Interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su • Hacker News Board

Re: Interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su

#21

Post by overcast » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 4:49 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.

If you're a fan of Baldur's Gate and the like. Isometric CRPG's are back in full swing now. Pillars of Eternity, Pillars of Eternity Deadfire(just completed a fig.co funding), Tyranny, Torment. They are huge, deep games. Tons of under the hood mechanics going on. Definitely not point, click, kill. Requires lots of setup, strategy, on how you address each situation. Great stories.

Re: Interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su

#22

Post by izacus » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 4:52 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.

Hmm, these last years were one of the best years in:

- strategy gaming (from Deserts of Kharak, Civilization, Paradox interactive grand strategy games, Eugen Systems games, Total War series, XCOM and more and more)

- RPG gaming (2D isometric RPGs are making a huge comeback with good writing and gameplay, things like Pillars of Eternity, new Torment, Divinty and more. 3rd person Witcher 3 collected record amount of awards and with good reason.)

- platformers (Ori, Shovel Knight), roguelikes (Darkest Dungeon, Don't starve, Spelunky, and more)

- experimental narrative games (Papers Please, This War of Mine, This is The Police)

- modern adventure games (Until Dawn, Telltales Wolf Among Us / Walking Dead / Game of Thrones and many more)

And those are only on PC and none of them are first person. Just like movies go beyond just Marvel and Transformers, gaming goes way beyond just Call of Duty and Battlefield. The AA market of smaller but still established companies (Paradox Interactive, Relic Entertainment, Telltale and many more) build great experiences and I don't think gaming market was ever so live and broad as it is these years.

Re: Interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su

#23

Post by floatboth » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 5:00 PM UTC

arcavorago wrote: post #18

floatboth wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-c…

3DMark's Physics section is a pure CPU parallel benchmark (also known as "buy 6950X to win"), not a game-like benchmark.

Here's results from actual games:

http://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/2822-amd-ryzen-r7-1800x...

Even the older 4790K is sometimes faster. And the i7 quads are cheaper. So games prefer higher clocks to more cores, that's still true.

Re: Interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su

#24

Post by drzaiusapelord » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 5:03 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…

In tech, CEOs are usually from engineering culture. Not every company is headed by a Trump-like buffoon.

Lisa is a MIT alumn as well. I suspect she doesn't need much help answering questions here.

Re: Interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su

#25

Post by overcast » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 5:17 PM UTC

Insanity wrote: post #15

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.

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 a…

Overwatch would be right up your alley :)

Re: Interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su

#26

Post by digi_owl » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 5:31 PM UTC

moxious wrote: post #9

baq wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, you would expect it, but it's still rather atypical; most people become CEOs because of their business and political acumen, whether or not they understand the technical bits is maybe 10th priority. They say about companies that you can tell their culture from the outside by who they value and who they promote. Some engineering companies promote MBAs, and some promote engineers. Promotions and who holds high ran…

And how many MBAs are "dreamers"? Then again, i don't think Jobs was much of a dreamer either, he was just damn good at talking the talk.

If anyone was a dreamer it was Woz back then. Dreaming of having his own computer, dreaming about computers improving life for everyone, etc etc etc.

Jobs are all about appearance. And not just visual. He had a near pathological loathing towards fan noise for example. To the point that one AppleII variant had problems with excessive heat buckling the logicboard and unseating components because he refused the engineers to install even the most unobtrusive of fans.

I suspect we can see this in how he was quite hung up on the GUI but completely missed networked computers while touring Xerox PARC.

Re: Interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su

#27

Post by ashark » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 5:40 PM UTC

izacus wrote: post #22

mercutio2 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hmm, these last years were one of the best years in: - strategy gaming (from Deserts of Kharak, Civilization, Paradox interactive grand strategy games, Eugen Systems games, Total War series, XCOM and more and more) - RPG gaming (2D isometric RPGs are making a huge comeback with good writing and gameplay, things like Pillars of Eternity, new Torment, Divinty and more. 3rd person Witcher 3 collected record amount of aw…

I'd recommend Kentucky Route Zero, too, which is finally almost all out (boo episodic release models). It's what you get when people with vision, talent, some real book learnin', a good understanding of video games in general, and artistic taste set out to tell a story in video game form. Brain bleach for the various trying-too-hard, one-note "art" games out there.

Re: Interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su

#28

Post by daemonk » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 6:11 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…

I am looking forward more to their Naples cpus for servers.

Re: Interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su

#29

Post by teddyh » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 6:21 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.

“Sadly, playing games where we live imaginary, exciting lives having basically destroyed our own is insane.”

http://www.scarygoround.com/bobbins/index.php?date=20140120

Re: Interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su

#30

Post by moxious » Thu, Mar 02, 2017, 6:40 PM UTC

digi_owl wrote: post #26

moxious wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you would expect it, but it's still rather atypical; most people become CEOs because of their business and political acumen, whether or not they understand the technical bits is maybe 10th priority. They say about companies that you can tell their culture from the outside by who they value and who they promote. Some engineering companies promote MBAs, and some promote engineers. Promotions and who holds high ran…

And how many MBAs are "dreamers"? Then again, i don't think Jobs was much of a dreamer either, he was just damn good at talking the talk. If anyone was a dreamer it was Woz back then. Dreaming of having his own computer, dreaming about computers improving life for everyone, etc etc etc. Jobs are all about appearance. And not just visual. He had a near pathological loathing towards fan noise for example. To the point…

An MBA doesn't teach you to be a dreamer. Neither does an engineering degree.

But consider what personality types are drawn to different businesses...and I think you'll find a larger (but still small) percentage of the dreamer type within the business community than within engineering.

This is not to say that there aren't also engineers who think this way, of course there are. It's more about demographics, and which personality type is attracted by which type of work.