7 ms·

Interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su

172 points by vivekchandsrc 10y ago

Insanity 10y ago
Since I stopped gaming, I stopped following the high-end market. However, it is nice to see that AMD is trying to get in there again, some competition is good for the market in general. If AMD can deliver, then Intel might have to respond with lowering prices on their products, which I believe might be a bit overpriced now due to there no being a real vialbe alternative. Whatever happens, some competition is bound to be a good thing imo.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Analemma_ 10y ago
  They actually already have: http://wccftech.com/intel-amd-price-war-ryzen-processors/ http://wccftech.com/intel-amd-price-war-ryzen-processors/ and that was before the reviews even went live. It should only get better since impressions seem favorable.
  - Insanity 10y ago
    Oh thanks for pointing that out, I missed that :-)
- overcast 10y ago
  You should come back, even just for a few games a year. There are some incredible experiences available these days.
  - Insanity 10y ago
    It is something I sometimes want to do, but find hard to justify. First of all, when I played, it was competitively and I found it hard to get fun out of just playing casually. In fact, I have quite addictive behaviour so I usually ended up addicted to games I played competitively. (CS:S, L4D(2) and COD2/4). I know myself well enough to know that I can not play "in moderation" and would tend towards the competitive aspect. (Single player games never really entertained me that much)
    - overcast 10y ago
      Overwatch would be right up your alley :)
      - Insanity 10y ago
        Hehe, I have heard that before, but I have actually not seen any gameplay of that :-)
  - mercutio2 10y ago
    I'm curious if you could elaborate on this. For the population I represent (never, ever, want a first person visual rendering, under any circumstance) but love high quality game mechanics, I have a hard time finding what I consider good games. Everybody wants to polish their fundamentally undesirable three dimensional scene.
    - mysterydip 10y ago
      While there is a lot of 3D experiences out there, a lot of the recent great games that show off interesting mechanics can be found in the 2D realm. While not an exhaustive list by any means, and not knowing your preferences, here's a handful: - terraria - stardew valley - undertale - rimworld - prison architect - nuclear throne
    - detaro 10y ago
      In addition to mysterydip: Many RPGs and strategy games use 3D engines, but only for more "isometric" or "top down" views (downside is that they require more GPU performance than you'd think sometimes) Also would like to mention Factorio explicitly.
    - overcast 10y ago
      If you're a fan of Baldur's Gate and the like. Isometric CRPG's are back in full swing now. Pillars of Eternity, Pillars of Eternity Deadfire(just completed a fig.co funding), Tyranny, Torment. They are huge, deep games. Tons of under the hood mechanics going on. Definitely not point, click, kill. Requires lots of setup, strategy, on how you address each situation. Great stories.
    - izacus 10y ago
      Hmm, these last years were one of the best years in: - strategy gaming (from Deserts of Kharak, Civilization, Paradox interactive grand strategy games, Eugen Systems games, Total War series, XCOM and more and more) - RPG gaming (2D isometric RPGs are making a huge comeback with good writing and gameplay, things like Pillars of Eternity, new Torment, Divinty and more. 3rd person Witcher 3 collected record amount of awards and with good reason.) - platformers (Ori, Shovel Knight), roguelikes (Darkest Dungeon, Don't starve, Spelunky, and more) - experimental narrative games (Papers Please, This War of Mine, This is The Police) - modern adventure games (Until Dawn, Telltales Wolf Among Us / Walking Dead / Game of Thrones and many more) And those are only on PC and none of them are first person. Just like movies go beyond just Marvel and Transformers, gaming goes way beyond just Call of Duty and Battlefield. The AA market of smaller but still established companies (Paradox Interactive, Relic Entertainment, Telltale and many more) build great experiences and I don't think gaming market was ever so live and broad as it is these years.
  - teddyh 10y ago
    “Sadly, playing games where we live imaginary, exciting lives having basically destroyed our own is insane.” http://www.scarygoround.com/bobbins/index.php?date=20140120 http://www.scarygoround.com/bobbins/index.php?date=20140120
- floatboth 10y ago
  The high-end market is actually not for gaming — both Ryzen and Intel's "enthusiast platform" (X99) are worse for gaming than Intel's mainstream (quad core) CPUs. Ryzen is great for tasks like, uh, recompiling your operating system :D Or editing photos or reencoding your movie archive into whatever is the next awesome codec (Daala anyone?).
  - arcavorago 10y ago
    Care to actually back up that statement with any sort of citation or fact? According to the leaked 3dmark benchmarks, the top 3 Ryzens are on par with some of the top i7 quads... so honestly I'm not sure where you are getting this idea from. It also completely ignores the price disparity which makes the AMD slightly slower but much cheaper CPU's a doable upgrade for many. (And VR capable) http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/AMD-Ryzen-3DMark-Physics-Score.png http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/AMD-Ryzen... http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/AMD-Ryzen-3DMark-Physics-Score-PER-CORE.png http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/AMD-Ryzen... http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/AMD-Ryzen-3DMak-Fire-Strike-Physics-Score-WM.jpg http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/AMD-Ryzen...
    - floatboth 10y ago
      3DMark's Physics section is a pure CPU parallel benchmark (also known as "buy 6950X to win"), not a game-like benchmark. Here's results from actual games: http://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/2822-amd-ryzen-r7-1800x-review-premiere-blender-fps-benchmarks/page-7 http://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/2822-amd-ryzen-r7-1800x... Even the older 4790K is sometimes faster. And the i7 quads are cheaper. So games prefer higher clocks to more cores, that's still true.
- daemonk 10y ago
  I am looking forward more to their Naples cpus for servers.
aljungberg 10y ago
It's pretty impressive to see a CEO being able to answer a question about CPU vs GPU power envelope targets just of the cuff. The interviewer asks why there are no CPUs targeting higher wattages, like how CPUs are less than 150W but there are 300W GPU. She says she'll need to think about it but she's pretty sure that the high parallelisation of GPUs makes them easier to scale up in terms of wattage. Granted, that answer could be wrong (I know nothing about CPU engineering), but either way it's a really well considered one to be thought up when "put on the spot" in an interview with a question you haven't considered ahead of time. I'm sure that's one of the things which separate good from great in CEOs: an understanding not only of the broad market decisions made by their company but even the details of low level architecture decisions.
- baq 10y ago
  > Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering i mean, you could expect someone with that degree from MIT have at least a general idea about the technicalities of her flagship products.
  - moxious 10y ago
    Yes, you would expect it, but it's still rather atypical; most people become CEOs because of their business and political acumen, whether or not they understand the technical bits is maybe 10th priority. They say about companies that you can tell their culture from the outside by who they value and who they promote. Some engineering companies promote MBAs, and some promote engineers. Promotions and who holds high rank is an external cultural signal to the world that is really hard to fake. This cuts both ways though: if you see a company that hires and promotes engineers, where the CEO is this technically deep, you can probably conclude that (a) they value engineering but also that (b) they're probably not that great in terms of financial management & project management. They're radically different skill sets, and opportunity cost abounds. Almost no one is awesome at everything, because there are only 24 hours in the day, so being awesome at one thing often does mean you have some trading area where you're weak. Engineering companies run by MBAs are not always so bad as they sound. It sucks as an engineer if your considerations are not always front and center, but you get other advantages too; better strategy/insight on fundraising, better overall management, and sometimes vision too, many engineers are too narrowly focused on incremental improvements, and are missing the "dreamer" component, aka the "Jobs" not the "Wozniak".

172 points by vivekchandsrc 10y ago

Since I stopped gaming, I stopped following the high-end market. However, it is nice to see that AMD is trying to get in there again, some competition is good for the market in general. If AMD can deliver, then Intel might have to respond with lowering prices on their products, which I believe might be a bit overpriced now due to there no being a real vialbe alternative. Whatever happens, some competition is bound to be a good thing imo.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Analemma_ 10y ago
They actually already have: http://wccftech.com/intel-amd-price-war-ryzen-processors/ http://wccftech.com/intel-amd-price-war-ryzen-processors/ and that was before the reviews even went live. It should only get better since impressions seem favorable.
- Insanity 10y ago
  Oh thanks for pointing that out, I missed that :-)
overcast 10y ago
You should come back, even just for a few games a year. There are some incredible experiences available these days.
- Insanity 10y ago
  It is something I sometimes want to do, but find hard to justify. First of all, when I played, it was competitively and I found it hard to get fun out of just playing casually. In fact, I have quite addictive behaviour so I usually ended up addicted to games I played competitively. (CS:S, L4D(2) and COD2/4). I know myself well enough to know that I can not play "in moderation" and would tend towards the competitive aspect. (Single player games never really entertained me that much)
  - overcast 10y ago
    Overwatch would be right up your alley :)
    - Insanity 10y ago
      Hehe, I have heard that before, but I have actually not seen any gameplay of that :-)
- mercutio2 10y ago
  I'm curious if you could elaborate on this. For the population I represent (never, ever, want a first person visual rendering, under any circumstance) but love high quality game mechanics, I have a hard time finding what I consider good games. Everybody wants to polish their fundamentally undesirable three dimensional scene.
  - mysterydip 10y ago
    While there is a lot of 3D experiences out there, a lot of the recent great games that show off interesting mechanics can be found in the 2D realm. While not an exhaustive list by any means, and not knowing your preferences, here's a handful: - terraria - stardew valley - undertale - rimworld - prison architect - nuclear throne
  - detaro 10y ago
    In addition to mysterydip: Many RPGs and strategy games use 3D engines, but only for more "isometric" or "top down" views (downside is that they require more GPU performance than you'd think sometimes) Also would like to mention Factorio explicitly.
  - overcast 10y ago
    If you're a fan of Baldur's Gate and the like. Isometric CRPG's are back in full swing now. Pillars of Eternity, Pillars of Eternity Deadfire(just completed a fig.co funding), Tyranny, Torment. They are huge, deep games. Tons of under the hood mechanics going on. Definitely not point, click, kill. Requires lots of setup, strategy, on how you address each situation. Great stories.
  - izacus 10y ago
    Hmm, these last years were one of the best years in: - strategy gaming (from Deserts of Kharak, Civilization, Paradox interactive grand strategy games, Eugen Systems games, Total War series, XCOM and more and more) - RPG gaming (2D isometric RPGs are making a huge comeback with good writing and gameplay, things like Pillars of Eternity, new Torment, Divinty and more. 3rd person Witcher 3 collected record amount of awards and with good reason.) - platformers (Ori, Shovel Knight), roguelikes (Darkest Dungeon, Don't starve, Spelunky, and more) - experimental narrative games (Papers Please, This War of Mine, This is The Police) - modern adventure games (Until Dawn, Telltales Wolf Among Us / Walking Dead / Game of Thrones and many more) And those are only on PC and none of them are first person. Just like movies go beyond just Marvel and Transformers, gaming goes way beyond just Call of Duty and Battlefield. The AA market of smaller but still established companies (Paradox Interactive, Relic Entertainment, Telltale and many more) build great experiences and I don't think gaming market was ever so live and broad as it is these years.
- teddyh 10y ago
  “Sadly, playing games where we live imaginary, exciting lives having basically destroyed our own is insane.” http://www.scarygoround.com/bobbins/index.php?date=20140120 http://www.scarygoround.com/bobbins/index.php?date=20140120
floatboth 10y ago
The high-end market is actually not for gaming — both Ryzen and Intel's "enthusiast platform" (X99) are worse for gaming than Intel's mainstream (quad core) CPUs. Ryzen is great for tasks like, uh, recompiling your operating system :D Or editing photos or reencoding your movie archive into whatever is the next awesome codec (Daala anyone?).
- arcavorago 10y ago
  Care to actually back up that statement with any sort of citation or fact? According to the leaked 3dmark benchmarks, the top 3 Ryzens are on par with some of the top i7 quads... so honestly I'm not sure where you are getting this idea from. It also completely ignores the price disparity which makes the AMD slightly slower but much cheaper CPU's a doable upgrade for many. (And VR capable) http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/AMD-Ryzen-3DMark-Physics-Score.png http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/AMD-Ryzen... http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/AMD-Ryzen-3DMark-Physics-Score-PER-CORE.png http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/AMD-Ryzen... http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/AMD-Ryzen-3DMak-Fire-Strike-Physics-Score-WM.jpg http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/AMD-Ryzen...
  - floatboth 10y ago
    3DMark's Physics section is a pure CPU parallel benchmark (also known as "buy 6950X to win"), not a game-like benchmark. Here's results from actual games: http://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/2822-amd-ryzen-r7-1800x-review-premiere-blender-fps-benchmarks/page-7 http://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/2822-amd-ryzen-r7-1800x... Even the older 4790K is sometimes faster. And the i7 quads are cheaper. So games prefer higher clocks to more cores, that's still true.
daemonk 10y ago
I am looking forward more to their Naples cpus for servers.

aljungberg 10y ago

It's pretty impressive to see a CEO being able to answer a question about CPU vs GPU power envelope targets just of the cuff. The interviewer asks why there are no CPUs targeting higher wattages, like how CPUs are less than 150W but there are 300W GPU. She says she'll need to think about it but she's pretty sure that the high parallelisation of GPUs makes them easier to scale up in terms of wattage. Granted, that answer could be wrong (I know nothing about CPU engineering), but either way it's a really well considered one to be thought up when "put on the spot" in an interview with a question you haven't considered ahead of time. I'm sure that's one of the things which separate good from great in CEOs: an understanding not only of the broad market decisions made by their company but even the details of low level architecture decisions.

baq 10y ago
> Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering i mean, you could expect someone with that degree from MIT have at least a general idea about the technicalities of her flagship products.
- moxious 10y ago
  Yes, you would expect it, but it's still rather atypical; most people become CEOs because of their business and political acumen, whether or not they understand the technical bits is maybe 10th priority. They say about companies that you can tell their culture from the outside by who they value and who they promote. Some engineering companies promote MBAs, and some promote engineers. Promotions and who holds high rank is an external cultural signal to the world that is really hard to fake. This cuts both ways though: if you see a company that hires and promotes engineers, where the CEO is this technically deep, you can probably conclude that (a) they value engineering but also that (b) they're probably not that great in terms of financial management & project management. They're radically different skill sets, and opportunity cost abounds. Almost no one is awesome at everything, because there are only 24 hours in the day, so being awesome at one thing often does mean you have some trading area where you're weak. Engineering companies run by MBAs are not always so bad as they sound. It sucks as an engineer if your considerations are not always front and center, but you get other advantages too; better strategy/insight on fundraising, better overall management, and sometimes vision too, many engineers are too narrowly focused on incremental improvements, and are missing the "dreamer" component, aka the "Jobs" not the "Wozniak".