AMD reports a dim financial picture and withdraws from high-density server business


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AMD reports a dim financial picture and withdraws from high-density server business

AMD has pulled out of the market for high-density servers, reversing a strategy it embarked on three years ago with its acquisition of SeaMicro.

AMD delivered the news Thursday as it announced financial results for the quarter. Its revenue slumped 26 percent from this time last year to $1.03 billion, and its net loss increased to $180 million, the company said.

AMD paid $334 million to buy SeaMicro, which had developed a new type of high-density server aimed at large-scale cloud and Internet service providers.

The purchase was made under former CEO Rory Read, and has now been reversed by Lisa Su, who took over the CEO job last October.

AMD said the move is part of its effort to

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Well, they had a good run.

I haven't been impressed since before Ruiz.  Frankly, I think he did more to drive it into the dirt than anyone.

 

Su at least seems to know what the hell she's doing.  I've seen more reason to believe they're positioned well for growth in the last year than I have in practically a decade.

 

We'll see if they can actually deliver on that with constant losses and obscene debts, though.

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Here I thought those ###### E-series CPU 's were selling like hot cakes.

 I recently tried one of those chips too, and theyre not bad for gaming..but as usual..AMD on the cpu side of things is extremely weak. 

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 I recently tried one of those chips too, and theyre not bad for gaming..but as usual..AMD on the cpu side of things is extremely weak. 

The issue isn't features (AMD actually has more CPUs, and at lower price points, that support EPT/SLAT than Intel does) but sheer performance - AMD CPUs are outperformed by Intel CPUs at the same price points.  However, for all that, even Intel CPUs are underutilized from a performance standpoint.  Folks would rather have excess capacity than efficiency - hence AMD's shortfall.

 

"Baby Pavilion" - my HP Pavilion dv4-2045dx - has an AMD Turion II mobile CPU tag-teamed with AMD's Mobility Radeon HD4200 mobile chipset.  The CPU itself is a dual-core mobile derivation of the Athlon II and Phenom II - like them, it supports AMD's version of EPT/SLAT.  That means this is a MOBILE CPU that supports server-class virtualization out of the box.  However, it was launched with Windows 7 (not 8) - which didn't support Hyper-V.  It also predates AMD's Fusion APU - like Turion II/Athlon II/Phenom II, they all support EPT/SLAT out of the box.  (Intel, by comparison, is late to the EPT/SLAT party on the mobile side - it took the mobile version of Core-I to even get there.)  You may want that sheer performance of an Intel CPU - but how often do you actually use it?  (In other words, why are you paying for performance that you won't use?)

 

In short, I agree that AMD CPU performance underwhelms compared to Intel - however, how much is that overwhelming (admittedly) Intel CPU performance advantage actually put to use by users?

 

That is why I replaced 7 with the Technical Preview of 10 on "Baby Pavilion" - so I can actually leverage the EPT/SLAT for development on the move; that is something that Intel flat-out does NOT have on any mobile CPU of the same age - in fact, it doesn't have it on many mobile CPUs at all - even of the current generation.  If you claim you need more performance, why aren't you using it?

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The issue isn't features (AMD actually has more CPUs, and at lower price points, that support EPT/SLAT than Intel does) but sheer performance - AMD CPUs are outperformed by Intel CPUs at the same price points.  However, for all that, even Intel CPUs are underutilized from a performance standpoint.  Folks would rather have excess capacity than efficiency - hence AMD's shortfall.

 

"Baby Pavilion" - my HP Pavilion dv4-2045dx - has an AMD Turion II mobile CPU tag-teamed with AMD's Mobility Radeon HD4200 mobile chipset.  The CPU itself is a dual-core mobile derivation of the Athlon II and Phenom II - like them, it supports AMD's version of EPT/SLAT.  That means this is a MOBILE CPU that supports server-class virtualization out of the box.  However, it was launched with Windows 7 (not 8) - which didn't support Hyper-V.  It also predates AMD's Fusion APU - like Turion II/Athlon II/Phenom II, they all support EPT/SLAT out of the box.  (Intel, by comparison, is late to the EPT/SLAT party on the mobile side - it took the mobile version of Core-I to even get there.)  You may want that sheer performance of an Intel CPU - but how often do you actually use it?  (In other words, why are you paying for performance that you won't use?)

 

In short, I agree that AMD CPU performance underwhelms compared to Intel - however, how much is that overwhelming (admittedly) Intel CPU performance advantage actually put to use by users?

 

That is why I replaced 7 with the Technical Preview of 10 on "Baby Pavilion" - so I can actually leverage the EPT/SLAT for development on the move; that is something that Intel flat-out does NOT have on any mobile CPU of the same age - in fact, it doesn't have it on many mobile CPUs at all - even of the current generation.  If you claim you need more performance, why aren't you using it?

Does it really matter from a business standpoint if that performance (agreed that mostly no one uses) if it makes them sell chips ?

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Here I thought those ###### E-series CPU 's were selling like hot cakes.

They should be - especially for anyone into development.  However, the excuse is that they are outperformed in terms of benchmarks per core by Intel CPUs.  However, what are users DOING with that extra/excess performance?  By and large, it sits underused, if not flat out UNused.  That extra performance goes into the vault and sits there.  (Sounds more like the "nobody gets fired for buying IBM" meme - substituting Intel for IBM.  You pay for the extra performance - but won't use it after paying for it.  Sounds like buying a Ferrari and garaging it, despite being near an autobahn - how silly would such a thing be?)

 

The same can be said of the Turion II - the immediate predecessor to Fusion; like Fusion, it supports AMD-V (their version of EPT/SLAT).  I, for one, have been SUGGESTING Fusion for development on the move - entirely BECAUSE of AMD-V support (and I didn't know about Turion II's support of the same feature).  Leave it to Intel to push the one advantage it had (performance per core) and to dismiss Hyper-V support (which Intel lacked until VERY recently in terms of either mobile CPUs or non-Core CPUs).

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Does it really matter from a business standpoint if that performance (agreed that mostly no one uses) if it makes them sell chips ?

Ever heard of "benchmarketing"?

 

No less than MaximumPC decried such tactics in the days of the GPU Wars (between ATI and NVidia, and between ATI and 3dfx before that) because using benchmarks that differed from how real-world users actually use the products under benchmarks did users a dis-service. However, the same thing has been happening far longer in the CPU Wars (between Intel and AMD) and it's cheered - despite our being quite aware that these same benchmarks are largely bogus?

 

Are we - as users, mind you - that clueless and shallow?

 

In other words, I'm not blaming Intel (or AMD, for that matter) - instead, I'm blaming us, as we know better.

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They should be

 

No they should. The e-series CPU's run like ball sack

 

Very simple tasks max those CPU's to 100%

 

I had either an e-200 or an e-300 cpu in my office yesterday .... it was excruciating.

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The first day AMD goes out of business is the day Intel raises prices and charges $400+ for a pentium, let alone an entry level i7. AMD is really the only proper company that kept Intel and their prices in check. It will be a sad day indeed.

 

On another note, AMD made x64 processors popular. Why not do the same to x128? I know technology at this point can't take advantage of it, but we said that back in ~2001 when they realeased x64. It could really be the thing that saves them.

 

Just my 2 cents...

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No they should. The e-series CPU's run like ball sack

 

Very simple tasks max those CPU's to 100%

 

I had either an e-200 or an e-300 cpu in my office yesterday .... it was excruciating.

What are you using it for, warwagon?

 

And how much more would an Intel CPU (for the same task) cost you?

 

Note that I agreed that AMD per-core performance underwhelms compared to Intel - my issue has to do with flat-out USAGE of the performance advantage that Intel has.

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I just did a job for someone with an E-series CPU in a packard bell computer. It was constantly freezing, and couldn't even handle basic web browsing and that was in a machine with 8GB of RAM. In the end I just advised the guy to get his money back and refurbished an old medion PC he had (HTPC with a blu ray drive) with a first generation Core 2 Duo and it really blew the E series machine out of the water, which is a joke given how old that C2D is.

 

Those things really are the pits when it comes to PC processors. A product AMD should never have released in my opinion.

 

I am however still a massive fan of their graphics cards.

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No they should. The e-series CPU's run like ball sack.

e-2x0 to 4x0?  Yes.  1x00 and 2x00?  Yes.  Let me know when you've tried the 6x00 series before making statements like that.  I really doubt they're any worse than Atoms with current models.

 

I mean, first gen Atoms still run like crap too, but we don't compare anything to those because it'd be silly.

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The first day AMD goes out of business is the day Intel raises prices and charges $400+ for a pentium, let alone an entry level i7. AMD is really the only proper company that kept Intel and their prices in check. It will be a sad day indeed.

 

On another note, AMD made x64 processors popular. Why not do the same to x128? I know technology at this point can't take advantage of it, but we said that back in ~2001 when they realeased x64. It could really be the thing that saves them.

 

Just my 2 cents...

 

the day that intel try to do funny thing like this would be their  doom

 

US DOJ , THE EU and countless govermental agency would jump on them and break intel into seprete companies and heavily fine them

 

No way in hell they would steak something as important, and just let one company have total control over the market

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As a general rule we use, or recommend, CPU's with a Passmark score of 2000 or above. AMD's A-series desktop processors are decent performers with most customer's happy with them. E-series are painful and are not recommended. Even with an SSD slower E-series based machines stall periodically. No CPU should stall with a new SSD installed. I like AMD and hope they hang in there. But, they are serious need a couple of generation of die shrinks to stay competitive with Intel. Intel's TDP 10-watt J2900 (CPUmark 2063) is almost as powerful as AMD"s 65-watt A7300 (CPUmark 2150). So, the future is not looking bright for AMD at this point.

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I just did a job for someone with an E-series CPU in a packard bell computer. It was constantly freezing, and couldn't even handle basic web browsing and that was in a machine with 8GB of RAM. In the end I just advised the guy to get his money back and refurbished an old medion PC he had (HTPC with a blu ray drive) with a first generation Core 2 Duo and it really blew the E series machine out of the water, which is a joke given how old that C2D is.

Exactly

 

As a general rule we use, or recommend, CPU's with a Passmark score of 2000 or above. AMD's A-series desktop processors are decent performers with most customer's happy with them. E-series are painful and are not recommended. Even with an SSD slower E-series based machines stall periodically. No CPU should stall with a new SSD installed. I like AMD and hope they hang in there. But, they are serious need a couple of generation of die shrinks to stay competitive with Intel. Intel's TDP 10-watt J2900 (CPUmark 2063) is almost as powerful as AMD"s 65-watt A7300 (CPUmark 2150). So, the future is not looking bright for AMD at this point.

 

and Exactly.

 

E-Series CPU's ######.

 

When you get an E-Series CPU into your office that hasn't been updated to 8.1 yet, you cry :D

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This machine was actually running 8.1 and it was still horrible to try and work on.

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This machine was actually running 8.1 and it was still horrible to try and work on.

 

Correct. It runs like BALLS on any OS. I've had customers buy laptops and desktops with E-series CPU's and say 1 of 2 things or both

 

1) Can you speed it up it's ran slow since I got it.

2) It's even slower than my old XP machines I was replacing.

 

I usually tell them the nicest way I can.

 

Not much I can do for you, that computer is a piece of crap.

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I think the place he went to (currys) just wanted to make sure they sold him something, even if it wasn't fit for purpose. Using Photoshop on an E1... yeah, right. Lol.

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