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Interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su

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Re: Interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su

#41

Post by Insanity »

overcast wrote: post #25
Insanity wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

Hehe, I have heard that before, but I have actually not seen any gameplay of that :-)

Re: Interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su

#42

Post by darksaints »

dave_sullivan wrote: post #39
darksaints wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She has also increased AMD's market cap by 400% since she was made CEO 3 years ago. Pretty impressive person all around.

As nothing material about their business has changed in 3 years, I think it's safer to say Nvidia has raised AMD's stock price 400%. See http://imgur.com/a/ul9LE (nvidia green, amd red) Nvidia clearly started ramping first, after which investors looked at AMD as a "cheaper alternative". Apparently a bunch of people think they're the same company, but Nvidia's recent rise is a result of their work in AI while AMD has…

Surely none of that rise has come from their best in class APUs, open source support, or a headline stealing new architecture that is stomping on Intel benchmarks. Surely their rise is because investors in huge masses are buying them up mistakenly thinking they're nvidia.

Re: Interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su

#43

Post by aljungberg »

asdfasdfa11112 wrote: post #40
aljungberg wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

No, but I bet he could talk about the messy complexities of the Apple supply chain. Can technical CEOs do that? My point isn't to get into a skills based dick measuring contest, but rather to point out that even at huge technology companies*, is being technically adept really a requirement for the job? Another one for discussion: is Apple a "technology" company? I put forth that a company is defined by the most diffi…

I wasn't saying Tim Cook is lacking in skills. As the CEO of one of the world's most successful companies he certainly has his own unique and impressive skills.

Lisa Su demonstrated an impressive skill not every CEO could pull off and I wanted to highlight that. That's all.

Whether being technically adept is a requirement or not, I'd say no in general for tech companies (and I'd count Apple as one) but for a certain subset of the tech companies (AMD, Tesla) it certainly seems to help.

Re: Interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su

#44

Post by dave_sullivan »

darksaints wrote: post #42
dave_sullivan wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As nothing material about their business has changed in 3 years, I think it's safer to say Nvidia has raised AMD's stock price 400%. See http://imgur.com/a/ul9LE (nvidia green, amd red) Nvidia clearly started ramping first, after which investors looked at AMD as a "cheaper alternative". Apparently a bunch of people think they're the same company, but Nvidia's recent rise is a result of their work in AI while AMD has…

Surely none of that rise has come from their best in class APUs, open source support, or a headline stealing new architecture that is stomping on Intel benchmarks. Surely their rise is because investors in huge masses are buying them up mistakenly thinking they're nvidia .

I did chuckle reading that, because yes it sounds ridiculous at first. Buuuut...

> best in class APUs

Best in class because no one else wants the market, there's no profit margin there (as AMD has proven).

> open source support

Just because you support it don't make it good. While I think it's lame Nvidia's stuff is closed source, they have such a superior eco-system that I'm willing to overlook it (along with most of industry). If AMD could somehow get around this, by having an open source ecosystem at parity or better than nvidia, they'd be golden. But as its stands, it's not enough to make a dent.

> huge masses are buying them up mistakenly thinking they're nvidia

Walk that back to "investors think the semiconductor industry is slightly more commoditized than it is and they're misjudging the current landscape" and yes.

> a headline stealing new architecture that is stomping on Intel benchmarks

Stealing headlines and stomping on single benchmarks does not a good product make. Jury's out on if they can come up with a winning flagship product, but I'm not holding my breath.

Also, they need to focus on stomping Nvidia benchmarks; Intel is not their competitor. By relative market cap, it's like saying "yahoo is google's competitor". Nvidia is AMD's "big" competitor.

Current CEO is an engineer (great!) but lacks the ability to see where things are heading; Nvidia's CEO founded the company. They need Jerry Sanders' younger clone back in there or something.

Re: Interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su

#45

Post by ksec »

astrodust wrote: post #32
digi_owl wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Jobs are all about appearance. Job was all about design , and design for him went from the very simple, raw components to the final packaging and marketing. For him there was no boundary between engineering and design, between software and hardware, they were all part of the same product. It's easy to dismiss his views as superficial, but when he wanted to have a board look a certain way, or for a case to be a cert…

>Job was all about design, and design for him went from the very simple, raw components to the final packaging and marketing. For him there was no boundary between engineering and design, between software and hardware, they were all part of the same product.

+1 Somebody who actually understands Apple and Steve.

Re: Interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su

#46

Post by saosebastiao »

dave_sullivan wrote: post #44
darksaints wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely none of that rise has come from their best in class APUs, open source support, or a headline stealing new architecture that is stomping on Intel benchmarks. Surely their rise is because investors in huge masses are buying them up mistakenly thinking they're nvidia .

I did chuckle reading that, because yes it sounds ridiculous at first. Buuuut... > best in class APUs Best in class because no one else wants the market, there's no profit margin there (as AMD has proven). > open source support Just because you support it don't make it good. While I think it's lame Nvidia's stuff is closed source, they have such a superior eco-system that I'm willing to overlook it (along with most o…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consensus_effect

Just because you care about AI doesn't mean anything about market size or even potential market size. GPUs are still niche compared to CPUs, GPGPUs even more so, and AI specialization is a fraction of that. I mean you're talking about a market measured in hundreds of millions today, a pittance compared to x86...and even assuming massive growth for a decade or more still couldn't catch up to the current market size for x86.

And as the only company in the world that is even legally allowed to compete with Intel on x86, they would be stupid to not try. The fact that they're catching headlines suggests that they actually have a chance of recapturing a portion of that $60B market...something unthinkable 3 years ago, especially for a company with yearly revenues lower than the monthly R&D spend of its competitor. To think that AMDs growth is entirely due to the market misjudging the level of commoditization of GPUs is absurd. If you're that confident of the market being so absurdly off base, some simple bets should put you in the Forbes 400 within a year or two. Get on it.

Re: Interview with AMD CEO Lisa Su

#47

Post by dave_sullivan »

saosebastiao wrote: post #46
dave_sullivan wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did chuckle reading that, because yes it sounds ridiculous at first. Buuuut... > best in class APUs Best in class because no one else wants the market, there's no profit margin there (as AMD has proven). > open source support Just because you support it don't make it good. While I think it's lame Nvidia's stuff is closed source, they have such a superior eco-system that I'm willing to overlook it (along with most o…

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_consensus_effect Just because you care about AI doesn't mean anything about market size or even potential market size. GPUs are still niche compared to CPUs, GPGPUs even more so, and AI specialization is a fraction of that. I mean you're talking about a market measured in hundreds of millions today, a pittance compared to x86...and even assuming massive growth for a decade or mor…

> GPUs are still niche compared to CPUs, GPGPUs even more so, and AI specialization is a fraction of that.

Yes, that's definitely AMD's thought process. The apocryphal IBM quote "There's a world market for perhaps only five computers" is why they're wrong.

My main point is this: AMD needs a new CEO; they had an opportunity that they've completely fumbled so far; this piece is so much fluff. You're free to disagree of course, but I don't think my opinion on this is going to change based on your arguments.

> If you're that confident of the market being so absurdly off base, some simple bets should put you in the Forbes 400 within a year or two. Get on it.

I'd be buying put options if the market couldn't stay irrational longer than I could stay solvent. Unfortunately the quality of their decisions as a company has nothing to do with their stock price right now. They were priced right a year and a half ago.

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