This is an unfortunately ebb-and-flow at companies, especially those corporations that are compelled to demonstrate qtr-qtr gains.
AMD seems to have treaded discreetly and certainly shouldn't be seen as "piling-on"... even that "4 GB means 4 GB" is too much. They should know dang well (as any smart company knows) this kind of "Doh" moment could be just around the corner, while they don't want to see their past digressions dredged-up in such conversations.
That's kind of what I was alluding to earlier. Not sure whether if its budget cuts/R&D trimming, or just the effort needed to get the console APU parts to market, but AMD are starting to fall behind in some of the very time sensitive markets they've targeted. As an example (there are others but I won't spoil the need to play tech detective), AMD's push into ARM servers - the reason they acquired SeaMicro- seems to be leading to a climb down from earlier lofty claims. Remember that Seattle (Opteron A1100 series) was
due in the second half of 2014 fully wired for SeaMicro's Freedom Fabric interconnect? A few months later and
Freedom Fabric was quietly dumped from at least the first generation, and while the development kits have been around since mid-2014, Seattle is for the most part still MIA - delayed (according to AMD) because of a lack of software support.
Honestly, Dave Baumann (and not finding for sure he’s still with AMD) comment was perhaps more that companies don't have to tell us or right to know saying, "Fundamental interconnects within a GPU are not the parts that are ever discussed, because largely they aren't necessary to know about; additionally ASIC "harvesting". In and of itself he’s right, as long as specifications presented are correct and/or the information provide isn't a pretense for concealling such weaknesses. It's was reckless in this case, because this was something that consumers might encounter as he said, "understandable that this would be "discovered" by end users."
I think Dave was alluding to the sensitivity of the information to other vendors (AMD specifically in this case) as well as the mainstream user base, because widely publicizing the information would allow AMD an insight into Nvidia's binning strategy. If the dies/defects per wafer and wafer cost are known, it becomes a relatively easy task to estimate yields of any ASIC. To use the previous example, AMD are similarly
tight-lipped about Seattle's cache coherency network protocol, even though it is supposedly a shipping product. The problem with tech is that that industrial secrecy has a tendency to spill over into the consumer arena - some more disastrously than others, where it invariably comes to light because it is in the nature of tech enthusiasts to tinker and experiment ( as example- albeit very minor in the greater scheme of things;
it wasn't AMD that alerted the community that their APUs perform worse with single rank memory DIMMs)
Any company especially at such a level must maintain an ethical rapport, not just for the end-user customer, but for their overall long-term health in other segments. As it might have an adverse effect on OE's consideration for engineered solution provider, and professional markets.
Agreed, but I think the ethical relationship between vendor and OEM/ODM only extends as far as it costing either of them money. Hardware components have such a quick product cycle that individual issues - even major ones like Nvidia's eutectic underfill problem, tend to pass from the greater consumer consciousness fairly quickly. I would hazard a guess, and say that 90% or more of consumer computer electronics buyers couldn't tell you anything substantive about the issue, or any of the others that have befallen vendors (FDIV, f00f, TLB, Enduro, GSoD, Cougar Point SATA, AMD Southbridge I/O and god knows how many others). What does stick in the public consciousness are patterns (repeat offending), so for Nvidia's sake (and any other vendor caught in the same mire) it has to become a lesson learned - and nothing makes a vendor take notice quicker than a substantial hit to the pocketbook.
