AMD - Piledriver chitchat

[HalloweenJack]

just been reading an article - is the time right for Samsung to buy AMD?

[scaryjim]

just been reading an article - is the time right for Samsung to buy AMD?

I saw that too. As far as I could tell, its basic thrust was "AMD's in a really good place if they had any money". I don't think we'll see anyone buying AMD in the near future (not sure what consequences thatwould have for the x86 cross-licensing agreements, for one thing), but I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a big strategic partnership between Samsung and AMD. Samsung have already used AMD's semi-custom business for one series of laptops; if they genuinely want to get into server and look at alternative designs for mobile then using AMD's semi-custom business would provide all the benefits without the huge investment and risk of buying the business....

[HalloweenJack]

Very disappointed with the slant of the article - very anti AMD with some basic errors - AMD have actually increased revenue for 3 quarters now (increase in 2nd , flat 3rd and increase in 4th) ; also licencing Samsung FINFet is a smart move - intel had to throw billions at it to get the process to work as intended , and even now - haswell was late (22nm finfet) broadwell desktop is late (yes BGA is here) ; in fact some could say Samsung could get 14nm to the market first if the rumours of the problems with morganfield are true it`ll be 2016 for intel and 14nm on mobile.


not impressed with the author - but why do I think Samsung wont buy AMD? Samsung are getting out of X86 and the PC market - so why buy a PC supplier? although a big partnership could happen I don't think Samsung will buy them

[scaryjim]

Very disappointed with the slant of the article - very anti AMD ...

Interestingly, if you read between the lines they're saying AMD are in a really strong position for every market but mobile. And tbh that has to be the case if anyone's going to buy AMD - you wouldn't buy a company that was going to the dogs.

The whole rumour-mill around this makes no sense: it's basically saying AMD's failing and needs to find a buyer, but that'll be really easy because AMD's in a great strategic position!

[DanceswithUnix]

Interestingly, if you read between the lines they're saying AMD are in a really strong position for every market but mobile. And tbh that has to be the case if anyone's going to buy AMD - you wouldn't buy a company that was going to the dogs.

The whole rumour-mill around this makes no sense: it's basically saying AMD's failing and needs to find a buyer, but that'll be really easy because AMD's in a great strategic position!

I think one of the problems AMD have is people have been talking about the death of AMD for so long that some people believe it.

However, I think it is true that AMD would benefit from an injection of cash and the image of being underpinned by a global giant that no-one believes is going anywhere.

If AMD were kept as a wholly owned subsiduary rather than merged then I doubt there would be a license agreement problem (though no doubt Intel would try and fight it because they are like that). It would probably give Samsung a better ability to fend of Nvidia in patent disputes if it sources all graphics from AMD as well.

I don't expect it to happen, but I can see where people are coming from.

[watercooled]

I saw this issue mentioned on SA forums a while back, seems it might be legit:
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/198214-198214

It will be interesting to see how this is fixed; a short-term solution could be just disallowing access to some memory.

IIRC the 970, like some Kepler cards, can come in more than one die configuration depending on things like location of die defects; I wonder then if certain configurations suffer from this issue while others are OK? I've not yet looked into it to see if it's possible - just a thought..

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

AMD Kaveri refresh:

http://wccftech.com/amd-allegedely-r...h-summer-2015/

[HalloweenJack]

Kaveri will be fully DX12 compliant as its a GCN part

[DanceswithUnix]

Article on Zen CPUs (thank you Google translate): http://www.sweclockers.com/nyhet/199...r-14-nanometer

Suggests a 95W 8 core APU.

[watercooled]

If I'm understanding the table correctly, the Kaveri refresh might be arriving quite soon: http://www.pcper.com/news/Processors...-X4-Processors

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqWhbga7qx0



Not a bad win for AMD!!

[watercooled]

Hardly news but interesting nonetheless considering AFAIK there's been nothing official from AMD yet: http://wccftech.com/amd-putting-fini...r9-300-series/

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Rumour of Chinese investment in AMD by China’s Loongson Technology:

http://www.vrworld.com/2015/02/09/am...ic-investment/

[watercooled]

Interesting, I suppose it could be related to their semi-custom business.

[watercooled]

I wonder if the Samsung 14nm announcement is any indication of GloFo progress? Granted this is probably the 'early' 14nm process and not the one intended for high-power devices, but it could still be useful for AMD's SoCs?

[DanceswithUnix]

New A8 7650K Kaveri out today?

http://www.fudzilla.com/news/process...rms-new-kaveri