So anyone want to speculate why Ryzen Mobile came out late? The chip can be a moneymaker but the launch, aside from specs, is really amenic and lackluster, almost to the point of being a paper launch.
Three partners and laptops only at launch and one of them is using single channel memory. At least they aren't going to miss the holiday season altogether but AMD kind of dropped the ball.
Possible causes, from most likely to least likely:
1.) Vega, probably the most obvious. But I seriously don't think that they fucked up the arch so much to scrap it from Ryzen Mobile and meeting their goals, but did AMD fuck up to the point where they had to redesign stuff in Vega to make it work out?
2.) Zen arch mini improvements, which I think is less likely than Vega being the issue. I think they would've scrapped the improvements and just used a vanilla Zen core instead.
3.) Planned but scrapped features like having HBM. Did they say they were going to do it on some roadmap they release? Is HBM then just delayed for desktop/completely gone until Ryzen Mobile with Zen and Navi are out?
Despite that, will probably wait until CES to see what the OEMs will offer with Ryzen Mobile. Not really too keen on the initial 3 models.
Because until very recently they were close to bankruptcy and their R&D was operating on a shoestring budget. I assume the work on raven ridge only really started up after they were done with zeppelin.
Bentley Diaz
>So anyone want to speculate why Ryzen Mobile came out late? Because it's Zen 1.5. Just look at their voltage regulation. >but did AMD fuck up to the point where they had to redesign stuff in Vega to make it work out? The hardware in Vega is literally P E R F E C T. >Planned but scrapped features like having HBM. Why the fuck would you use HBM for 704 ALUs?
Ryan Walker
because if they released the desktop with the voltage regulators we saw on the ravens the mobile chips wouldnt have such a wow effect..
the RR line clearly shows what jim keller actually did for amd and zen+ will probably have all of this shit incorporated
John Harris
Jesus Christ the Pajeets kikes from Intel are shitting themselves over this latest AMD shit.
You faggots would try to sound less desperate and shrill, I’m buying AMD stock on the inter day as we speak.
Adam Sullivan
>Pajeets kikes from Intel Sounds like "gayniggers from outer space".
Henry Rivera
2 reasons:
glofo is operating at almost full capacity. Amd and IBM are big companies
OEMs have contracts with intel, and its easier for them to jump between intel's designs. RR will not be in many laptops, but the next generation will be in more, and more.
David Foster
It wasn't late though? It's shipping at the promised Q4 2017 which was always the target schedule. If you commenting about why it wasn't targeted early from the get go, i would guess it's because of their pipeline order zen->vega->apu, you can't ship a product if it isn't ready.
About your points, sure they tweaked Zen and Vega for low power and that takes time hence APUs come later in the pipeline. HBM APUs though were not planned for consumer level stuff, there is literally no point, they could do it for enterprise if there is demand.
Wyatt Evans
>Why the fuck would you use HBM for 704 ALUs? Marketing.
Ian Collins
Wasting money is a bad marketing.
Tyler Cook
>"gayniggers from outer space" You watched that too?
Nathan Wilson
>Because until very recently they were close to bankruptcy You retards literally keep spamming that but having literally no idea what it means, or looks like for an international multi billion dollar company to go "bankrupt" It doesn't fucking happen in one quarter, I'll tell you that.
At it's peak, AMD's debt was $1.8billion, that's fucking nothing, 2 good quarters and that's that debt resolved. At no point have AMD layed off staff for the sake of saving money. Yes Lisa Su gutted their marketting department and some of the less than useful staff members, but that's internal, that's to remove the slackers and staff who just don't work out.
At no point have AMD had to be bailed out, a company that size recieves multiple bailouts from governments to stay in operation due to the tax revenue that they provide and jobs that they create. AMD going down would also mean that Intel would have to be broken up into a dozen or so pieces to satisfy monopoly laws.
AMD have literally never even been "close" to bankruptcy in their entire existence.
Passive aggressive shilling much OP? Face reality and realise that mobile is a fucking huge market. The stock they need to supply initial demand is massive, and due to how AMD have designed Zen, and how each and every CCX is used up and down the line in tow, then it's especially difficult to justify setting aside perfectly functional CCXs while you can use them immediately in existing supply. There are also necessary changes in the uarch required to get a product ready for mobile. Such as improved voltage regulation and power management options. while no mention of these are made in regards to the desktop lineup, it happens in way of updated stepping.
VEGA performs exceptionally at lower voltage, in order to get enough products out the door, AMD went spastic with the power targets, just so more products would meet QC and be available for sale. Some VEGA owners notice performance gain when lowering voltage.
Joseph Gutierrez
Their quartetly R&D was down below 200M$. Call it what you want, they had severely limited ressorces for a lot of different products.
Ethan Hernandez
Their expenditure is no measure of their impending financial collapse. Look at their R&D for the past 4 years, while Zen was being developed, that's where the major expenditure is, now it's just minor alterations to Zen as an architecture to get it ready for moves to 7nm and just general uarch improvements.
Angel Bailey
>At it's peak, AMD's debt was $1.8billion, that's fucking nothing It stuck like sore thumb in earnings, especially when company turned loss after loss for years and it was due ~2020. Su did a fantastic job restructuring it.
Noah Clark
It still means that available resources had to be focussed and leapfrogging development teams had to be used sparingly. They said themseld that there are features that didn't make it into zens first iteration due to budget/time constraints. And while they didn't plan for it they surely would have released Raven ridge earlier had they had the resources to do so.
Benjamin Ward
Budget does not mean "readily available funds", it simply means that Zen was likely to exceed initial expected cost to develop, the budget they set the project. Should Zen have needed an extra $50m, they would not have hesitated in that investment. Time constrains is nearer to the truth, even as it was Zen nearly missed it's Q2 launch.
Isaac Stewart
AMD has always had trouble with laptop OEMs
there's also the vega gpu it uses probably not being ready around the time of summit ridge
Kevin Bailey
>that Intel would have to be broken up into a dozen or so pieces to satisfy monopoly laws. Do you think intel would have preferred to be broken up or forced to license x86 to other companies?
Ian Williams
I assume it takes time to work in new engineers, so after operating on a shoestring budget for years it takes time to rebuild an engineering department for a project like this. Limited funding for the project is the only reason I can see to why things turned out as they did. Mind you, it was amazing what they pulled of with what they had. But summit ridge instead of a zen based APU for AM4 and mobile products half a year later, almost missing the Christmas sales, is far from optimal from an economic point of view.
I mean just look at what happened after the ryzen launch, R&D went up by 50%. If they could have afforded to do so earlier I'm sure they would have done so.
Cameron Jenkins
Use desktop market as beta tester, to server EPYC and for APU, Ryzen Mobile and EPYC will be biggest money machine for AMD, first time AMD had high performance,low power and great graphics APU, but still stigma of bad and cheap Apus.
Cooper Lewis
And sell x86 to what other companies? AMD's x86-64 would go into a legal limbo, so goodbye licensing of 64bit. VIA are the only other company with an x86 license, and would be the only ones near ready to develop something "useful". If Samsung bought up an x86 license it would be anywhere from 8-10 years to develop a chip truly from the ground up. AMD and Intel both use technologies and methods that they've honed over the past 40 years in development of their chips and a new arch still takes them 5 years.
Intel would be forced to break up, it's the only way to not cause a massive gulf in the market that would immediately impact the economy as a whole.
Joshua Morris
Your only valid point so far. Summit Ridge being so late, and RR coming this late may well have an impact on holiday sales. But at the same time, there is nothing "late" about them, RR is as set in the lineup, Q3 2017.
Tyler Davis
>intel is broken up >only one company is the legal successor of intel >only this company can make x86 cpus
Adam Watson
Sure it is. But my assumption was that they'd have released it closer to ryzen had they been able to do so. And the cause for not being able to do so seems to be not having enough money to throw at problems.
Carson Powell
The staggering of the releases is intentional as to not flood the market and deprive themselves of the sales of a higher margin product. They make alot more money off of selling an R7 to retailers than they do from selling a RR chip to a manufacturer. It's a financial move to not release the entire lineup at one go. And a sound one at that.
Again, you keep falling back to money. A company that still has near $1b in outstanding debt would have no qualms over spending another $50m in development of a product they intent to use for the next 5 years, and will continue to reference in design for the next 10 years. Money is literally not a problem in this situation.
Leo Lee
Intel has its hand in so many pies that they could still keep making x86-64 regardless of legal limbo, even potentially avoid being broken up (because lol Via has license).
Remember that they still hadn't paid that 1 billion euro fine that was ruled for them almost a decade ago.
Mason Brown
>Intel has its hand in so many pies that they could still keep making x86-64 regardless of legal limbo, Until the next renewal date on the license, sure. What happens after that though? Who do Intel pay for the right to use x86-64? The Government perhaps? Should they allow it maybe.
Josiah Lewis
>Because until very recently they were close to bankruptcy Wut Did you pull this out of your butthole?
Easton Cox
>paper launch. >Intel does literar paper launch, suddenly threads with long ass posts how AMD is doing it Fanboys... every time.
Angel Roberts
>Intel paper launch >First product is available in 3 months
AMD laptops have been historically horrifying housefire machines, for the first time I'm a little hyped about mobile ryzen. But then again lenovo would never release a thinkpad with a non intel cpu, shame.
Sebastian Myers
Dude don't you keep up with the news or the stock market?
Amd was truly down in the shitter, especially since the Bulldozer incident. Mainly because Intel's Core series wiped the floor with every single one of their offerings. The only thing keeping them alive was the deals they made with console makers, their acquisition of ATI, and their Opteron series.
Them coming back as strong as they are now is quite literally the corporate equivalent of Jesus Christ's resurrection.
Connor Sullivan
See () >At it's peak, AMD's debt was $1.8billion, that's fucking nothing, 2 good quarters and that's that debt resolved.
Ayden Hall
>AMD laptops have been historically horrifying housefire machines
Nah, you are just too young to remember otherwise (A64 vs P4, for example).
Luis King
I used to own athlon 64 PC which was clearly the better deal back in the day, but I didn't care at all about laptops at that time, I have no idea what was the laptop market like back then. But considering last 5 years, and working for laptop tech support for 2 years, I avoid amd laptops like the plague.
Gabriel Carter
> Yes Lisa Su gutted their marketting department and some of the less than useful staff members, but that's internal, that's to remove the slackers and staff who just don't work out.
I thought she was cool before, but now I truly respect her. Most CEOs would gut everything BUT the marketing department, because "Who cares about the product quality as long as the ads make it look good".
But that would explain why AMD's ads have been so hilariously bad for so long.
