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AMD pulls a bait-and-switch on Linux users with Vivado licensing changes

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Re: AMD pulls a bait-and-switch on Linux users with Vivado licensing changes

#81

Post by rcxdude »

altairprime wrote: post #61
fsh wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vivado is an IDE for programming AMD FPGAs. One cannot use it without buying AMD hardware.

Hardware isn’t where the margins are, and probably is somewhat of a loss leader for small-batch users; for hobby users I would hazard a guess that they’re running at around -10% profit on small sales to try and drive subscription revenue multipliers, and for already-paying users this change is essentially irrelevant and will have zero downside impact on sub revenue. Terrible way to run a profitable business if you fu…

I doubt that. Dev boards are often not very high margin despite their costs, but absolutely the majority of their profit is from hardware sales, not software licenses. Small volume customers are a combination of a long tail and a loss leader for a marketing pipeline, and FPGAs are almost by definition something where you can't ignore that part of the market (because you only use an FPGA if you can't use anything else and you don't have the volume/margin to justify an ASIC, so it's a niche of niches).

Re: AMD pulls a bait-and-switch on Linux users with Vivado licensing changes

#82

Post by voakbasda »

linuxftw wrote: post #73
techcode wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how that particular line of thinking applies when: 1) They continue to have a free version for Windows 2) They continue to have a version for Linux I just can't see that cost of having a free Linux version (on top having a paid Linux version) is big?

I literally explained the thinking that the free builds on Linux aren't worth it. If you've ever shipped production software, you'd know this. Just because there's a free build available for Windows doesn't mean it costs the company $0 to release the free build. It's a lot of extra time and QA for each variant of a release. There might be many differences between the Windows and Linux builds, such as the Linux builds…

This ignores that their revenue comes from selling chips. The software enables that. No software, no chip sales. This can only have a negative impact on their sales.

Re: AMD pulls a bait-and-switch on Linux users with Vivado licensing changes

#83

Post by b3lvedere »

SSLy wrote: post #26
wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #2

It's long been said: "AMD never misses a chance to miss a chance." In this case, the chance to trash its reputation with customers.

especially their marketing dept which made this decision seems to be run by absolute buffoons

I bet this decision was made by showing an Excel sheet.

Re: AMD pulls a bait-and-switch on Linux users with Vivado licensing changes

#84

Post by bee_rider »

theresistor wrote: post #43
wongarsu wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AMD also had the strongest offering for GPU and CPU using the same memory with the same address space. That allows you to switch between CPU and GPU processing for the same data, without paying the cost of moving the data to and from the GPU. Similar to what we now have on Apple silicon They tried to push the same into the desktop market with their APUs, where it was mostly ignored. But console games only target a co…

Also also, AMD’s play has always been to produce HW that offers good performance/$, with the downside of having much weaker SW offerings to go with it. Consoles are always pressured to minimize upfront purchase costs, and they generally replace the vendor-provider SW stack with their own anyways.

And they’ve been in a rough spot at various times in the past, which probably made them willing to negotiate with the console companies.

Actually looking at this thread, there’s a lot of good reasons they were the go-tos for consoles. Consoles seem to be in rough shape at the moment, I wonder if part of that is that AMD has been doing too well since Zen, haha.

Re: AMD pulls a bait-and-switch on Linux users with Vivado licensing changes

#85

Post by nekusar »

JCTheDenthog wrote: post #69
nekusar wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seriously think the CUDA situation was set up intentionally. Jensen Huang (Nvidia CEO) is related to Lisa Su (AMD CEO). A decade ago, I saw a demo of some AMD skunkworks GPU datacenter tech, that could execute CUDA natively on AMD/ATI graphics cards. Initially was half speed, but having the flexibility was crazy amazing. Created a big buzz in the big iron and educational markets. Where'd it go? Buried. You cant eve…

I'm not trying to dismiss what you're saying as a possibility (AMD's behavior in many regards over the last 15 years or so is baffling to the point that a family conspiracy feels surprisingly plausible) but Huang isn't Su's uncle. They are "first cousins once removed" meaning that Su is the child of one of Huang's cousins. Or put another way, one of Huang's grandparents is one of Su's great-grandparents.

Honestly, my mind could never wrap around genealogy and family relations well at all. I thought they were indirect cousin/uncle , or as you say, cousins once removed.

Also my understanding of many Asian cultures is they tend to have a much more tight-knit large family structure. And doubling that is the fact they're 2 heads of world-level hardware tech companies.

And, well, there's no such thing as coincidences. Having all of this line up, and for "some reason" AMD keeps missing when they could have owned a big chunk of the market has a certain family oligopoly smell to me.

Re: AMD pulls a bait-and-switch on Linux users with Vivado licensing changes

#86

Post by adwn »

altairprime wrote: post #61
fsh wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vivado is an IDE for programming AMD FPGAs. One cannot use it without buying AMD hardware.

Hardware isn’t where the margins are, and probably is somewhat of a loss leader for small-batch users; for hobby users I would hazard a guess that they’re running at around -10% profit on small sales to try and drive subscription revenue multipliers, and for already-paying users this change is essentially irrelevant and will have zero downside impact on sub revenue. Terrible way to run a profitable business if you fu…

> Hardware isn’t where the margins are

Baseless speculation

> probably is somewhat of a loss leader for small-batch users

Wrong. AMD/Xilinx doesn't sell devices directly to customers, they sell them to distributors in huge quantities. Those distributors then sell them to "small-batch users", and they're not involved with AMD/Xilinx free-tier software at all.

> they’re running at around -10% profit on small sales to try and drive subscription revenue multipliers

More baseless speculation

Re: AMD pulls a bait-and-switch on Linux users with Vivado licensing changes

#87

Post by mindcrime »

tux3 wrote: post #20

The rumor on the FPGA reddit is that they're going to walk it back. Quote: 'The only source I can give at this time is "trust me bro"'

Hot Aisle on Twitter say they heard it directly from AMD, but I haven't seen any kind of public announcement yet.

https://twitter.com/HotAisle/status/2059706563665998317

Re: AMD pulls a bait-and-switch on Linux users with Vivado licensing changes

#88

Post by genxy »

philistine wrote: post #44
Novosell wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine it's due to having had decent enough GPUs and decent enough CPUs, from a single vendor. If you want the platform to be x86 but not AMD then your only other choice is Intel, but they've only recently started making high performance GPUs. So then you need another vendor for the GPU, and your only choice is Nvidia. A lot simpler, cheaper and predictable to go with a single vendor for both I imagine?

You’re approaching this as if every company had the same corporate intentions. Nvidia never cared much for those types of deals. They preferred to lose Apple as a business than to admit fault, they’ve always refused to compete on price for the business of Sony and Microsoft’s consoles. They’re adamant to beat at the sound of their own drum.

Nvidia was so thirsty for an x86 license, for years, that it wouldn't consider anything else.

Re: AMD pulls a bait-and-switch on Linux users with Vivado licensing changes

#90

Post by omgJustTest »

While Vivado/Vitis etc do amazing things, I challenge anyone to find a person who enjoys using them without TCL interfaces.

These tools do need attention, it's too bad there's not a better model than subscription bases like these.

Pretty sure, based on TCL base, that these tools were native Unix at some point, so the no-linux-free-beer vs windows-free-beer version are hilarious...

Ultimately one has, with so many vendor tools, a windows box somewhere so make it a remote compile machine.

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