who should acquire amd??

[HumanSmoke]

Not really. They're all portable products with 10 watts are less. I'm talking a ~100 watt ARM processor (could potentially have ~100 cores). I could see the super computing and data processing markets eat them up.

Good luck with that. K12 is basically missing in action ( timetable now slipped to 2017) , and Applied Micro (X-Gene) and Cavium (ThunderX - which has a boatload of partners on board already) are already available and deployed. ThunderX is already a 48-core part, and Skylark (X-Gene 3) a 64-core SoC.

 

[alucasa]

TPU should buy AMD.

Don't mark my words but you heard it from here.

 

[remixedcat]

 

[Tatty_Two]

I went "other", suggestion................ Apple, we need someone with more money than sense.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Good luck with that. K12 is basically missing in action ( timetable now slipped to 2017) , and Applied Micro (X-Gene) and Cavium (ThunderX - which has a boatload of partners on board already) are already available and deployed. ThunderX is already a 48-core part, and Skylark (X-Gene 3) a 64-core SoC.

So much for blind optimism.

Unless AMD brought something unique to the table, they'd have to fight pretty hard for market share.

 

[HossHuge]

I haven't checked my tix for the lottery last night so maybe I could buy them? Is 55 million enough?

 

[qubit]

I went "other", suggestion................ Apple, we need someone with more money than sense.

Oh yeah, Apple have money all right. They currently dwarf Microsoft if I remember correctly.

Regardless, AMD needs some serious investment right now and can become competitive again with the right leadership.

 

[remixedcat]

Yep I know about Cavium they power Xirrus wifi arrays!!

 

[GC_PaNzerFIN]

I am going to think out of the box here and say Asus/ASMedia should buy them. Whole platform development, manufacturing & global retail channels up and running. A lot of relevant technology patents at hand. Should be pretty good!
Couple that with a fresh cash injection from investors that would surely follow I think it would give them good chances to succeed.

 

[64K]

Apple really is sitting on the top right now

200 billion dollars in cash, 183 billion dollars in revenue last year with a net income of 40 billion dollars and a present Market Cap of 702 billion dollars

and Microsoft

90 billion dollars in cash, 94 billion dollars in revenue last year with a net income of 12 billion dollars and a present Market Cap of 348 billion dollars

for comparison AMD

800 million dollars in cash, 5.5 billion dollars in revenue last year with a net loss of 400 million dollars and a present Market Cap of 1.5 billion dollars

 

[rtwjunkie]

Apple really is sitting on the top right now

200 billion dollars in cash, 183 billion dollars in revenue last year with a net income of 40 billion dollars and a present Market Cap of 702 billion dollars

and Microsoft

90 billion dollars in cash, 94 billion dollars in revenue last year with a net income of 12 billion dollars and a present Market Cap of 348 billion dollars

for comparison AMD

800 million dollars in cash, 5.5 billion dollars in revenue last year with a net loss of 400 million dollars and a present Market Cap of 1.5 billion dollars

Thing is, Apple is dangerously dependant on one device. The majority of their income is from one device only, the iPhone.

It might be good for them to branch out.

 

[Aquinus]

Thing is, Apple is dangerously dependant on one device. The majority of their income is from one device only, the iPhone.

It might be good for them to branch out.

The company I work for has purchased a reasonable amount (for a small business,) from them in terms of laptops. Considering how often I see people with them, I think the amount Apple makes on OS X driven devices might not be a little as you're lead to believe. Apple cut their losses on the server market when they realized that they suck at doing servers, so I suspect they're not taking anything close to a loss on their current lineup as it really hasn't changed much in the last several years other than hardware improvements and battery life.

IIRC, Apple still uses AMD for GPUs in the iMacs but, nVidia on the expensive 15 MBPs and Intel on everything else. I think Apple is just happy with the options it has as it is considering it has a bit of everything.

 

[dorsetknob]

UNTIL the US Government give a corporation Tax Break Apple will not Repatriate their profits to buy AMD.
Apple would Sooner Hoard their Tax Manipulated Profits OFFSHORE

 

[HumanSmoke]

UNTIL the US Government give a corporation Tax Break Apple will not Repatriate their profits to buy AMD.
Apple would Sooner Hoard their Tax Manipulated Profits OFFSHORE

The tax situation is what drives a few of the offshore acquisitions. Microsoft has so much cash offshore that it can't transfer it to the U.S. without incurring a substantial tax penalty - hence using the European funds to buy companies like Nokia, which seems like a giant outlay of cash, but was devalued because of the geographic area it was stuck in.

I think Apple is just happy with the options it has as it is considering it has a bit of everything.

Which is why it is happy to have competitors cutting margins to the bone in order to supply them. Buying AMD (or any hardware company) means you have to support the product even if costs rise, or it underperforms, or is late to market, or a superior product arrives in the market.

Unless AMD brought something unique to the table, they'd have to fight pretty hard for market share.

I really think that K12 going MIA and SkyBridge being canned is indicative of why Keller left. The original project was presented as an entire ecosystem that Keller would oversee that would marry x86, ARM, and an interconnect to allow any permutation of both architectures. I suspect that K12's R&D relegation and SkyBridge's cancellation are indicators of a wider issue concerning AMD's need to prioritize R&D - so it is very possible that the vastly scaled down project is at odds with what Keller originally envisioned he he took the position. The timing seems bad for any other conclusion. If Zen and K12 were fully on track, I would suspect that Keller would stay on board at least until the whitepaper presentations (if not launch).

 

[Frick]

so I suspect they're not taking anything close to a loss on their current lineup

This is so true for everything Apple is doing. Retailers selling phones for instance usually has something around a 20% profit (at least where I live) on most phones and tablets, on iDevices that number is about 7%. Who pockets all that money? Apple.

 

[Solaris17]

I'll probably do it honestly. I just got paid what are they worth ATM like $300?

 

[FordGT90Concept]

I really think that K12 going MIA and SkyBridge being canned is indicative of why Keller left. The original project was presented as an entire ecosystem that Keller would oversee that would marry x86, ARM, and an interconnect to allow any permutation of both architectures. I suspect that K12's R&D relegation and SkyBridge's cancellation are indicators of a wider issue concerning AMD's need to prioritize R&D - so it is very possible that the vastly scaled down project is at odds with what Keller originally envisioned he he took the position. The timing seems bad for any other conclusion. If Zen and K12 were fully on track, I would suspect that Keller would stay on board at least until the whitepaper presentations (if not launch).

 

[NC37]

What about all those GTX 970's with coil whine, and that 3.5GB thing? They still sell like hotcakes (deservedly so because the memory thing doesn't have an impact). The R9 290/x was pretty stupid sure, but Nvidia has had cards that were noisy as all heck too, but that doesn't matter as much because they are higher quality.

Their CPU's are of high quality too. I'm not sure how you measure that quality in a CPU though.

And as for Bulldozer... Well yes, it wasn't brilliant, but I still think at some point we'll look back and say they were too early with that design.

EDIT: IBM should buy them. Then we have two blues.

They sell because people are stupid and don't read. Plus AMD waited too long on the 390s and rode the 290s. If AMD had struck sooner with the 390s, we'd be probably seeing a good price war as nVidia cannot compete with the 390s on price. For the same price as a 970 with 3.5GB and frame stuttering you get a 8GB 390 that beats it in performance and has no stuttering, plus is ready for future games....AMD waited 6 months, underwhelmed everyone, which in turn helped 970 sales.

Who knows, if AMD had struck sooner, maybe nVidia would have released a 970 with only 3.5GB and no stuttering issue. That is really all it needs. Course the 900 series has been utter shit the moment they announced the 960 would be a 128bit card and the 204 would be leveraged for the high end.

CPUs are mixed. Quality is good but builds are moronic. AMD has had years now to tweak APUs and keep ahead of Intel but literally they've just rehashed the same crap. BD in quad setups is terrible no matter what refinements you do to the core, yet they keep promoting it. Using RAM for VRAM is another problem that I expected they'd address before Intel caught up...they didn't do it. Intel now has chips with fast RAM added that can beat APUs.

Literally they released Trinity and that was the end of any real refinements in APUs. GP processing then came too late and is so limited in usefulness that there is no real point to it. Not to mention they've lacked L3 all these years as well.

I recently did a build for a friend's mother. She needed something simple and instead of going with an APU like I did years ago for a relative, I did a Haswell i3 build. Damn its snappy. Much more confident in her getting 5+years out of that than I am an APU build.

 

[rtwjunkie]

@NC37 please tell me which frame stuttering I have that I don't actually have? I actually do read, and knowingly bought a 970 100ME for my fiance in April. Guess what? No coil whine. And the 3.5GB memory issue? Non-existent. She runs a 25" 1080p monitor and no game has even breached the 3GB barrier.

Why did we buy it? Because it was $300, used less energy and ran cooler than my 780, and slightly outperforms it. Those are all facts that run counter to the things that you apparently know how to repeat from web postings.

 

[Jborg]

@NC37 please tell me which frame stuttering I have that I don't actually have? I actually do read, and knowingly bought a 970 100ME for my fiance in April. Guess what? No coil whine. And the 3.5GB memory issue? Non-existent. She runs a 25" 1080p monitor and no game has even breached the 3GB barrier.

Why did we buy it? Because it was $300, used kess energy and ran cooler than my 780, and slightly outperforms it. Those are all facts that run counter to the things that you apparently know how to repeat from web postings.

The 970 Stuttering issue seems to be very subjective... I have a 970 and it runs GTA 5 at a reasonable FPS.... 55-59 FPS @ 1080p thats what I mainly play... The game stutters a bit here and there but in my opinion is more the game itself. Also I have a crap ton of mods installed which could add to FPS loss/so called stuttering.

 

[AlwaysHope]

I hope AMD do not sell out to anyone or any company, Chipzilla (intel) needs competition, oppps.. my apologies... markets NEED competition.. more options for consumers is better than limited ones imo.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

I think Intel should acquire amd and then make everything intel inside that will make it so theres no competition and there won't be anything to worry about when it comes to Processors.

What are you worrying about competition, choice ,odd reply all in all intel have little to gain bar gfx ip which in all likelihood has some legal ties to its use also ,just non disclosed.

 

[remixedcat]

I knew someone back in 2006 that went by the name AMD_ZEN has it been hyped up since that long ago!??

 

[R-T-B]

I know VIA isn't a serious contender, but I mean really, why not? Don't they have an existing x86 license?

 

[Frag_Maniac]

How about KFC, they'll let anybody be their spokesman lately. Kinda fits right in with AMD's crazy marketing tactics.