As promised, AMD posts disappointing financial results AMD has released its financial results for its second quarter 2012, and as they had warned earlier this month, revenues dipped by 11 per cent from the previous quarter, hitting $1.41bn. "Overall weakness in the global economy, softer consumer spending and lower channel demand for our desktop processors in China and Europe made …
Last quarter AMD actually made money but took a large write-off for acquisitions. This quarter the bottom dropped again on world economies and even Intel missed projections. Microsucks just took a $6 Billion write-off for a bad acquisition and had to declare their first ever quarterly LOSS since going public. If you check you'll see that Dull and many other PC purveyors all had double digit losses this quarter so the pain is being felt by many.
For those not paying attention, we're in a world wide economic meltdown that has been ongoing for over five years and there is no end in sight because no one is creating new jobs.
Actually AC in the case of AMD they shot themselves in the face. The OEMs were gobbling up the Bobcat chips as fast as they could crank them out, so did they actually LISTEN to the market and boost R&D on the Bobcats? Nope they canceled the successor to Bobcat in favor of faildozer, a chip they knew for over a year before release was too hot, sucked too much power, and because they didn't bother to keep MSFT in the loop won't even have an OS that supports it until Windows 8, because every Windows before that has a scheduler that doesn't know how to allocate for a "half core" design like AMD went for.
So sadly AMD did this to themselves. they could have invested in Bobcat, kept dropping the power with die shrinks and working on even better designs, like better GPUs and more cores, instead they bet the farm on a chip that nobody wanted and they knew was too hot and too underpowered and was expensive to manufacture to boot. At current prices a faildozer quad (which is actually a dual core with hardware HT if you are wanting to use anything but Win 8, because that is how the MSFT Win 7 patch treats a faildozer, as HyperThreaded) costs more than 40% HIGHER than a Thuban which has six actual cores and get on average 50% higher on the benches.
Faildozer is the AMD Netburst, they knew it, but instead of doing the smart thing and investing in Bobcat while working on the next design and using Liano to cover the gap they bet it all on a turkey, now they will pay for that mistake. The only thing AMD had going for it was "bang for the buck" and faildozer crushed that with its high cost to manufacture. Sorry AMD, you brought this on yourselves.
Everyone is talking about AMD suffering problems as a result of politics and the economy, but has anybody considered that it may be becuase they aren't making things consumers want.
If I want a mid-range processor, my first thought is the Intel i5-2500K. While AMD offer the Bulldozer, which kind of competes, I can't say it really makes me want to go out and buy AMD. If I'm looking at high end stuff, you have the i7 Ivy Bridges and the six-core Sandy Bridge-E chips from Intel but nothing which really gives them a run for their money from AMD. It's the same with server stuff, I automatically think of E5 or E7 Xeons now, rather the the Opterons.
On the other hand, when I build my new workstation, AMD will be getting a nice wad of cash in return for a 7970 because nothing from NVidia can support the 6-monitor setup I want.
Considering demand for AMD products has exceeded production capacity for the past several years, no it does not appear that the issue is lack of consumer interest in AMD products. The global economic crisis is hurting virtually all companies.
As far as desktop CPUs go, Vishera/Piledriver will start to show in Q4 and will offer good performance and value compared to Intel. For entry level desktop Trinity desktop is the best way to go. For laptop, Trinity is the ONLY way to go. AMD has good values in entry level servers but they need to and are developing a much better mid-level server CPU/systems now that they have purchased SeaMicro.
I cant see Q3 or Q4 being any better for AMD to be honest, what have AMD got to look forward to for the rest of the year? No AAA gaming titles coming out as BF3, MW, Diablo3 etc already out and they have only got the release of Win8 to stimulate PC/laptop sales at a time when there will be a slew of new Android tablets, 7inch mini iPads and the iPhone5 all vying for your hard earned cash!
I see more job cuts coming for AMD very soon, shame.
I see you are very confused ! <LOL>
Ever heard of Trinity laptop or desktop? Trinity laptop just started shipping and is superior to Intel's offerings at the same price points. Demand is exceptionally high for Trinity laptop from OEMs. Trinity desktop will be available to consumers in Q4 but some OEMs are shipping complete Trinty desktop systems now. Ever heard of Vishera or Piledriver? Vishera will be released in Q4 of '12 in time for holiday sales. Ever heard of SeaMicro? They have some nice server tech and AMD bought them a few months ago. This server tech will be used for new server products very soon. Ever heard of Jaguar? This is AMD's new tablet CPUs that will debut in August. Ever heard of the GHz Edition 7970? It's scheduled to ship next week. There is a whole lot more going on at AMD than just GPU cards.
AMD has a bright future if you look at the many revenue streams they have and continue to develop.
I hear what you are saying and the Trinity stuff does look good but will it be enough? Will there be big "back to school" marketing campaign to push home AMDs advantage? Will the Piledriver/Vishera desktop be powerful enough to beat i7 Sandybridge/Ivybridge parts or low cost enough to be a no-brainer in almost every PC?
AMDs got some great stuff coming, it's just around the corner! How often have we heard that and it either didn't arrive when it should have or didn't quite meet expectations?
AMD is not spending their limited advertising budget on retail adverts. Instead they are educating OEMs who are the ones that deliver the end product. AMD has over 130 new OEM wins for Trinity powered laptops for back-to-school sales. That is a huge gain for AMD over their very successful launch of Llano laptop. Vishera will be out in time for Christmas sales as will Trinity desktop and more GPU cards, so yes AMD still has a lot of good products coming to market this year.
I'm sorry but you are wrong, and here is why: Piledriver is based on the same faildozer design and thus will NOT work right on anything but Windows 8, and as we have seen the backlash on win 8 is gonna be insane. its like designing a chip that works best with WinME, its practically suicide.
The problem is Faildozer was originally envisioned as "The GPU does the FP with a weaker FP shared between cores for when gaming" now we can already see the problem, yes? windows cheduler, thanks to AMD not keeping them in the loop, doesn't have a clue how to treat the "one FP for two cores" design so what you get is a bad hardware assisted HyperThreading. this is why a Thuban, which has a FP per core, stomps the new design in most benches.
While the "GPU does the FP" is an interesting idea in theory, as we all know theory and practice are two different things. For that to work either AMD is gonna have to get everyone to code for it (not likely) or AMD is gonna have to seamlessly offload the FP code to the GPU with enough cache and speed that it doesn't take a penalty. Now as much as i support AMD, in fact every machine I've built for the past 5 years and my own family's machines are ALL AMD, I'm sorry but we haven't seen AMD pull anything that was THAT big a game changer since Athlon64 and since they fired all those guys for computer automated chip layouts I seriously doubt they can pull it off. finally since they kept MSFT out of the loop for so long good luck getting all those businesses who will be staying with win 7 to buy AMD when its crippled by the Win 7 scheduler.
Final verdict? Faildozer is AMD's netburst and without anything in the pipe besides it (they killed Thuban production, killed the next rev of Bobcat, all they have left is Liano and Faildozer) means for the next couple of years AMD is gonna be hurting BAD. Hell Thuban wins in most benches and was 40% cheaper to make than faildozer quad which Windows treats as a dual core with HT! As much as I love AMD when I can't get anymore Thubans and Athlons and Phenom IIs I'll have no choice but go Intel, faildozer is too hot, sucks too much power, and gives too little in return, just like netburst.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
