Allen
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Joined: Oct 1999
Posts: 8,839
Ohio USA
An article that claims to have "inside knowledge" of AMD's Future Direction and its implications. May be worth a read to someone really interested in AMD's future.
Quote
Exclusive: The AMD Inside Story, Navi GPU Roadmap And The Cost Of Zen To Gamers
it is essential to understand AMD’s contextual backdrop – both in terms of talent and finances. The company has a market capitalization $15.25 billion and has struggled to turn a profit. In comparison, competitors like NVIDIA and Intel are giants with market capitalization of $158.2 billion and $254.1 billion respectively and net income in the billions of dollars as well. The same goes for talent as well, it costs money and AMD has a relatively smaller pool of (very) talented engineers that can work on a given project at one time as compared to its much bigger rivals.
Lisa’s dilemma: A CPU comeback with semi-custom centric [GPU] roadmaps or maintain expensive leadership in graphics for gamers
AMD built Vega for Apple and it is building Navi for the Sony PS5 – which is expected to launch in 2020
Creating value for shareholders vs value for gamers
While it’s clear to me that Lisa steered the company towards the steady and reliable income of the semi-custom [GPU] market and prioritized the CPU side of things over [gaming], I cannot bring myself to say it was a bad thing in terms of creating value for shareholders.
Sacrificing some of their gaming blood to make a comeback in the x86 market and a slow but steady stream of income from the mainstream and semi-custom GPU market is the trade-off at play here and while I do not have the actual numbers to back any kind of statement, it does seem like a feasible choice to make. Lisa’s choice might have robbed Radeon fans of their birthright, but it probably saved the company.
This author is predicting no AMD 7nm for gamers early next year. Rather, initially, 7nm will be for industrial clients and also aimed at the new PS5 Console.
The author agrees with the AMD plan, in principle because it keeps AMD alive and progressing. Currently, according to this author (and many others) AMD is giving Intel serious problems. However, Nvidia is "off the hook" at the high-performance-GPU end for a couple more years (according to the author).
For the next couple years, AMD will concentrate on cost effective products for the "mainstream" GPU market that applies to most gamers -- if one wants the fastest FPS regardless of cost, that will be Nvidia for a while longer.
We'll see how this turns out - the author may be incorrect. However, if the article is correct and the AMD plan keeps AMD alive to compete, that's a good thing -- because, otherwise, Intel and Nvidia have no competition; that is bad for everyone.