Hopefully this doesn't mean Zen was a failure. Really want to replace my 2600k with one next year, as I have grown rather dissatisfied with Intel's mobile prioritized offerings and disgusted by their racist and sexist hiring bonuses.
he! i don't think Zen will be able to overclock like your 2600K, even with around the same IPC, the old Sandy likely will remains faster. These finer nodes are not great in high clock speeds.
Neither. Very smart. What is the point in designing cpus that LOSE money hand over fist? If you can't top Intel when they are wasting 1/2 (more actually) of their die on GPU, and YOU are stripping out yours, moving to an new process, moving to FINFET etc, you have FAILED.
It's not mhz here, he's talking the PERF (no matter the clocks) of a 2016 chip vs. 2011 overclocked. You should be able to beat that given that you (if chosen wisely) should be spending the EXACT size (roughly...LOL) of Intels CPU+GPU on ALL CPU. They will fail if they don't make a die at least 75% of Intel's die size, and they will lead for a few years if they match Intel's top i7 die size (cpu+gpu sides). Intel's best hope at that point is to strap two together with stripped gpus and hope 8 cores can do something to stem the bloodshed until they can make massive cores again and even this would take a while to tapeout etc. We know 8 doesn't work vs. 4 already (see AMD vs. Intel now...LOL), so going MASSIVE for AMD on 4 cores will be tough to beat for a while as we also know Intel stopped making a ton of designs at once when AMD quit. You can speed up engineering a bit by throwing more money at it, but not 4-5 YEARS.
I sincerely hope AMD doesn't try to match Intel by simply hacking off gpu and merely matching the size of Intel's CPU ONLY side of their current tech. That would be pointless and give ZERO pricing power, to which intel's response will simply be PRICE CUTS until they put out a better design a few years later to get price power back in their house (basically not too different from last time, just AMD was constrained also allowing Intel to not price cut massively). This is why I really hope they looked at intel's WHOLE die and said, "we'll do that size but PURE CPU" and charge $50 over Intel's cpu at every value or more on high end stuff (make hay while sun shines!). If you're WINNING you can do that and make money again. If you have a BETTER product you can price higher than Intel, if you match them, they just price you down until you can't sell yours.
One more point about money here; if they can't BEAT Intel, they should SELL the company now before it's worthless, and hopefully to someone with billions behind it that can actually put out better tech. IE, R&D dropping for 4yrs not good, losing people (30% of your engineers, now Keller, first Meyer and company etc) will kill you over time that are badly needed to innovate. I can't believe they didn't fight to keep this guy for a decade+. Fire all of marketing, and keep people like this, get Meyer back etc. It seems to me, AMD keeps cutting the wrong people. Meyer was right back in ~2011, when he said you need a KING in product line before going to crap like APU, etc. Comic they fired him, then now go back to his strategy that has ruled for Intel (cpu), Nvidia (gpu), Qcom (modem) etc. You can't branch out from a position of weakness and bad balance sheets. AMD incorrectly chased things that were NOT their core products, like consoles, apu, etc, instead of PURE CPU, GPU and DRIVERS! Jack of all trades in semi's sucks, when KINGS of all trades blow you away. Master something first, or die.
AMD has lost 6B in 12 yrs. You should get the point. If they had listened to Dirk, we probably would have had ZEN in 2011 and likely wouldn't have left the cpu competition. Instead they went custom chip crap, consoles (totally robbed from ZEN like cpu for 3yrs, drivers too, took 8 months to put out a driver since Dec 2014) etc, and forced out the guy who said they needed a ZEN...LOL. That sir, is STUPID.
Unlike before when AMD had a winner for 3yrs, this time they literally could manufacture all they need (capped at ~20% last time) for the most part and make a HUGE dent in Intel while they're distracted by ARM, modems, gpus (in cpu but still R&D going there too) etc. Back then (2000), you could still maybe get fired for going AMD in enterprise, but not so today since most people now know they are the same as far as compatible products goes. So if you put out a BETTER Intel, you can sell the crap out of it today, manufacture the crap out of it to meet those needs, and finally make a few billion to provide for future R&D and engineers or at worst massively pay down debt so you don't have to make 200mil/yr just to break even.
I really doubt Intel has a HUGE 4 core die waiting in the wings, as they've needed to cut everywhere to fund the 4B+ losses per year in mobile while trying to keep up with samsung, tsmc etc. We are now seeing how that has hurt them (IE, everyone basically meeting at 14 or at worse 10nm). AMD could actually be on the same process (essentially) as Intel while hitting with a new, hopefully HUGE (IPC and size wise), cpu core tech that might take Intel 3-5yrs to compete with for real. The shoe really could be on the other foot for a while. IE Intel having 8 core that only wins a small scant few things where more cores matters, while AMD rocks in anything 4 core or less across the board (like Intel now). Intel probably has enough production to cherry pick 5ghz models if AMD only goes 1.25x Intels' cpu side or less and aims at Intel price or lower (stupid). But if they went 1.5-2x Intel cpu side, they should have pricing power for at least a few years and possible cause Intel to have financial problems.
Can you imagine if Intel had price pressure to sell loser products in cpu (their cash cow funding their 4B loss in mobile yearly, along with fab funding too) for 3yrs at this stage in the ARM game/fab game as arm keeps moving to a 500w PC like box with NV discrete gpus (or AMD at some point too for gpu - I mean a full PC box w/85w ARM SOCS or discrete for high end stuff)? They were able to afford it when it was just AMD and they couldn't produce enough to steal any real Intel market share to hurt their profits, but that would NOT be the case today. GF and TSMC could be used to produce ZEN, and maybe samsung (since GF/Samsung share all processes now) if samsung saw a money maker in it. Samsung will need to replace Apple's loss (A10) with something right? ZEN or GPU's is about all you can do to take up all of apple's soc loss.
Well said on all counts. The truth is, AMD is in serious trouble, and most everyone knows it. They are bailing water out of a sinking ship financially, and unless they merge with Samsung ASAP, then one has to wonder just to much time they have left to exist with a very large infusion of capital (preferably in the Billions of dollars). They have made costly mistakes at the Executive Level in the decision-making processes, and have thought too short-term in their R&D planning to make any headway against Intel, if even that was their original goal anyways. Lucky for them that they have the Console Market with Sony PS and Xbox to help them for the time being financially, or else they would have been DOA for a long time now. AMD's GPU nightmares that stem from bad Management decisions and gross incompetence haven't helped them either. Anyone who bought their very poorly constructed 7970m GPUs knows full well of what I am talking about here. Very bad P.R and it's why a great many went back over to Nvidia. AMD had better hope that ZEN is the quick Fountain of Youth for them, because without a merger with Samsung, AMD is toast.
It doesn't have to overclock the same as his Sandy. Better IPC, more cores and good clock speed can easily enough. Otherwise we'd be all be running 2 GHz Pentium 4 overclocked to 4 GHz and complain that a recent Broadwell i7 doesn't reach higher clocks.
I don't even need it to beat SB. I'd be good with it beating Phenom II. I picked up a FX-6300 a while back. Since I was dropping it in as a replacement for the PII X3-720 I had, I thought the time was right to do a little head-to-head using wPrime. Core-for-core, the 720 beat the 6300. Not by huge amount, but I had the 720 mildly overclocked, at 3.5GHz, while I left the 6300, which for me will turbo up to 3.8GHz, at stock.
I'm not going to let myself get too excited this time. When Bulldozer was about to drop, I had grand plans of finally building the ridiculously over-the-top, water-cooled, custom-case beast I've had in my head for years, in celebration of AMD getting back in the game. Then BD released...
I won't buy Intel for a few different philosophical differences I have with them, but AMD sure as hell makes it hard to be happy backing the underdog.
The 8 core chips, fully enabled and at a reasonable clockspeed are a good budget option for some workloads even today. At one point you could get an 8 phase motherboard and an 8320E for $133.75, tax included.
This guy seems to have a history of methodically building a CPU development system inside a company, and once the teams are built and the groundwork for his first-gen architecture is put into motion, he moves to another company to do the same thing. He built AMD's comeback before, maybe he'll do it again. He built Apple's ARM CPU division and left, and it's been strong since. So with the right management and engineering talent, they could continue doing what he (Jim) puts in place.
Like the article said, hopefully they don't fall apart again without him, because the K8 was literally milked dry with no real architectural improvement since the initial Athlon 64 (they coasted on the same core CPU design for nearly 8 years!)
Some have tried to equate this as evidence that Zen will be a failure, whereas I view it as Keller believing his job is done and he could do more somewhere else.
The first time around AMD only had him for one year and he helped transform the entire market with the K7 CPU and other technologies. This time, AMD was much further behind, but he spent three years there working on the problem. With any luck, they have achieved their goals, or even exceeded them.
I am quite confident that if there was a significant failure that Keller would have stayed until it was resolved, and AMD would delay until they had a powerful enough product, bringing the AM4 platform out with the Excavator-based APUs and the promise of Zen would even create a ready-to-upgrade market.
But AMD won't wait until things are right to release, they will just stack product slides to their favor, and release a gold plated turd. They've proven this time and time and TIME again.
Hahahahaha. And yet I'm here from the future where the only "gold plated turd CPU's" coming out of fab's are those with big ol' "Intel" signs out front ;).
As somebody who interned at Intel this summer, he's half right. The REFERRAL bonuses for referring a Hispanic or female new hire (for example) is higher than that of a non minority.
I don't really view it as racist or sexist though. They aren't taking away from the normal referral bonus, they just have it doubled for employees helping bring minority talent into the field.
It's not really discrimination though since its a referral, IMO. If I have white and hispanic friends, I'm going to refer them both.
As pointed out, the employee is not being paid more for their gender or ethnicity. The person who referred them is being given a larger bonus to get them to consider candidates beyond the majority.
That's still one person being paid more than they otherwise would have been, simply based off race or gender (whether of themselves or some third party).
Again, no, an employee making a referral is paid a fixed bonus. An additional amount is given if they candidate comes from certain underrepresented classes. However the regular bonus is still in place. Those bonuses range from $3000-5000 typically. I do not know anyone who would say "I have three white engineering friends, three asian engineering friends and two black engineering friends, I will forget referring the first six because the last two will get me more." Employees can refer as many people as they wish, I can't see leaving thousands of dollars on the table as reasonable, anyone who gets hired gets them a bonus.
It is due to making the workforce represent the customer base, a sound business strategy. There are no additional writeoffs or tax breaks, but you do gain more insight into product development which is very valuable.
Intel does a lot more than just develop a CPU and toss it onto the market. They build various real and proposed form factors often targeted at different markets, different regions, and different use cases. If their employees do not come from those regions, markets, backgrounds, etc they run the risk of missing entire classes of markets just as they missed the move to mobile in 2007. A diverse workforce is one that is more likely to avoid missing anything.
Sttm, you mistake your own ignorance for understanding. It isn't an admirable trait, but it isn't exactly unusual either. Its hard to understand one's own biases, particularly when one spends a lot of time in the company of people who share similar biases.
You know what helps with that? Mixing people together with different backgrounds. It works best though if you can keep out the jerks though, the people who refuse to admit, even to just themselves, that other people might have a point.
They pay more money, they make an investment in that referral. You can't put money into the system to favor a candidate, and then expect the company not to biased to the candidate they invested more in.
Yes, they're paying to get people to look more at groups where it historically takes more credentials to be taken as seriously, and are likely to have qualified candidates looking hard for work. What horror.
I did a google on "intel diversity" as I recalled Intel recently announced something like 300 million dollar investment in creating a more diverse work place.
Um, thats not how discrimination works. Intel, like many tech companies, recognizes that their workforce is not representative of their customer base. That is a bad position to be in, after all in tech companies most of the ideas come from your engineering team and if that team looks nothing like the real world then the ideas they come up with won't reflect the needs of the real world.
As a result, Intel is doing the smart thing and incentivizing employees to find underrepresented classes and get them into their recruiting system, and doing so with cash. A lot of companies do this, including my own which is also a top five tech company.
Discriminating against white or Asian male candidates would be choosing not to hire them because of their ethnicity or gender, which Intel certainly does not do.
Hiring more minorities is totally fine, but Intel also supports scams like Anita Sarkeesian who does nothing else than spread stupid hate against all men, aka femnazi movement or attack every video game they see. I have nothing against proper feminists though, who fight for equal rights.
libastral - I think you do not understand Anita Sarkeesian or what Intel's position was. Also, the term 'femnazi' is a slur. There is nothing hateful against men inherent in pointing out societal sexism, and most corporations have strong internal policies against it.
Furthermore, no male is in a position to determine what is a 'proper feminist', just as no Caucasian is in a position to determine who was a 'proper minority' who deserved to get heard. The idea that those who are among the class most often responsible for the oppression being opposed get to determine who and how that oppression can be combatted is itself a form of oppression.
I hear you loud and clear. Discrimination only counts or matters if it is against women or minorities, got it!
I bet if a company had "too many" workers of an ethnic minority and started discriminating against non-white new hires there would be one heck of an uproar. But I'm sure that's all covered in your extensive HR brainwash- I mean, training.
"Caucasian is in a position to determine who was a 'proper minority' who deserved to get heard." Caucasian is not a race, check your facts, this is old terminology.
And white people are certainly a minority in many countries, actually they are a minority on the world scale.
And feminism does a lot of bad things for males, and females are not a minority. Feminism is not about equality, and everyone who observes it and is willing to see what happens, can see that.
"The idea that those who are among the class most often responsible for the oppression" Who is oppressed and who isn't is a question of debate. Considering all the feminist teachers working on kids more than 30 years, you can hardly say they aren't oppressing males in school, for which there are indeed indicators.
So stop talking in general and defining others as incapable of mistakes, just because they fight for something. Actually, those who fight are bound to make mistakes, and getting overprotective is quickly turning into dictatorship.
Sounds like you've been reading too much MRA propaganda. There's nothing wrong with Anita Sarkeesian, and there's no such thing as a "femnazi movement".
Neckbeards just hate because she has a voice and has the guts to critique media and games. They prefer the women who stay quiet.
At least you show that your argumentation has not more substance than them... simply repeating what your camp says. When she starts to critique the male role models, not because there is some purposed patriarchy (I'd like to see who actually belongs to this purpoted club....), or as something men want, but lobbies for a more varied representation of male or in general people types, then we are fine.
The representation of males in the media is less than favorable at least. Nothing you can identify with, nothing.
What she tries is to push through *her* ideals, which is not about equality, but her thoughts about how men and women should be, this is preaching and being a missionary, not giving different kinds of people the right to live and express themselves.
Perhaps to you. I just don't see a point in continuing to engage, he is not actually responding to what I write, he is making up his own supposed oppression to respond to.;
No problem, I think Sttm would have to give up virtually all of his non-China developed tech toys if he is sincere about believing this is discrimination. Virtually all of the big players in the US and EU take gender and diversity issues seriously to varying degrees, and have programs in place to incentivize the same things as Intel. I have been in the industry since 1995, and I haven't worked anywhere without extensive HR training on topic since prior to 1999.
Diversity is not about skin color, but personality types. And there it's clear that the non-tech personality and fluff type is getting more and more popular in domains where it doesn't belong.
This is not about diversity, look at their ads and you see what kind of "marketable" people they choose. All lifestyle, all cool, no substance.
I personally find that discriminating, media in general pushes this kind of superficial qualities, adding different colors to it doesn't make it more varied.
Ah yes, I love how you demonstrate your inclusiveness by casting aspersions on others who are not like you. How terrible that others have other priorities! It must be horrible to have to live in a world where others may choose to prioritize things you do not...
yeah it's not really discriminating as long as the subsequent hiring process is race-blind, but let's face it: almost no customers go beyond understanding that the hard disk is their space and the computer is the rest, so the CPU companies reflecting the real world is completely useless.
I don't actually agree with this assertion for a couple reasons. First, Intel does not just design integrated circuits, they design platforms, and those platforms are often 50% or more of what goes into the final product. Intel does not just hand Dell a CPU, they hand them a prototype tablet, ultrabook, or other design and Dell takes that and brings it to market, with their own engineering efforts added to it. If you go to IDF or other Dell events you will find a wide range of tablets, ultrabooks, desktops, phones and other designs, all based on their own market research and engineering ideas. It is very important for Intel to understand the market, they have to deliver silicon that matches the products that people will want to buy.
The second reason is competitiveness. Unless one accepts the incorrect notion that white and asian males are inherently superior engineers to all others, then if your workforce is overwhelmingly white and asian males you are likely leaving a lot of the best available talent unconsidered, and another company that recognizes that will grab the top talent first. I see this a lot with female engineers, we do not have enough of them so we started sending recruiters to Grace Hopper events before many other tech companies and we had the pick of the absolute best female engineers in the country. Many of our absolute best engineers and software architects are now women as a result. By not explicitly targeting underrepresented groups, you are leaving that top talent to your competition, and they will use that talent to beat you in the market.
The major area I'd like to still see improvement is in the US education system, where women are still aggressively pushed towards communications, marketing and other non-technical careers. In China, India and the middle east you do not see this kind of bias, and a large percentage of our female hires are foreign as a result. This is nationally a missed opportunity in my opinion since I have no reason to believe that American women are less capable than foreign women.
Here's an idea: Hire whoever is best for the job and go truly race blind. We should make it illegal to offer different treatment to anyone based on race or gender. Taken mention of race and gender out of everything. Across the board, nationwide. True equality, under the law, no special treatment. Ah, but that doesn't promote the agenda.
Oh and FYI most females tend to avoid technical classes like the plague. They're not being "aggresively pushed towards non-technical careers" when they (of their own volition) avoid technical education. If you want more women in those fields you'd have to push them towards it. Good luck.
Truly race blind is a great goal, but we have to get there first. Institutional racism and sexism are things that still exist in our society, and these problems must be addressed. Calling for "colorblindness" while courts disproportionately give longer sentences to black men for the same crimes as others isn't colorblindness. It's ignorance and denial.
>Oh and FYI most females tend to avoid technical classes like the plague.
[citation needed]
>They're not being "aggresively pushed towards non-technical careers"
They definitely are. It's said that adults tend to live up to their role, and not their potential. In our society girls are often shamed away from things like math because it's not "womanly".
"Calling for "colorblindness" while courts disproportionately give longer sentences to black men for the same crimes as others isn't colorblindness." That's certainly a problem that needs to get fixed. Men in general btw, get a lot more and longer sentences than women. I hope you don't agree that's because men are more aggressive or bad in general....
Besides that, compensating a wrong by discriminating another group in another domain is not what an evolved country should do.
I have no problem with people who love their work, no matter their looks. What does matter is personality, though. And this kind of targeted minority hiring gets a lot of self-entitled personalities come to companies, with overinflated egos, because they are made to believe they are special and deserve it so much.
That indeed is hurting the whole atmosphere and devaluing other groups or people that are more sensible.
Also in general, more and more fluff kind of people come to IT, because it's the big business right now. That's also where all those "equality" propaganda comes from. They don't care about equality, they want to see more of their own type amongst their co-workers.
If this was about equality the ads would truly be varied, and not have those licked and slick and always fake-happy people. Because the company would care about a real representation of all kinds and personality of people.
This is just marketing. This isn't about the minorities. Actually they are just a tool and it's a good way to distract from the real change that needs to happen. It's clever because if they don't get hired they hate white males as a group, instead of those people who really make the decisions, which are not the "white males" group.
White males are individuals, and it's actually insulting to lump them together and fovor or disfavor them based on skin color, or assign them properties.
"They definitely are. It's said that adults tend to live up to their role, and not their potential. In our society girls are often shamed away from things like math because it's not "womanly"."
Yeah, since it's so cool to be a guy that is into technology. The normal population certainly has limited interest for those topic, as is obvious again and again.
It's not like you are a hero because you are a man and into tech. It's more like a looser.
If you have a successful internet startup it may be different. But it's about the business you created, not because of the subject or technology itself.
Let's not fool ourselves. Boys and men in tech are seen as looser nerds who can be lucky if they get a girl.
The wrong ideals are certainly not made by male nerds, most would love to share their interests if people would listen (who are not already into it by their own interest).
I cannot speak in general, but in my uni (and class), first year there were only about 6 or 7 women(out of ~100ish pple). Out of those, only one finished the degree (but most gave up during first few months). Don't ask me why, they definitely were not bullied by anyone or anything like that, university itself was even actively trying to promote IT among potential women students, but at least on my university they were extremely rare back when I was there. From what I have heard the situation hasn't changed so far. So I guess majority of women are simply not interested in 1s and 0s and honestly you can't force them to like computer sciences if it is not interesting for them.
It's imho better if they focus on something they like. Same like you won't see 50% of miners being women or 50% of kindergarten teachers being men (I for one am sure I would epically fail being one). I am by no means a specialist to tell, but I guess certain roles prefer some dispositions (like physical body build for miners) that's more suitable for one gender. Maybe IT has something like that too, dunno.
I often see this claim that women aren't pushed out of technical careers, but I witnessed the exact opposite myself. My ex partner was herself a scientist, at the top of her class in an elite program. At every level from high school through her PhD the pressure was on her, and her female friends to drop out of her major and move into something 'easier'. She was asked repeatedly why she wanted to pursue a major with so much advanced math and chemistry, and didn't she know she could move towards an easier major? Her friends faced similar challenges.
Working in a top 5 tech company, I often mentor our interns. The female interns we get almost always talk about the pressure they face, how often they are pushed towards project management, marketing, design and other 'light' majors and away from computer science. I have been told over and over about how difficult it is to know that in order to succeed in tech as a female they have to be the best of the best, while a guy just has to be 'good enough'.
The more astounding part to me is how that situation does NOT exist among foreign hires. I have never met a woman from India or China who was pressured to change her major away from engineering. Their culture does not treat women from a young age as though they are less than feminine or strange if they are interested in science or technology. Our international hires are far more gender balanced than our domestic hires.
Given that, there are only two conclusions that I can come up with. Either US born women are mentally and intellectually inferior to foreign born women, or the experience I witnessed with my ex is indicative of our culture in general pushing women away from technical roles.
I'll go with the latter since I'm not a believer in american inferiority.
They push THEMSELVES away from technical educations before they even consider higher education at all. In droves. I've seen it all my life. They want nothing to do with highly technical classes. I know you believe you can't be wrong, but look at it this way: If 90% of students attending programming courses (starting in high school, for argument's sake) are male, why in hell would you be shocked to hear that 90% of programmers are male? I've discussed it with a lot of people who have also taken male-dominated technical classes and the typical consensus is DUH they don't want to be involved in that world. Less taking those classes = less in those careers.
That doesn't make the ones who decide to take an interest to be any worse than men, in the slightest. They're absolutely our equals, when they choose to take on the same role. The key is "when". There's a societal problem alright... and it's mostly an image problem. If you can get more girls to feel it is socially acceptable and indeed desirable to take these classes, the problem will fix itself.
If you are using so-called "positive" discrimination whether racially or gender based, you're still a biggot and you're discriminating both for and against humans based on a genetic characteristic rather than their merit as an individual. But naturally you'll reject this notion, being a faultless, selfless champion of the people.
You are making an argument against a case I wasn't making. I never claimed women were not themselves running away from the field. Many in fact are. However those who do choose to continue also find hurdles, both in terms of education where many are pressured to consider design or program management, or in corporations where getting hired as a female, promoted as a female and regarded as a peer is a steep task in much if not most of the industry. This creates a feedback loop where women who have not decided on a career learn how they will be treated should they manage to get in, thus reducing their desire to enter the field in the first place.
Again, the question is this: Why is the ratio of male:female so much more equal in candidates I interview from India and China than it is from the United States? What are we doing that is discouraging so much of our own potential talent, and how can we rectify that situation?
As to your second point, again, its not discrimination if they are not declining to hire males or asians. You can try to imply it is until you are blue in the face, but it has never, ever worked that way. They hire just as many as ever, they are simply trying to reach out to underrepresented groups because the logical assumption is that its a largely untapped source of talent, and from a business perspective it is wise to have some level of workforce parity that reflects their customers.
"and another company that recognizes that will grab the top talent first" That language... So aggressive and so utilitarian.
" we had the pick of the absolute best female engineers in the country." How do you know that? Hyperbole and overselfconfidence is not a good indicator of someone who knows what he or she does. It reflects however your role and how you repeat the same phrases over and over again and surround yourself with people of the same mindset. Try to be a little more varied, it opens the mind and avoids getting into missionary one-sided frenzy.
" Many of our absolute best engineers and software architects are now women as a result." That says a lot about the company/companies you work for, but otherwise it doesn't say much. Obviously women can be good engineers, why not? The positive discrimination you do however is ugly and is not helping them. If you talk to them like you do now, you'll ruin them by overinflating their ego, and praising them for being women. It's not different than praising girls to look so pretty since they are little. Wrong incentives!
Praise is good, but not praising for qualities they don't control (such as being female in this example). Also you should treat people good no matter what they are like physically or personally and not just for their economic worth or "talent".
I say that some of our top engineers are now women because it is objectively true. Because women are in lower demand, the ones we hire are often at the top of their class or highly accomplished. The average female hire we get is generally speaking at a higher level of accomplishment, whether academic or professional, than the average male hire. That is a pretty good indicator that the industry as a whole is overlooking women. Your weird statement that by me pointing out that they have performed on average so well is defied by the fact that our rating and promotion system, which is gender and ethnicity blind, has consistently rated them near the top or at the top of the teams they tend to be on. Our promotion system is based on those ratings. Nobody is patting the women on the head and saying "Nice job, here's a lollipop!" I am not praising them for being women, the fact that you read that into what I typed says a LOT about you however.
Your statement about men in tech is very out of date, also. This is not the 80's or 90's where it was the class nerd. Nowadays we get top graduates from around the world, and the vast majority of them were not the kind who could fix the projector in class. Most are people who would have chosen medicine in the 90's or finance in the 80's, it is just another career choice. Quite frankly in the past fifteen years my colleagues have gone from a lot of poorly dressed, poorly self-maintained nerds to socially adept, well dressed career driven individuals. The old stereotypes simply don't fit anymore, at least not in Seattle or San Francisco which are the main tech hubs. And here in Seattle saying you are in software is an excellent way to get a date (complaining about how easy women and minorities have it, however, is not).
Furthermore, when someone points out that black males receive more and longer sentences than whites, the proper response is to address that assertion directly, either by agreement or disagreement. The racist response is to immediately deflect it into something else, such as "all males get longer sentences." That may or may not be true, but it is not a response to the comment made, and it is a potential second issue. The first was about the impact of race, the second was a comment on gender. Trying to deflect the conversation away from the first point strongly implies that you have no interest in addressing the challenges racial minorities face, and that instead you can simply shift the topic to one where you feel some measure of victimhood.
Finally, I have yet to meet the mythical entitled minority who has an inflated ego and is destructive towards teams. I've heard about him a lot, mostly from older white guys, but I have in 20 years not met them. I'm going to go out on a limb here and state that if in 20 years and having worked for four of the largest companies in technology I have not met such a creature, that I'm willing to 'risk' encountering them at some point in exchange for a more diverse workforce. Because quite frankly when I entered the industry in 1995 it was nothing but a lot of geeky white guys, and now I work with men and women from around the world in a far more professional environment and not only are the products I build better than they ever were, but my work environment is a lot more fun.
And what happens when the majority of your customers are either uneducated or unemployed? By definition your employees can't simultaneously be unemployed, so those needs are obviously missed. And you don't really want a lot of uneducated employees dragging the company down. That's why companies use focus groups to determine what potential customers need.
Ask Wal*Mart. They seem to do a fantastic job with that, both with marketing towards the under employed, and making certain their own workforce is on the government dole.
Yeah, and only when the white suburban soccer moms start shooting heroin does it become a sickness to be treated, rather than criminal and off to the prison??? Shoe's on the other foot?? How's it fit??
So they want a more diverse workforce and are aware of the advantages white and Asian males have in the tech industry. Trying to compensate for those advantages with such a bonus might not be the nicest thing to do, but it does make sense and if it works, I would do it.
Note that this is as much discriminating for white or Asian males as it is discriminating for non-handicapped people to have a special toilet for the disabled. You could argue that it is discriminating but it is rather disingenuous.
"Note that this is as much discriminating for white or Asian males as it is discriminating for non-handicapped people to have a special toilet for the disabled. You could argue that it is discriminating but it is rather disingenuous." That's very different! It's an *additional" option, having a toilet arranged for handicapped people, so it doesn't make anything worse for those who don't need it.
However as man who is talented in the tech domain, it is a disadvantage, because they can't suddenly go into other domains where they aren't welcome and actually ostracized, like arts or advertizement or media companies in general.
This isn't about equality, it's about favoring one group, instead of working for real diversity, and stopping wrong ideals in general.
So as net effect, it's negative for those people, just because they are white and male and into tech. It does not in any way recognize the individuality of the person, but puts a label on them, and assigns properties to that person based on external features.
That *is* discrimination, and it's not positive (like the word positive discrimination implies).
Again, they are not declining to hire white or asian males. They are offering incentives to individuals who can recruit non-white or asian talent. They already offer a base incentive for any new hire, this is a bonus if the new hire is not white or asian. The hiring process itself is color blind, and the people making the hiring decision are not themselves given any sort of a bonus.
As for your assertion, all of the areas you mentioned, arrts, advertising and media, are also dominated by white males. You can actually go in those directions with relative ease.
They are putting a bias in the form of money to favor candidates based on skin color and gender. That is blatant discrimination. Only a complete moron would think that Intel having paying out a bonus to get a candidate would just disregard that investment in the hiring process.
Or they find that they have a higher rate of successful interviews with candidates from those groups, and thus paying more to see those candidates isn't taking a loss because the talent pool's been less picked over and has more high quality talent that isn't already being utilized elsewhere, so the money's worth spending just to maximize the chances of getting a high quality hire.
They are paying more to incentivize looking at candidates that don't fit the stereotype and are thus less likely to have their top talent already recruited. Even if it's a smaller pool, the cream's less likely to be skimmed off and they probably have a better shot at high outliers in a pool that hasn't been as thoroughly combed for talent. Thus candidates from those less utilized pools are more valuable on average due to their higher chance of being worth hiring.
It's sound business sense wrapped in positive pr for everyone who hasn't convinced themselves that somehow the world is against them as a poor put upon white man. And frankly that level of irrationality has no place in a company that makes logic circuits as their main product.
So they want a more diverse workforce and are aware of the advantages white and Asian males have in the tech industry. Trying to compensate for those advantages with such a bonus might not be the nicest thing to do, but it does make sense and if it works, I would do it.
Note that this is as much discriminating for white or Asian males as it is discriminating for non-handicapped people to have a special toilet for the disabled. You could argue that it is discriminating but it is rather disingenuous.
They are literally paying a bonus based on skin color or the lack of a penis, and you idiots actually believe that is not discrimination. Well I am not an idiot. I am not going to be okay with Intel paying money for skin color or vaginas, no matter the reason.
I take it you also don't believe in calibrating measuring equipment because accounting for statistical bias is beyond your rational STEM white man brain?
If it turned out that there was an industry wide bias against hiring people with a specific major who were just as good as the main majors hired, then you'd want to pay more to see them because they have a higher chance of being top quality. Normalizing for sampling bias makes good sense.
This right here. The reason Intel, and others, do this is that there is a well known bias against candidates beyond white and asian males. Knowing that this bias exists, attempting to counter for it is not itself racism or sexism. It is just the opposite.
I am sorry a few mediocre white or asian male candidates may not meet the bar now that they have to compete with an increased number of top candidates of other ethnicities and gender. Actually, no I am not, I like working with the best of the best.
What I find especially hilarious is that all Asians are just lumped into the same category, as if that's not extremely racist. But such is the stupidity of US race relations, anything that doesn't fit into the census category is basically lumped into the same category.
I wonder, do I get to quadruple the referral bonus is my referral is female AND hispanic?
I am not certain what your point it. Quite frankly "asians" from virtually all of Asia are very well represented. I have many colleagues from Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, China and India. There are only a few Asian countries I can honestly say are not represented well at the major tech firms I have worked at, and in those cases I would guess its more a function of population size or much lower general education levels.
By contrast, I can total the number of black colleagues I've had in my 15 years up on one hand. And virtually all of the women I've worked with were Asian, at least on the engineering side.
He helped make K8 and the left before it's launch, so it doesn't necessarily mean that. And processor designs take like half a decade now, Zen will be mostly done by now, so him leaving shouldn't throw the project into a ditch, it's just a few final steps and verification now.
A sale is more and more likely and in pieces. We had lots of rumors, then the split rumors , more rumors, last week they name a graphics head, today Keller leaves.... Sure maybe he was fired but given the context that seems less likely. If they take it private, AMD could remain as is but other than that there is nobody likely to buy the entire thing, costs too much to be worth it.
Not many want to take that "plunge", but it's been rumored (for quite a while back) that Samsung is willing. Not to mention the loads of cash it'll need for serious lack in R&D. If it does, it's going to be huge threat for Intel's and nVidia's dominance in their respective markets.
I wouldn't be surprised if Keller is leaving AMD to work directly for the "buyer".
Buying the entire thing would be a bit of a waste for Samsung and Keller wouldn't have to leave to work for the buyer, him leaving means he's not going to the buyer. Samsung could use a GPU in mobile but they can do that a lot cheaper. Maybe the GPU part would be worth it for patents but the CPU part doesn't make sense.
Well it's been years since rumors started. Samsung has been anxiously looking for a loophole for x86 licensing. If buying patents or splitting AMD was an option, I'm sure we would have heard about it by now.
It seems like AMD isn't budging, because they're simply the only option for potential buyers of "all" or "some". But if they did/do, I wouldn't be surprised if project Mongoose (Samsung's custom ARM cores) is in whole, or part, AMD's K12. Buying/licensing the architecture separately (in addition to a mobile GPU architecture) _might_ be cheaper than developing completely new custom cores.
If they are sold, I think I am rooting for MS to buy them. Then MS can become like Apple and Samsung with offering their own mobile CPU offerings. I was looking forward to Windows 10 devices, but the failure of Qualcomm with the 810 has really dampened that. If MS can buy AMD and start putting out Apple level SoC's with AMD gpu tech, they'd be able to push a hardware advantage, which I feel they need as their software is lets face it inferior due to application support.
That would leave Microsoft in a very awkward position with lots of its partners (Intel and Qualcomm specifically). Microsoft is the least likely buyer. If they want Windows 10 mobile to succeed, they should make the hardware and driver stack flexible (like the desktop version) so that OEMs can do their "magic" and keep up with the feature and gimmick game.
That awkward position argument was brought up in regards to them entering the hardware business. Yet MS still did it. Surface still became a billion dollar business. Qualcomm and Intel do not have any problem selling chips to Samsung and Apple, who both make their own SoC's as well. Why would they suddenly have an issue with Microsoft, when they are happy to continue to do business with Samsung and Apple?
Also, the x86 license AMD has may not even survive a sale, making any competition with Intel possibly dependent on Intel renewing the licensing.
Sure they did, and it cost them ~$10B in write-offs....... Now they're giving the "keys" back to the OEMs. Surface Pro was the only survivor of that endeavor though.
That's the sticky part. To a degree, Intel has a pretty big hand in whether AMD is worth buying. That is, Intel holds veto power over the transfer of the x86 license AMD holds. Then again, the DOJ probably wouldn't look too kindly on Intel kicking up too much fuss if AMD gives up the ghost.
His departure is neither fired nor quit. Its just the nature of his job and what he has been doing for apparently decades. He was bound to leave once zen was completed just as he left when k8 was done. Either he left or they would pay him a high salary for doing lower level work.
Maybe the likely scenario is Zen is either behind schedule/over budget or not performant enough. I don't see why this has anything to do with an acquisition and leaving immediately usually means fired.
That's the point, this is not usually , you have the rumors and AMDs actions providing additional context. Plus their financial situation and a declining market. And ofc if Keller was fired it means Zen is a dud and AMD has to sell itself anyway since they can't survive if Zen fails. There is the option that the core is done and he left but would you leave before you got final silicon even if your main job is done? Or Zen could be fantastic and even without him AMD can't mess it up but that seems a bit too optimistic.
It's entirely possible that his team has the guidance they need, and as such can function on their own for at least the first generation of Zen. The way people talk about Keller, you'd think nobody else at AMD could design their way out of a paper hat, but let's remind ourselves that he had nothing to do with the Cat cores, let alone the jump in IPC from K8 to K10.5, or anything beyond two cores.
Zen+ is an incremental update and they've probably largely finalised that as well, especially considering it's on roadmaps.
The guy is always part of a team. Works as lead or works under someone else. So I do not doubt his team can manage. He was not at AMD for over a decade and they brought him back probably to tap into some of his gained expertise on other architectures. His job is done, hes gone again.
It's true. AMD's had some good cores, even without him. The cat cores were pretty nice, and they would've had some more wins in the mobile space, imho, if Intel wasn't literally paying people (again) to use their stuff instead of AMD's chips or even other companies'.
I did that because of our RSS and other feeds. The top picture is tied to our front page images, so to start our feeds with the image caption where they might not have the image to see would be confusing. I felt this was the best compromise.
*looks at the mans history of finishing the design of a processor Core, then leaving to do the same somewhere else*.
Ok, not the first time he's done so. And not the only company he's done so with. Anyone who knows anything knows that the early Athlons in the 2000s were based highly on what? You guessed it, the alpha design he had worked on previously, which is why they used the same DDR 200-233mhz fsb at the time.
*looks at the other idiots crying doom and gloom and Zen failure confirmed* Get your heads out of your butts. This is what the guy does. Don't be surprised if AMD continues to exist, if we see him working there again the next time they need a boost.
AMDs problem was never design. After they lost so much to intels cheating and sold Global Foundries their problem became manufacturing nodes. If they had access to something below 28nm they would have released faster fx processors already. They pretty much hit a wall there long ago while Intel went on to smaller nodes.
Given How AMD has listed Zen and Zen+ on the Roadmap. I guess everything is pretty much done. The rest, is about figuring out the best yielding from GF.
Again, AMD is handicapped by GF, which has seen delay after delay. And that is something Jim Keller could not help.
I hope Jim Returns to Apple though, and hopefully not Samsung.
You guys read too much into this and his history. The only people who really knows what's going on aren't on here talking.
His history isn't 100% all wham bam thank you ma'am each and everytime he takes and leave a job. At various times he has stayed considerable tenures. He stayed 8 years at PA Semi/Apple for example. And seemingly almost 20 at DEC.
It fact it seems his times at AMD is the shortest of all his jobs. First time just 1 year and this time 3. I begs many questions. Forgetting Zen for a moment, if AMD is a great place to work why did he leave after a year first time and after 3 this time? This is troubling because the contest between AMD and intel isn't a one generation cycle thing. And if Keller really has the magic to make great things happen, losing him now isn't exactly great for the AMD long term game plan.
Keller knows that his talent, skills, and experience makes him invaluable. Making it easy for him to jump to different companies knowing that he is always in demand, indispensable to a company that requires his resume.
Nice article, and I remain optimistic for the future of the microprocessor market. Less so for the future of the comments section given the colossal off-topic diversion!
I have completely lost hope with AMD and in the next two months, I will retire the last AMD system I built 5 years ago. I have been a champion of AMD since the 386 days but the Intel i cores are just too good. I think AMD's graphics division is great and I had always preferred them over NVidia but when it comes to the actual processing, Intel makes a better processor. I'm done with the overclocking and buying $100 cooling systems in order for an AMD to keep up with a stock Intel processor. The benchmarks don't lie when it comes to clock for clock performance. When a dual core Intel CPU can keep up with a quad core AMD, then you know it's over. This is no slam against those who wish to continue using AMD processors. I have been there through all the battles with Intel. Being into video/audio production, Intel has had the better processors over the past 4-5 years. I miss the old days of AMD and Intel going head to head. AMD hasn't brought anything of real competition in a few years.
I don't know how AMD stays alive but woe to all of us should they fold because then Intel won't have to innovate nor price their products competitively. Someone said it best years ago: "the best thing that ever happened to Intel was AMD."
I don't want to reply to an old comment section and necro this thing but the time is ripe and AMD has Ryzen from the ashes. There is too much hype in the leaked benchmarks and pricing that even if it is a little bit underperforming people will surely buy one for price to performance ratio. Good managerial decisions after 2015 have led them close from bankruptcy to almost clearing their debt in the next two three years. I sincerely hope that there is real competition now, Kaby lake hasn't provided much incentive to upgrade over Skylake and all it did was to provide a hotter cpu than before. Hope Intel now produces a competitive product but I know it will take atleast a year from now to provide a marginal improvement from now. Anyways Silicon's era is going to end soon, it is reaching the limit at 7nm. We might see graphene as the norm after 5-10 years.
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Sttm - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
Good luck to him.Hopefully this doesn't mean Zen was a failure. Really want to replace my 2600k with one next year, as I have grown rather dissatisfied with Intel's mobile prioritized offerings and disgusted by their racist and sexist hiring bonuses.
Gondalf - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
he! i don't think Zen will be able to overclock like your 2600K, even with around the same IPC, the old Sandy likely will remains faster. These finer nodes are not great in high clock speeds.Sttm - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
If they can't match my overlocked 2011 i7 in 2016 with a brand new architecture, they should just fold their cpu division.flyingpants1 - Saturday, September 19, 2015 - link
That is either a very stupid joke, or just very stupid.TheJian - Wednesday, September 23, 2015 - link
Neither. Very smart. What is the point in designing cpus that LOSE money hand over fist? If you can't top Intel when they are wasting 1/2 (more actually) of their die on GPU, and YOU are stripping out yours, moving to an new process, moving to FINFET etc, you have FAILED.It's not mhz here, he's talking the PERF (no matter the clocks) of a 2016 chip vs. 2011 overclocked. You should be able to beat that given that you (if chosen wisely) should be spending the EXACT size (roughly...LOL) of Intels CPU+GPU on ALL CPU. They will fail if they don't make a die at least 75% of Intel's die size, and they will lead for a few years if they match Intel's top i7 die size (cpu+gpu sides). Intel's best hope at that point is to strap two together with stripped gpus and hope 8 cores can do something to stem the bloodshed until they can make massive cores again and even this would take a while to tapeout etc. We know 8 doesn't work vs. 4 already (see AMD vs. Intel now...LOL), so going MASSIVE for AMD on 4 cores will be tough to beat for a while as we also know Intel stopped making a ton of designs at once when AMD quit. You can speed up engineering a bit by throwing more money at it, but not 4-5 YEARS.
I sincerely hope AMD doesn't try to match Intel by simply hacking off gpu and merely matching the size of Intel's CPU ONLY side of their current tech. That would be pointless and give ZERO pricing power, to which intel's response will simply be PRICE CUTS until they put out a better design a few years later to get price power back in their house (basically not too different from last time, just AMD was constrained also allowing Intel to not price cut massively). This is why I really hope they looked at intel's WHOLE die and said, "we'll do that size but PURE CPU" and charge $50 over Intel's cpu at every value or more on high end stuff (make hay while sun shines!). If you're WINNING you can do that and make money again. If you have a BETTER product you can price higher than Intel, if you match them, they just price you down until you can't sell yours.
One more point about money here; if they can't BEAT Intel, they should SELL the company now before it's worthless, and hopefully to someone with billions behind it that can actually put out better tech. IE, R&D dropping for 4yrs not good, losing people (30% of your engineers, now Keller, first Meyer and company etc) will kill you over time that are badly needed to innovate. I can't believe they didn't fight to keep this guy for a decade+. Fire all of marketing, and keep people like this, get Meyer back etc. It seems to me, AMD keeps cutting the wrong people. Meyer was right back in ~2011, when he said you need a KING in product line before going to crap like APU, etc. Comic they fired him, then now go back to his strategy that has ruled for Intel (cpu), Nvidia (gpu), Qcom (modem) etc. You can't branch out from a position of weakness and bad balance sheets. AMD incorrectly chased things that were NOT their core products, like consoles, apu, etc, instead of PURE CPU, GPU and DRIVERS! Jack of all trades in semi's sucks, when KINGS of all trades blow you away. Master something first, or die.
AMD has lost 6B in 12 yrs. You should get the point. If they had listened to Dirk, we probably would have had ZEN in 2011 and likely wouldn't have left the cpu competition. Instead they went custom chip crap, consoles (totally robbed from ZEN like cpu for 3yrs, drivers too, took 8 months to put out a driver since Dec 2014) etc, and forced out the guy who said they needed a ZEN...LOL. That sir, is STUPID.
Unlike before when AMD had a winner for 3yrs, this time they literally could manufacture all they need (capped at ~20% last time) for the most part and make a HUGE dent in Intel while they're distracted by ARM, modems, gpus (in cpu but still R&D going there too) etc. Back then (2000), you could still maybe get fired for going AMD in enterprise, but not so today since most people now know they are the same as far as compatible products goes. So if you put out a BETTER Intel, you can sell the crap out of it today, manufacture the crap out of it to meet those needs, and finally make a few billion to provide for future R&D and engineers or at worst massively pay down debt so you don't have to make 200mil/yr just to break even.
I really doubt Intel has a HUGE 4 core die waiting in the wings, as they've needed to cut everywhere to fund the 4B+ losses per year in mobile while trying to keep up with samsung, tsmc etc. We are now seeing how that has hurt them (IE, everyone basically meeting at 14 or at worse 10nm). AMD could actually be on the same process (essentially) as Intel while hitting with a new, hopefully HUGE (IPC and size wise), cpu core tech that might take Intel 3-5yrs to compete with for real. The shoe really could be on the other foot for a while. IE Intel having 8 core that only wins a small scant few things where more cores matters, while AMD rocks in anything 4 core or less across the board (like Intel now). Intel probably has enough production to cherry pick 5ghz models if AMD only goes 1.25x Intels' cpu side or less and aims at Intel price or lower (stupid). But if they went 1.5-2x Intel cpu side, they should have pricing power for at least a few years and possible cause Intel to have financial problems.
Can you imagine if Intel had price pressure to sell loser products in cpu (their cash cow funding their 4B loss in mobile yearly, along with fab funding too) for 3yrs at this stage in the ARM game/fab game as arm keeps moving to a 500w PC like box with NV discrete gpus (or AMD at some point too for gpu - I mean a full PC box w/85w ARM SOCS or discrete for high end stuff)? They were able to afford it when it was just AMD and they couldn't produce enough to steal any real Intel market share to hurt their profits, but that would NOT be the case today. GF and TSMC could be used to produce ZEN, and maybe samsung (since GF/Samsung share all processes now) if samsung saw a money maker in it. Samsung will need to replace Apple's loss (A10) with something right? ZEN or GPU's is about all you can do to take up all of apple's soc loss.
transphasic - Thursday, September 24, 2015 - link
Well said on all counts. The truth is, AMD is in serious trouble, and most everyone knows it.They are bailing water out of a sinking ship financially, and unless they merge with Samsung ASAP, then one has to wonder just to much time they have left to exist with a very large infusion of capital (preferably in the Billions of dollars).
They have made costly mistakes at the Executive Level in the decision-making processes, and have thought too short-term in their R&D planning to make any headway against Intel, if even that was their original goal anyways.
Lucky for them that they have the Console Market with Sony PS and Xbox to help them for the time being financially, or else they would have been DOA for a long time now.
AMD's GPU nightmares that stem from bad Management decisions and gross incompetence haven't helped them either. Anyone who bought their very poorly constructed 7970m GPUs knows full well of what I am talking about here. Very bad P.R and it's why a great many went back over to Nvidia.
AMD had better hope that ZEN is the quick Fountain of Youth for them, because without a merger with Samsung, AMD is toast.
MrSpadge - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
It doesn't have to overclock the same as his Sandy. Better IPC, more cores and good clock speed can easily enough. Otherwise we'd be all be running 2 GHz Pentium 4 overclocked to 4 GHz and complain that a recent Broadwell i7 doesn't reach higher clocks.fluxtatic - Saturday, September 19, 2015 - link
I don't even need it to beat SB. I'd be good with it beating Phenom II. I picked up a FX-6300 a while back. Since I was dropping it in as a replacement for the PII X3-720 I had, I thought the time was right to do a little head-to-head using wPrime. Core-for-core, the 720 beat the 6300. Not by huge amount, but I had the 720 mildly overclocked, at 3.5GHz, while I left the 6300, which for me will turbo up to 3.8GHz, at stock.I'm not going to let myself get too excited this time. When Bulldozer was about to drop, I had grand plans of finally building the ridiculously over-the-top, water-cooled, custom-case beast I've had in my head for years, in celebration of AMD getting back in the game. Then BD released...
I won't buy Intel for a few different philosophical differences I have with them, but AMD sure as hell makes it hard to be happy backing the underdog.
Oxford Guy - Saturday, September 19, 2015 - link
The 8 core chips, fully enabled and at a reasonable clockspeed are a good budget option for some workloads even today. At one point you could get an 8 phase motherboard and an 8320E for $133.75, tax included.Samus - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
This guy seems to have a history of methodically building a CPU development system inside a company, and once the teams are built and the groundwork for his first-gen architecture is put into motion, he moves to another company to do the same thing. He built AMD's comeback before, maybe he'll do it again. He built Apple's ARM CPU division and left, and it's been strong since. So with the right management and engineering talent, they could continue doing what he (Jim) puts in place.Like the article said, hopefully they don't fall apart again without him, because the K8 was literally milked dry with no real architectural improvement since the initial Athlon 64 (they coasted on the same core CPU design for nearly 8 years!)
looncraz - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
Yep, that is his modus operandi, for sure.Some have tried to equate this as evidence that Zen will be a failure, whereas I view it as Keller believing his job is done and he could do more somewhere else.
The first time around AMD only had him for one year and he helped transform the entire market with the K7 CPU and other technologies. This time, AMD was much further behind, but he spent three years there working on the problem. With any luck, they have achieved their goals, or even exceeded them.
I am quite confident that if there was a significant failure that Keller would have stayed until it was resolved, and AMD would delay until they had a powerful enough product, bringing the AM4 platform out with the Excavator-based APUs and the promise of Zen would even create a ready-to-upgrade market.
Refuge - Sunday, September 20, 2015 - link
I agree with almost everything you've said.But AMD won't wait until things are right to release, they will just stack product slides to their favor, and release a gold plated turd. They've proven this time and time and TIME again.
Cooe - Sunday, February 28, 2021 - link
Hahahahaha. And yet I'm here from the future where the only "gold plated turd CPU's" coming out of fab's are those with big ol' "Intel" signs out front ;).Reflex - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
What racist and sexist hiring bonuses..? First I've heard of that.Sttm - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
Intel is paying a $4000 bonus for candidates who are not white or Asian males. Intentionally discriminating against white and Asian male applicants.D. Lister - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
Do you actually have a legitimate reference for that claim?Drumsticks - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
As somebody who interned at Intel this summer, he's half right. The REFERRAL bonuses for referring a Hispanic or female new hire (for example) is higher than that of a non minority.I don't really view it as racist or sexist though. They aren't taking away from the normal referral bonus, they just have it doubled for employees helping bring minority talent into the field.
It's not really discrimination though since its a referral, IMO. If I have white and hispanic friends, I'm going to refer them both.
D. Lister - Saturday, September 19, 2015 - link
Ah, that makes a lot more sense. Thanks for the explaination.Oxford Guy - Saturday, September 19, 2015 - link
Whenever someone is paid more than someone else just because of their sex or ethnicity...Reflex - Sunday, September 20, 2015 - link
As pointed out, the employee is not being paid more for their gender or ethnicity. The person who referred them is being given a larger bonus to get them to consider candidates beyond the majority.Gigaplex - Sunday, September 20, 2015 - link
That's still one person being paid more than they otherwise would have been, simply based off race or gender (whether of themselves or some third party).Sttm - Sunday, September 20, 2015 - link
Which gives that person a way to make more money by basing their referrals on race and gender. Which is fucked up.Reflex - Monday, September 21, 2015 - link
Again, no, an employee making a referral is paid a fixed bonus. An additional amount is given if they candidate comes from certain underrepresented classes. However the regular bonus is still in place. Those bonuses range from $3000-5000 typically. I do not know anyone who would say "I have three white engineering friends, three asian engineering friends and two black engineering friends, I will forget referring the first six because the last two will get me more." Employees can refer as many people as they wish, I can't see leaving thousands of dollars on the table as reasonable, anyone who gets hired gets them a bonus.Seriously, that is ridiculous.
Refuge - Sunday, September 20, 2015 - link
Its supply and demand, probably has something to do with diversity and tax write offs.So if you have a problem with it take it up with our wonderful government and their ridiculous tax breaks/rules.
Reflex - Monday, September 21, 2015 - link
Refuge -It is due to making the workforce represent the customer base, a sound business strategy. There are no additional writeoffs or tax breaks, but you do gain more insight into product development which is very valuable.
Sttm - Monday, September 21, 2015 - link
What insight would that be? That black women like slower CPUs? That Hispanic Men want a larger core count? Its a CPU business, not a grocery store.Reflex - Monday, September 21, 2015 - link
sttm -Intel does a lot more than just develop a CPU and toss it onto the market. They build various real and proposed form factors often targeted at different markets, different regions, and different use cases. If their employees do not come from those regions, markets, backgrounds, etc they run the risk of missing entire classes of markets just as they missed the move to mobile in 2007. A diverse workforce is one that is more likely to avoid missing anything.
easp - Wednesday, September 23, 2015 - link
Sttm, you mistake your own ignorance for understanding. It isn't an admirable trait, but it isn't exactly unusual either. Its hard to understand one's own biases, particularly when one spends a lot of time in the company of people who share similar biases.You know what helps with that? Mixing people together with different backgrounds. It works best though if you can keep out the jerks though, the people who refuse to admit, even to just themselves, that other people might have a point.
Sttm - Sunday, September 20, 2015 - link
They pay more money, they make an investment in that referral. You can't put money into the system to favor a candidate, and then expect the company not to biased to the candidate they invested more in.xthetenth - Monday, September 21, 2015 - link
Yes, they're paying to get people to look more at groups where it historically takes more credentials to be taken as seriously, and are likely to have qualified candidates looking hard for work. What horror.JumpingJack - Sunday, September 20, 2015 - link
I did a google on "intel diversity" as I recalled Intel recently announced something like 300 million dollar investment in creating a more diverse work place.I found this on Intel's website:
http://download.intel.com/newsroom/kits/diversity/...
This is about as ANTI racist and sexist as you can get.
Sttm - Sunday, September 20, 2015 - link
Yes nothing says ANTI racist like creating a system where you pay a bonus for people of the RIGHT color.Reflex - Monday, September 21, 2015 - link
Not the 'right' color, the underrepresented color.johnsonx - Tuesday, September 22, 2015 - link
a difference without a distinctionReflex - Tuesday, September 22, 2015 - link
To you. Reasonable people disagree. Especially people of the affected classes.Reflex - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
Um, thats not how discrimination works. Intel, like many tech companies, recognizes that their workforce is not representative of their customer base. That is a bad position to be in, after all in tech companies most of the ideas come from your engineering team and if that team looks nothing like the real world then the ideas they come up with won't reflect the needs of the real world.As a result, Intel is doing the smart thing and incentivizing employees to find underrepresented classes and get them into their recruiting system, and doing so with cash. A lot of companies do this, including my own which is also a top five tech company.
Discriminating against white or Asian male candidates would be choosing not to hire them because of their ethnicity or gender, which Intel certainly does not do.
Drumsticks - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
^ this guylibastral - Saturday, September 19, 2015 - link
Hiring more minorities is totally fine, but Intel also supports scams like Anita Sarkeesian who does nothing else than spread stupid hate against all men, aka femnazi movement or attack every video game they see. I have nothing against proper feminists though, who fight for equal rights.Reflex - Saturday, September 19, 2015 - link
libastral - I think you do not understand Anita Sarkeesian or what Intel's position was. Also, the term 'femnazi' is a slur. There is nothing hateful against men inherent in pointing out societal sexism, and most corporations have strong internal policies against it.Furthermore, no male is in a position to determine what is a 'proper feminist', just as no Caucasian is in a position to determine who was a 'proper minority' who deserved to get heard. The idea that those who are among the class most often responsible for the oppression being opposed get to determine who and how that oppression can be combatted is itself a form of oppression.
Alexvrb - Saturday, September 19, 2015 - link
I hear you loud and clear. Discrimination only counts or matters if it is against women or minorities, got it!I bet if a company had "too many" workers of an ethnic minority and started discriminating against non-white new hires there would be one heck of an uproar. But I'm sure that's all covered in your extensive HR brainwash- I mean, training.
Spunjji - Tuesday, September 22, 2015 - link
Alexvrb attempts to assemble "Straw Man".Alexvrb has encountered a grotesque logical inconsistency!
Alexvrb's attack fails.
pklop - Sunday, September 20, 2015 - link
"Caucasian is in a position to determine who was a 'proper minority' who deserved to get heard."Caucasian is not a race, check your facts, this is old terminology.
And white people are certainly a minority in many countries, actually they are a minority on the world scale.
And feminism does a lot of bad things for males, and females are not a minority. Feminism is not about equality, and everyone who observes it and is willing to see what happens, can see that.
"The idea that those who are among the class most often responsible for the oppression"
Who is oppressed and who isn't is a question of debate. Considering all the feminist teachers working on kids more than 30 years, you can hardly say they aren't oppressing males in school, for which there are indeed indicators.
So stop talking in general and defining others as incapable of mistakes, just because they fight for something. Actually, those who fight are bound to make mistakes, and getting overprotective is quickly turning into dictatorship.
Think about it for a while and open your eyes.
MisterAnon - Sunday, September 20, 2015 - link
Sounds like you've been reading too much MRA propaganda. There's nothing wrong with Anita Sarkeesian, and there's no such thing as a "femnazi movement".Neckbeards just hate because she has a voice and has the guts to critique media and games. They prefer the women who stay quiet.
pklop - Sunday, September 20, 2015 - link
At least you show that your argumentation has not more substance than them... simply repeating what your camp says. When she starts to critique the male role models, not because there is some purposed patriarchy (I'd like to see who actually belongs to this purpoted club....), or as something men want, but lobbies for a more varied representation of male or in general people types, then we are fine.The representation of males in the media is less than favorable at least. Nothing you can identify with, nothing.
What she tries is to push through *her* ideals, which is not about equality, but her thoughts about how men and women should be, this is preaching and being a missionary, not giving different kinds of people the right to live and express themselves.
Reflex - Sunday, September 20, 2015 - link
Sorry, I couldn't understand your words over the sound of this very tiny violin...lmcd - Sunday, September 20, 2015 - link
You do realize that belittling him only validates him further, right?Reflex - Monday, September 21, 2015 - link
Perhaps to you. I just don't see a point in continuing to engage, he is not actually responding to what I write, he is making up his own supposed oppression to respond to.;D. Lister - Saturday, September 19, 2015 - link
@ReflexSttm may not appreciate that insight of corporate process but I do, cheers.
Reflex - Saturday, September 19, 2015 - link
No problem, I think Sttm would have to give up virtually all of his non-China developed tech toys if he is sincere about believing this is discrimination. Virtually all of the big players in the US and EU take gender and diversity issues seriously to varying degrees, and have programs in place to incentivize the same things as Intel. I have been in the industry since 1995, and I haven't worked anywhere without extensive HR training on topic since prior to 1999.pklop - Sunday, September 20, 2015 - link
Diversity is not about skin color, but personality types. And there it's clear that the non-tech personality and fluff type is getting more and more popular in domains where it doesn't belong.This is not about diversity, look at their ads and you see what kind of "marketable" people they choose. All lifestyle, all cool, no substance.
I personally find that discriminating, media in general pushes this kind of superficial qualities, adding different colors to it doesn't make it more varied.
Reflex - Sunday, September 20, 2015 - link
Ah yes, I love how you demonstrate your inclusiveness by casting aspersions on others who are not like you. How terrible that others have other priorities! It must be horrible to have to live in a world where others may choose to prioritize things you do not...Murloc - Saturday, September 19, 2015 - link
yeah it's not really discriminating as long as the subsequent hiring process is race-blind, but let's face it: almost no customers go beyond understanding that the hard disk is their space and the computer is the rest, so the CPU companies reflecting the real world is completely useless.Software companies are another thing.
Reflex - Saturday, September 19, 2015 - link
I don't actually agree with this assertion for a couple reasons. First, Intel does not just design integrated circuits, they design platforms, and those platforms are often 50% or more of what goes into the final product. Intel does not just hand Dell a CPU, they hand them a prototype tablet, ultrabook, or other design and Dell takes that and brings it to market, with their own engineering efforts added to it. If you go to IDF or other Dell events you will find a wide range of tablets, ultrabooks, desktops, phones and other designs, all based on their own market research and engineering ideas. It is very important for Intel to understand the market, they have to deliver silicon that matches the products that people will want to buy.The second reason is competitiveness. Unless one accepts the incorrect notion that white and asian males are inherently superior engineers to all others, then if your workforce is overwhelmingly white and asian males you are likely leaving a lot of the best available talent unconsidered, and another company that recognizes that will grab the top talent first. I see this a lot with female engineers, we do not have enough of them so we started sending recruiters to Grace Hopper events before many other tech companies and we had the pick of the absolute best female engineers in the country. Many of our absolute best engineers and software architects are now women as a result. By not explicitly targeting underrepresented groups, you are leaving that top talent to your competition, and they will use that talent to beat you in the market.
The major area I'd like to still see improvement is in the US education system, where women are still aggressively pushed towards communications, marketing and other non-technical careers. In China, India and the middle east you do not see this kind of bias, and a large percentage of our female hires are foreign as a result. This is nationally a missed opportunity in my opinion since I have no reason to believe that American women are less capable than foreign women.
Alexvrb - Saturday, September 19, 2015 - link
Here's an idea: Hire whoever is best for the job and go truly race blind. We should make it illegal to offer different treatment to anyone based on race or gender. Taken mention of race and gender out of everything. Across the board, nationwide. True equality, under the law, no special treatment. Ah, but that doesn't promote the agenda.Oh and FYI most females tend to avoid technical classes like the plague. They're not being "aggresively pushed towards non-technical careers" when they (of their own volition) avoid technical education. If you want more women in those fields you'd have to push them towards it. Good luck.
MisterAnon - Sunday, September 20, 2015 - link
@AlexvrbTruly race blind is a great goal, but we have to get there first. Institutional racism and sexism are things that still exist in our society, and these problems must be addressed. Calling for "colorblindness" while courts disproportionately give longer sentences to black men for the same crimes as others isn't colorblindness. It's ignorance and denial.
>Oh and FYI most females tend to avoid technical classes like the plague.
[citation needed]
>They're not being "aggresively pushed towards non-technical careers"
They definitely are. It's said that adults tend to live up to their role, and not their potential. In our society girls are often shamed away from things like math because it's not "womanly".
pklop - Sunday, September 20, 2015 - link
"Calling for "colorblindness" while courts disproportionately give longer sentences to black men for the same crimes as others isn't colorblindness."That's certainly a problem that needs to get fixed. Men in general btw, get a lot more and longer sentences than women. I hope you don't agree that's because men are more aggressive or bad in general....
Besides that, compensating a wrong by discriminating another group in another domain is not what an evolved country should do.
I have no problem with people who love their work, no matter their looks. What does matter is personality, though. And this kind of targeted minority hiring gets a lot of self-entitled personalities come to companies, with overinflated egos, because they are made to believe they are special and deserve it so much.
That indeed is hurting the whole atmosphere and devaluing other groups or people that are more sensible.
Also in general, more and more fluff kind of people come to IT, because it's the big business right now. That's also where all those "equality" propaganda comes from. They don't care about equality, they want to see more of their own type amongst their co-workers.
If this was about equality the ads would truly be varied, and not have those licked and slick and always fake-happy people. Because the company would care about a real representation of all kinds and personality of people.
This is just marketing. This isn't about the minorities. Actually they are just a tool and it's a good way to distract from the real change that needs to happen. It's clever because if they don't get hired they hate white males as a group, instead of those people who really make the decisions, which are not the "white males" group.
White males are individuals, and it's actually insulting to lump them together and fovor or disfavor them based on skin color, or assign them properties.
This is harmful.
pklop - Sunday, September 20, 2015 - link
"They definitely are. It's said that adults tend to live up to their role, and not their potential. In our society girls are often shamed away from things like math because it's not "womanly"."Yeah, since it's so cool to be a guy that is into technology. The normal population certainly has limited interest for those topic, as is obvious again and again.
It's not like you are a hero because you are a man and into tech. It's more like a looser.
If you have a successful internet startup it may be different. But it's about the business you created, not because of the subject or technology itself.
Let's not fool ourselves. Boys and men in tech are seen as looser nerds who can be lucky if they get a girl.
The wrong ideals are certainly not made by male nerds, most would love to share their interests if people would listen (who are not already into it by their own interest).
HollyDOL - Monday, September 21, 2015 - link
I cannot speak in general, but in my uni (and class), first year there were only about 6 or 7 women(out of ~100ish pple). Out of those, only one finished the degree (but most gave up during first few months). Don't ask me why, they definitely were not bullied by anyone or anything like that, university itself was even actively trying to promote IT among potential women students, but at least on my university they were extremely rare back when I was there. From what I have heard the situation hasn't changed so far. So I guess majority of women are simply not interested in 1s and 0s and honestly you can't force them to like computer sciences if it is not interesting for them.It's imho better if they focus on something they like. Same like you won't see 50% of miners being women or 50% of kindergarten teachers being men (I for one am sure I would epically fail being one). I am by no means a specialist to tell, but I guess certain roles prefer some dispositions (like physical body build for miners) that's more suitable for one gender. Maybe IT has something like that too, dunno.
Reflex - Sunday, September 20, 2015 - link
Alexvrb -I often see this claim that women aren't pushed out of technical careers, but I witnessed the exact opposite myself. My ex partner was herself a scientist, at the top of her class in an elite program. At every level from high school through her PhD the pressure was on her, and her female friends to drop out of her major and move into something 'easier'. She was asked repeatedly why she wanted to pursue a major with so much advanced math and chemistry, and didn't she know she could move towards an easier major? Her friends faced similar challenges.
Working in a top 5 tech company, I often mentor our interns. The female interns we get almost always talk about the pressure they face, how often they are pushed towards project management, marketing, design and other 'light' majors and away from computer science. I have been told over and over about how difficult it is to know that in order to succeed in tech as a female they have to be the best of the best, while a guy just has to be 'good enough'.
The more astounding part to me is how that situation does NOT exist among foreign hires. I have never met a woman from India or China who was pressured to change her major away from engineering. Their culture does not treat women from a young age as though they are less than feminine or strange if they are interested in science or technology. Our international hires are far more gender balanced than our domestic hires.
Given that, there are only two conclusions that I can come up with. Either US born women are mentally and intellectually inferior to foreign born women, or the experience I witnessed with my ex is indicative of our culture in general pushing women away from technical roles.
I'll go with the latter since I'm not a believer in american inferiority.
Alexvrb - Thursday, September 24, 2015 - link
They push THEMSELVES away from technical educations before they even consider higher education at all. In droves. I've seen it all my life. They want nothing to do with highly technical classes. I know you believe you can't be wrong, but look at it this way: If 90% of students attending programming courses (starting in high school, for argument's sake) are male, why in hell would you be shocked to hear that 90% of programmers are male? I've discussed it with a lot of people who have also taken male-dominated technical classes and the typical consensus is DUH they don't want to be involved in that world. Less taking those classes = less in those careers.That doesn't make the ones who decide to take an interest to be any worse than men, in the slightest. They're absolutely our equals, when they choose to take on the same role. The key is "when". There's a societal problem alright... and it's mostly an image problem. If you can get more girls to feel it is socially acceptable and indeed desirable to take these classes, the problem will fix itself.
If you are using so-called "positive" discrimination whether racially or gender based, you're still a biggot and you're discriminating both for and against humans based on a genetic characteristic rather than their merit as an individual. But naturally you'll reject this notion, being a faultless, selfless champion of the people.
Reflex - Saturday, October 3, 2015 - link
You are making an argument against a case I wasn't making. I never claimed women were not themselves running away from the field. Many in fact are. However those who do choose to continue also find hurdles, both in terms of education where many are pressured to consider design or program management, or in corporations where getting hired as a female, promoted as a female and regarded as a peer is a steep task in much if not most of the industry. This creates a feedback loop where women who have not decided on a career learn how they will be treated should they manage to get in, thus reducing their desire to enter the field in the first place.Again, the question is this: Why is the ratio of male:female so much more equal in candidates I interview from India and China than it is from the United States? What are we doing that is discouraging so much of our own potential talent, and how can we rectify that situation?
As to your second point, again, its not discrimination if they are not declining to hire males or asians. You can try to imply it is until you are blue in the face, but it has never, ever worked that way. They hire just as many as ever, they are simply trying to reach out to underrepresented groups because the logical assumption is that its a largely untapped source of talent, and from a business perspective it is wise to have some level of workforce parity that reflects their customers.
In other words it is a smart business decision.
pklop - Sunday, September 20, 2015 - link
"and another company that recognizes that will grab the top talent first"That language... So aggressive and so utilitarian.
" we had the pick of the absolute best female engineers in the country."
How do you know that? Hyperbole and overselfconfidence is not a good indicator of someone who knows what he or she does. It reflects however your role and how you repeat the same phrases over and over again and surround yourself with people of the same mindset. Try to be a little more varied, it opens the mind and avoids getting into missionary one-sided frenzy.
" Many of our absolute best engineers and software architects are now women as a result."
That says a lot about the company/companies you work for, but otherwise it doesn't say much. Obviously women can be good engineers, why not? The positive discrimination you do however is ugly and is not helping them. If you talk to them like you do now, you'll ruin them by overinflating their ego, and praising them for being women. It's not different than praising girls to look so pretty since they are little. Wrong incentives!
Praise is good, but not praising for qualities they don't control (such as being female in this example). Also you should treat people good no matter what they are like physically or personally and not just for their economic worth or "talent".
Reflex - Sunday, September 20, 2015 - link
pklop -What the heck is wrong with you???
I say that some of our top engineers are now women because it is objectively true. Because women are in lower demand, the ones we hire are often at the top of their class or highly accomplished. The average female hire we get is generally speaking at a higher level of accomplishment, whether academic or professional, than the average male hire. That is a pretty good indicator that the industry as a whole is overlooking women. Your weird statement that by me pointing out that they have performed on average so well is defied by the fact that our rating and promotion system, which is gender and ethnicity blind, has consistently rated them near the top or at the top of the teams they tend to be on. Our promotion system is based on those ratings. Nobody is patting the women on the head and saying "Nice job, here's a lollipop!" I am not praising them for being women, the fact that you read that into what I typed says a LOT about you however.
Your statement about men in tech is very out of date, also. This is not the 80's or 90's where it was the class nerd. Nowadays we get top graduates from around the world, and the vast majority of them were not the kind who could fix the projector in class. Most are people who would have chosen medicine in the 90's or finance in the 80's, it is just another career choice. Quite frankly in the past fifteen years my colleagues have gone from a lot of poorly dressed, poorly self-maintained nerds to socially adept, well dressed career driven individuals. The old stereotypes simply don't fit anymore, at least not in Seattle or San Francisco which are the main tech hubs. And here in Seattle saying you are in software is an excellent way to get a date (complaining about how easy women and minorities have it, however, is not).
Furthermore, when someone points out that black males receive more and longer sentences than whites, the proper response is to address that assertion directly, either by agreement or disagreement. The racist response is to immediately deflect it into something else, such as "all males get longer sentences." That may or may not be true, but it is not a response to the comment made, and it is a potential second issue. The first was about the impact of race, the second was a comment on gender. Trying to deflect the conversation away from the first point strongly implies that you have no interest in addressing the challenges racial minorities face, and that instead you can simply shift the topic to one where you feel some measure of victimhood.
Finally, I have yet to meet the mythical entitled minority who has an inflated ego and is destructive towards teams. I've heard about him a lot, mostly from older white guys, but I have in 20 years not met them. I'm going to go out on a limb here and state that if in 20 years and having worked for four of the largest companies in technology I have not met such a creature, that I'm willing to 'risk' encountering them at some point in exchange for a more diverse workforce. Because quite frankly when I entered the industry in 1995 it was nothing but a lot of geeky white guys, and now I work with men and women from around the world in a far more professional environment and not only are the products I build better than they ever were, but my work environment is a lot more fun.
Gigaplex - Sunday, September 20, 2015 - link
And what happens when the majority of your customers are either uneducated or unemployed? By definition your employees can't simultaneously be unemployed, so those needs are obviously missed. And you don't really want a lot of uneducated employees dragging the company down. That's why companies use focus groups to determine what potential customers need.Reflex - Monday, September 21, 2015 - link
Ask Wal*Mart. They seem to do a fantastic job with that, both with marketing towards the under employed, and making certain their own workforce is on the government dole.Spunjji - Tuesday, September 22, 2015 - link
Nice to see some sense in here amongst the reactionary nonsense. Cheers, Reflex.Reflex - Tuesday, September 22, 2015 - link
Its a little weird when the guy speaking up for the corporate point of view is the one who apparently is the 'progressive'...Its amazing how the right wing has run so far right that conservative principles are now supposedly bigoted.
FunBunny2 - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
Yeah, and only when the white suburban soccer moms start shooting heroin does it become a sickness to be treated, rather than criminal and off to the prison??? Shoe's on the other foot?? How's it fit??woggs - Saturday, September 19, 2015 - link
You are a gigantic idiot.jospoortvliet - Saturday, September 19, 2015 - link
So they want a more diverse workforce and are aware of the advantages white and Asian males have in the tech industry. Trying to compensate for those advantages with such a bonus might not be the nicest thing to do, but it does make sense and if it works, I would do it.Note that this is as much discriminating for white or Asian males as it is discriminating for non-handicapped people to have a special toilet for the disabled. You could argue that it is discriminating but it is rather disingenuous.
pklop - Sunday, September 20, 2015 - link
"Note that this is as much discriminating for white or Asian males as it is discriminating for non-handicapped people to have a special toilet for the disabled. You could argue that it is discriminating but it is rather disingenuous."That's very different! It's an *additional" option, having a toilet arranged for handicapped people, so it doesn't make anything worse for those who don't need it.
However as man who is talented in the tech domain, it is a disadvantage, because they can't suddenly go into other domains where they aren't welcome and actually ostracized, like arts or advertizement or media companies in general.
This isn't about equality, it's about favoring one group, instead of working for real diversity, and stopping wrong ideals in general.
So as net effect, it's negative for those people, just because they are white and male and into tech. It does not in any way recognize the individuality of the person, but puts a label on them, and assigns properties to that person based on external features.
That *is* discrimination, and it's not positive (like the word positive discrimination implies).
Reflex - Sunday, September 20, 2015 - link
Again, they are not declining to hire white or asian males. They are offering incentives to individuals who can recruit non-white or asian talent. They already offer a base incentive for any new hire, this is a bonus if the new hire is not white or asian. The hiring process itself is color blind, and the people making the hiring decision are not themselves given any sort of a bonus.As for your assertion, all of the areas you mentioned, arrts, advertising and media, are also dominated by white males. You can actually go in those directions with relative ease.
Sttm - Sunday, September 20, 2015 - link
They are putting a bias in the form of money to favor candidates based on skin color and gender. That is blatant discrimination. Only a complete moron would think that Intel having paying out a bonus to get a candidate would just disregard that investment in the hiring process.xthetenth - Monday, September 21, 2015 - link
Or they find that they have a higher rate of successful interviews with candidates from those groups, and thus paying more to see those candidates isn't taking a loss because the talent pool's been less picked over and has more high quality talent that isn't already being utilized elsewhere, so the money's worth spending just to maximize the chances of getting a high quality hire.xthetenth - Monday, September 21, 2015 - link
They are paying more to incentivize looking at candidates that don't fit the stereotype and are thus less likely to have their top talent already recruited. Even if it's a smaller pool, the cream's less likely to be skimmed off and they probably have a better shot at high outliers in a pool that hasn't been as thoroughly combed for talent. Thus candidates from those less utilized pools are more valuable on average due to their higher chance of being worth hiring.It's sound business sense wrapped in positive pr for everyone who hasn't convinced themselves that somehow the world is against them as a poor put upon white man. And frankly that level of irrationality has no place in a company that makes logic circuits as their main product.
Sttm - Monday, September 21, 2015 - link
Did you really just equate being female, black, or hispanic, to being handicapped. Holyshit.xthetenth - Monday, September 21, 2015 - link
In that it's a continuing refrain that people need to be reminded of their existence, it's a very accurate analogy.jospoortvliet - Saturday, September 19, 2015 - link
So they want a more diverse workforce and are aware of the advantages white and Asian males have in the tech industry. Trying to compensate for those advantages with such a bonus might not be the nicest thing to do, but it does make sense and if it works, I would do it.Note that this is as much discriminating for white or Asian males as it is discriminating for non-handicapped people to have a special toilet for the disabled. You could argue that it is discriminating but it is rather disingenuous.
Sttm - Sunday, September 20, 2015 - link
They are literally paying a bonus based on skin color or the lack of a penis, and you idiots actually believe that is not discrimination. Well I am not an idiot. I am not going to be okay with Intel paying money for skin color or vaginas, no matter the reason.That is not how any company should operate.
xthetenth - Monday, September 21, 2015 - link
I take it you also don't believe in calibrating measuring equipment because accounting for statistical bias is beyond your rational STEM white man brain?If it turned out that there was an industry wide bias against hiring people with a specific major who were just as good as the main majors hired, then you'd want to pay more to see them because they have a higher chance of being top quality. Normalizing for sampling bias makes good sense.
Reflex - Monday, September 21, 2015 - link
This right here. The reason Intel, and others, do this is that there is a well known bias against candidates beyond white and asian males. Knowing that this bias exists, attempting to counter for it is not itself racism or sexism. It is just the opposite.I am sorry a few mediocre white or asian male candidates may not meet the bar now that they have to compete with an increased number of top candidates of other ethnicities and gender. Actually, no I am not, I like working with the best of the best.
nils_ - Sunday, September 27, 2015 - link
What I find especially hilarious is that all Asians are just lumped into the same category, as if that's not extremely racist. But such is the stupidity of US race relations, anything that doesn't fit into the census category is basically lumped into the same category.I wonder, do I get to quadruple the referral bonus is my referral is female AND hispanic?
Reflex - Saturday, October 3, 2015 - link
I am not certain what your point it. Quite frankly "asians" from virtually all of Asia are very well represented. I have many colleagues from Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, China and India. There are only a few Asian countries I can honestly say are not represented well at the major tech firms I have worked at, and in those cases I would guess its more a function of population size or much lower general education levels.By contrast, I can total the number of black colleagues I've had in my 15 years up on one hand. And virtually all of the women I've worked with were Asian, at least on the engineering side.
tipoo - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
He helped make K8 and the left before it's launch, so it doesn't necessarily mean that. And processor designs take like half a decade now, Zen will be mostly done by now, so him leaving shouldn't throw the project into a ditch, it's just a few final steps and verification now.jjj - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
A sale is more and more likely and in pieces. We had lots of rumors, then the split rumors , more rumors, last week they name a graphics head, today Keller leaves.... Sure maybe he was fired but given the context that seems less likely.If they take it private, AMD could remain as is but other than that there is nobody likely to buy the entire thing, costs too much to be worth it.
lilmoe - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
Not many want to take that "plunge", but it's been rumored (for quite a while back) that Samsung is willing. Not to mention the loads of cash it'll need for serious lack in R&D. If it does, it's going to be huge threat for Intel's and nVidia's dominance in their respective markets.I wouldn't be surprised if Keller is leaving AMD to work directly for the "buyer".
jjj - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
Buying the entire thing would be a bit of a waste for Samsung and Keller wouldn't have to leave to work for the buyer, him leaving means he's not going to the buyer. Samsung could use a GPU in mobile but they can do that a lot cheaper. Maybe the GPU part would be worth it for patents but the CPU part doesn't make sense.lilmoe - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
Well it's been years since rumors started. Samsung has been anxiously looking for a loophole for x86 licensing. If buying patents or splitting AMD was an option, I'm sure we would have heard about it by now.It seems like AMD isn't budging, because they're simply the only option for potential buyers of "all" or "some". But if they did/do, I wouldn't be surprised if project Mongoose (Samsung's custom ARM cores) is in whole, or part, AMD's K12. Buying/licensing the architecture separately (in addition to a mobile GPU architecture) _might_ be cheaper than developing completely new custom cores.
Sttm - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
If they are sold, I think I am rooting for MS to buy them. Then MS can become like Apple and Samsung with offering their own mobile CPU offerings. I was looking forward to Windows 10 devices, but the failure of Qualcomm with the 810 has really dampened that. If MS can buy AMD and start putting out Apple level SoC's with AMD gpu tech, they'd be able to push a hardware advantage, which I feel they need as their software is lets face it inferior due to application support.lilmoe - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
That would leave Microsoft in a very awkward position with lots of its partners (Intel and Qualcomm specifically). Microsoft is the least likely buyer. If they want Windows 10 mobile to succeed, they should make the hardware and driver stack flexible (like the desktop version) so that OEMs can do their "magic" and keep up with the feature and gimmick game.Sttm - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
That awkward position argument was brought up in regards to them entering the hardware business. Yet MS still did it. Surface still became a billion dollar business. Qualcomm and Intel do not have any problem selling chips to Samsung and Apple, who both make their own SoC's as well. Why would they suddenly have an issue with Microsoft, when they are happy to continue to do business with Samsung and Apple?Also, the x86 license AMD has may not even survive a sale, making any competition with Intel possibly dependent on Intel renewing the licensing.
lilmoe - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
Sure they did, and it cost them ~$10B in write-offs....... Now they're giving the "keys" back to the OEMs. Surface Pro was the only survivor of that endeavor though.fluxtatic - Saturday, September 19, 2015 - link
That's the sticky part. To a degree, Intel has a pretty big hand in whether AMD is worth buying. That is, Intel holds veto power over the transfer of the x86 license AMD holds. Then again, the DOJ probably wouldn't look too kindly on Intel kicking up too much fuss if AMD gives up the ghost.Azix - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
His departure is neither fired nor quit. Its just the nature of his job and what he has been doing for apparently decades. He was bound to leave once zen was completed just as he left when k8 was done. Either he left or they would pay him a high salary for doing lower level work.AS118 - Saturday, September 19, 2015 - link
Yeah, I agree. That seems like the most logical thing to think.Azix - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
I mean people are making too much of this.Jtaylor1986 - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
Maybe the likely scenario is Zen is either behind schedule/over budget or not performant enough. I don't see why this has anything to do with an acquisition and leaving immediately usually means fired.MrSpadge - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
Or that the Zen design is finished. What's left is to get yields up, decide on SKUs and maybe new steppings. Everything else is done by now.Jtaylor1986 - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
So he had to leave immediately after the majority of the work was done?Gigaplex - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
He did the same thing with the K8. Finish the design then leave to work on a different project elsewhere.AS118 - Saturday, September 19, 2015 - link
Well, they could always bring him back if they need help. This is the second time he's been at AMD, after all. No reason there can't be a third.jjj - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
That's the point, this is not usually , you have the rumors and AMDs actions providing additional context. Plus their financial situation and a declining market.And ofc if Keller was fired it means Zen is a dud and AMD has to sell itself anyway since they can't survive if Zen fails.
There is the option that the core is done and he left but would you leave before you got final silicon even if your main job is done? Or Zen could be fantastic and even without him AMD can't mess it up but that seems a bit too optimistic.
silverblue - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
It's entirely possible that his team has the guidance they need, and as such can function on their own for at least the first generation of Zen. The way people talk about Keller, you'd think nobody else at AMD could design their way out of a paper hat, but let's remind ourselves that he had nothing to do with the Cat cores, let alone the jump in IPC from K8 to K10.5, or anything beyond two cores.Zen+ is an incremental update and they've probably largely finalised that as well, especially considering it's on roadmaps.
Azix - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
The guy is always part of a team. Works as lead or works under someone else. So I do not doubt his team can manage. He was not at AMD for over a decade and they brought him back probably to tap into some of his gained expertise on other architectures. His job is done, hes gone again.AS118 - Saturday, September 19, 2015 - link
It's true. AMD's had some good cores, even without him. The cat cores were pretty nice, and they would've had some more wins in the mobile space, imho, if Intel wasn't literally paying people (again) to use their stuff instead of AMD's chips or even other companies'.vladx - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
Zen failure confirmed. Good to know.anivarti - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
This could be a big morale impact on engineers before zen tapeout.Azix - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
wouldn't matter. Zen is done.jay401 - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
Tip: Image caption should go immediately under the image, not at the end of the article.Ian Cutress - Saturday, September 19, 2015 - link
I did that because of our RSS and other feeds. The top picture is tied to our front page images, so to start our feeds with the image caption where they might not have the image to see would be confusing. I felt this was the best compromise.Mathos - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
*looks at the mans history of finishing the design of a processor Core, then leaving to do the same somewhere else*.Ok, not the first time he's done so. And not the only company he's done so with. Anyone who knows anything knows that the early Athlons in the 2000s were based highly on what? You guessed it, the alpha design he had worked on previously, which is why they used the same DDR 200-233mhz fsb at the time.
*looks at the other idiots crying doom and gloom and Zen failure confirmed*
Get your heads out of your butts. This is what the guy does. Don't be surprised if AMD continues to exist, if we see him working there again the next time they need a boost.
webdoctors - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
You're absolutely right! I'm gonna go double my AMD stock holdings! Monday ASAP~!nofumble62 - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
Exactly 3 years to develop a new architect to turn around a sinking ship .. yes he must be Einstein.Azix - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
AMDs problem was never design. After they lost so much to intels cheating and sold Global Foundries their problem became manufacturing nodes. If they had access to something below 28nm they would have released faster fx processors already. They pretty much hit a wall there long ago while Intel went on to smaller nodes.nofumble62 - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
So Jim Keller has figured that out and loaded his truck once again, lol.iwod - Friday, September 18, 2015 - link
Given How AMD has listed Zen and Zen+ on the Roadmap. I guess everything is pretty much done.The rest, is about figuring out the best yielding from GF.
Again, AMD is handicapped by GF, which has seen delay after delay. And that is something Jim Keller could not help.
I hope Jim Returns to Apple though, and hopefully not Samsung.
cotak - Saturday, September 19, 2015 - link
You guys read too much into this and his history. The only people who really knows what's going on aren't on here talking.His history isn't 100% all wham bam thank you ma'am each and everytime he takes and leave a job. At various times he has stayed considerable tenures. He stayed 8 years at PA Semi/Apple for example. And seemingly almost 20 at DEC.
It fact it seems his times at AMD is the shortest of all his jobs. First time just 1 year and this time 3. I begs many questions. Forgetting Zen for a moment, if AMD is a great place to work why did he leave after a year first time and after 3 this time? This is troubling because the contest between AMD and intel isn't a one generation cycle thing. And if Keller really has the magic to make great things happen, losing him now isn't exactly great for the AMD long term game plan.
Spunjji - Tuesday, September 22, 2015 - link
Nobody's contesting that it's a great place to work - just that historically he has done good things there before moving along.toyotabedzrock - Saturday, September 19, 2015 - link
Qualcommdaftshadow - Monday, September 21, 2015 - link
Keller knows that his talent, skills, and experience makes him invaluable. Making it easy for him to jump to different companies knowing that he is always in demand, indispensable to a company that requires his resume.Wolfpup - Monday, September 21, 2015 - link
Wow, I can't believe it's been 3 years since his rehire! That seemed super recent to me. Well, still can't wait for Zen!jamyryals - Monday, September 21, 2015 - link
It sounds like this may be good news for Zen, I hope so!Spunjji - Tuesday, September 22, 2015 - link
Nice article, and I remain optimistic for the future of the microprocessor market. Less so for the future of the comments section given the colossal off-topic diversion!SeanJ76 - Monday, September 28, 2015 - link
@AMD. It's been a long struggle for AMD, hopefully they get their sh__ together!marsax73 - Friday, October 2, 2015 - link
I have completely lost hope with AMD and in the next two months, I will retire the last AMD system I built 5 years ago. I have been a champion of AMD since the 386 days but the Intel i cores are just too good. I think AMD's graphics division is great and I had always preferred them over NVidia but when it comes to the actual processing, Intel makes a better processor. I'm done with the overclocking and buying $100 cooling systems in order for an AMD to keep up with a stock Intel processor. The benchmarks don't lie when it comes to clock for clock performance. When a dual core Intel CPU can keep up with a quad core AMD, then you know it's over. This is no slam against those who wish to continue using AMD processors. I have been there through all the battles with Intel. Being into video/audio production, Intel has had the better processors over the past 4-5 years. I miss the old days of AMD and Intel going head to head. AMD hasn't brought anything of real competition in a few years.7beauties - Monday, January 4, 2016 - link
I don't know how AMD stays alive but woe to all of us should they fold because then Intel won't have to innovate nor price their products competitively. Someone said it best years ago: "the best thing that ever happened to Intel was AMD."bhavesh10 - Tuesday, February 14, 2017 - link
I don't want to reply to an old comment section and necro this thing but the time is ripe and AMD has Ryzen from the ashes. There is too much hype in the leaked benchmarks and pricing that even if it is a little bit underperforming people will surely buy one for price to performance ratio. Good managerial decisions after 2015 have led them close from bankruptcy to almost clearing their debt in the next two three years. I sincerely hope that there is real competition now, Kaby lake hasn't provided much incentive to upgrade over Skylake and all it did was to provide a hotter cpu than before. Hope Intel now produces a competitive product but I know it will take atleast a year from now to provide a marginal improvement from now. Anyways Silicon's era is going to end soon, it is reaching the limit at 7nm. We might see graphene as the norm after 5-10 years.lknight007 - Saturday, April 17, 2021 - link
Sorry for the necro but... time changes, huh?