Interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su • Hacker News Board

Re: Interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su

#11

Post by slantyyz » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 3:18 PM UTC

aljungberg wrote: post #3

It's pretty impressive to see a CEO being able to answer a question about CPU vs GPU power envelope targets just of the cuff. The interviewer asks why there are no CPUs targeting higher wattages, like how CPUs are less than 150W but there are 300W GPU. She says she'll need to think about it but she's pretty sure that the high parallelisation of GPUs makes them easier to scale up in terms of wattage. Granted, that ans…

I happened to watch the Ryzen keynote video last week [1], and she's also an impressive presenter.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1v44wWAOHn8

Re: Interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su

#12

Post by aljungberg » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 3:25 PM UTC

baq wrote: post #6

aljungberg wrote: post #3

It's pretty impressive to see a CEO being able to answer a question about CPU vs GPU power envelope targets just of the cuff. The interviewer asks why there are no CPUs targeting higher wattages, like how CPUs are less than 150W but there are 300W GPU. She says she'll need to think about it but she's pretty sure that the high parallelisation of GPUs makes them easier to scale up in terms of wattage. Granted, that ans…

> Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering i mean, you could expect someone with that degree from MIT have at least a general idea about the technicalities of her flagship products.

Yes absolutely, I think that's the key. It's cool to see very tech-y CEOs like this. I feel like many CEOs would defer a hypothetical question about how a product could have been made.

I mean it's like asking Tim Cook about a different strength cellular antenna in the iPhone. Probably he could give a reasonable answer about what the iPhone antenna is actually like and why it's like that, and how many tests they ran to confirm it's the best design or whatever. But could he talk about an alternative antenna that could have been, on the spot?

Re: Interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su

#13

Post by k__ » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 3:26 PM UTC

aljungberg wrote: post #3

It's pretty impressive to see a CEO being able to answer a question about CPU vs GPU power envelope targets just of the cuff. The interviewer asks why there are no CPUs targeting higher wattages, like how CPUs are less than 150W but there are 300W GPU. She says she'll need to think about it but she's pretty sure that the high parallelisation of GPUs makes them easier to scale up in terms of wattage. Granted, that ans…

Aren't the CEOs of most successful technical companies engineers?

Re: Interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su

#14

Post by venomsnake » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 3:44 PM UTC

k__ wrote: post #13

aljungberg wrote: post #3

It's pretty impressive to see a CEO being able to answer a question about CPU vs GPU power envelope targets just of the cuff. The interviewer asks why there are no CPUs targeting higher wattages, like how CPUs are less than 150W but there are 300W GPU. She says she'll need to think about it but she's pretty sure that the high parallelisation of GPUs makes them easier to scale up in terms of wattage. Granted, that ans…

Aren't the CEOs of most successful technical companies engineers?

Depends on technical definition. Bill Gates, Carmack and Dr. Su seem to have the chops. On the other hand you have the Jobs and Zuckebergs - that could not engineer their way out of medium depth hole.

Re: Interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su

#15

Post by Insanity » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 4:05 PM UTC

overcast wrote: post #10

Insanity wrote: post #2

Since I stopped gaming, I stopped following the high-end market. However, it is nice to see that AMD is trying to get in there again, some competition is good for the market in general. If AMD can deliver, then Intel might have to respond with lowering prices on their products, which I believe might be a bit overpriced now due to there no being a real vialbe alternative. Whatever happens, some competition is bound to…

You should come back, even just for a few games a year. There are some incredible experiences available these days.

It is something I sometimes want to do, but find hard to justify. First of all, when I played, it was competitively and I found it hard to get fun out of just playing casually. In fact, I have quite addictive behaviour so I usually ended up addicted to games I played competitively. (CS:S, L4D(2) and COD2/4).

I know myself well enough to know that I can not play "in moderation" and would tend towards the competitive aspect. (Single player games never really entertained me that much)

Re: Interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su

#16

Post by mercutio2 » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 4:05 PM UTC

overcast wrote: post #10

Insanity wrote: post #2

Since I stopped gaming, I stopped following the high-end market. However, it is nice to see that AMD is trying to get in there again, some competition is good for the market in general. If AMD can deliver, then Intel might have to respond with lowering prices on their products, which I believe might be a bit overpriced now due to there no being a real vialbe alternative. Whatever happens, some competition is bound to…

You should come back, even just for a few games a year. There are some incredible experiences available these days.

I'm curious if you could elaborate on this.

For the population I represent (never, ever, want a first person visual rendering, under any circumstance) but love high quality game mechanics, I have a hard time finding what I consider good games. Everybody wants to polish their fundamentally undesirable three dimensional scene.

Re: Interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su

#17

Post by floatboth » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 4:17 PM UTC

Insanity wrote: post #2

Since I stopped gaming, I stopped following the high-end market. However, it is nice to see that AMD is trying to get in there again, some competition is good for the market in general. If AMD can deliver, then Intel might have to respond with lowering prices on their products, which I believe might be a bit overpriced now due to there no being a real vialbe alternative. Whatever happens, some competition is bound to…

The high-end market is actually not for gaming — both Ryzen and Intel's "enthusiast platform" (X99) are worse for gaming than Intel's mainstream (quad core) CPUs.

Ryzen is great for tasks like, uh, recompiling your operating system :D Or editing photos or reencoding your movie archive into whatever is the next awesome codec (Daala anyone?).

Re: Interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su

#18

Post by arcavorago » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 4:29 PM UTC

floatboth wrote: post #17

Insanity wrote: post #2

Since I stopped gaming, I stopped following the high-end market. However, it is nice to see that AMD is trying to get in there again, some competition is good for the market in general. If AMD can deliver, then Intel might have to respond with lowering prices on their products, which I believe might be a bit overpriced now due to there no being a real vialbe alternative. Whatever happens, some competition is bound to…

The high-end market is actually not for gaming — both Ryzen and Intel's "enthusiast platform" (X99) are worse for gaming than Intel's mainstream (quad core) CPUs. Ryzen is great for tasks like, uh, recompiling your operating system :D Or editing photos or reencoding your movie archive into whatever is the next awesome codec (Daala anyone?).

Care to actually back up that statement with any sort of citation or fact? According to the leaked 3dmark benchmarks, the top 3 Ryzens are on par with some of the top i7 quads... so honestly I'm not sure where you are getting this idea from. It also completely ignores the price disparity which makes the AMD slightly slower but much cheaper CPU's a doable upgrade for many. (And VR capable)

http://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/AMD-Ryzen...

Re: Interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su

#19

Post by mysterydip » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 4:30 PM UTC

mercutio2 wrote: post #16

overcast wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should come back, even just for a few games a year. There are some incredible experiences available these days.

I'm curious if you could elaborate on this. For the population I represent (never, ever, want a first person visual rendering, under any circumstance) but love high quality game mechanics, I have a hard time finding what I consider good games. Everybody wants to polish their fundamentally undesirable three dimensional scene.

While there is a lot of 3D experiences out there, a lot of the recent great games that show off interesting mechanics can be found in the 2D realm. While not an exhaustive list by any means, and not knowing your preferences, here's a handful: - terraria - stardew valley - undertale - rimworld - prison architect - nuclear throne

Re: Interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su

#20

Post by detaro » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 4:39 PM UTC

mercutio2 wrote: post #16

overcast wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should come back, even just for a few games a year. There are some incredible experiences available these days.

I'm curious if you could elaborate on this. For the population I represent (never, ever, want a first person visual rendering, under any circumstance) but love high quality game mechanics, I have a hard time finding what I consider good games. Everybody wants to polish their fundamentally undesirable three dimensional scene.

In addition to mysterydip: Many RPGs and strategy games use 3D engines, but only for more "isometric" or "top down" views (downside is that they require more GPU performance than you'd think sometimes)

Also would like to mention Factorio explicitly.