users who have to buy a CPU.

 

[Rapidfire48]

man.. so many AMD haters glorifiying themselves these days grabbing the trollin opportunity

I don't think they are haters or trolls. So much hype was built up for the release of BD and from what the benchmarks show is not impressive at all. I for one am an AMD supporter and I am tired of all of there misleading bullshit . Why would you label a cpu FX when it is not worthy of the title? The AMD FX chips were beast and the new FX 8150 in my opinion is SHIT.

 

[Jack Doph]

I don't think they are haters or trolls. So much hype was built up for the release of BD and from what the benchmarks show is not impressive at all. I for one am an AMD supporter and I am tired of all of there misleading bullshit . Why would you label a cpu FX when it is not worthy of the title? The AMD FX chips were beast and the new FX 8150 in my opinion is SHIT.

The issue is with one of competition in the CURRENT market, when AMD has, as it seems, at least, been trying to look forward in a way that shows them as being ponces right now, but may well be vindicated in time.

Alas, this is many-a-company's epitaph (I'm too sexy for your time, too sexy for your time - too far ahead, it may leave me dead) - that sort of stuff :/

A pity, for sure - as it took me more than 12 years (!) to get another Intel-based system.

All of us need the competition, the drive and the incentive, of the 2 most prominent CPU players in the market today.
The loss of either of these, means the loss of invention for ALL of us.
I don't care what kind of 'fanboi' anyone may be, but the fact remains: no competition = no invention == stagnation of computing in the world as we know it.

Never *EVER* allow a single company to dictate the terms, in any way, shape or form.
This is the biggest 'fail', as has been said, on the part of AMD.
Intel doesn't care - they're in the top spot. The only thing they stand to lose is a minor market-share. Stuff that bothers corporate executives at night, when they think they're being video-taped banging their secretaries (rather than their wives), instead of focussing on what THE REST OF THE WORLD WANTS.
And they *CAN* deliver.

For the sake of all of us, let's hope AMD gets its shit (shit, shite, excrement) together, so we may all benefit, in one way or another

 

[Tatty_Two]

There are a loyal lot of people out there who would not buy Intel and will stick with AMD through thick and thin. Lets hope there is enough of them that there will continue to be a healthy rivalry for the benefit of all.

The rivalry is not all that healthy to be honest, despite AMD increasing thier market share slightly in Q1 and Q2 of 2011, this is how the picture looks in share terms.....

Desktop CPU - Intel 70.9%, AMD 28.9%
Mobile CPU - Intel 84.4%, AMD 15.2%
Server/workstation CPU - Intel 94.5%, AMD 5.5%

 

[Bo$$]

in my opinion is SHIT

Well what is shit for you??? may appeal to others, to get massive parralisation in certain programs is really useful, getting 2500K perf at a lower overall price. Granted it was a little bit of a let down but if you feel like that you aren't their target market.
The speculation was too much i think

 

[qubit]

OMG what a f* disaster. :shadedshu I've just seen a block diagram and explanation for the Bulldozer architecture: it's not an 8-core chip at all. The two 'cores' are siamesed into one building block and share lots of resources and lose lots of performance. This thing is actually merely a quad core processor with a souped-up version of HyperThreading or whatever the AMD equivalent is.

Here's the block diagram taken from Hexus' review:

See what I mean? The only thing it seems to be good at is overclocking and that only brings it within reach of Intel's top parts at stock, it doesn't even beat them, all the while using a huge amount of power and requiring expensive cooling. This chip is a lemon like Vista was for Microsoft, or perhaps even worse.

I'll soon be upgrading my aging E8500 to an i5-2500K. No point in waiting any more.

 

[HalfAHertz]

Why BD failed? Let's see:

Shi**y Marketing Killed the Bulldozer Star
Shi**y Performance

Ya right. The only problem is that right now I can get a 1090T for less than a 6100 and get both a better single and multi-threaded performance...Yes you are missing out on some of the new stuff like lower idle consumption, working turbo, AES-NI and advanced instructions(which you may never actually use) but you're getting so much more performance it's just silly

 

[nt300]

Interesting.....
Bulldozer is here to stay and AMD will figure out a way to make it deserving of the "FX" moniker.

The reviewer from Guru3D says it right. Bulldozer is way ahead of it's time. There is nothing wrong with concentrating on massive multi-threading software, but you still need to have the horse power for single threaded software too. This is where Bulldozer falls flat on its face.

 

[cdawall]

The rivalry is not all that healthy to be honest, despite AMD increasing thier market share slightly in Q1 and Q2 of 2011, this is how the picture looks in share terms.....

Desktop CPU - Intel 70.9%, AMD 28.9%
Mobile CPU - Intel 84.4%, AMD 15.2%
Server/workstation CPU - Intel 94.5%, AMD 5.5%

Amd will never touch intel in the server market there are way to many programs designed to run on intel chips that have nothing but problems running on AMD.

 

[Bjorn_Of_Iceland]

Interesting.....
There is nothing wrong with concentrating on massive multi-threading software, but you still need to have the horse power for single threaded software too. This is where Bulldozer falls flat on its face.

Its way ahead of its time indeed. And if current apps would take advantage of it, it would surely be a beast as it was evident on some heavy multithreaded benchies

 

[pantherx12]

OMG what a f* disaster. :shadedshu I've just seen a block diagram and explanation for the Bulldozer architecture: it's not an 8-core chip at all. The two 'cores' are siamesed into one building block and share lots of resources and lose lots of performance. This thing is actually merely a quad core processor with a souped-up version of HyperThreading or whatever the AMD equivalent is.

Here's the block diagram taken from Hexus' review:

http://img.techpowerup.org/111013/BDS.jpg

See what I mean? The only thing it seems to be good at is overclocking and that only brings it within reach of Intel's top parts at stock, it doesn't even beat them, all the while using a huge amount of power and requiring expensive cooling. This chip is a lemon like Vista was for Microsoft, or perhaps even worse.

I'll soon be upgrading my aging E8500 to an i5-2500K. No point in waiting any more.

Seriously you've only just realised this?

It's literally the main selling point for bulldozer.

It means instead of building a whole entire core they use 25% of one and still get MOST of the performance of an extra core. ( In theory a shit ton better than hyper threading )

To put it simply, AMD may of had an underwelming release but they've just started a core race with Intel ( I imagine it's due to silicone not going to go much further IPC and clock speed wise) Piledriver will be 10 cores and the chips after that will be 20 core monsters. ( I suspect AMD are going to try and push OPEN CL big time in order for the cores to be taken advantage of easily)

They've a plan, they may not pull it off but if they do they'll become server CPU kings and if they can increase IPC a wee bit to bring it into line with competing processors then it will be a beast.



I'm aware it doesn't seem like they're pulling that off at the moment but I'm fairly certain something is wrong either with software or hardware ( rather than design) as a chip with twice the transistors of phenom x6 should be smashing it.