Nice interview, Dr. Su seems like a very comfortable person to talk to, even if her answers are often vague and completely expected. It's nice to hear that they are going to push for better laptop designs from OEMs, but at the same time disappointing to know that HP, etc. are just sloughing off junk chassis alongside the most advanced APU to date. Derp.
Also, I got a funny image in my head of her husband sitting at home all day playing videogames, while she's running one of the largest companies in the world. She comes home after 14 hours of meeting with investors and he's like, "Oh, I'm so glad you're home, I had a rough go of it in PUBG."
I completely agree. She has CEO-speak of course and doesn’t give away much, but it’s still an enjoyable interview read. And the photos are pretty cool :) Buying a laptop at Best Buy and gamer husband, hehe.
Eh, I thought the part about her husband was a little sad, actually. At least he keeps her in touch with the market, though.
I thought the answers would be totally useless, but they revealed a bit on ARM, automotive, and their collaboration with Intel. It's also nice to hear they're focused on investing for the future more than financial management, at this point.
BTW, what was that PSP reference, in the section about ARM? I don't imagine it was PlayStation Portable - not least because it's actually MIPS-based, but also discontinued for years and so not relevant to this discussion of their current activities.
Getting Vega everywhere except into gamer's hands.
I am constantly seeing Now-in-stock alerts for Vega 64's at $1299 and $1399 that sell out in minutes.
If AMD was serious about getting gamer's Vega 56 and 64 they would do what Nvidia is doing and directly sell from their website Vega 56's and 64's at MSRP limit two per customer.
How does that get them into gamers' hands? The mining demand is ever greater at MSRP. Besides, many gamers are selling their GPUs to miners for a profit.
I understand how buying products online works, but my question is how does this prevent miners from being auto-notified and buying them for MSRP? (Answer: it doesn't.)
Because miners buy them 10's or 100's at a time. It does them no good to be able to just buy one. However actual gamers only came about buying them one at a time.
Then miners will simply pay people $50-$100/pop to order and forward the product to them. Either that or just simply purchase a forwarding address from the any one of the dozens of companies that sell them. There isn't any way to stop miners. Nor is there really any way to measure who is a miner and who is not. The real solution is exactly what they are doing. Cautiously increase supply as capacity allows.
Or you make the next gen GPU's that are aimed at gamers, crap for mining. I would not be mad at all with this approach since you can gimp the actual FPU or do it in drivers. AMD and Nvidia need a "mining" class GPU to sell to miners.
Bitcoin already has the serious miners using ASICs not GPUs. The other cryptocurrencies use GPUs, but there's nothing stopping someone from coming out with ASICs there too.
It'll only stop the most casual miners and largest scale miners for any length of time. Those in the lower end of the middle will just have friends/family members ordering 2 each to get a few dozen cards. At a somewhat larger scale there will eventually be people playing the same sorts of auto buying games as ticket scalpers do the get around limited per person maximum buys.
Maybe this shit should be regulated by the government. I mean imagine that some obscure group of billionaires decides to buy all the toilet paper in the World. What will you then? Not everybooty has a bidet :)
Miners want those cards badly. It would be nothing for them to write (or pay someone else to) a script to buy the cards as soon as they become available.
Need different credit/debit cards, IP addresses, and physical addresses? Hardly a problme if you can get GPUs at MSRP.
The limited purchase would prevent anyone from buying more than two. Sure you could buy two and sell them at a profit, but ultimately unless you have multiple mailing addresses, names and credit cards you aren't going to get more than two.
that should be EXACTLY what AMD does, this way here THEY get to keep the lions share of the profit from the sale, am sure they could work out a deal with specific partners (Asus etc) to keep pricing in check, because lord knows amazon and the like really do not seem to bother proper price checking on their end IMO, something as simple as a Cryorig H7 I seen listed on newegg for over $170..something that at most should be ~$50, let them know about it, and they say "we will look into it"
But honestly AMD SHOULD sell direct from their website, at least you know it will be in stock A and B any price adjustments will be there right off the bat (for good or bad)
Should put this in as a ticket/suggestion to AMD, either way the more they sell the better for them :)
Awesome interview. I was hoping for a few questions regarding mining and the inability for gamers to buy cards because the AIB's are selling directly to miners, and that the retail chain never sees the majority of the cards. As I do feel it is really hurting AMD's presence in the gaming industry.
At the forefront of my mind is there are so many areas that we can broaden our perspective in our base business in PCs and graphics and data center to the machine learning and machine intelligence markets.
They really are kind of behind in the latter, even though they have compute cards. Also graphics cards for VDI would be an area to target.
Regarding Meltdown and Spectre, when can we expect CPUs free of them? i.e. not requiring software patches. I expect major redesign is necessary. 2-3 years time?
2=3 years is good estimatio to completely new micro architeckture. Even more to get it to the customers hand. How long did it take to develop Ryzen to real product. 4-5 years... Intel has the sama problem but They have more money to burn to develop new system. Amd is luckier or more wice and has Little bit less to change to get those two in order, but still it takes Many years!
I wouldn't be surprised if Spectre ends up lingering for at least twice that at some reduced level. Meltdown is a specific bug, fixing it should be strait forward. Spectre's a completely new side channel to attack, based on history from other side channel attacks It's probably going to be a bug that keeps on giving as researchers find more ways to exploit it.
I agree we are talking 8 -10 years for a real fix from Intel. They have Ice Lake tape in ready for production which I assume they will use that design as the base architecture for 4-5 years.
The BIG question is: Does anyone actually working on it? I suspect it will be brushed under the carpet, hoping software only patches for the future. This, however, will slow present and future CPUs down, negating some of the speedups we can expect from new CPUs.
Would be nice to know for sure. Can AT ask Intel and AMD?
Some of us were actually paying attention and concerned. This was a good interview. Thanks for getting this out and I hope the illness stays well behind you.
AMD has some interesting technologies and bringing really low prices for high CPU core counts which is great. However, their debt ratio is huge, if the last 10 years hadn't seen essentially free money they probably would've gone under.
Ideally they can improve their balance sheets so they can both invest more in R&D and get their debt under control, otherwise rising interest rates could sink them like the US Fed budget.
Great interview with this great CEO. But I'm very surprised that you didn't directly address the card shortages and how this persistent inability of gamers to get their hands on AMD's latest cards might be affecting their long term GPU market share. Obviously for the time being they are selling everything they can make and that's good for the bottom line but all bubbles eventually burst and AMD can't rely on mining to bolster their GPU sales indefinitely. I would be thinking about buying a new card this year but I can see how a lot of people in my position would just get fed up, throw their hands up in the air and buy an nVidia card instead. A very large number of that group will not be buying another GPU for years and portion of that demographic will become nVidia customers for many more years beyond that. I would think that going forward that would be something AMD would be extremely concerned with.
If I were AMD I would milk the hell out of miners for R&D money until I got Navi in production on the 7nm process . Navi should be a beast of card if glofo can nail the 7nm process. The 7nm process on paper is vastly superior to glofos 14 nm process they are using for Zen and Vega today. I don't just mean densities which is obvious but the frequency scaling is supposed to be very very good.
It's too bad AMD isn't getting any more profit from these overpriced cards than they are from regular priced purchases. They are still selling their chips at the same price. Card manufacturers may be putting a little extra margin on their prices, but the etailers are the largest beneficiaries as they are the parties responsible for setting the outrageous prices. Granted, they are also very supply limited, so their overall profit may not be any better despite the higher margins. Note: Manufacturers that sell directly or via their own storefront fall intro the same category as etailers.
Intel is not a future they win now because existing customer first mover advantage and their monolithic cpu will be a problem.amd does has customers and will grow.
Two things: 1) Thank you for asking about processors in the 4.5w range. There are a few products that are coming out now (such as the GPD Win 2) which are bringing back the UMPC for Steam gaming on the go, and with AMD's GPU prowess they could make a really compelling product if they wanted to (which they don't seem like they do.) For now there is no choice but to use old Intel chips (and their integrated graphics...) 2) OMG I'M DYING FROM THIS GPU SHORTAGE! I've been waiting forever to upgrade my now over 6 year old GCN cards, but AMD have yet to release something compelling. I have been waiting for any word on when all of the features that were advertised for Vega would be enabled, but that doesn't seem to be happening. AMD's GPU division is really in a shambles right now, and I wish you really would have addressed it.
I hope they find a way to get the GPUs to normal people and not to miners. I've been trying to build a new PC and was strongly interested in the Vega 56 but it's disheartening to see it going for $700-850. For a card that's supposed to retail for $400!
Good job on everyone! Reading it is like a dream! I do hope AMD can put even more of a fight this year vs Intel and Nvidia. Their recent products are now decent compared to years ago.
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FireSnake - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
Awesome input.Always nice to read interview with dr. Su
velocidad - Friday, January 26, 2018 - link
Idd nice imput but for next interview I will ask Dr. Su when we will see 8 core APU?nathanddrews - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
Nice interview, Dr. Su seems like a very comfortable person to talk to, even if her answers are often vague and completely expected. It's nice to hear that they are going to push for better laptop designs from OEMs, but at the same time disappointing to know that HP, etc. are just sloughing off junk chassis alongside the most advanced APU to date. Derp.Also, I got a funny image in my head of her husband sitting at home all day playing videogames, while she's running one of the largest companies in the world. She comes home after 14 hours of meeting with investors and he's like, "Oh, I'm so glad you're home, I had a rough go of it in PUBG."
smilingcrow - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
Your post made me smile but AMD are hardly one of the largest companies in the world!mode_13h - Tuesday, January 30, 2018 - link
Currently #$565 on the Fortune list, with $4.272B in annual revenues. So, not quite a Fortune 500 company. But in 2018, I'm sure.FreckledTrout - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
+1, rough day in PUGB. Wouldn't that be a dream to consider that a rough day.mikato - Saturday, January 27, 2018 - link
I completely agree. She has CEO-speak of course and doesn’t give away much, but it’s still an enjoyable interview read. And the photos are pretty cool :) Buying a laptop at Best Buy and gamer husband, hehe.mode_13h - Tuesday, January 30, 2018 - link
Eh, I thought the part about her husband was a little sad, actually. At least he keeps her in touch with the market, though.I thought the answers would be totally useless, but they revealed a bit on ARM, automotive, and their collaboration with Intel. It's also nice to hear they're focused on investing for the future more than financial management, at this point.
BTW, what was that PSP reference, in the section about ARM? I don't imagine it was PlayStation Portable - not least because it's actually MIPS-based, but also discontinued for years and so not relevant to this discussion of their current activities.
HighTech4US - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
Getting Vega everywhere except into gamer's hands.I am constantly seeing Now-in-stock alerts for Vega 64's at $1299 and $1399 that sell out in minutes.
If AMD was serious about getting gamer's Vega 56 and 64 they would do what Nvidia is doing and directly sell from their website Vega 56's and 64's at MSRP limit two per customer.
nathanddrews - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
How does that get them into gamers' hands? The mining demand is ever greater at MSRP. Besides, many gamers are selling their GPUs to miners for a profit.HighTech4US - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
Quote: How does that get them into gamers' hands?Easily by doing this:
You go to https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/shop
Pick the card/cards you want
Select Auto-Notify
When cards get restocked purchase them at MSRP price.
GTX 1080 Ti $699
GTX 1080 $549
GTX 1070 Ti $449
GTX 1070 $399
GTX 1060 $299
nathanddrews - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
I understand how buying products online works, but my question is how does this prevent miners from being auto-notified and buying them for MSRP? (Answer: it doesn't.)Stuka87 - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
Because miners buy them 10's or 100's at a time. It does them no good to be able to just buy one. However actual gamers only came about buying them one at a time.HighTech4US - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
^^ Thiseek2121 - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
Then miners will simply pay people $50-$100/pop to order and forward the product to them. Either that or just simply purchase a forwarding address from the any one of the dozens of companies that sell them. There isn't any way to stop miners. Nor is there really any way to measure who is a miner and who is not. The real solution is exactly what they are doing. Cautiously increase supply as capacity allows.MrPoletski - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
You stop miners by selling them a product that's better at mining than a GPU. Somebody needs to make one.FreckledTrout - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
Or you make the next gen GPU's that are aimed at gamers, crap for mining. I would not be mad at all with this approach since you can gimp the actual FPU or do it in drivers. AMD and Nvidia need a "mining" class GPU to sell to miners.Threska - Saturday, January 27, 2018 - link
Bitcoin already has the serious miners using ASICs not GPUs. The other cryptocurrencies use GPUs, but there's nothing stopping someone from coming out with ASICs there too.DanNeely - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
It'll only stop the most casual miners and largest scale miners for any length of time. Those in the lower end of the middle will just have friends/family members ordering 2 each to get a few dozen cards. At a somewhat larger scale there will eventually be people playing the same sorts of auto buying games as ticket scalpers do the get around limited per person maximum buys.Gastec - Thursday, January 25, 2018 - link
This is a conflict of interests that can only be solved violently. We must start a minerhunt! Burn them all!!Alexvrb - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
I forgot only people with thousands or tens of thousands of GPUs mine...Gastec - Thursday, January 25, 2018 - link
Maybe this shit should be regulated by the government. I mean imagine that some obscure group of billionaires decides to buy all the toilet paper in the World. What will you then? Not everybooty has a bidet :)Holliday75 - Thursday, January 25, 2018 - link
Can I borrow the t-shirt off your back?Tams80 - Friday, January 26, 2018 - link
Miners want those cards badly. It would be nothing for them to write (or pay someone else to) a script to buy the cards as soon as they become available.Need different credit/debit cards, IP addresses, and physical addresses? Hardly a problme if you can get GPUs at MSRP.
rahvin - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
The limited purchase would prevent anyone from buying more than two. Sure you could buy two and sell them at a profit, but ultimately unless you have multiple mailing addresses, names and credit cards you aren't going to get more than two.Dragonstongue - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
that should be EXACTLY what AMD does, this way here THEY get to keep the lions share of the profit from the sale, am sure they could work out a deal with specific partners (Asus etc) to keep pricing in check, because lord knows amazon and the like really do not seem to bother proper price checking on their end IMO, something as simple as a Cryorig H7 I seen listed on newegg for over $170..something that at most should be ~$50, let them know about it, and they say "we will look into it"But honestly AMD SHOULD sell direct from their website, at least you know it will be in stock A and B any price adjustments will be there right off the bat (for good or bad)
Should put this in as a ticket/suggestion to AMD, either way the more they sell the better for them :)
Gastec - Thursday, January 25, 2018 - link
The moment you realize these people only care about money making, priceless! For the rest there is, you guessed it, Mastercard! :)Gastec - Thursday, January 25, 2018 - link
Well if you sell your gaming GPU to a miner then you are not a gamer anymore are you? You are a profiteer. Next is "gaming" at the stock exchange :Pmode_13h - Tuesday, January 30, 2018 - link
You obviously haven't checked Nvidia's web site, then. They're sold out of everything, just like everybody else.krumme - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
I think she tells a lot. I get a very good grip of how she manage the company. She is just gold.Thanx for the unique interview.
Stuka87 - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
Awesome interview. I was hoping for a few questions regarding mining and the inability for gamers to buy cards because the AIB's are selling directly to miners, and that the retail chain never sees the majority of the cards. As I do feel it is really hurting AMD's presence in the gaming industry.ianmills - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
"Getting Vega anywhere" is a misleading titlenathanddrews - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
That's not the title, though. It's getting Vega "everywhere": graphics cards, consoles, 7nm, Ryzen APUs, Intel CPUs, machine learning, etc.Threska - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
They really are kind of behind in the latter, even though they have compute cards. Also graphics cards for VDI would be an area to target.
Pork@III - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
Where is Vega, Lisa?- RA 18h 36m 56s | Dec +38° 47′ 1″
serendip - Sunday, January 28, 2018 - link
Good one there, Vega is one of the brightest summer sights in northern skies.bill44 - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
Regarding Meltdown and Spectre, when can we expect CPUs free of them? i.e. not requiring software patches.I expect major redesign is necessary.
2-3 years time?
haukionkannel - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
2=3 years is good estimatio to completely new micro architeckture. Even more to get it to the customers hand. How long did it take to develop Ryzen to real product. 4-5 years... Intel has the sama problem but They have more money to burn to develop new system. Amd is luckier or more wice and has Little bit less to change to get those two in order, but still it takes Many years!DanNeely - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
I wouldn't be surprised if Spectre ends up lingering for at least twice that at some reduced level. Meltdown is a specific bug, fixing it should be strait forward. Spectre's a completely new side channel to attack, based on history from other side channel attacks It's probably going to be a bug that keeps on giving as researchers find more ways to exploit it.FreckledTrout - Thursday, January 25, 2018 - link
I agree we are talking 8 -10 years for a real fix from Intel. They have Ice Lake tape in ready for production which I assume they will use that design as the base architecture for 4-5 years.Targon - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
This isn't the same as Meltdown which requires a major CPU rework. This issue may be fully resolved with BIOS updates.bill44 - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
The BIG question is: Does anyone actually working on it?I suspect it will be brushed under the carpet, hoping software only patches for the future.
This, however, will slow present and future CPUs down, negating some of the speedups we can expect from new CPUs.
Would be nice to know for sure. Can AT ask Intel and AMD?
HighTech4US - Thursday, January 25, 2018 - link
AMD white paper on Spectre and Meltdownhttp://developer.amd.com/wordpress/media/2013/12/M...
Read it to see how AMD is handling it currently now and in future processors
bill44 - Friday, January 26, 2018 - link
Intel just announced in-silicone fix. 2019!thopper46 - Thursday, January 25, 2018 - link
What cpu processors are the Russian and Chinese using? Intel AMD, etc .wow&wow - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
Published ~2 weeks after the interview because it was submitted to Intel for review and approval? :-DIan Cutress - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
Because CES, then CES illness. But thanks for your concern.BurntMyBacon - Thursday, January 25, 2018 - link
Some of us were actually paying attention and concerned. This was a good interview. Thanks for getting this out and I hope the illness stays well behind you.LastQuark - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
Very good questions from Ian. Great job.webdoctors - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
AMD has some interesting technologies and bringing really low prices for high CPU core counts which is great. However, their debt ratio is huge, if the last 10 years hadn't seen essentially free money they probably would've gone under.Ideally they can improve their balance sheets so they can both invest more in R&D and get their debt under control, otherwise rising interest rates could sink them like the US Fed budget.
Magichands8 - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
Great interview with this great CEO. But I'm very surprised that you didn't directly address the card shortages and how this persistent inability of gamers to get their hands on AMD's latest cards might be affecting their long term GPU market share. Obviously for the time being they are selling everything they can make and that's good for the bottom line but all bubbles eventually burst and AMD can't rely on mining to bolster their GPU sales indefinitely. I would be thinking about buying a new card this year but I can see how a lot of people in my position would just get fed up, throw their hands up in the air and buy an nVidia card instead. A very large number of that group will not be buying another GPU for years and portion of that demographic will become nVidia customers for many more years beyond that. I would think that going forward that would be something AMD would be extremely concerned with.FreckledTrout - Thursday, January 25, 2018 - link
If I were AMD I would milk the hell out of miners for R&D money until I got Navi in production on the 7nm process . Navi should be a beast of card if glofo can nail the 7nm process. The 7nm process on paper is vastly superior to glofos 14 nm process they are using for Zen and Vega today. I don't just mean densities which is obvious but the frequency scaling is supposed to be very very good.BurntMyBacon - Thursday, January 25, 2018 - link
It's too bad AMD isn't getting any more profit from these overpriced cards than they are from regular priced purchases. They are still selling their chips at the same price. Card manufacturers may be putting a little extra margin on their prices, but the etailers are the largest beneficiaries as they are the parties responsible for setting the outrageous prices. Granted, they are also very supply limited, so their overall profit may not be any better despite the higher margins. Note: Manufacturers that sell directly or via their own storefront fall intro the same category as etailers.Tkan215 - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
Intel is not a future they win now because existing customer first mover advantage and their monolithic cpu will be a problem.amd does has customers and will grow.iwod - Thursday, January 25, 2018 - link
Purely from PR perspective I would trust the AMD's leadership team much more then Intel.Another Interesting point is TSMC 7nm, I hope they move all GPU back to TSMC. Stop having one foundry tied up your whole business.
Arbie - Thursday, January 25, 2018 - link
I love the picture of her buying the computer. Just an image, but it really connects.wrkingclass_hero - Friday, January 26, 2018 - link
Two things:1) Thank you for asking about processors in the 4.5w range. There are a few products that are coming out now (such as the GPD Win 2) which are bringing back the UMPC for Steam gaming on the go, and with AMD's GPU prowess they could make a really compelling product if they wanted to (which they don't seem like they do.) For now there is no choice but to use old Intel chips (and their integrated graphics...)
2) OMG I'M DYING FROM THIS GPU SHORTAGE! I've been waiting forever to upgrade my now over 6 year old GCN cards, but AMD have yet to release something compelling. I have been waiting for any word on when all of the features that were advertised for Vega would be enabled, but that doesn't seem to be happening. AMD's GPU division is really in a shambles right now, and I wish you really would have addressed it.
dirtyvu - Sunday, January 28, 2018 - link
I hope they find a way to get the GPUs to normal people and not to miners. I've been trying to build a new PC and was strongly interested in the Vega 56 but it's disheartening to see it going for $700-850. For a card that's supposed to retail for $400!serendip - Sunday, January 28, 2018 - link
Come on AMD, we need 2W-4W TDP Ryzen APUs with Vega so I can finally send the Atom zombie to its well-deserved grave.mode_13h - Tuesday, January 30, 2018 - link
OMG, just had to lol at that pic of EPYC in her hand.If they added some HBM2 stacks in there or some Vega dies, maybe she'd have to hold it with both hands.
zodiacfml - Sunday, February 11, 2018 - link
Good job on everyone! Reading it is like a dream! I do hope AMD can put even more of a fight this year vs Intel and Nvidia. Their recent products are now decent compared to years ago.