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AMD is having its day
- Narishma 7y agoIs there a non-paywalled version?
- ShinTakuya 7y agoCheck the FAQ.
- kick 7y agoIn comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so.
- j4kp07 7y agoSo where do we complain? This posting is essentially an advert.
- kick 7y agoSend all complaints over to hn@ycombinator.com.
- zaroth 7y agoOften times people will upvote the topic / headline as something interesting or noteworthy or because the discussion in the comments is interesting. I’m sure a double digit percentage of people are not even clicking over to TFA, and then another double digit percentage click and then bounce back to the comments (after hitting the paywall) for the discussion and may still upvote.
- eBombzor 7y agohttps://outline.com/eyM5Pt https://outline.com/eyM5Pt
- opencl 7y agoThe article is basically devoid of content beyond "AMD makes less money than Intel, Zen is good, their marketshare is small but rapidly increasing".
- sliken 7y agoNipping at the heels, market share wise. Crushing it on the actual CPU performance side. The new Epyc Romes are pretty amazing chips compared to the Intel warmed over Xeon 82xx series.
- ekianjo 7y agoProblem is that in the enterprise segment there is almost no AMD offering with the big brands so it is going to take a while to displace the Xeons. I looked at Lenovo workstations recently and their offering is 90% Intel.
- beatgammit 7y agoWell, at least Thinkpad is available in AMD, which is a huge potential enterprise market.
- godzillabrennus 7y agoTime to go super micro or Gigabyte for a cycle. Let the big brands feel the pain of not incorporating AMD.
- jzwinck 7y agoSuperMicro's ILO and rack mounting hardware were really poor a few years ago. Has that changed? Keep in mind the big brands have improved those parts since then, so unless SM made amazing progress, they're not a drop in replacement.
- sliken 7y agoWorks for me. I just want to be able to turn on, turn off, reset, get a video console, and reinstall the OS from an ISO. Sure the software/tools could be nicer, but I've not been overly impressed with the competition. At least HTML5 has replaced the pain of ancient buggy java solutions that waste 5 minutes over a slow connections with sandbox permissions, java splash screens, and some awful client that's mostly VNC, but with a hacked up auth system.
- yumario 7y agoFrom the game theorist point of view I think its better if one company is the underdog. Think about it, if one company is the underdog, one company has a lot to gain by competing, while the other has a lot to lose if they don't compete. Therefore we get competition. Now, the more equal the market share of the companies the grater the risk and less the reward for competition... A better strategy would be not to undercut your competitor and instead divide the market share. Which leads to stagnation. Do people here think it sound reasonable? Edit: Mathematically the argument would be as follows: Consider two company A and B. A has market share 'a' and B has b. n is the total market. Then a + b = n. A's reward for competing will be n - a = b. A's risk for competing will be a, (it's remaining market share). A's will compete as long as the reward is greater than risk. This will reach an equilibrium at a = b.
- airza 7y agoThis basically describes the argument for antitrust regulation
- WrtCdEvrydy 7y agoIt feels backwards... the closer the companies are, the more there is to lose from not competing... but you do get commoditization. I wonder what a world with AMD being the leader and Intel being the underdog would look like.
- yumario 7y agoConsider two company A and B. A has market share 'a' and B has b. n is the total market. Then a + b = n. A's reward for competing will be n - a = b. A's risk for competing will be a, (it's remaining market share). A's will compete as long as the reward is greater than risk. This will reach an equilibrium at a = b.
- foota 7y agoI understand this is an armchair discussion about economics, but this is wildly oversimplified. What does it even mean to "compete" in this case? Obviously if either intel or AMD stopped researching entirely then they would quickly fall by the wayside, as long as either intel or AMD pose a credible threat to being able to innovate. I would say that your a and b could be like, levels of investment into researching. They'll research at some level, or risk falling too far behind, but can't spend too much as then they'll have to divert funds from other things like marketing or production, or just run out of money. They'll both likely choose to invest at a pace where they think they'll be able to match the other's innovation, but not so much as to overspend.
- ConcernedCoder 7y agoJim Keller, the designer of "Zen" architecture, is now working for Intel... https://web.archive.org/web/20180426124248/https://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/matthew-wilson/zen-architecture-lead-jim-keller-heads-to-intel/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180426124248/https://www.kitgu...
- kick 7y agoIt's kind of his "thing" to bounce around to different, interesting projects. He wrote the x86_64 spec while working at AMD (and was responsible for the K8s ala Athlon 64s), he played a big part in Apple getting their SoCs to best-in-class, and that's not nearly all he's done. Incredibly accomplished man, I don't think he's going to stay in one place for very long. He'll probably come back to AMD at some point or another.
- Roritharr 7y agoI wish I knew what his secret is. He can't be a genius of THAT magnitude, that would be a miracle.
- kick 7y agoIf you ask most people who have familiarity with x86_64, I'm certain they would use a different term than "genius." Though the first step for you would be to work on projects you're more passionate about, and that are more technically challenging. A billing site (judging by your HN about section) won't challenge you in a way that will make you get better.
- m15i 7y agoAre there any good alternatives to Nvidia GPUs/cuDNN for deep learning?
- rarecoil 7y agoROCm doesn't completely suck with the Radeon VII, which is a Radeon Instinct MI50. Deep learning is not my day job and I'd like to avoid supporting NVidia's insane prices for DL-capable cards, so I've been dealing with the performance hit, and only using the R7 for DL tasks then switching it off when the power isn't needed. The XFX Radeon VII is actually on sale for Newegg for $569 so it's a lot of power (and 16 GB HBM2) for that price.
- jamesblonde 7y agoAgreed. The Radeon VII is currently the best price/compute GPU out there for deep learning. It's performance on RESNET-50 is about the same as the 2080Ti - https://github.com/ROCmSoftwarePlatform/tensorflow-upstream/issues/173 https://github.com/ROCmSoftwarePlatform/tensorflow-upstream/...
- bitL 7y agoThat's only theoretical. Try to use ROCm on latest frameworks or on external models that write custom CUDA operations/losses. Basic stuff might work in a more complicated way than on NVidia, advanced stuff is guaranteed to either not work or work in a couple of months when it lands into ROCm. Radeon VII is a beast for FP64 computation, if you do simulation or heavy computations that require supercomputer-level of precision, then grab one while you can, it's the best price/performance of all GPUs on the market. However folks, please don't follow the advice about using for it Deep Learning if you want to actually have Deep Learning business in any way.
- ccffpphh 7y agohttps://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/ROCm https://github.com/RadeonOpenCompute/ROCm ROCM makes it possible to use consumer grade AMD GPUs for deep learning.
- rgbrenner 7y agoCongrats to AMD, but I'm still very pessimistic on their long term prospects. It seems like Intel's advantages come from a system that produces improvements over years. You can see this just in their R&D spending: Intel spends nearly 2x AMD's revenue just on R&D. Whereas this development from AMD was thanks to Jim Keller (who now works at Intel)... It was a one-off event.. and once they've extended it as far as it'll go.. then what? Unless they develop their ability to innovate (they've had issues keeping top talent at the firm), this will probably be another one of AMD's boom and bust cycles.
- tuananh 7y agoyou gotta give credits to the team as well. It wasn't just Jim Keller. btw this kind of architecture can give AMD a few years to catchup. if they can keep the momentum, they have a very good chance to be relevant again.
- jcheng 7y agoBut in 2019 you need to compare Intel’s R&D with AMD + TSMC. What’s different this time is that Intel has lost its process node advantage.
- jsf01 7y agoIntel decided to invest more heavily in share buybacks than R&D as of their recent earnings call. But that’s only half of the story. They need that R&D budget because they have the (massive and growing) expense of building and upgrading their own fabs, which have undergone a series of costly mistakes in the last decade. I wonder what % of intel’s R&D budget is actually comparable to AMD’s if you exclude the amount poured into fabs—betting those figures are much closer despite enormous differences in market cap. TSMC, who along with GloFo fab the AMD chips, is basically all-in on R&D investment and taking on debt to facilitate the construction of the most advanced fabs to date. And their prior investments in 7nm have scaled rapidly and panned out well. I think it was the fastest ramp for a node shrink that they’ve done. Oh and Keller is definitely smart but you imply that he’s got a monopoly on talent in the semiconductor industry. There’s no way that’s the case lmao
- 7y ago
- arcanus 7y ago"For now, AMD’s resurgence is good news for consumers, IT departments, cloud-computing firms and anybody who uses software. Like any good monopolist, Intel charges a steep price for its products—unless AMD is doing well. Sure enough, Intel’s newest set of desktop chips, due in November, are some of its thriftiest in years."
- unfocused 7y agoInteresting timing for this article. I'm in Canada, and for the first time in over a decade, I decided I couldn't pay the premium of $3200 (taxes included) for a Macbook Pro with 512GB SSD and 16GB of RAM. I bought a Lenovo 2 in 1 touch laptop with lots of ports, and an AMD Ryzen 3700U with RX Vega 10 graphics, for $700 (taxes included). The AMD Ryzen 3700U is just as good as the 8th Gen i5. Plenty for me at home. And with the money I saved, I can upgrade my NAS. This combination of AMD + Windows + Lenovo has finally pushed me to try the world outside of Apple.
- ralusek 7y agoHow's the trackpad? I have heard people say that they've found an apple comparable trackpad, but I have yet to encounter one.
- fyfy18 7y agoI switched to ThinkPads last year (first a X250, now T470s) and this was my big concern too. I just sat down one day and spent an hour or so tweaking the various options for the trackpad driver until I got it how I was used to from Apple. I'd say it's 95% as good, and some things like dragging are infact easier as there are physical mouse buttons (as well as tap to click). I have no idea why the defaults are so bad, but I've kind of got used to that as a Linux user ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- nsomaru 7y agoCan you detail your distro and the tool you used to tweak? What settings worked well?
- macintux 7y ago> and some things like dragging are infact easier as there are physical mouse buttons Did you ever try the 3-finger drag on a Mac? I find it hard to imagine any button being easier than that. It’s a shame Apple hides it in Accessibility. That gesture is wonderful.
- SoreGums 7y ago
- tempsy 7y agoThere's a strange cohort of "meme" stocks that I see in certain male-dominant internet subcultures. Tesla and AMD seems to be at the top of that list.
- tristor 7y agoCan you expand on what you mean by this? I don't understand. Are you saying people pick these stocks because of cultural reasons and they're actually not good investments? Are you saying that male-dominated internet subcultures have a cultural reason to pick these stocks, specifically?
- KaoruAoiShiho 7y agoProbably the second one leading to a bias causing the first one. Some tech/geek communities really like those 2 stocks. There are other male communities as well that are into other stocks. Even in tech the culture leads to some stocks becoming overvalued and others undervalued. AMD is overvalued while FB is undervalued because of the cultural feelings toward those companies.
- WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago> FB is undervalued Yes, I too thought myspace stock was undervalued.
- jsf01 7y agoAMD is worth ~40B today. FB is worth ~550B today. AMD supplies a product in growing demand while FB supplies access to demographics in growing demand. But the downside risks are not the same. It only took FB’s viral growth to end MySpace. User loyalty is far more fleeting than the market for CPUs. Within five years or your preferred investment time horizon, compare the valuations of each firm and see how your assessment stood the test of time.
- mantap 7y agoFacebook has a plan A and a plan B for dealing with competition. Plan A is to buy out competitors to acquire users and diversify their brand (Instagram, Whatsapp). Plan B is to use FB's overwhelming resource advantage to copy their product (Snapchat). It's fair to say that FB is well aware of what happened to MySpace. Any potential "Facebook killer" needs to circumvent both of these tactics. Not impossible but not easy either.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dredmorbius 7y agoNo mention of Spectre / Meltdown? https://www.csoonline.com/article/3247868/spectre-and-meltdown-explained-what-they-are-how-they-work-whats-at-risk.html https://www.csoonline.com/article/3247868/spectre-and-meltdo...
- jangid 7y agoAMD lags not because of hardware only. There is very weak support for drivers and libraries in software. Intel and Nvidia spend huge amount of money in supporting library maintainers and thereby creating a lobby. For example, look into the list of supported GPUs in the Github repositories of popular machine-learning libraries PyCharm, Tensorflow etc. AMD and OpenCL is nowhere as compared to Nvidia's CUDA.
- lone_haxx0r 7y agoOn the other hand, Nvidia's Linux drivers are blobs (that don't even support Wayland) while AMD and Intel actively contribute to Mesa, and treat their users well (or at least much better than nvidia).
- toma1k 7y agoThere is one advantage of nvidia proprietary driver, you get support of new cards on day one, with amd/intel it takes few months to have drivers in good shape.
- clarry 7y agoI'm pretty sure amdgpu has supported AMD's recent cards (from the past few years) before they hit the shelves. Same for intel. It's always fun seeing the commits adding support for chips that you can't buy yet. And I've bought some very bleeding edge hardware from both companies in the past few years, with good results OOTB on Linux.
- chousuke 7y agoI look forward to the day that someone pulls the rug from under Nvidia like AMD did to Intel. I'm not sure if it will happen, or when, but damn would it be satisfying.
- Erlich_Bachman 7y agoThere have been numerous situations just this year where I've stumbled on problem from having an AMD card, whereas Nvidias with their "blobs" have worked just fine. Gaming, video editing, even ML, they all seem to work perfectly on Linux with Nvidia, and AMD always has some problems. So at the very least this is contested. Nvidia seems much more supporting of the open source OS.
- sandGorgon 7y agoAMD needs to figure out a way to get CUDA support on its integrated GPU or get Tensorflow/Pandas/etc etc to adopt its GPU acceleration libraries. Their brand is still not thought of as equal to intel. So the other way to build the brand is through developer adoption.
- selimthegrim 7y agoSo why aren’t they handing out free GPUs to colleges and universities like nVidia?
- sandGorgon 7y agobecause nobody wants their GPU. AMD integrated GPU laptops are very common in India and are very cheap compared to equivalent intel. For example Ryzen 5 Vega 11. People would rather shell out for expensive nvidia. Because no academic/research software can use the AMD GPU. If CUDA was available on AMD, then the sale of their laptops (and servers) would 10x overnight.
- hyperpallium 7y agoIntel has had the smallest nodes since the beginning. With Moore's law's death, everyone is catching up. Isn't it that simple?
- trynumber9 7y agoI don't think so. Because now TSMC has the highest transistor density. It is more that Intel fumbled 10nm so badly that others have passed them. Intel's 7nm had better be good and timely or they're in some serious trouble. TSMC's 5nm is starting early next year and with 1.84x scaling.
- hyperpallium 7y agoBut nm are marketing terms now; TSMC's 7nm is said to be equal to Intel's 10nm. Nodes are still shrinking, but not at the rate implied by their nm names. In addition, thermal constraints mean they can't actually be used at their theoretical capacity.
- trynumber9 7y agoIntel's 10nm is finally shipping now, according to Intel, but it seems small scale yet. TSMC's 7nm has been shipping for over a year, in very ubiquitous devices (iPhones).
- puranjay 7y agoI just built a new PC with Ryzen 3700x. I use it mostly for music production. Fantastic performance so far. 10 instances of Serum and my CPU doesn't even cross 15%. Moreover, I feel like I'm buying for the future with Ryzen. Intel is going to change its architecture after the 10th gen. Buying a 9th gen Intel right now seems like throwing money at a dead end
- pier25 7y agoSame. My new 3700x build can push dozens of Diva instances. If you want to see more details: https://vi-control.net/community/threads/my-ryzen-3700x-build-for-music-production.86352/ https://vi-control.net/community/threads/my-ryzen-3700x-buil...
- jimbo1qaz 7y agoIf I block web fonts, all references to AMD are lowercase. MiloTE and MiloSCTE (small caps). .blog-post small { text-transform: lowercase; }
- Finch2192 7y agoCan I ask -- What was your line of thinking that led you to find this out? I'm the kind of guy who could probably figure out how to do this if it was, like, given to me as a task. But never in a million years would I just stumble across this.
- jacobolus 7y agoI assume the previous poster blocks all web fonts as a matter of course (to save bandwidth? speed web page loading? reduce vectors for tracking?) Anyhow, people should ideally be using small caps a whole lot more. Using all caps for abbreviations is much uglier and less legible, especially in texts where many abbreviations appear.
- jimbo1qaz 7y agoI don't like it when different websites look very different. So in my primary browser (Firefox), I only allow sites to use my preferred sans-serif, serif, and monospace fonts. (In the options page's font dialog, I unchecked "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of your selections above".) I noticed that all occurrences of AMD are lowercase, so I noticed that it's set to lowercase. Opening in Chrome, I noticed that there was a giant banner on the bottom covering 1/3 of my page, and another on the top which closed when I closed the bottom banner. In Chrome, I noticed that AMD was written in small-caps with font MiloSCTE, and the rest of body text was using MiloTE.
- some1else 7y agoThis rule would ensure that the fallback font also displays small caps for that tag: font-variant: small-caps Small capitals only apply to lower-case letters, so it's common to lower-case small capital abbreviations, especially in body text: http://theworldsgreatestbook.com/book-design-part-5/ http://theworldsgreatestbook.com/book-design-part-5/
- m0zg 7y agoAnd I sure hope they keep it up. Intel was getting way too comfortable in its dominant position, and that hurts everyone (including Intel in the longer term). The best outcome for all is to have two companies with approximately equal marketshare competing on merit. There isn't much you can squeeze out of general purpose CPUs anymore, but I'd be quite grateful for the next 2 or 3x. And then they can start competing in acceleration hardware and GPUs.
- boyadjian 7y agoAMD HD 4770, HD 6870, HD 7870, R9 290, RX Vega 64, all the graphic cards that I bought recently have been AMD. And thought my previous CPUs where Intel, my next CPU will be an AMD.
- known 7y agoI think China will try to acquire AMD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices
- achow 7y agohttp://archive.is/c6fKX http://archive.is/c6fKX
- pschastain 7y agoFull article is behind a paywall :-/