
AMD Is on Fire - x0054
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4195761
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Arzh
So this is the good form of "on Fire" right?

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monocasa
Yeah, like "killing it".

I mean, the good form of "killing it".

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xellisx
Thankfully it's not "Killing IT".

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ksec
I am secretly hoping that at least for Desktop Mac, Apple could switch to AMD.
They could leave the Mac Pro and iMac Pro for Xeon ( Or they could choose AMD
and that will be EPYC ) But right now it is very hard to argue for purchasing
Intel when AMD offer many more cores for lower price at the expense of ~20%
peak single threaded performance.

Unless Intel offer Apple very good deal but I thought part of the Intel / AMD
agreement was Intel can not use any tactics to undercut AMD with incentives or
rebate or something similar.

At the same time Intel is like assembling old Apple alumni from CPU to GPU.

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monocasa
My ideal would be if AMD gives an HDL license to Apple, and they make semi
custom chips with the ex-Intrinsity guys going to town with power micro
optimizations making a nice AMD mobile chip. It'd be kind of the best of both
worlds for Apple with an x86 mobile chip that they control. And it'd be a nice
way for AMD to differentiate itself as I'm sure that Intel would never in a
million years give full HDL to Apple.

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t3soro
What's RTL stand for?

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monocasa
Meant to say HDL. I shouldn't HN before I drink my coffee. But to answer your
question, RTL is Register Transfer Language, so the EDIF or equivalent.

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humantiy
Glad to see this. Used AMD back about 10 years ago, but last two builds I've
done were intel given they couldn't keep up with performance or price of
intel. I have stuck with ATI/AMD cards though since they have seemed to stay
competitive with nvidia and timing wise they seems to be the best bang for the
buck.

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SteveNuts
If they can use their boost from Ryzen sales to bolster their graphics
division, they'll be in a great position.

Yesterday I was talking with some coworkers about a new computer build and one
of them had recently purchased Ryzen and the other was thinking about it.

So at least anecdotally, AMD does indeed appear to be on fire.

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LarryDarrell
My next build probably will be Ryzen based, but... my i7-3770 is still
handling all I throw at it.

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SteveNuts
Yeah, I'm in the same boat as you, however I want to add a second graphics
card since my monitor is 4k and my motherboard only has one full speed PCI
express slot.

The only thing keeping me from pulling the trigger is the obscene memory
pricing right now.

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paulie_a
AMD has been undervalued for years due to short sellers. They release a better
than expected earnings report and the stock goes down 10 percent. It's always
been the whipping boy on Wall Street. But a great stock to profit from on a
very cyclical basis when those shorts go nowhere.

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PopsiclePete
How are their mobile offerings? Would be nice for Intel to get some
competition in that space!

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johnvanommen
This is a great example of capitalism working properly:

Intel has been 'phoning it in' for nearly a decade now, because their products
had a significant lead over AMD, particularly in performance-per-watt.

Now AMD has taken the lead, and it's going to take years for Intel to catch
up. (Because CPU innovation moves at a glacial pace.)

The winners are the consumers.

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smaddox
AMD has taken the lead in performance per watt??? Do you have a source?
Everything I've seen shows Intel is either matched or better. If you also take
capitol cost into account, maybe AMD is in the lead; I don't really know.

Either way, Intel is soon to release the first 10nm process product, which
should provide a significant boost, as long as the architecture can take
advantage of it.

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zaarn
You mean the 10nm that has been delayed for 6 years now? That has so bad
yields Intel has internally just renamed 12nm to 10nm and use that? The 10nm
that has 50% yields while being 12nm _THAT_ 10nm?

For Performance per Watt you can check this article:
[http://www.pcgameshardware.de/CPU-CPU-154106/Tests/CPU-
Test-...](http://www.pcgameshardware.de/CPU-CPU-154106/Tests/CPU-Test-
Benchmark-AMD-Intel-675663/)

The current Intel top dog against AMD in terms of perf per watt is the Core i3
8300.

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smaddox
Not sure where you heard that Intel renamed 12nm to 10nm, but you're probably
thinking of another fab. Intel's 10nm cell density is comparable to Global
Foundry's 7nm [1]. And yes, Intel's 10nm process is _very late_ ; that doesn't
mean it's not coming.

As far as yields go, they're constantly improving, and they depend on the
processor, so your claim that the yield is 50% is either ignorant or
intentionally misleading.

I checked out your link, but all I saw was price per performance numbers, not
performance per watt. Price per performance is an important metric for gamers,
but not so much for servers, which is Intel's bread and butter. In the server
space, performance per watt is what matters. If you have some evidence that
AMD has taken the lead in performance per watt, I would love to see it.

[1]
[https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/7191-iedm-2017-intel-...](https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/7191-iedm-2017-intel-
versus-globalfoundries-leading-edge.html)

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zaarn
>Intel's 10nm cell density is comparable to Global Foundry's 7nm [1]. And yes,
Intel's 10nm process is very late; that doesn't mean it's not coming.

That was Q4/17\. Latest information:
[https://www.semiaccurate.com/2018/08/02/intel-guts-10nm-
to-g...](https://www.semiaccurate.com/2018/08/02/intel-guts-10nm-to-get-it-
out-the-door/)

The 10nm parts due for Q4/19 (!) are 12nm more than 10nm.

The report also mentions the real 10nm yields, 8-10%, targets at 50-60%. I
admit that I'm not sure what the current yield on their 12nm is but I would
guess it would have to be the target.

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smaddox
That article is completely devoid of any technical information supporting the
claim that Intel nerfed the 10nm scaling.

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artsyxxx
They're hiring like mad in Markham, Canada..

