AMD Reports 2014 Third Quarter Results

[Frick]

In short: Are they breaking even?

 

[john_]

Intel can't move the prices much higher because of the ARM platform. If the x86 platform becomes too expensive, people will turn to ARM. CPU performance today is more than enough for most people. Not everyone is encoding video in their free time, or manipulating dozens of photos every day passing them through heavy filters. Intel is giving away free chips to create a market share in the low end and they will have to keep the cash flow in the future to maintain that market share.

On the other hand Nvidia is much more greedy. We seen that with Titan Z, but if it becomes a monopoly in hi end graphics and starts having bigger incomes from Tegra, it will eventually go against Intel's x86 platform trying to create it's own proprietary gaming platform, which means more reasonable prices.

 

[jigar2speed]

Looks like AMD should be done within 6 - 9 months... They are running out of cash and employees. They are also not being supported by the system builders like HP, Acer etc.

And lets not forget the fact that New Nvidia GTX 980 & 970 has simply stunned the crap out of current AMD GPUs.

I hope Dr. Su can spin this and make AMD once again a competitive company, but currently it is looking very very difficult job.

 

[Sony Xperia S]

I guess the biggest problem is that they have nothing competitive in the works to counter Maxwell.

They are so late with 20 nm if ever jump on it. Was it Rory's decision not to go to new manufacturing processes first as soon as possible? Probably this is the reason why he's gone now.

Too many wrong managerial decisions and strategies.

16 nm is still at least a year away, so the clouds over their heads will only get heavier.

 

[jagd]

Sorry but where at 20nm available to AMD atm ? Do you realise 20nm not available to amd/nvidia from TSMC or glofo atm .

AMD and nvdia are fabless chip makers and depending to TSMC and global foundries for fab process , they can only use what available and 20nm is not available at the moment.

They are so late with 20 nm if ever jump on it. Was it Rory's decision not to go to new manufacturing processes first as soon as possible? Probably this is the reason why he's gone now.

 

[m0nt3]

I guess the worst part was left for last. I bet GTX970 had something to do with this one.

I would say it has more to do with them not having a new product available for this holiday season. The R9 390X is still rumored for next year.

 

[Sony Xperia S]

Do you realise

I don't have to realise anything. I'm just stating finished facts and you argue for the reasons but they themselves don't change the outcome.

TSMC and Global Foundries are not the only fabs in the world producing chips on cutting-edge technology. Neither is AMD supposed to look only for this as a solution for their lacking of efficient architectures.

Something happens with this world, like global progress freeze. Wondering what causes it and why?

 

[john_]

I would say it has more to do with them not having a new product available for this holiday season. The R9 390X is still rumored for next year.

What Nvidia did, redesign their architecture and optimize it as much as possible for the 28nm, AMD couldn't do it or choose not to do it. They didn't had the engineers, the time, the money, maybe all those, so they just did a few improvements in the current architecture to call it 285 and 285X until 20nm would come. Save millions of dollars in R&D, replace the 280 series with cheaper to manufacture 285s but sell them for more, then throw a watercooling on the biggest 295X model and sell it for even more than 290X. Nvidia never sells their top cards cheap anyway, right? Well 970 came at $330 and not $450 for example and AMD's strategy gone to the dustbin with 285X and maybe 295X, if there was any, canceled.

 

[RejZoR]

People predicting death of AMD and they aren't even in the red numbers lmao...

 

[GhostRyder]

You have to question AMD business practices. For a company with the GPU chip in the only two modern gaming consoles and currently the best integrated gfx solution, how can their finances be so bad?
So they don't compete on HEDT but they do have a CPU solution and their GPU solutions have been competent, if not brilliant (5870, 7970, 290x). Being 2nd to Intel or Nvidia in performance doesn't need to mean a loss making business.

Even with all that without a ton of OEMS to back them up you do not get enough sales on an individual basis. The Enthusiasts who buy the chips separate to build their own machine are much fewer than the guy walking into Fry's/Best Buy/Walmart/Whatever your shop is called to pick up a laptop/tablet/desktop. AMD still has to get enough OEM's for their components to sell significant quantities to really put them back into the market and really there are too few machines available at each price segment that they get overlooked to easily.

I guess the biggest problem is that they have nothing competitive in the works to counter Maxwell.

They are so late with 20 nm if ever jump on it. Was it Rory's decision not to go to new manufacturing processes first as soon as possible? Probably this is the reason why he's gone now.

Too many wrong managerial decisions and strategies.

16 nm is still at least a year away, so the clouds over their heads will only get heavier.

AMD is not late with 20nm and neither is Nvidia, its the foundry's who are late and the reason Nvidia chose to not hop onto the 20nm chips and just released their 28nm chip again but on Maxwell architecture. We would not have gotten the GTX 980 and 970 had it been on the 20nm process and its the reason Nvidia is predicted to just skip 20nm altogether and go straight to 16nm for the next lineup. They may backpedal of course and go to 20nm depending but AMD chose to wait and go to the next process which caused the delay.

What Nvidia did, redesign their architecture and optimize it as much as possible for the 28nm, AMD couldn't do it or choose not to do it. They didn't had the engineers, the time, the money, maybe all those, so they just did a few improvements in the current architecture to call it 285 and 285X until 20nm would come. Save millions of dollars in R&D, replace the 280 series with cheaper to manufacture 285s but sell them for more, then throw a watercooling on the biggest 295X model and sell it for even more than 290X. Nvidia never sells their top cards cheap anyway, right? Well 970 came at $330 and not $450 for example and AMD's strategy gone to the dustbin with 285X and maybe 295X, if there was any, canceled.

Nvidia realized early on that to get out a chip earlier they had to keep on the old process so they just designed around that. They will move on to 16nm based on rumors and skip 20nm all together unless the 16nm process is very delayed as well. There was also never a 295X because the rumor that Hawaii had more to unlock/give proved false after better shots of the die were released and the 285X was never officially announced. The 285 was to make a cheap alternative to the 280 because that area is a area that many gamers on a budget go for and producing such a card that was already basically a neutered chip with all the extra bells and whistles was just not a very profitable area and they even made the card smaller, lowered power consumption, and increased performance while putting a smaller memory bus but it definitely was nothing special in the end. The GTX 970 has shocked us all but it is believed to just be making room for a 970ti later based on how many cores are disabled which will fill the mid point. I believe the 970 was more of a spite at the R9 290 being priced so cheap and powerful compared to its bigger brother and it became similar to how the GTX 670 was performance wise to the GTX 680.

People predicting death of AMD and they aren't even in the red numbers lmao...

Thank you!^

 

[ensabrenoir]

......ouch this is people's lively hood we're talking about here..... Hexus reports a 7% CUT IN WORK FORCE.... not good for any one:

http://hexus.net/business/news/components/75953-amd-axe-seven-per-cent-staff-poor-q3-performance/

All eyes on the new Boss to turn it around......

 

[john_]

People predicting death of AMD and they aren't even in the red numbers lmao...

I was laughing at people predicting AMD's death from around 2006. The problem here is not if AMD will close tomorrow morning. The question is if it can stay competitive. They lost the competition race with Intel so badly, that they can be competitive only where Intel let them, and there is a possibility to lose the competition race to Nvidia also. The major fear here is down the road, in 4-5 years, AMD to become the next VIA. VIA didn't gone bankrupt, didn't close, they are still alive and who knows maybe they are not on the red, but who cares????

 

[Sony Xperia S]

I was laughing at people predicting AMD's death from around 2006. The problem here is not if AMD will close tomorrow morning. The question is if it can stay competitive. They lost the competition race with Intel so badly, that they can be competitive only where Intel let them, and there is a possibility to lose the competition race to Nvidia also. The major fear here is down the road, in 4-5 years, AMD to become the next VIA. VIA didn't gone bankrupt, didn't close, they are still alive and who knows maybe they are not on the red, but who cares????

Yes, or in other words said - AMD would be like a brown dwarf, the remnants of an once upon a time alive star. People will know it's there but its existence will be close to meaningless.

Intel don't price according to what AMD is doing - never really have.

Intel don't experience real competitive pressures from AMD. We cannot argue that this indirectly or directly reflects on the overall stagnation of the market and very very slow progress with computational performance, if any.

 

[HalfAHertz]

They are cutting workforce to decrease short term expenditure and lighten the debt burden. You can't sugarcoat AMD's continual downsizing as anything else.

They won't go under. The x86 / x86-64 IP cross licence with Intel will keep them afloat and largely autonomous. They probably can't be subsumed by another company without licensing issues, and thanks to IP their actual value exceeds their book (market cap) value in any case.

That's just plain FUD, and easily disproved FUD at that. Intel haven't had a competitor in the HEDT market for years, yet:

5960X ($999)........4960X ($990)......3960X ($999)......965XE ($999).....QX9770 ($1399)
5930K ($583)........4930K ($555)......3930K ($583)......940 ($562).....Q9550 ($530)
5820K ($389)........4820K ($310)......3820K ($294)......920 ($284).....Q9450 ($316)

Intel don't price according to what AMD is doing - never really have. If anything, the reverse is true. When AMD had a truly competitive architecture with no proviso's, their pricing reflected that (remember the days of $1K K8's ? )

On a side note. this result answers why AMD's directors have been selling their shares in such large quantities for the last few weeks.

You've got a good point but keep in mind that at that point AMD couldn't cope with the demand and markets adjusted accordingly.

Also as you yourself noted Intel's HEDT entry platform costs has been on the rise for the last 3 generations: 3820 to 4820 = >5%, 4820 to 5820 => 25%.

 

[suraswami]

True enough, although that said, Lisa Su's total remuneration package as AMD's COO was $3,591,408 of which only $574,995 was salary. Rory as CEO made $8.2 million (by comparison Nvidia's Jen-Hsun made $6 million and Intel's CEO Brian Krzanich received $9.5 million)
.............

Holy Crap!! they suck so much blood? more than Indian mosquitoes?

 

[Sony Xperia S]

Holy Crap!! they suck so much blood? more than Indian mosquitoes?

I thought you would say that Rory Read's renumeration package wasn't corresponding neither to the quality of the company he had run, nor to the quality of his own work. Unjust as hell.

 

[Steevo]

Companies do the whole "big pay" thing all the time, and the other than cash is made up in company stock, benefits, and things that can be written off.


Plus yes, getting a CEO who cares anymore is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.


OEM sales pay the bills and not much else, the margins are so low they won't make any real money off the deal.

 

[m0nt3]

What Nvidia did, redesign their architecture and optimize it as much as possible for the 28nm, AMD couldn't do it or choose not to do it. They didn't had the engineers, the time, the money, maybe all those, so they just did a few improvements in the current architecture to call it 285 and 285X until 20nm would come. Save millions of dollars in R&D, replace the 280 series with cheaper to manufacture 285s but sell them for more, then throw a watercooling on the biggest 295X model and sell it for even more than 290X. Nvidia never sells their top cards cheap anyway, right? Well 970 came at $330 and not $450 for example and AMD's strategy gone to the dustbin with 285X and maybe 295X, if there was any, canceled.

Yes, I am sure AMD was calculating their own incompetence when they were projecting revenue for 4th quarter. How silly of me to think otherwise. Thank you for setting the record straight for me. Ok, AMD is dead because of nvidia GTX 9XX series. I'm sue that is what AMD was thinking when calculating their number, it was all nvidia's fault. You are so smart, yes you are!

 

[Sony Xperia S]

getting a CEO who cares anymore is like trying to find a needle in a haystack

Aaaaa? Does it mean that AMD's CEOs don't care about what they were doing and have done?

Maybe getting a CEO who actually is an owner of the corporation would do it, no?!

 

[john_]

Yes, I am sure AMD was calculating their own incompetence when they were projecting revenue for 4th quarter. How silly of me to think otherwise. Thank you for setting the record straight for me. Ok, AMD is dead because of nvidia GTX 9XX series. I'm sue that is what AMD was thinking when calculating their number, it was all nvidia's fault.

The only problem with your sarcastic reply, other that thinking it is a smart post, is that I didn't tried to prove you wrong or something, just expressed an opinion about why AMD doesn't going to have a product before this holiday season. You have another opinion? Post it.

You are so smart, yes you are!

You are talking to yourself here of course, for writing "that clever", but needless and full of sarcasm post.
Congrats for your great achievement.

 

[xenocide]

I find it hilarious everyone still believes AMD competes with Intel, and moreso that if AMD were to stop "being competitive" Nvidia and Intel would stagnate innovation and overprice the crap out of their products. Lets consider this, AMD can't get the money together for R&D like Intel and Nvidia, so they aren't super competitive as it is. If they disappear that means Intel and Nvidia have more problems than people realize, they then have to compete against themselves.

Intel and Nvidia would have to offer better refreshes and push themselves because who's going to want to buy a PC that is equivalent to their old one? For example, as it is consumers basically upgrade from an old Intel system to a new Intel system when it's convenient for them. Intel hasn't had to worry about AMD since Core2 came out, but that hasn't stopped them from pushing themselves further and further with the advent of Nahelem and Sandy Bridge. Intel needs to keep making better products, no for system builders to push games, but for corporations to buy a dozen or so workstations with 2-4 Xeons each in them, or the DOD to buy a dozen servers with hundreds of Xeons in them. If they stopped innovating they would lose billions in revenue from the people who actually push their hardware to the limits.

There's also this weird sentiment that because AMD has failed to deliver Intel and Nvidia are lazy and that's why we haven't seen massive performance gains. Once again, wrong. Nvidia (just like AMD) is only able to produce newer products as well as TSMC can manufacture them. 20nm and 14nm are a real jump, and are going to be very difficult--and costly--for TSMC to get down. On top of manufacturing issues, all 3 are starting to hit the walls of physics. There's only so small they can make processors with current methods, and so quickly they can move electrons around. They also have made massive strides in energy efficiency, which is the first part of making a higher performing processor. If Nvidia wants to make a super powerful GPU, they need to make sure it will run in most consumers systems without a gigantic PSU, that means they need to create a very efficient framework and then scale up. Theoretically they could just keep slapping SMX modules on there but it makes manufacturing more problematic, and energy usage climbs quickly.

 

[Tonduluboy]

I Never buy AMD GPU (BUT i did bought their cpu many times)
I was happy to see AMD in the profit situation.
I do not wish AMD to go Under. That will make Nvidia n Intel a monopoly company.

From where i am from, electricity, Internet, Airports, etc etc etc monopolize by a company really bad for consumers... Remember, competition reduce a product price...