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I was at AMD in the mid-late 2000s helping design CPU/APU/GPUs
- mkl 2y agohttps://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1809135345683841050 https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1809135345683841050
- unyttigfjelltol 2y agoThis should be the article link. As a non-X user the message thread in the original post doesn't work.
- jxub 2y agoApologies - it didn’t cross my mind!
- numpad0 2y agoIt's insane how Twitter of late is weaponizing "doesn't exist" and "cannot display" messages as loginwall and impressions control. It won't reproduce at the side of first class citizens with industrialized means of buzzing, so posters won't notice until subhuman class gather and speak up outside of the system. Crazy stuff.
- galdosdi 2y agoYeah, it's so disrespectful, typical of Elon's whole personality. For example, if you try to load Twitter in Firefox incognito, it will say "Error" and then lower say "Firefox incognito is known to cause issues with X.com" as if to move the blame away from themselves, when in actuality they are specifically detecting and blocking browsers in order to deter privacy.
- OliverGuy 2y agoWhy is AMD green on that graph and Nvidia red.......
- amlib 2y agoAMD used to be green and nVidia... idk, maybe because they are more like dealing with the devil nowadays :)
- garaetjjte 2y agoAMD was green, ATI red, so... yellow?
- lotsofpulp 2y ago> a technology cross-licensing that takes advantages of each other’s fab capabilities is going to help a lot in bringing the cost of GPU cycles down much further! What does this mean? I thought neither have any “fab” (manufacturing) facilities.
- gpderetta 2y ago> We did launch a “true” dual core, but nobody cared. By then Intel’s “fake” dual core already had AR/PR love. Practicality beats purity 100% of the time. This echoes "Worse is better".
- basilgohar 2y agoI love this insider view into this interesting point in computing history, especially about AMD. However, I was a little put off by the glorification of nVidia's shady practices and lock-in policies as key to their current leading position. While technically true, I dislike "ends justify the means"-style thinking. All this as the OP glorifies AMD's engineering and grit-based culture to drive through all though tough missteps and missed opportunities. To expand on that, I really do feel AMD has great engineering culture but they keep falling to the same traps. They do not invest strongly enough in software support nor vendor relationships. Neither of these necessitate the more evil monopolistic practices of vendor lock-in and proprietary, non-free (as in libre) software. If they can navigate that without turning evil, they'd be a company for the ages. And I can't close with mad respect to Dr. Lisa Su for her admirable leadership, itself bookworthy. Also, quick fact, she and Jensen are cousins!
- belter 2y agoOn the GPU area AMD lost, and will continue to lose to Nvidia, because they don't seem to get a grip on Software and Drivers. And that does not bode well for their long time CEO.
- diamond559 2y agoThe more this is blindly repeated the more you know it's bs
- latchkey 2y agoMI300x is doing quite well. https://chipsandcheese.com/2024/06/25/testing-amds-giant-mi300x/ https://chipsandcheese.com/2024/06/25/testing-amds-giant-mi3... https://www.nscale.com/blog/nscale-benchmarks-amd-mi300x-gpus-with-gemm-tuning-improves-throughput-and-latency-by-up-to-7-2x https://www.nscale.com/blog/nscale-benchmarks-amd-mi300x-gpu...
- belter 2y agoJust the first link review you posted reinforces my argument: "...But we must now talk about the elephant in the room, and that is AMD’s software stack. While it is absolutely night and day from where it was when we tested MI210, ROCm is nowhere near where it needs to be to truly compete with CUDA..."
- sublinear 2y ago> We were always engineering-led and there was a lot of hubris... So, long story short is that most engineers, especially ones as fanboyish as this, are wildly out of place in decision making and can't see the forest for the trees? It doesn't seem that surprising.
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago> So, long story short is that most engineers, especially ones as fanboyish as this, are wildly out of place in decision making and can't see the forest for the trees? My experience is rather that people who are passionate about engineering simply have a very different "taste" in hardware and buying decisions than other groups. So they see the forest insanely well, but they see very different paths through this forest than other people (say analysts or the general population) do.
- AlexandrB 2y ago> SUPERIOR PRODUCTS LOSE TO SUPERIOR DISTRIBUTION LOCK-INS & GTM. This takeaway was a little odd to me in the context of 2008. I had been an AMD stalwart in my PCs since about 2000 (Athlon Thunderbird), but IIRC in 2008 Intel had the better processor. Better single core performance, better performance/watt, and I think AMD processors tended to have stability issues around this time. I remember I built a PC in 2009 with a Core processor for these reasons. Obviously this is a niche market (gaming PC) perspective. But I don't think it was so clear cut.
- tails4e 2y agoAgree. It took a truly superior product at lower cost to make a dent in Intel's dominance in server, all the while Intel tried their best to flex their lock in muscle. That happened well after 2008, with the advent of Zen and chiplet bases tech and better perf/W
- treprinum 2y agoRyzen 1 was far from superior, performance-wise it was already behind Intel at around Haswell-level but it brought the first reasonably-priced octacore x64 for the masses.
- BirAdam 2y agoUntil the later Core 2 Quad CPUs, AMD’s stuff was “technologically” better in the multi core workloads. The problem with that is that multi core workloads were uncommon at the time. This is where the “AMD Fine Wine” meme originated. By the time people had moved on to better things, the greatness of AMD’s technologies became apparent. Personally, I’ve always liked Intel for stability reasons. Running Intel chipsets and CPUs, I’ve just had fewer issues. I’m an enthusiast, so I do spend more than I should on both Intel and AMD rather frequently… but now, I’m hungry for an Ampere system. My wallet is crying.
- nickpeterson 2y agoPeople keep yelling about nvidia stock but that feels like a huge bubble. AI disillusionment will hit and the stock will implode. Nvidia hasn’t made any inroads on producing actual systems, just gpus. Once Apple or Microsoft have a fast enough chip (TOPs wise), nobody will care about nvidia lead except in the datacenter. Seems like a failing position to me.
- htrp 2y ago>Once Apple or Microsoft have a fast enough chip (TOPs wise), nobody will care about nvidia lead except in the datacenter. thats gonna take a while
- eitally 2y agoI think I'm not adequately understanding your comment. Nvidia has huge software teams building accelerators that optimize application of their GPUs for all kinds of applications. They also now offer their own "cloud" and have partnered with the hyperscalers for integration as well as GTM. Those same hyperscalers are also almost unilaterally driving Nvidia's growth the past few years. The cloud market is still growing and will continue to do so. Nvidia's consumer business almost doesn't matter anymore.
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- bob1029 2y agoI think much of this boils down to perspectives some of us have regarding the value of in-house manufacturing capabilities relative to design time & software capabilities. I get arguments that maybe one fab is better than the other, but what about all of them combined? All of our modern chipmaking capability all at once. Nvidia has no factories. You can ship their output on a USB flash drive. Valuation: ~3.1T. Intel, TSMC and Samsung have all the factories. Every modern chip made on earth in this circle. Combined valuation: ~1.1T This is simple napkin math for this arbitrary retail investor. I don't know when the music will stop but it absolutely will.
- difosfor 2y ago> I seriously wish Nvidia and AMD could merge now – a technology cross-licensing that takes advantages of each other’s fab capabilities is going to help a lot in bringing the cost of GPU cycles down much furthe. Given Nvidia's track record I'd sooner imagine them just slacking off and overcharging more for lack of competition. I wish AMD would actually compete with them on GPUs (for graphics, not AI). Interestingly Intel seems to be trying to work up to that now.
- paulmd 2y agothe reason NVIDIA has a lead right now is largely because they didn't slack off during the Maxwell era and kept iterating even after the 22nm/20nm node fell though. AMD decided that hey, we can't really afford this right now, and NVIDIA can't shrink either, right? But NVIDIA slipped in a major architectural iteration that was basically a full node worth of efficiency gains, and that really has put them in the position they are today. Being able to take a trailing-node strategy during the Turing/Ampere years, being able to run a full node behind RDNA1/2 and use dirt-cheap Samsung crap and last-gen TSMC 16FF/14FFN while still fighting AMD to a standstill on efficiency is entirely the result of AMD slacking off. AMD themselves have said they slacked off. Lost focus, is the quote. https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1956&v=590h3XIUfHg https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1956&v=590h3XIUfHg
- carlsborg 2y agoBack in 2015, AMD was trading at $2.40 and Nvidia at about 50 cents (accounting for stock splits). 1000 USD invested then would be ~$70,000 and ~$256,000 respectively today.
- elzbardico 2y agoLet's be frank. Nobody invests on the market nowadays, the correct verb is BET.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoI have been reading this comment since early 2000s. If I was old enough, I probably would have heard this comment being made in the late 1990s. As well as the 1980s. And probably before that too.
- polymatter 2y agoThat doesn’t make it less true! It’s a bet because it’s risky “capital is at risk”,“value of investments can go down as well as up” etc. As opposed to a savings account which is far far less risky enough that it’s not really a bet.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoThat use of bet would make it a meaningless comment. Presumably, elzbardico’s use of “bet” meant something akin to betting in a casino or lottery, where the goal is to get high from the rush of sudden, big, improbable wins.
- quesera 2y agoNo, it's just wordplay. Capital is always at risk in financial investments. If there is a semantic difference, I'd say you "invest" when you have a historical expectation of future positive returns, and you "bet" when you're taking a contrarian approach or just going with a gut feeling when data isn't available or known. Anecdotally, and personally, I've had better luck with "bets" than "investments". But they're fundamentally the same thing.
- washedup 2y agohttps://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1809135345683841050.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1809135345683841050.html
- theandrewbailey 2y ago> We didn’t want a GPU company so much that the internal joke was AMD+ATI=DAMIT. I remember reading that on places like the Register, but they kept the second A, so DAAMIT.
- tambourine_man 2y agoI never worked at a large company and he was right there, but there are so many outstanding things in this thread, it’s hard not be surprised. Not understanding the importance of GPUs in 2006, or of being first-to-market, while confusing OpenGL with OpenCL (twice), survival bias (BELIEVE IN YOUR VISION)…
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- dooglius 2y agoDupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40696384 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40696384 no idea why that was flagged
- sorenjan 2y agoSame guy on Twitter posted the same story today as he did in 2020. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1285234687267356672.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1285234687267356672.html
- btouellette 2y agoIs he really trying to say that AMD had a superior product in the Core 2 Duo era and Intel was only dominating due to marketing? It's hard to take any of the rest of his opinions seriously when he starts with that take
- luyu_wu 2y agoI'm not sure if you're familiar with CPU history, but this is roughly true. Intel's catchup to multicore offerings was trippy and severely lagged behind AMD. I think it's often forgotten that CPU leadership has fluctuated between different companies many times in the past!
- btouellette 2y agoI'm quite familiar as I worked for Intel for over a decade as an engineer. It's absolutely true that leadership has fluctuated a lot but the 2003-2010 era had fairly clear cut leaders for each generation. AMD was the choice for just about everything through the Athlon 64 single core era but the Core 2 Duo run had them relegated to superiority in the very bottom end of the market only for a long time. https://www.anandtech.com/print/2045/ https://www.anandtech.com/print/2045/
- creativeSlumber 2y agoIs it possible that maybe your view point is biased against AMD since you worked for for Intel during that time?
- wmf 2y agoNah, btouellette is correct. AMD only led for a few years around 2003-2005.
- Delk 2y agoAMD did become at least competitive in high end CPUs with the original Athlon or Athlon XP. Not sure whether they were faster than the Pentium 3 but they weren't trailing. So perhaps a bit more than a couple of years, but my impression is also that they fell behind on (single-thread) performance for a long time after that. I've also understood that in more ancient history AMD CPUs sometimes beat contemporary Intel parts in performance, although releasing their parts later than Intel. I'm not sure that's relevant to any remotely recent developments anymore though.
- chollida1 2y agoMinor curiosity point.... Does anyone know why engg has two g's here? I'm sure it mean engineering but i've never seen that abbreviation, he motioned he's from India, is that where this comes from or is it just an individual quirk?
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- andruby 2y agoIt's unbelievable that INTC market cap is only 133B, AMD is only 274B and NVDA is 3,130B. That's 23x INTC and 11x AMD.
- drexlspivey 2y agoOn the latest quarter, NVDA’s net profit was 3 times AMDs revenue
- andruby 2y agoThat is jaw dropping.
- SushiHippie 2y agoWow okay, that's really crazy. > AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) today announced revenue for the first quarter of 2024 of $5.5 billion, gross margin of 47%, operating income of $36 million, net income of $123 million and diluted earnings per share of $0.07. https://ir.amd.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1192/amd-reports-first-quarter-2024-financial-results https://ir.amd.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1192/am... And Nvidia had a revenue $22.1 billion in Q4 2024, gross margin of 76%, operating income of $13.6B, net income of $12.2B, and diluted earnings per share $4.93. https://investor.nvidia.com/news/press-release-details/2024/NVIDIA-Announces-Financial-Results-for-Fourth-Quarter-and-Fiscal-2024/ https://investor.nvidia.com/news/press-release-details/2024/...
- drexlspivey 2y ago> And Nvidia had a revenue $22.1 billion in Q4 2024, gross margin of 76%, operating income of $13.6B, net income of $12.2B, and diluted earnings per share $4.93. That was the previous quarter. $14.881B net profit on the last one
- SushiHippie 2y agoOh you are right, these differences in quarters and fiscal years between companies are really confusing. https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-announces-financial-results-for-first-quarter-fiscal-2025 https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-announces-financia... $26.044 revenue 78.4% gross margin $16.909 operating income $14.881B net income $5.98 diluted earnings per share
- Zambyte 2y ago> I seriously wish Nvidia and AMD could merge now – a technology cross-licensing that takes advantages of each other’s fab capabilities is going to help a lot in bringing the cost of GPU cycles down much further! It's interesting that they see such a monopoly as something that would bring costs down. It seems more to me like competing with AMD does much more to keep Nvidias costs down (if they can be described as "down") than combining resources would.
- Apreche 2y agoI predicted years ago they would make a CPU and you would be able to buy an All-NVidia PC. I think the reason that hasn't happened is because of the failed purchase of ARM. And looking at the market dominance of NVidia, it seems they were right to block that acquisition.
- alphabeta2024 2y agoSupercomputers are now Nvidia-only with Grace Hopper chips.
- JonChesterfield 2y agoThere was an arm CPU from nvidia branded "Tegra" from circa 2010. I remember a laptop (or maybe a mini pc style thing) based on that and power consumption being shameful but my recollections are hazy. Vaguely interesting side note, yandex found that from poor search terms very easily and google abjectly failed to. I hope google are tracking how frequently people use their engine to find yandex, while remembering bing being mostly used to find google and maybe the death of yahoo.
- einsteinx2 2y agoThe Nintendo Switch uses a Tegra X1 chip.
- modeless 2y ago> In fact, AMD almost bought Nvidia but Imagine the wealth destruction if they had merged way back then! I don't love the way mergers are regulated today but I do feel like preventing companies from growing too big through mergers is desirable.
- _zoltan_ 2y agoSince we're talking about nvidia... :) is there anybody here who has access to a B200 NVL72 with working external nvlink switches and wants to share non-marketing impressions?
- wmf 2y agoBlackwell hasn't been released yet. I'm a little skeptical of the NVL racks since I've seen no success stories so far.
- paulmd 2y ago> We did launch a “true” dual core, but nobody cared. By then Intel’s “fake” dual core already had AR/PR love. We then started working on a “true” quad core, but AGAIN, Intel just slapped 2 dual cores together & called it a quad-core. How did we miss that playbook?! it is wild the way AMD engineers can't stop themselves from throwing stones, even with 20 years of distance and even when their entire product strategy in 2024 now rides on gluing together these cores. people forget that Intel saying that AMD was gluing together a bunch of cores comes after years of AMD fans whining that Intel was gluing together a bunch of cores - that was always an insult to Intel users that pentium D wasn't a real chip, that core2quad wasn't a real chip (not like quadfather, that's a real quad-core platform!). And you see that play out here, this guy is still salty that Intel was the first to glue together some chips in 2002 or whatever! and the first time AMD did it, they rightfully took some heat for doing it... especially since Naples was a dreadful product. Rome was a completely different league, Naples really was glued-together garbage in comparison to Rome or to a monolithic chip. You can argue that (like DLSS 1.0) maybe there was a vision or approach there that people were missing, but people were correct that Naples was a dogshit product that suffered from its glued-together nature. Even consumer ryzen was a real mixed bag, vendors basically took one look at naples and decided to give AMD 2 more years to cook. People wedge still so wound into it they sent death threats to GamersNexus for the “i7 in production, i5 in gaming” which frankly was already quite generous given the performance. frankly I find it very instructive to go back and read through some of the article titles and excerpts on semiaccurate because it just is unthinkable how blindly tribal things were even 10 years ago, but this shit is how people thought 10 years ago. Pentium D is bad, because it's glued-together! Core2Quad is bad because it's glued-together! And that from the actual engineers who have the perspective and the understanding to know what they're looking at and the merits, with 20 years of retrospect and distance! If you instead look at what the discourse of this time was like... https://www.semiaccurate.com/tag/nvidia/page/6/ https://www.semiaccurate.com/tag/nvidia/page/6/ "NVIDIA plays games with GM204" "how much will a GM204 card cost you!?" "Why mantle API will outlive DX12 [as a private playground for API development outside the need for standardization with MS or Khronos]" "GP100 shows that NVIDIA is over four years behind AMD in advanced packaging" "NVIDIA profits are up in a fragile way". like why are amd people like this? inside the company and out. It’s childish. None of the other brands engineers are out clowning on twitter (frank azor? chris hook? etc), none of the other fans are sending death threats when their brand’s product isn’t good. Like you wanna make a $10 bet over it???
- alberth 2y ago> I spent 6+yrs @ AMD engg in mid to late 2000s helping design the CPU/APU/GPUs that we see today. Is that a far statement to make, given ~20-years has passed?
- JonChesterfield 2y agoIt seems a bit dubious since there's the trainwreck of Bulldozer on x64 sitting between then and the ryzen cores that managed to dethrone intel. I'm pretty sure the GPUs were VLIW without direct access to system memory too. I think one could sketch a lineage from the PS4 processor through to el capitan with a bunch of handwaving but that also seems to be after that time period.
- stagger87 2y agoNo, and the content of the tweets certainly dont support his claim. As someone else pointed out he's already tweeted this "story" in the past. It's all low effort self promotion for his brand.
- 1oooqooq 2y agoHes not an engineer anymore. that's MBA math. it checks out.
- fulafel 2y ago> We wanted to merge GPU+CPU into an APU but it took years of trust & and process-building to get them to collaborate. Maybe if we had Slack, but we only had MSFT Sharepoint I wonder how many companies had this problem.