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Can't fight them on price? Fight them on talent. Whoever at AMD who refused to match the offer probably made a terrible decision. This is about the worst time
by eganist 9y ago
Can't fight them on price? Fight them on talent.
Whoever at AMD who refused to match the offer probably made a terrible decision. This is about the worst time to lose that talent right after inking a gpu die deal which, in light of this news, will only be temporary. AMD just got played.
If I were AMD, I would review Mark Papermaster's comp and incentives to ensure he doesn't leave.
(I'm long AMD)
- shmerl 9y agoYeah, that's kind of weird, at the time when AMD need to invest more effort in their GPUs to get ahead to Nvidia.
- 0xbear 9y agoIf they are playing this smart, there should be a bench of people, nearly as experienced, and willing to bust their ass twice as hard for half as much.
- marcosdumay 9y agoSomehow, companies never play this smart. Maybe at very R&D laden companies things are different, so I wouldn't bet against AMD, but wouldn't bet on them either.
- eksu 9y agoI don’t think this was all about money. Raja had been trying to run Radeon Technologies Group like an independent company and pushing for separation from AMD for a while. HardOCP did a good piece on this -> https://hardocp.com/article/2016/05/27/from_ati_to_amd_back_journey_in_futility https://hardocp.com/article/2016/05/27/from_ati_to_amd_back_... I think the recent Intel + AMD custom chip was probably the last thing Raja did before he got pulled RTG got the reins put back on and now he’s hoping ship to peruse what he’s wanted all along. To work with more independence.
- Terribledactyl 9y agoWhat leads you to think Intel will give him more autonomy? Or is their integrated graphics team setup differently than Radeon? I would suspect the old ATI boundaries after 11 years would still be stronger than something Intel has homegrown over the past 20.
- 0xbear 9y agoWell, he wouldn’t go there if Intel wouldn’t give him what he wanted, whatever that might be.
- MengerSponge 9y agoAnd if it's not corporate structure, maybe it's a boat. More power to him.
- burnte 9y agoTaking the GPU unit independent was never going to happen. The entire point of the ATI acquisition was to create the APUs that AMD has made for years, as well as get ahold of that great gaming market profit.
- WhitneyLand 9y agoAnd if you were at an auction, would you review Warren Buffett’s bid to ensure he doesn’t leave with the item you want? I know AMD has access to some resources, but If Intel decided he was a strategic hire, the game was over before it started. It’s not just that they are richer, it’s worth spending more to them because you could argue it ties into their most important long term IP battles in related areas like massively parallel computing, ML, etc.
- eganist 9y agoStrategic hiring should fail against survivalistic retention, but I may be an idealist. I'd think in practice hiring for growth would fail against retaining to survive.
- DigitalJack 9y agoThere is a point where the cost of rentention would ensure a failure to survive. At that point you have to just cut the line.
- rasz 9y agoBuffet doesnt do auctions
- desuvader 9y agoNothing some hot OTC options can't solve (hah!) - AMD definitely got played. I am short AMD, long NVDA. Keep an eye open on ER tomorrow.
- mmgutz 9y agoAMD GPUs haven't faired well against Nvidia for some time. AMD GPUS use 1.5X more power to keep pace. The recently released Vega GPUs are underwhelming. I don't think Nvidia is too concerned about him going to Intel. AMD needed a shakeup in that division anyway.
- fulafel 9y agoWhy do you think power consumption by itself is a pain point for AMD? Gaming customers don't care because it's only consuming more when actually playing - 500 hours played in a year times 0.1 eur/usd per kwh says you only save 50 eur or usd per year per 1000 watts reduction on power consumption, so it's like 2.5 eur or usd per year for a 50W difference. Cryptocurrency miners have voted with their wallets and gone AMD. There are some 24/7 HPC GPGPU users who put weight on power consumption but it is a small market segment. Of course lower power consumption lets you do all kinds of useful engineering decisions within the product, so lowering it would make the product faster or cheaper, but that is already accounted for in the direct cost and performance numbers of the current product.
- barrkel 9y agoMore power means more cooling which means more noise.
- ndesaulniers 9y agoI'd imagine gamers being a significantly smaller market than HPC/cloud where power consumption directly correlates to Total Cost of Ownership. > There are some 24/7 HPC GPGPU users who put weight on power consumption but it is a small market segment. Ugh latest estimates on machine learning are something like $40B by 2024.
- nl 9y agoGaming is roughly double the size of data centre and professional visualisation sales combined for NVidia. I’d imagine the difference is even larger for AMD. See https://wccftech.com/nvidia-second-quarter-2017-fy-18-analysis/ https://wccftech.com/nvidia-second-quarter-2017-fy-18-analys...
- sigi45 9y agoIn this position and pay grade, i think he wouldn't even be allowed to work for intel if amd would have said no.