5 ms·

I'm consistently surprised at how tepid AMD's embrace of mining has been. If I was them and noticed that my product was literally sold out everywhere because of

I'm consistently surprised at how tepid AMD's embrace of mining has been. If I was them and noticed that my product was literally sold out everywhere because of mining, I would embrace it, open a mining division, and immediately get to work trying to create specialized hardware optimized for mining. The fact that they seem to be pretending that this use case does not exist and stubbornly declare themselves to be exclusively a gaming company is baffling to me.

kbaker 9y ago
I don't know... demand can drop instantly, maybe permanently, if the price crashes. Not the best long-term strategy...
maxerickson 9y ago
If their hardware is sold out because of mining, all they have to do to serve the mining segment is make more of that hardware. There is no urgent need to undercut themselves. Brief research suggests that the entirety of Etherium mining is roughly equivalent to 1 quarter of AMDs GPU sales. It seems gaming is the much bigger chunk of demand (Nvidia sells 3x what AMD sells, so annual gaming sales are roughly 10x the total Etherium spend).
- literallycancer 9y ago
  Wasn't there a time few years ago when AMD overestimated the demand and then had 4 times the production capacity idle? It's not exactly cheap to build too.
arkitaip 9y ago
Or set up a startup thru which they mine coins themselves.
- seanp2k2 9y ago
  Start a REIT that does cryptocurrency mining.
  - thephyber 9y ago
    I'm curious why you used "REIT" and not some other investment instrument. Where does Real Estate factor into this?
    - lostboys67 9y ago
      I think they meant a classic Investment trust - there are some types of investment property amongst them where a closed ended structure is better. a REIT is just a special case of an IT eg "tritax big box" vs a RIT Capital Partners or Wittan
freeflight 9y ago
I think AMD's problem is manufacturing capacities. They can't even properly fulfill the current demand of gamers and miners, you want them to start a completely new line specialized just on miners? Where are they supposed to manufacture these chips? It would also be wasted effort on AMD's part as the cards are selling like crazy anyway and once the cryptoboom stops there's still plenty of gamers left to buy them.
- kalleboo 9y ago
  When the cryptoboom ends the secondhand market will flood with cheap used cards. If they made mining-specific cards with no video output, then they would be useless on the secondhand market
Qwertious 9y ago
The problem is, the mining comes and goes extremely sporadically, and can cause huge problems. Namely: * Overproduction for the sake of mining can leave you with huge oversupply of cards, which is very costly. * GPU miners can crowd out the enthusiast market, which is terrible in the long term: * gamers have brand loyalty and buy peripherals (like FreeSync monitors) and miners don't. * if gamers can't buy GPUs at affordable prices when they're building their new PC, then (some companies perceive that) they might just buy consoles instead, which shrinks the entire market. This is more a problem for the "budget" market, obviously. * Enthusiasts recommend products to non-tech-savvy consumers, which again, means that if temporary mining sales crowd out non-mining sales, they lose money in the long term.
biggerbistro 9y ago
They did embrace it: http://www.pcworld.com/article/3204149/components-graphics/amd-nvidia-coin-mining-graphics-cards-appear-as-gaming-gpu-shortage-intensifies.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/3204149/components-graphics/a... The problem is their core audience (gamers) gets cranky when they can't buy cards at regular prices due to the huge crypto demand. It negatively affects their image and they would rather have their fanboys than the disloyal miners who would happily switch to nvidia if it meant a greater ROI.

kbaker 9y ago

I don't know... demand can drop instantly, maybe permanently, if the price crashes. Not the best long-term strategy...

maxerickson 9y ago

If their hardware is sold out because of mining, all they have to do to serve the mining segment is make more of that hardware. There is no urgent need to undercut themselves. Brief research suggests that the entirety of Etherium mining is roughly equivalent to 1 quarter of AMDs GPU sales. It seems gaming is the much bigger chunk of demand (Nvidia sells 3x what AMD sells, so annual gaming sales are roughly 10x the total Etherium spend).

literallycancer 9y ago
Wasn't there a time few years ago when AMD overestimated the demand and then had 4 times the production capacity idle? It's not exactly cheap to build too.

arkitaip 9y ago

Or set up a startup thru which they mine coins themselves.

seanp2k2 9y ago
Start a REIT that does cryptocurrency mining.
- thephyber 9y ago
  I'm curious why you used "REIT" and not some other investment instrument. Where does Real Estate factor into this?
  - lostboys67 9y ago
    I think they meant a classic Investment trust - there are some types of investment property amongst them where a closed ended structure is better. a REIT is just a special case of an IT eg "tritax big box" vs a RIT Capital Partners or Wittan

freeflight 9y ago

I think AMD's problem is manufacturing capacities. They can't even properly fulfill the current demand of gamers and miners, you want them to start a completely new line specialized just on miners? Where are they supposed to manufacture these chips? It would also be wasted effort on AMD's part as the cards are selling like crazy anyway and once the cryptoboom stops there's still plenty of gamers left to buy them.

kalleboo 9y ago
When the cryptoboom ends the secondhand market will flood with cheap used cards. If they made mining-specific cards with no video output, then they would be useless on the secondhand market

Qwertious 9y ago

The problem is, the mining comes and goes extremely sporadically, and can cause huge problems. Namely: * Overproduction for the sake of mining can leave you with huge oversupply of cards, which is very costly. * GPU miners can crowd out the enthusiast market, which is terrible in the long term: * gamers have brand loyalty and buy peripherals (like FreeSync monitors) and miners don't. * if gamers can't buy GPUs at affordable prices when they're building their new PC, then (some companies perceive that) they might just buy consoles instead, which shrinks the entire market. This is more a problem for the "budget" market, obviously. * Enthusiasts recommend products to non-tech-savvy consumers, which again, means that if temporary mining sales crowd out non-mining sales, they lose money in the long term.

biggerbistro 9y ago

They did embrace it: http://www.pcworld.com/article/3204149/components-graphics/amd-nvidia-coin-mining-graphics-cards-appear-as-gaming-gpu-shortage-intensifies.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/3204149/components-graphics/a... The problem is their core audience (gamers) gets cranky when they can't buy cards at regular prices due to the huge crypto demand. It negatively affects their image and they would rather have their fanboys than the disloyal miners who would happily switch to nvidia if it meant a greater ROI.