I would have held off from buying ATI for a while... at least until the price tag would have been more attractive. Instead of laying people off, offer incentives of working harder and smarter in order to introduce new and even better products quicklier and more efficiently. Of course, remove the redudancy within the company and cut costs wherever possible.

How do you propose to remove redundancy without laying off some people?

i would partner with china to produce next generation cpu, they have the money, manufacturing, patience and they need / would love the technology. then with china's deep pockets, amd can go head to head against intel, us congress would go nuts...

Narrowing your focus will be the mantra of any successful company for the next 5 years. AMD will do well by this, and other companies should take note. Are you listening Steve Ballmer?

ok here it goes, they should on the low end come up with cpu for mobile devices, go after phone market ect.

on the high end they should turn their gpu into 64-bit cpu with hundreds of computing cells. can you imagine what kind of games could be made with a cpu that had 256 cores.


re: next five years

they certainly could partner with china now and get money that will keep them going and building a brighter future..

I would not have spun off Global Foundries. I would take any extra capital I have and dedicate it to R&D. AMD in the past has gone a different route in CPU architecture andhas been quite good at beating Intel in real-world performance. AMD CPU's have had slower clock speeds but far better performers due to better design. That is also working for ATI as well. The Radeons produced lately are able to beat Nvidia and be cheaper--also better design. R&D will win out.

I would Sold AMD To Intel or Vice-versa , So we Can have Better CPU with both technologies and for Less $$

Global Foundaries: Shoulda been done a LONG time ago.
ATI: Great move
New PRocessor Architecture? Absolutely not.

AMD needs to build a stronger portfolio in the x86 space. they need to build a crown-winner. They also need to get on board with Intel in the sense that they need to invest in die shrinks. They're lagging behind in architecture, engineering, and performance. All of AMD's innovation is gone. They need to step up the game.

They need to spend more on research and development.

Amd - Great job launching the Phenom II Processors but you people really need to pull up ur socks or even those will be taken away by intel.
Buying ATI was a great move and now nvidia is shitting due to the competiton from ATI. I used to be a nvidia fan now im all ati!!!

plese keep up the good work and do something about the i7. i donnt wanna spend $1000 for a rig!

well, they should have invested the money the spent in buying ATI into research and development of technologies to take the lead that intel has since a while ago. A processor company falling behind is in danger of falling obsolete.

1. cut the ridiculous consumer cost of notebook chips (ZM chips cost more than Intel's)
2. Opteron server chipsets need to be released YESTERDAY. No one wants to buy Opterons based on nVidia chips now that nVidia & AMD are enemies.
3. Southbridge RAID for enterprise -- Intel's RAID SUCKS. Intel's chipsets have been terribly unstable, and their RAID has serious problems like the cache settings won't survive a reboot, etc. AMD could do better and gain a following here.

idiot... you think a monopoly would result in lower prices?

I think AMD should have gone skipped phenom I and skipped straight to a 45nm Athlon 6400X2... but then with HT3.0 ofc and the other phenom features... I bet that if they had skipped phenom I, then Phenom II would JUST start coming out right about now- or maybe a few months from now... but we would be sitting on Athlon 6800x2's or something running at 3.4-3.6 ghz at stock speeds... and overclockable to higher speeds than the E8400/E5200.

I would orient my platform on synergy between the GPU and CPU, offloading and balancing wherever possible so that both are taken full advantage of instead of working independent of one another.

Well its kinda pointless to rehash history. I would have definitly waited on native quad core and extended the athlon 64 dual core fruther before moving to naitive quad. That was their biggest mistake.

But as for the future, they need to look into merging th compare and jump instructions like intel did, its just too big of a performance gain. Im seriously surprised they haven't done it yet.

They also need to see how easy they could add multiple threads per core to the chip. This is essential in the server world, not so much for your average user.

Beyond that, work on cache latency, needs to be brought down.

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On the manufacturing side, their 45nm process seems strong. However, they need to execute 32nm flawlessly and get it out the door ASAP.

Purchase much insurance, sell my stocks, dump some gasoline and be very UN-careful when lighting my cigarette.… FIRE!!! I’m kidding of course.

I think they should focus on new and improved products instead of rebranding and also creating more low/mid range stuff. Take a break from releasing “mid-range” processors and spend ALL that cash on surpassing Intel / Nvidia.

Keep investing in R&D; keep shrinking die; make CPU w/RAM on same die (4/8 GB).

ATI already had the next two generations in the works, maybe more. Their price wouldn't have gotten much lower...

That said.
I'd like to see AMD make their own architecture. A true 64 bit (maybe even step up to 128 bit or something else) architecture that they could design to be backwards compatible with x64 (which is theirs anyway) and design a new platform for it but keep the standard open. That way Intel could go hither with their x86 licensing, AMD could make an open platform of the future for itself and maybe even license out to Intel or other companies so they could make products for their platform.

I know you could say that they don't have the support to go forward with a unique platform, but if its made well and holds great advantage over existing platforms, it could work.

Seek bailout immediately!

A) Hire me and move me to a warmer climate
2) Show your employees how valuable they are to you(much more then the useless management)
C) BREAK AWAY FROM THE BULLSH!! ADVERTISING MODE. SHOW THE BENEFITS OF 64-bit processing, because Intel's crack at it SUCKS! IF I could get a 16 core 64-bit processor running 2.0 ghz for under 200 w/ motherboard (not ram) I would sell my teeth instantly.
GREEN) Most of the time, management doesnt have a clue what the market wants. They've spent too long managing employees and getting over paid and underworked. Start listening to your engineers. Start listening to the Customer Service agents, start listening to everyone but stock holders and corporate management....most of the time, they are honestly... useless
APPLE) ATi is known for taking what works, throwing more at it and selling it at current NVDA prices. Break that mold and get more specialized. Get in talks with Newtek or whomever to help your 3D Rendering packages. The common user isn't the guy spending $20,000 its the one spending 100-200 dollars...

I would have played things differently than what AMD did except I would have bought ATI at the same time they did.

For CPUs:

K8: The last K8s would be 90nm, on Socket 939 with a DDR controller and two types: Single and Dual Core.

K9: It would be 65nm, the introduction of Socket AM2, a DDR2 controller, and a CPU with two cores or four cores designed kind of like the K8 but different: all cores would have two or three treads (two for Athlon X2, three for Athlon FX) 1MB or 2MB of L2 cache per two cores and 4MB L3 cache and make the quad cores just like the Core 2 Quad, put two Dual-Core K9s on one die. This would have beaten the Conroe.
K10: Use the same architecture but build a true quad core (just like today) but introduce Socket AM3 (which is backwards compatible with AM2) and a DDR3/DDR2 hybrid memory controller. Oh and 45nm. It would be built in the same way as the Phenom II but have many other additions that AMD didn't have time to incorporate like Multi-Treading (three treads or more per core) and I would have a Phenom FX which could mop the floor with Core i7.

For chipsets:
I would have made more 6xx series chipsets, not just the 690G

And today I would have a similar but very different AMD, one that wouldn't have gone the way of Global Foundaries because it would have a lot more money to play with and at this time I would have completely dominated the server market. And K11 is coming with 32nm or even jump over 32nm and go all the way to 22nm beating Intel completely.

Ahhh, one can dream, hehe!

amd should invest more in marketing. most people think that amd is just a cheep substitute for intell. run some adds like the apple vs windows stuff. make people realize that amd is a great computing solution. focus on the needs of an average user and show how little difference there is between intell vs amd. there are only a few percentage of users who really benefit from using intell. i think most users could benefit more from saving a few bucks than a few seconds encoding a mp3 etc.

Address the relatively low performance and reliability of AMD/ATI drivers compared to nvidia/intel, especially under Linux.
ATI's Linux drivers still suck especially hard after years. AMD processors after years still have linux issues too. Furthermore topend AMD processors are significantly slower than topend Intel regardless of platform.

As a linux user, with the current situation I won't even consider buying anything with an AMD or ATI sticker. Presumably there must be other potential customers ATI/AMD are missing out on because they run Linux occasionaly or more too.

The only justification for AMD/ATI over nvidia/intel purchase is price per some unit of performance is less, however its a meaningless metric as if you care primarily about stability and reliability (which you should) or outright performance then AMD/ATI aren't there at all, espcially in the Linux world.

I would have bought VIA Technologies instead of Ati.
So they whould have the Via Chipset business, S3 Graphics and its cpu business.I think S3 is able to make highend GPU cards but they focus on cheap ones..Via had Intel and Amd chipsets at the time(just like Ati) so that would work out.And they would have a good product against Intel's Atom, via's Nano cpu.

And the biggest pro is that S3 Graphics is located in California(just like AMD's cpu design)and not in canada like ATI, so you could merge the two design labs to make one design lab, and make a real Fusion between a Gpu and Cpu like Intel is doing with Larrabee.
The Fusion they are making now is just a normal GPU core added to a cpu.
Another plus is that Via has some great patents that intel needs

I would not have bothered with 45nm development and gone right for 32nm or 22nm! Also got rid of Hector a long, long time ago!

I would say that the ati made sense but it was bad timing correct me if I am wrong but wasn't ati purchased right before or after the phenom flopped because of the erratum bug. Fast forward amd is only now catching up to the time it lost they have a talented development team especially in the graphics processor wing and up until core 2 duo they could meet or beat intel at any price point. The phenom 2 is what phenom should have been so if amd can make a jump with its processors like it did with its graphics chips when going from the x3000 series to the x4000 series intel would have a real competitor on its hands again.

I don’t agree with spending anything in marketing…

I’m guessing but I think the average Joe goes to Bestbuy or dell to purchase his PC. I think the days of “Pentium” are gone and most people don’t even give a crap what’s running there machine because they just want it to run. They are not running benchmarks they want to cruise the net and look at emails and are just looking for a good deal. Just like most people don’t know anything about their car engine, simple things too.. Like how much HP they have.

Just my thoughts… The only people that even know AMD is behind Intel are techs and computer geeks, 10% of the population (total guess).
You do have a valid point with the Apple ads, I do think it sucks the morons in but Apple must spend INSANE amounts of cash for what type of returns?

ATI's headquarters is indeed in Toronto (or specifically in Markham which is just 5 blocks south of me) but they have also a design facility in Silicon Valley as well.

What I would do different if I could with AMD is to further nurture co-operation with IBM to get faster die shrinks, press down prices to undercut Intel as much as possible (it was one reason that dragged me from Intel to AMD in the first place). Focus on OEM partners and give them reasons to build machines with AMD processors. Remember that these OEM versions are the ones that end up with the most consumers. Focus on building a lot more efficient notebook processors. The Turions still lose out compared to the Intel Core 2 notebook processors in terms of energy efficiency. It's not all about raw power as people here keeps talking about. It's important to hit the key markets and sadly it isn't what most computer enthusiasts would like which is not as fast as possible.

So, in summary to get AMD back on its feet, continue working with partners like IBM. Push reasons for more OEM support to build machines with AMD processors and to push for newer and more efficient notebook designs. Notebooks are getting more popular than desktops so this will be a big thing to go after which Intel is in the lead.

I thought it was a little ballsy but now it seems like a good move and might be responsible for intel moving into the discrete graphics card market. (more competition)

ATI graphics cards have been a huge success for AMD since the HD3x series and their onboard chips are superior to nvidias and have taken a huge share of the chipset market away from nvidia.

I wonder what would AMD would be right now if they hadn't acquired ATI.
After the release of the core2duo AMD probably had a huge sales slump on the CPU market but ATI was able to do quite well. Would AMD be in more financial trouble? If so could they have borrowed enough money to stay afloat?

AMD is second best right now, so they need to lower prices than Intel. Phenom II 940 is around $200. The i7 920 is $230. For $30 more, I would totally get the i7. If the Phenom II 940 was around $160, then I would be having second thoughts about the the i7.

AMD's AM3 socket processors look like they have great potential and might overtake Intel's C2D and C2Q line. Can't wait to get my hands on a Phenom II 990.

Which patents does Via has that Intel would want?

I think that i would change 3 things only:

1) Redesign K8 at 65nm (forget quad cores for a while) and launch it at K9. We have almost same athlon since Slot A. They were very competitive against Pentium III and best clock per clock against Netburst. But Core is better then P-III, so AMD should change more then just Macro-architecture from K8 to K9. Then do the same at 45nm. The quad cores at 65nm would be two K9, each one with one memmory channel (unfortunately isn't as easy as intel because memmory controller is at core, so this is best way i could think xD). So we would have K8 at 90 and 65nm, K9 at 65 and 45nm and K10 at 45 and 32nm.

2) Instead create a new corporation lice TFC with ATIC, should lay-off new stock to ATIC ad avoid problems with Intel. Or sell 180nm and 130nm, and perhaps 90nm. This would make some cash.

3) Focus on mobile and mainstream... Spend less money forgetting the performance leaders. Make it's brand more known as better choice for office and home use. Intel, with more expensive chips, could take the performance hungry and overclocker users. Most of the market doesn't need $300 or $400 chips. So smaller CPUs able to do daily needs would cost less to make and give more profit.