Interesting deal. On the surface it doesn't make much sense beyond diversifying AMDs product line to give them better income predictability, but perhaps they have some Global Foundry wafer allocation they can pass over to FPGA use.
I remember the last time they had a successful lead over Intel and decided to acquire ATi with their flush cash… They got too complacent, lost direction, almost went bankrupt with debt and ended up in the doldrums for 10 years before they could have another competitive product…
TBF the idea behind ATI acquisition wasn't the problem, was it?
More the execution to absorb them in a proper way that didn't bleed them dry? Obviously Intel also got their stuff together for Core too and wiped them out in the consumer space top to bottom.
Terbinator
TBF the idea behind ATI acquisition wasn't the problem, was it?
More the execution to absorb them in a proper way that didn't bleed them dry? Obviously Intel also got their stuff together for Core too and wiped them out in the consumer space top to bottom.
Yeah you can see the good idea behind it. Also tbf I was a teenager at the time and knew nothing about it other than it was apparent pretty soon after that they are cocking it up!
Actually this ‘kind of’ makes sense to me as an acquisition.
When you consider that ‘everyone’ seems to be jumping on the AI bandwagon it would make sense for AMD to have their own AI too. They've already worked with Xilinx so they know they can work together well.
Just think if AMD were to start adding custom accelerators into their gpu/cpu's for certain tasks, similar to how they're adding custom bits to ARM cpu's these days to speed up key areas.
As long as AMD can keep driver support as a high priority that could really serve them well in servers and even on workstations, especially if they could come up with a real competitor to cuda.
This is not good news on two levels. One,is AMD will have significantly more debt,just like they did with ATI,which took them a decade to pay off. It also meant they had to reduce R and D,etc.
It also means,us the consumer will pay for the increased debt burden one way or another. That means increased tierisation and price increases. Intel did exactly the same - all those billion dollar purchases have to be paid somewhere.
Zhaoman
I remember the last time they had a successful lead over Intel and decided to acquire ATi with their flush cash… They got too complacent, lost direction, almost went bankrupt with debt and ended up in the doldrums for 10 years before they could have another competitive product…
Totally fair point, but i believe with Lisa heading the way with Papermaster, i feel that history may not be one to repeat itself.
LSG501
Actually this ‘kind of’ makes sense to me as an acquisition.
When you consider that ‘everyone’ seems to be jumping on the AI bandwagon it would make sense for AMD to have their own AI too.
You don't want to use FPGA for AI. There was a time a few years ago when it made sense, like bitcoin mining went fpga for a while.
But there are just too many ASIC dedicated implementations out there now, that ship has sailed. Specially when the main users like Google have their own silicon.
I think it would make more sense if AMD bought shares in the company. At least that would give them some leverage over the company.
Buying a company is not only the upfront costs,but all the other costs of essentially running another company. Intel also paid less for Altera.
Terbinator
TBF the idea behind ATI acquisition wasn't the problem, was it?
More the execution to absorb them in a proper way that didn't bleed them dry? Obviously Intel also got their stuff together for Core too and wiped them out in the consumer space top to bottom.
That was the thing though: the biggest problem AMD had afterwards was they still needed their fabs to be competitive and they owned those.
What they were never able to do in all those years was to have used Radeon products to expand the volume for their fabs/GF.
At the end of the day, fabrication is a volume game and with
out scale it's a big money sink.
AMD is as Awesome as Intel, no doubt about that… tried both brands at the peek… and next time we go AMD instead of Intel… call it a cycle of life… just wish they both was more competetative head to head though, would benefit both consumers and professionals… mayebe even with a combination of both brands in one machine.
This would bring a lot of re-programmable IP to AMD's use that would certainly bolster the GFx offering and a lot of interfacing IP for CPU's I certainly get the benefits that could be had with Xilinx.
CAT-THE-FIFTH
This is not good news on two levels. One,is AMD will have significantly more debt,just like they did with ATI,which took them a decade to pay off. It also meant they had to reduce R and D,etc.
It also means,us the consumer will pay for the increased debt burden one way or another. That means increased tierisation and price increases. Intel did exactly the same - all those billion dollar purchases have to be paid somewhere.
I totally agree with this comment. AMD shouldn't follow INtel's and Nvidia's path to this kind of policy of buying and destroying. Innovation thrives on diversity.
This does explain the recent obsession about margins rather than marketshare or mindshare as when playing the acquisitions and mergers game, Wall Street's opinions are the most important thing and the stockmarket is obsessed about margins and short-term thinking.
John_Amstrad
I totally agree with this comment. AMD shouldn't follow INtel's and Nvidia's path to this kind of policy of buying and destroying. Innovation thrives on diversity.
I can't see why they would in this case. Gaining access to Xilinx 5G technology could be very lucrative, in the US and elsewhere, with Huawei being pushed out by Trump's anti-communist/anti-China paranoia.
Friesiansam
John_Amstrad
I totally agree with this comment. AMD shouldn't follow INtel's and Nvidia's path to this kind of policy of buying and destroying. Innovation thrives on diversity.
I can't see why they would in this case. Gaining access to Xilinx 5G technology could be very lucrative, in the US and elsewhere, with Huawei being pushed out by Trump's anti-communist/anti-China paranoia.
You've hit the nail there, 5G, add it to the mobile ryzen cpus and it will be a big increase in feature set.
Not to mention the other uses of FPGAs.