Raja is cooked. vega is a flop 20% over furyX and terrible power with a node shrink. nope.avi this is a non compete clause being enacted before he leaves
Because it costs AMD exactly as much to make as the Vega 64, only they get so much less profit from it? Don't expect to see any manufactured until the cryptomining boom cools off enough that they have to put the "graphics" back in GPU.
I suspect his job is safe as long as the cryptomining boom continues. Remember, computational use of GPUs has been a key AMD strategy since they mortgaged* the company to buy ATI. While nvidia certainly has the supercomputer GPU computing market to themselves, AMD really never gave up the idea of moving CPU work to the GPU (and look at AVX[256-512] to see how seriously Intel is about preventing that). Cryptomining sales are proof that at least some people buy AMD for GPU computing.
That's not how chip manufacturing works. The Vega 56 product exists because not everyone can afford the 64, and because the 56 product can absorb Vega dies that either have a few defective compute units, or which wouldn't meet energy/thermal specs if all 64 NCUs were enabled. It can also absorb lower-binned HBM production, which are available at a lower cost. You're correct that its a lower per-unit profit, but all of these cards have really healthy margins if you only account for the material manufacturing costs -- most of the investment is in R&D of the architecture and other major expenses include validation of the silicon, neither of those costs increase as a result of Vega 56, yet Vega 56 increases revenue and and market-share. The only risk posed is that a lower-tier product can cannibalize higher-tier product sales, but that's only true if you're not selling as many of the high-tier product as you can manufacture; in normal markets that tends not to be true until later in the product's lifecycle, but its certainly not true now with the crypto boom going on and won't be true for the entire lifecycle of Vega if the trend holds.
I do wish power consumption were better under control with Vega, and people who under-volt have been able to get much lower power consumption without giving up much performance. I also wish Vega had come out sooner, and its a big headline to say "AMD's best and latest only competes with nVidia's year-old GPU", but we also have to remember that this means we're comparing a brand-new product with brand-new drivers that no one's had much time to understand and optimize for, to a product from nVidia where all of those things have had a year to mature. I think over the next year Vega is going to look better and better, whereas Pascal doesn't have much room left to grow.
Raja isn't going anywhere, people forget that the graphics business has seen about 20% growth year-over-year since he's returned, which is huge given their market position. Besides that, the word on the street is that Navi is the first GPU that was fully brought up under Raja, not Vega. I suspect, as they do over at Hot Hardware, that AMD will bring in someone to handle more of the day-to-day business of the Graphics Unit, with Raja remaining at the head, but giving him more time to focus on the technical side of things; he's done the business thing for a number of years, but he's an engineer, not a suit.
Kinda this. That being said RX 480 when it was launched was a valid buy for mid-tier gaming purposes, assuming you could get it for MSRP. Even better if you got one of the few reference style RX 480s that were advertised as being 4GB but could be unlocked to 8GB with flashing.
Ever since then, mining took off and RX 400s and RX 500s are nowhere to be found for rational prices, so while, yeah AMD's stuff is apparently selling "well" it's not actually going into the hands of people using it for a gaming PC. I imagine a "lot" of that stock is going to miners around the world, but supposedly it's quite a bit more popular in Asia than even the US.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure money made with miners is worth less than money made with gamers, so it’s really a bad, bad flop all around.
If people stop buying AMD’s new GPUs all of a sudden then, yeah, Raja would be in trouble. As long as they sell well he won’t be — AMD doesn’t make products to please the ah-so-important gamers, AMD makes products to sell to whomever is willing to buy them, and the higher the margins, the happier AMD (and their business partners) will be.
Because if the value of the crypto currencies crashes, the difficulty gets to high or a new, better (performance/watt and $) GPU gets released all these polaris chips end up on ebay for cheap and AMD won't be able to sell any new ones and price will crash. That is the sole reason for these mining cards because they can't be resold.
That stuff would have happened anyway; the GPUs would end up on eBay at some point or the other, and a new GPU is always going to be released in the next 6-18 months. If prices go back to MSRP people will rather buy a new one than a used mining GPU (unless the price difference is MSRP -50% or some such), too.
So why should AMD care, exactly? A sale is a sale, and a sale now is better than a potential sale in the future. AMD needs money, mining craze is making them money.
From the business perspective, there's an important part to mindshare, advertising, and building up customer loyalty with well priced and well performing products, with good support.
Similar to the anxieties AIB partners like ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, and more have on selling lots of card stock to miners, this also affects AMD/Radeon in a direct way.
Miners are less likely to purchase a product again due to good performance, as they ideally only care about MH/s/watt or some other derivative function to determine the best card(s) to fill mining rigs with. If Nvidia had better performance/watt for mining, then I can bet you many miners would start buying Nvidia tomorrow, and try to sell off or claim warranty on heavily stressed/used GPUs. Abusive warranty claims is another thing. As mining operations puts near ~100% load on the card 24/7, a card used for mining then claiming warranty on it a few months before warranty ends to get a new card happened the last time during the mining craze happened with bitcoin and such, and that overall cut into the profit(s) made with the original card sales. A GPU under ~100% utilization 24/7 over the course of 3 years of warranty is going to be a lot more worn out than even the heaviest gamer's ~70% load for 6 ~ 8 hours of heavy gaming per day for 3 years.
Regular PC builders and gamers are more likely to be repeat AMD customers if they liked their original AMD card, had good service, and good performance, and want more of the same in a new, more powerful, card.
There's actually more value to be had in the long term selling a video card to a PC gamer than there is to a miner. Sure you get the short term profits now, but you don't really know if miners are going to burn you out with warranty claims on heavily abused GPUs within a warranty period that was calculated as if the card was only seeing the nominal use in a typical gaming PC.
I'm kinda surprised on saying this myself, but while reading and watching a couple of reviews I am thinking - it has definitely higher power consumption, but it still delivers very good performance. Not the top, but as close as it comes, given completely different design that GeForce Pascal has, and it is not big issue. Sure, it requires you to be more careful about buying PSU, but that's all for true enthusiasts. And I have a feeling, as an owner of GTX1070 - there is no point in water cooling the 1070. But Vega? It makes WC exciting again!
I'd assume that any for sale until the mining boom ends really have that many failed ALUs. If you see any for sale, it probably means GoFlo isn't doing much of a job and AMD will be looking elsewhere (I'd expect they can sell as many CPUs as GoFlo can make, something that hasn't been true since the wild days of Athlon64).
Nah, Vega isn't his child, Navi is. The guy has been busy for a long time, probably dealing with having to report to the board of directors at AMD that Vega isn't going to be stellar.
It's evident that AMD hasn't provided enough resource to get drivers complete, or indeed to have timely top-to-bottom product refreshes with Polaris, and Vega will have big time delays between products.
As a professional product, Vega is excellent. It's only the gaming aspect that is ... uninspiring. This is unacceptable, but the design brief was pre-Raja.
He's back since 2013 and, as far as I remember, entered straight into a leading position. Chip designs take long, but not that long for him not to have decisive influence on Vega.
It should be really easy to calculate. Where does GCN end. Well it ends with Vega. Therefore not Raja's baby.
Vega was probably in the stages that gave Raja opportunity for input but still can we really blame Raja for not making Vega (GCN card) a burner? It would be like blaming the Zen team for not making Evacuator better than Skylake.
I say this as the owner of a gaggle of 1080's (Ti and non and 980's and 780's and on and on)... As above, I think this is not only cynical, but factually invalid. Vega is selling like super-heated hot-cakes. Whatever quibbles over power and price, they are flying off the shelf faster than they can be made. Honestly, I think this is what it is described. He's been on a whirlwind and wants to take a long vacation.
I think Product Management deserves a lot of the blame, here.
"We entered the high-end gaming, professional workstation and machine intelligence markets with Vega ..."
It's like they said "we can only afford to build one big chip, so it has to do everything!" In the networking industry, it would be referred to as a "God box". What they needed to do was prioritize their markets and pare down the feature set, accordingly. Kinda like how Nvidia has the P100 mainly for compute, and the P102 for graphics. Well, if you can't afford to build both, then pick one and don't try to combine both into the same product, or it's little surprise that it'll be big, hot, and expensive to fab. Not to mention taking forever to design and test.
Nope. They can't afford to make 2 chips and they can't afford to leave a market. Considering what they have to work with and what they have to go against this is about all that could ever be expected from them. If you don't like it then you simply dont understand it.
"Considering what they have to work with and what they have to go against this is about all that could ever be expected from them."
The market doesn't give you a handicap because of "what you have to work with and what you have to go against".
By trying to do everything, they ended up doing some important things badly. Vega's graphics performance is crap, considering its size, memory bandwidth, and power. Vega 64 is stillborn, as a high-end gaming product. In effect, they *did* leave their biggest and most stable market!
In the short term, mining will compensate. But this has a longer-term cost that game & VR developers have little incentive to optimize for Vega, so mining isn't a perfect substitute for those markets.
Moreover, Nvidia's V100 is about 5x as fast at training neural networks and has far better scaling to multiple GPUs for that & HPC applications. So, that's another market where half-way measures just aren't good enough to compete in a meaningful way.
If you refuse to see the breadth and depth of the impact Vega's substantial short-comings will have, then you simply don't understand it.
Well, obviously I don't know the internal workings of AMD, but I have to wonder the resources AMD have been allocating to GPU development in recent years. AMD seemed to take a strategy to focus on becoming competitive with Intel in CPUs, resulting in Ryzen, which seems to be rather successful. But at the same time as Ryzen's development, AMD were reducing their R&D budget. I'm inferring that that means less resources available for GPU development. Now, maybe they fully-funded development of a next-generation (post GCN) architecture (that sounds like the best long-term strategic move if they have the cash reserves to do it), which would leave new GCN development on a shoestring budget.
If my guesses are correct, one can hardly blame Raja Koduri for RTC's lack of competitiveness with NVIDIA and the performance of its GPUs up to this point. One can certainly not blame him for AMD's inability to break into the HPC and machine learning space with their GPUs, because AMD has certainly not been funding the necessary tool chain development to compete there.
If it's true this is a soft-layout, then shame. RX 400 and RX 500 was a hit, and Vega was a financial hit. If it isn't and he's really just taking time off... I wonder if I write a fancy letter like that, can I get 3 months off from work?
You can, but don't expect to have a job after 3 months. Extended leave like this is typically only available for people who are on the military reserve and leave to serve their country or may be on maternal leave (but I believe 3 months is a bit longer than most companies already allow).
The comment was meant moreso in the way of the average Joe's hourly wage as opposed to an in-office salary kind of job.
I imagine the typical grocery store, restaurant, or gas station kinds of jobs to only offer the government mandated minimum for maternity/paternity leave.
The better the job you have, the more benefits you'll have, the more likely you'll have more vacation/PTO, insurance options, 401k/retirement options, maternity leave, etc.
Before everyone trashes AMD and the disaster (both performance wise and power/heat wise) that is Vega, please keep in mind that nVidia tesla will never come out without a company like AMD pushing nVidia. The same is true for next gen Intel CPUs. So, you can hate AMD for its products, its crappy drivers, buggy motherboard chipsets, whatever, but do love them for the fact that their CPUs and GPUs push other companies to go forward with hardware that you will actually buy. Think of AMD as a catalyst for Intel's and nVidia's future products.
Heck, that hasn't been more evident than this year! Just the rumblings of Vega got nVidia to release the 1080 Ti and pull the cover off of Volta. I wouldn't be surprised if, in a couple of months, they would've just slapped an 1180 sticker on 1080 Ti and push Volta off a while longer if it wasn't for Vega.
Likewise, Ryzen and Threadripper got Intel moving faster than I've seen them move in years. So much so that they even stumbled a bit. I can almost guarantee that we would not have seen an 18 core enthusiast chip from them if it wasn't for TR. I also seriously wonder if six and eight core Coffee Lake chips would have been non-extreme (X) chips if it wasn't for Ryzen.
Even the best, most beloved companies will sit on their hands and take things slow if there are no significant market pressures, there's just a tremendous cost savings doing so. I'm really looking forward to what Navi will push nVidia to do. Tiny, 7nm dies linked via infinity fabric will eliminate yield concerns and heat/power usage should drop like a rock (you don't need more than one of the, let's say, eight dies running to draw your desktop). nVidia is clearly the better GPU architect, even when not being pushed. Put AMD back nipping at their heels and we are going to see some amazing tech come out in the next five years!
It's been quite a while since Nvidia's release schedule was effected by AMD. They release a 25-30% faster part pretty well like clockwork whatever AMD do. I suspect someone in Nvidia has calculated that's the ideal jump to get people to upgrade while not being impossible to maintain, so as long as they keep doing that people keep buying new cards and Nvidia keeps making money.
The biggest enemy of current NVidia is NVidia of one-two years ago - if the graphic cards (for example) they make aren't much better than the older ones, fewer people would upgrade. Intel is in the same situation - their current processors aren't so much better (from a typical user point of view) than the ones from a couple of years (or even more) ago, so people postpone upgrades.
Not remotely true, unlike CPU manufacturers Gpu manufacturers can't afford to stagnate if they wanna keep selling their products especially with new developments such as mobile, VR and machine learning which would've still pushed Nvidia to innovate even without AMD.
Yeah, mobile is awesome. Qualcomm is doing amazing work even without competition, their mobile CPUs and GPUs are making huge leaps in performance every year.
Lol. Wrong. Nvidia has proven that they don't stagnate when they are ahead. Tesla would come out on time and every bit as good just slightly more expensive.
Over hyped Watt Sucking Vega is a EPIC Gaming Fail, Raja and his team should be sent on permanent leave/fired.
Cred Dead AMD said According to AMD's DON WOLIGROSKI, the Radeon RX Vega performance compared to the likes of NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1080 Ti and the Titan Xp, Vega looks really nice." It seems very likely that RX Vega is going to compete against NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1080 Ti in the flagship enthusiast product department in both price and performance. NONE of these Blatant Lies were even close to what Watt Sucking Vega really was. Also AMD's nefarious disappearing Rebate BS that Falsely made reviewers compare Watt Sucking Vega 56/64 with performance per watt champion Pascal 1070/1080 when in reality because of price Vega 56/64 should be compared to Pascal 1080/1080Ti which DESTROYS Vega. Desperate AMD will do and say anything to fool reviewers and gamers, NOTHING AMD propaganda pumps is to be trusted.
I think we are just not getting what Vega is. It was never meant as a gaming GPU. Why? Because there is no margin in selling it as such.
Consider this. RTG have been selling the Polaris cards as fast as they could make them, to gamers or miners does not matter here. Yet even selling so much the RTG has not had good financial results. Simply put, selling gaming cards is not reallt that profitable.
Vega is a card made to enter the Compute / Professional market that by serendipity can almost compete on the gaming level.
As it is AMD needs cash, lots of cash, to be able to invest in R&D like nvidia can. When they can afford to create gaming GPU like Nvidia does now we might return to have a competitive AMD lineup for gaming.
On the top of my head I can't remember where AMD overstated the Gaming performance of Vega. They have been quite careful to not give performance numbers until the cards launch. Sure, they may have cherrypicked some test results but I don't see where they lied.
Are you not, maybe, confusing AMD provided information with the over hype generated by vega? Most serious analists were expecting the performance we are getting now.
While I don't think it's that extreme, I think there are a number of examples that might fit that.
Going back far enough, the "overclocker's dream" nonsense was not exactly a lie, but it was certainly misleading enough to imply anything about the Fury X would lead to an overclocker's dream.
As far as Vega, I don't think there's anything deliberately extremely misleading, but Raja at one point said they believed that Vega met the goal of 4k at 60 fps. I don't think it's readily agreeable that Vega has made that mark.
Lastly, on what metric would analysts expect the performance they're getting now? There's a significant regression in perf/mm^2, no real progress on perf/w (at least on the cards as they ship in stock configurations), and not much of a gain in IPC over Fiji. I'm not sure why any of that would be expected out of a new GPU Architecture.
Well, I included in serious analysts anyone that wasn't expecting it to beat 1080Ti. Early demos had it at 1080 levels in doom wich is more or less what we are getting on vega 64. It competes with 1080 and 1070. The water cooled one is a joke of a product.
I disagree with that assessment. Nvidia makes a lot of money in the consumer/gaming segment. The real reason AMD can't turn a good profit in gaming is just that their uarch is inefficient. It requires more silicon than Nvidia's architecture and they obstinately keep using ultra expensive HBM for their high end consumer parts.
That's the difference between being able to turn a tidy profit at $499 and barely breaking even.
Reading Raja's letter, I'd say it's pretty clear he's been forced out as RTG's face, he'll probably return from his "sabbatical" as a senior chip designer only.
people saying that vega is a flop and he got fired, well you are looking into from just gaming perspective, for companies, its about money and targets, their target is to get X revenue from this, Y revenue from that and so on. currently polaris and vega are selling like hot cake and their are a massive shortage in the market, AMD doesnt give a damn about if its miners or gamers, as long as they are selling them and getting profit then thats great news and Raja met his targets and beyond, thus it makes him the perfect man for the job.
I agree, as I said before the succes of vega will be determined in the Compute/Pro marquet. Profit wise the gaming market is not the main one considering it costs the same to AMD to build a Vega 64 gaming GPU that it costs them to build the radeon Instinct.
While I can understand the cynicism, sabbaticals in the engineering world are a thing. So, until we hear otherwise, it is entirely reasonable to take him at his word and recognize that if your company and your market will allow such things, there's nothing wrong or sinister with this timing. At his point in the pipe, Q4 is dead. The decisions have been made, the cake is baked, what is going to happen is going to happen and nothing he has to say is going to change it between now and Q1.
I somehow get the feeling almost all the negative commentators here are just gamers and not actual engineering developers. If it's anything like most engineers he probably worked like a dog for months to get the product out and now needs a break to recover.
Ok let me explain it for you. AMD was not going to compete with nvidia for the top spot (1080 ti) in gaming with polaris. This was clear for a long time before release. They MAY compete with navi. Using multiple pieces of silicon overcomes a big barrier to profit for AMD; chip yeild rates. Even nvidia is looking to make something in a similar fashon.
Also nvidia doesnt NEED AMD to compete in order to progress. It will drive down prices yes but nvidia has had a clear advantage in architechture since maxwell and are still pushing forward faster than ever with their biggest chips yet for the 11 series. Just like the 10 series it will be a BIG leap forward while they are already ahead. AMDs only chance is a complete redesign which is navi, which is not untill 2019. 2018 will be owned by nvidia.
As far as this guy. AMD has probably worked him to the bone like most companies trying to play catch up and this is his way of saying "Hey I need some time off. Don't like it? Well then find someone who can do it better or the same for the same ammount of money." I'm sure he deserves a break and AMD will be dying to have him back when his vacation is over. They need navi to be a success.
So this is either a soft-layoff or he has a burn-out. Both options are possible. higher-exec manager where I work had a burn-out as well and was away for 2 month then came back only to be replaced shortly after. Note: he wasn't fired but moved to a lesser position. So what's clear Raja is done has head of RTG.
If P = NP, all those design compromises Raja made in favor of cryptocurrency mining are completely lost. Now they're left with a very mediocre graphics card that costs consumers nearly the same as the superior GTX 1080 ti.
To me, it looks like AMD has been funneling whatever resources they have at Ryzen for the past couple years, and put GPUs on the backburner somewhat. Yeah, they have released some new GPU products, but nothing super exciting like Ryzen. Maybe now that Ryzen's out they can put more more effort into their GPU lineup. It's going to be difficult for them to catch up to Nvidia, just like what happened to them with Intel.
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nunya112 - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
Raja is cooked. vega is a flop 20% over furyX and terrible power with a node shrink. nope.avi this is a non compete clause being enacted before he leavesAmandtec - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
Around here they call it gardening leave. Generally looks better for everybody involved than firing the poor basturd.Samus - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
Why would they fire the guy who cooked up the vega 56, probably the most competitive dollar for dollar offering AMD has had against nvidia in years?wumpus - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
Because it costs AMD exactly as much to make as the Vega 64, only they get so much less profit from it? Don't expect to see any manufactured until the cryptomining boom cools off enough that they have to put the "graphics" back in GPU.I suspect his job is safe as long as the cryptomining boom continues. Remember, computational use of GPUs has been a key AMD strategy since they mortgaged* the company to buy ATI. While nvidia certainly has the supercomputer GPU computing market to themselves, AMD really never gave up the idea of moving CPU work to the GPU (and look at AVX[256-512] to see how seriously Intel is about preventing that). Cryptomining sales are proof that at least some people buy AMD for GPU computing.
ravyne - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
That's not how chip manufacturing works. The Vega 56 product exists because not everyone can afford the 64, and because the 56 product can absorb Vega dies that either have a few defective compute units, or which wouldn't meet energy/thermal specs if all 64 NCUs were enabled. It can also absorb lower-binned HBM production, which are available at a lower cost. You're correct that its a lower per-unit profit, but all of these cards have really healthy margins if you only account for the material manufacturing costs -- most of the investment is in R&D of the architecture and other major expenses include validation of the silicon, neither of those costs increase as a result of Vega 56, yet Vega 56 increases revenue and and market-share. The only risk posed is that a lower-tier product can cannibalize higher-tier product sales, but that's only true if you're not selling as many of the high-tier product as you can manufacture; in normal markets that tends not to be true until later in the product's lifecycle, but its certainly not true now with the crypto boom going on and won't be true for the entire lifecycle of Vega if the trend holds.I do wish power consumption were better under control with Vega, and people who under-volt have been able to get much lower power consumption without giving up much performance. I also wish Vega had come out sooner, and its a big headline to say "AMD's best and latest only competes with nVidia's year-old GPU", but we also have to remember that this means we're comparing a brand-new product with brand-new drivers that no one's had much time to understand and optimize for, to a product from nVidia where all of those things have had a year to mature. I think over the next year Vega is going to look better and better, whereas Pascal doesn't have much room left to grow.
Raja isn't going anywhere, people forget that the graphics business has seen about 20% growth year-over-year since he's returned, which is huge given their market position. Besides that, the word on the street is that Navi is the first GPU that was fully brought up under Raja, not Vega. I suspect, as they do over at Hot Hardware, that AMD will bring in someone to handle more of the day-to-day business of the Graphics Unit, with Raja remaining at the head, but giving him more time to focus on the technical side of things; he's done the business thing for a number of years, but he's an engineer, not a suit.
versesuvius - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
They are selling like hotcakes. What kind of a flop is that? RX 480 and RX 580 did not do bad at all either. What kind of a flop is that?SharpEars - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
Selling for mining purposes, sure, but not to be used as graphics cards.JoeyJoJo123 - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
Kinda this. That being said RX 480 when it was launched was a valid buy for mid-tier gaming purposes, assuming you could get it for MSRP. Even better if you got one of the few reference style RX 480s that were advertised as being 4GB but could be unlocked to 8GB with flashing.Ever since then, mining took off and RX 400s and RX 500s are nowhere to be found for rational prices, so while, yeah AMD's stuff is apparently selling "well" it's not actually going into the hands of people using it for a gaming PC. I imagine a "lot" of that stock is going to miners around the world, but supposedly it's quite a bit more popular in Asia than even the US.
xype - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
Yeah, I’m pretty sure money made with miners is worth less than money made with gamers, so it’s really a bad, bad flop all around.If people stop buying AMD’s new GPUs all of a sudden then, yeah, Raja would be in trouble. As long as they sell well he won’t be — AMD doesn’t make products to please the ah-so-important gamers, AMD makes products to sell to whomever is willing to buy them, and the higher the margins, the happier AMD (and their business partners) will be.
Makaveli - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
I don't understand the logic here Money is Money.How is a miners dollar worth less than a gamer dollar?
Alexvrb - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
You also don't understand sarcasm, apparently. :PMakaveli - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
ya I guess!beginner99 - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
Because if the value of the crypto currencies crashes, the difficulty gets to high or a new, better (performance/watt and $) GPU gets released all these polaris chips end up on ebay for cheap and AMD won't be able to sell any new ones and price will crash. That is the sole reason for these mining cards because they can't be resold.xype - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
That stuff would have happened anyway; the GPUs would end up on eBay at some point or the other, and a new GPU is always going to be released in the next 6-18 months. If prices go back to MSRP people will rather buy a new one than a used mining GPU (unless the price difference is MSRP -50% or some such), too.So why should AMD care, exactly? A sale is a sale, and a sale now is better than a potential sale in the future. AMD needs money, mining craze is making them money.
JoeyJoJo123 - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
From the business perspective, there's an important part to mindshare, advertising, and building up customer loyalty with well priced and well performing products, with good support.Similar to the anxieties AIB partners like ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, and more have on selling lots of card stock to miners, this also affects AMD/Radeon in a direct way.
Miners are less likely to purchase a product again due to good performance, as they ideally only care about MH/s/watt or some other derivative function to determine the best card(s) to fill mining rigs with. If Nvidia had better performance/watt for mining, then I can bet you many miners would start buying Nvidia tomorrow, and try to sell off or claim warranty on heavily stressed/used GPUs. Abusive warranty claims is another thing. As mining operations puts near ~100% load on the card 24/7, a card used for mining then claiming warranty on it a few months before warranty ends to get a new card happened the last time during the mining craze happened with bitcoin and such, and that overall cut into the profit(s) made with the original card sales. A GPU under ~100% utilization 24/7 over the course of 3 years of warranty is going to be a lot more worn out than even the heaviest gamer's ~70% load for 6 ~ 8 hours of heavy gaming per day for 3 years.
Regular PC builders and gamers are more likely to be repeat AMD customers if they liked their original AMD card, had good service, and good performance, and want more of the same in a new, more powerful, card.
There's actually more value to be had in the long term selling a video card to a PC gamer than there is to a miner. Sure you get the short term profits now, but you don't really know if miners are going to burn you out with warranty claims on heavily abused GPUs within a warranty period that was calculated as if the card was only seeing the nominal use in a typical gaming PC.
wumpus - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
AMD's long term goals have been to move as much CPU work onto the GPU, and that is pretty much why they bought ATI in the first place.Leadership in GPU computing isn't a bad thing for AMD, even if they might prefer leadership in graphics.
Flunk - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
Kinda irrelevant what the cards are being used for, sales are sales.xype - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
That seems like a hard concept to grasp, it looks like.Sergio526 - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
They also have to hold back reserve to have enough for the iMac Pros which will have Vega 56 and 64 options.Vatharian - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
I'm kinda surprised on saying this myself, but while reading and watching a couple of reviews I am thinking - it has definitely higher power consumption, but it still delivers very good performance. Not the top, but as close as it comes, given completely different design that GeForce Pascal has, and it is not big issue. Sure, it requires you to be more careful about buying PSU, but that's all for true enthusiasts. And I have a feeling, as an owner of GTX1070 - there is no point in water cooling the 1070. But Vega? It makes WC exciting again!Alexvrb - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
Yeah Vega isn't bad, if you can get one for a decent price. Especially Vega 56.sonicmerlin - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
The margins on such a large die with HBM2 selling for $400 must be atrocious.wumpus - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
I'd assume that any for sale until the mining boom ends really have that many failed ALUs. If you see any for sale, it probably means GoFlo isn't doing much of a job and AMD will be looking elsewhere (I'd expect they can sell as many CPUs as GoFlo can make, something that hasn't been true since the wild days of Athlon64).beginner99 - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
It is still not even listed where I live so impossible to get unless importing and then the decent price falls over.psychobriggsy - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
Nah, Vega isn't his child, Navi is. The guy has been busy for a long time, probably dealing with having to report to the board of directors at AMD that Vega isn't going to be stellar.It's evident that AMD hasn't provided enough resource to get drivers complete, or indeed to have timely top-to-bottom product refreshes with Polaris, and Vega will have big time delays between products.
As a professional product, Vega is excellent. It's only the gaming aspect that is ... uninspiring. This is unacceptable, but the design brief was pre-Raja.
MrSpadge - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
He's back since 2013 and, as far as I remember, entered straight into a leading position. Chip designs take long, but not that long for him not to have decisive influence on Vega.ImSpartacus - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
Yeah, I'm hesitant to believe that Raja didn't have significant sway on Vega.GPUs take a while, but not THAT long.
Flunk - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
They have 3 generations in the pipe at a time, so yeah it really does take that long.MrSpadge - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
But then look at what they call a "generation": the steps from GCN 1 to 2 to 3 were rather small, yet still officially called generations.Topweasel - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
It should be really easy to calculate. Where does GCN end. Well it ends with Vega. Therefore not Raja's baby.Vega was probably in the stages that gave Raja opportunity for input but still can we really blame Raja for not making Vega (GCN card) a burner? It would be like blaming the Zen team for not making Evacuator better than Skylake.
cekim - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
I say this as the owner of a gaggle of 1080's (Ti and non and 980's and 780's and on and on)... As above, I think this is not only cynical, but factually invalid. Vega is selling like super-heated hot-cakes. Whatever quibbles over power and price, they are flying off the shelf faster than they can be made. Honestly, I think this is what it is described. He's been on a whirlwind and wants to take a long vacation.mode_13h - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
I think Product Management deserves a lot of the blame, here."We entered the high-end gaming, professional workstation and machine intelligence markets with Vega ..."
It's like they said "we can only afford to build one big chip, so it has to do everything!" In the networking industry, it would be referred to as a "God box". What they needed to do was prioritize their markets and pare down the feature set, accordingly. Kinda like how Nvidia has the P100 mainly for compute, and the P102 for graphics. Well, if you can't afford to build both, then pick one and don't try to combine both into the same product, or it's little surprise that it'll be big, hot, and expensive to fab. Not to mention taking forever to design and test.
Opencg - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
Nope. They can't afford to make 2 chips and they can't afford to leave a market. Considering what they have to work with and what they have to go against this is about all that could ever be expected from them. If you don't like it then you simply dont understand it.mode_13h - Friday, September 15, 2017 - link
"Considering what they have to work with and what they have to go against this is about all that could ever be expected from them."The market doesn't give you a handicap because of "what you have to work with and what you have to go against".
By trying to do everything, they ended up doing some important things badly. Vega's graphics performance is crap, considering its size, memory bandwidth, and power. Vega 64 is stillborn, as a high-end gaming product. In effect, they *did* leave their biggest and most stable market!
In the short term, mining will compensate. But this has a longer-term cost that game & VR developers have little incentive to optimize for Vega, so mining isn't a perfect substitute for those markets.
Moreover, Nvidia's V100 is about 5x as fast at training neural networks and has far better scaling to multiple GPUs for that & HPC applications. So, that's another market where half-way measures just aren't good enough to compete in a meaningful way.
If you refuse to see the breadth and depth of the impact Vega's substantial short-comings will have, then you simply don't understand it.
sonicmerlin - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
Not just any node shrink. 2 major nodes at once that should have resulted in a doubling of performance without any architecture changes.Opencg - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
You have no concept of how nodes are working right now. Read up son.Opencg - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
Also how exactly are you going to use 4x the transistors without any changes to silicon. And no you cant just stamp the old design 4 times.Yojimbo - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
Well, obviously I don't know the internal workings of AMD, but I have to wonder the resources AMD have been allocating to GPU development in recent years. AMD seemed to take a strategy to focus on becoming competitive with Intel in CPUs, resulting in Ryzen, which seems to be rather successful. But at the same time as Ryzen's development, AMD were reducing their R&D budget. I'm inferring that that means less resources available for GPU development. Now, maybe they fully-funded development of a next-generation (post GCN) architecture (that sounds like the best long-term strategic move if they have the cash reserves to do it), which would leave new GCN development on a shoestring budget.If my guesses are correct, one can hardly blame Raja Koduri for RTC's lack of competitiveness with NVIDIA and the performance of its GPUs up to this point. One can certainly not blame him for AMD's inability to break into the HPC and machine learning space with their GPUs, because AMD has certainly not been funding the necessary tool chain development to compete there.
bill.rookard - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
I must say, if anyone deserves a break... I imagine Lisa Su could use one as well...axy1985 - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
If it's true this is a soft-layout, then shame. RX 400 and RX 500 was a hit, and Vega was a financial hit. If it isn't and he's really just taking time off... I wonder if I write a fancy letter like that, can I get 3 months off from work?JoeyJoJo123 - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
You can, but don't expect to have a job after 3 months. Extended leave like this is typically only available for people who are on the military reserve and leave to serve their country or may be on maternal leave (but I believe 3 months is a bit longer than most companies already allow).tarqsharq - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
Eh, you'd be surprised.My dad took a 6 month sabbatical from his job as the CEO of a telecomm company and they definitely still wanted him back afterwards.
e36Jeff - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
I got 3 months(technically 12 weeks) paid at 100% for paternity leave, and I do live and work in the US. You just need to work for the right company.JoeyJoJo123 - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
The comment was meant moreso in the way of the average Joe's hourly wage as opposed to an in-office salary kind of job.I imagine the typical grocery store, restaurant, or gas station kinds of jobs to only offer the government mandated minimum for maternity/paternity leave.
The better the job you have, the more benefits you'll have, the more likely you'll have more vacation/PTO, insurance options, 401k/retirement options, maternity leave, etc.
Ian Cutress - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
Intel engineers get 6 months sabbatical for every 10 years of service.weilin - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
Intel's policy is 4 weeks after 4 years or 8 weeks after 7 years of service.FriendlyUser - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
8 weeks isn't a sabbatical, it's what I get every year. And I'm not a teacher... You really need more vacation in the US.SharpEars - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
Before everyone trashes AMD and the disaster (both performance wise and power/heat wise) that is Vega, please keep in mind that nVidia tesla will never come out without a company like AMD pushing nVidia. The same is true for next gen Intel CPUs. So, you can hate AMD for its products, its crappy drivers, buggy motherboard chipsets, whatever, but do love them for the fact that their CPUs and GPUs push other companies to go forward with hardware that you will actually buy. Think of AMD as a catalyst for Intel's and nVidia's future products.Sergio526 - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
Heck, that hasn't been more evident than this year! Just the rumblings of Vega got nVidia to release the 1080 Ti and pull the cover off of Volta. I wouldn't be surprised if, in a couple of months, they would've just slapped an 1180 sticker on 1080 Ti and push Volta off a while longer if it wasn't for Vega.Likewise, Ryzen and Threadripper got Intel moving faster than I've seen them move in years. So much so that they even stumbled a bit. I can almost guarantee that we would not have seen an 18 core enthusiast chip from them if it wasn't for TR. I also seriously wonder if six and eight core Coffee Lake chips would have been non-extreme (X) chips if it wasn't for Ryzen.
Even the best, most beloved companies will sit on their hands and take things slow if there are no significant market pressures, there's just a tremendous cost savings doing so. I'm really looking forward to what Navi will push nVidia to do. Tiny, 7nm dies linked via infinity fabric will eliminate yield concerns and heat/power usage should drop like a rock (you don't need more than one of the, let's say, eight dies running to draw your desktop). nVidia is clearly the better GPU architect, even when not being pushed. Put AMD back nipping at their heels and we are going to see some amazing tech come out in the next five years!
Dribble - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
It's been quite a while since Nvidia's release schedule was effected by AMD. They release a 25-30% faster part pretty well like clockwork whatever AMD do. I suspect someone in Nvidia has calculated that's the ideal jump to get people to upgrade while not being impossible to maintain, so as long as they keep doing that people keep buying new cards and Nvidia keeps making money.Calin - Friday, September 15, 2017 - link
The biggest enemy of current NVidia is NVidia of one-two years ago - if the graphic cards (for example) they make aren't much better than the older ones, fewer people would upgrade. Intel is in the same situation - their current processors aren't so much better (from a typical user point of view) than the ones from a couple of years (or even more) ago, so people postpone upgrades.vladx - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
Not remotely true, unlike CPU manufacturers Gpu manufacturers can't afford to stagnate if they wanna keep selling their products especially with new developments such as mobile, VR and machine learning which would've still pushed Nvidia to innovate even without AMD.xype - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
Yeah, mobile is awesome. Qualcomm is doing amazing work even without competition, their mobile CPUs and GPUs are making huge leaps in performance every year.vladx - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
Mobile means more than smartphones, and there's also the embedded market that I've forgot about.xype - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
I know. And those are all making great strides in CPU and GPU performances, you think? How’s Imagination Tech doing these days?vladx - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
Well Img Tech is still alive, but we're talking about Nvidia here which is doing great in those areas.Opencg - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
Lol. Wrong. Nvidia has proven that they don't stagnate when they are ahead. Tesla would come out on time and every bit as good just slightly more expensive.CPUGPUGURU - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
Over hyped Watt Sucking Vega is a EPIC Gaming Fail, Raja and his team should be sent on permanent leave/fired.Cred Dead AMD said According to AMD's DON WOLIGROSKI, the Radeon RX Vega performance compared to the likes of NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1080 Ti and the Titan Xp, Vega looks really nice."
It seems very likely that RX Vega is going to compete against NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 1080 Ti in the flagship enthusiast product department in both price and performance. NONE of these Blatant Lies were even close to what Watt Sucking Vega really was. Also AMD's nefarious disappearing Rebate BS that Falsely made reviewers compare Watt Sucking Vega 56/64 with performance per watt champion Pascal 1070/1080 when in reality because of price Vega 56/64 should be compared to Pascal 1080/1080Ti which DESTROYS Vega. Desperate AMD will do and say anything to fool reviewers and gamers, NOTHING AMD propaganda pumps is to be trusted.
valinor89 - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
I think we are just not getting what Vega is. It was never meant as a gaming GPU. Why? Because there is no margin in selling it as such.Consider this. RTG have been selling the Polaris cards as fast as they could make them, to gamers or miners does not matter here. Yet even selling so much the RTG has not had good financial results. Simply put, selling gaming cards is not reallt that profitable.
Vega is a card made to enter the Compute / Professional market that by serendipity can almost compete on the gaming level.
As it is AMD needs cash, lots of cash, to be able to invest in R&D like nvidia can. When they can afford to create gaming GPU like Nvidia does now we might return to have a competitive AMD lineup for gaming.
vladx - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
Keep telling yourself that, it's not even the first time AMD lied about their product's performance when they knew it wasn't even close to reality.valinor89 - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
On the top of my head I can't remember where AMD overstated the Gaming performance of Vega. They have been quite careful to not give performance numbers until the cards launch. Sure, they may have cherrypicked some test results but I don't see where they lied.Are you not, maybe, confusing AMD provided information with the over hype generated by vega? Most serious analists were expecting the performance we are getting now.
Drumsticks - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
While I don't think it's that extreme, I think there are a number of examples that might fit that.Going back far enough, the "overclocker's dream" nonsense was not exactly a lie, but it was certainly misleading enough to imply anything about the Fury X would lead to an overclocker's dream.
As far as Vega, I don't think there's anything deliberately extremely misleading, but Raja at one point said they believed that Vega met the goal of 4k at 60 fps. I don't think it's readily agreeable that Vega has made that mark.
Lastly, on what metric would analysts expect the performance they're getting now? There's a significant regression in perf/mm^2, no real progress on perf/w (at least on the cards as they ship in stock configurations), and not much of a gain in IPC over Fiji. I'm not sure why any of that would be expected out of a new GPU Architecture.
valinor89 - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
Well, I included in serious analysts anyone that wasn't expecting it to beat 1080Ti. Early demos had it at 1080 levels in doom wich is more or less what we are getting on vega 64. It competes with 1080 and 1070. The water cooled one is a joke of a product.Friendly0Fire - Saturday, September 16, 2017 - link
I disagree with that assessment. Nvidia makes a lot of money in the consumer/gaming segment. The real reason AMD can't turn a good profit in gaming is just that their uarch is inefficient. It requires more silicon than Nvidia's architecture and they obstinately keep using ultra expensive HBM for their high end consumer parts.That's the difference between being able to turn a tidy profit at $499 and barely breaking even.
MrSpadge - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
"looks really nice" is very subjective, based on your expectation. It's not a lie to have low expectations.vladx - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
Reading Raja's letter, I'd say it's pretty clear he's been forced out as RTG's face, he'll probably return from his "sabbatical" as a senior chip designer only.Sttm - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
So he is taking a 2 and half month vacation. What amazing news!shabby - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
I'm taking a 2 week vacation on xmas, write about me!webdoctors - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
I'm taking a x-mas vacation too! But not sure where, may just stay home and chill.YazX_ - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
people saying that vega is a flop and he got fired, well you are looking into from just gaming perspective, for companies, its about money and targets, their target is to get X revenue from this, Y revenue from that and so on. currently polaris and vega are selling like hot cake and their are a massive shortage in the market, AMD doesnt give a damn about if its miners or gamers, as long as they are selling them and getting profit then thats great news and Raja met his targets and beyond, thus it makes him the perfect man for the job.valinor89 - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
I agree, as I said before the succes of vega will be determined in the Compute/Pro marquet. Profit wise the gaming market is not the main one considering it costs the same to AMD to build a Vega 64 gaming GPU that it costs them to build the radeon Instinct.Hurr Durr - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
You keep saying how it sells so well, and still AMD is in the red for how many consequtive quarters now?cekim - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
While I can understand the cynicism, sabbaticals in the engineering world are a thing. So, until we hear otherwise, it is entirely reasonable to take him at his word and recognize that if your company and your market will allow such things, there's nothing wrong or sinister with this timing. At his point in the pipe, Q4 is dead. The decisions have been made, the cake is baked, what is going to happen is going to happen and nothing he has to say is going to change it between now and Q1.foxalopex - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
I somehow get the feeling almost all the negative commentators here are just gamers and not actual engineering developers. If it's anything like most engineers he probably worked like a dog for months to get the product out and now needs a break to recover.cekim - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
Exactly. As has been pointed out in these comments, such sabbaticals are part of many tech companies policy/benefits.MrSpadge - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
This man wants to avoid burnout and divorce - how dare he! He should better sacrifice his life and soul to give the Gamerz a few more FPS!/sarcasm off (just in case it wasn't obvious enough)
Opencg - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
Ok let me explain it for you. AMD was not going to compete with nvidia for the top spot (1080 ti) in gaming with polaris. This was clear for a long time before release. They MAY compete with navi. Using multiple pieces of silicon overcomes a big barrier to profit for AMD; chip yeild rates. Even nvidia is looking to make something in a similar fashon.Also nvidia doesnt NEED AMD to compete in order to progress. It will drive down prices yes but nvidia has had a clear advantage in architechture since maxwell and are still pushing forward faster than ever with their biggest chips yet for the 11 series. Just like the 10 series it will be a BIG leap forward while they are already ahead. AMDs only chance is a complete redesign which is navi, which is not untill 2019. 2018 will be owned by nvidia.
As far as this guy. AMD has probably worked him to the bone like most companies trying to play catch up and this is his way of saying "Hey I need some time off. Don't like it? Well then find someone who can do it better or the same for the same ammount of money." I'm sure he deserves a break and AMD will be dying to have him back when his vacation is over. They need navi to be a success.
mode_13h - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
"Lisa will be acting as the leader of RTG during by absence."LOL, as if she didn't already have enough to do.
beginner99 - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
So this is either a soft-layoff or he has a burn-out. Both options are possible. higher-exec manager where I work had a burn-out as well and was away for 2 month then came back only to be replaced shortly after. Note: he wasn't fired but moved to a lesser position.So what's clear Raja is done has head of RTG.
Gigaplex - Thursday, September 14, 2017 - link
Or they're simply taking a holiday to visit family. All work and no play, and all that.msroadkill612 - Friday, September 15, 2017 - link
That other rock star guy John Lennon joined an ashram for a while too didnt he?bcroner - Friday, September 15, 2017 - link
If P = NP, all those design compromises Raja made in favor of cryptocurrency mining are completely lost. Now they're left with a very mediocre graphics card that costs consumers nearly the same as the superior GTX 1080 ti.lashek37 - Thursday, September 21, 2017 - link
Technical Issues Affecting Custom AMD Vega Card Production.http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-vega-custom-g...ThreeDee912 - Sunday, September 24, 2017 - link
To me, it looks like AMD has been funneling whatever resources they have at Ryzen for the past couple years, and put GPUs on the backburner somewhat. Yeah, they have released some new GPU products, but nothing super exciting like Ryzen. Maybe now that Ryzen's out they can put more more effort into their GPU lineup. It's going to be difficult for them to catch up to Nvidia, just like what happened to them with Intel.