Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I was at AMD in the mid-late 2000s helping design CPU/APU/GPUs

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 139 posts

Re: I was at AMD in the mid-late 2000s helping design CPU/APU/GPUs

#51

Post by btouellette »

luyu_wu wrote: post #41
btouellette wrote: post #34

Is he really trying to say that AMD had a superior product in the Core 2 Duo era and Intel was only dominating due to marketing? It's hard to take any of the rest of his opinions seriously when he starts with that take

I'm not sure if you're familiar with CPU history, but this is roughly true. Intel's catchup to multicore offerings was trippy and severely lagged behind AMD. I think it's often forgotten that CPU leadership has fluctuated between different companies many times in the past!

I'm quite familiar as I worked for Intel for over a decade as an engineer. It's absolutely true that leadership has fluctuated a lot but the 2003-2010 era had fairly clear cut leaders for each generation. AMD was the choice for just about everything through the Athlon 64 single core era but the Core 2 Duo run had them relegated to superiority in the very bottom end of the market only for a long time.

https://www.anandtech.com/print/2045/

Re: I was at AMD in the mid-late 2000s helping design CPU/APU/GPUs

#52

Post by wormlord »

bob1029 wrote: post #29
eitally wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I'm not adequately understanding your comment. Nvidia has huge software teams building accelerators that optimize application of their GPUs for all kinds of applications. They also now offer their own "cloud" and have partnered with the hyperscalers for integration as well as GTM. Those same hyperscalers are also almost unilaterally driving Nvidia's growth the past few years. The cloud market is still growing…

I think much of this boils down to perspectives some of us have regarding the value of in-house manufacturing capabilities relative to design time & software capabilities. I get arguments that maybe one fab is better than the other, but what about all of them combined ? All of our modern chipmaking capability all at once. Nvidia has no factories. You can ship their output on a USB flash drive. Valuation: ~3.1T. Intel…

I agree with this sentiment overall, but we have to remember that for valuations, profit and growth is really all that matters. Even if an industry is irreplacable.

I think I read this from Warren Buffett, but basically as of the early 2000s the airlines, in their entire history, had only managed to break even. If you had bought an airline company in 1940 and held it until 2000, you would have never profited from it. The business itself would be worth significantly more, but your only exit strategy would be to sell.

I haven't looked at any of these company's balance sheets, but it might be that semiconductor fabbing is less profitable and has less room for growth. In the short term that's all that matters. The question is if Nvidia can hold on to its current growth and margins (I don't think it can).

Re: I was at AMD in the mid-late 2000s helping design CPU/APU/GPUs

#53

Post by J_Shelby_J »

ant6n wrote: post #43
elzbardico wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be frank. Nobody invests on the market nowadays, the correct verb is BET.

I INVESTED maybe 5% of my portfolio on AMD at around 2.5$, I think I sold it at 20x or so. I should‘ve BET 50% my portfolio.

Same. I wish I held. At the time it was such an obvious play with Zen, but I never for saw it running for a decade of growth.

Re: I was at AMD in the mid-late 2000s helping design CPU/APU/GPUs

#56

Post by matwood »

bob1029 wrote: post #29
eitally wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I'm not adequately understanding your comment. Nvidia has huge software teams building accelerators that optimize application of their GPUs for all kinds of applications. They also now offer their own "cloud" and have partnered with the hyperscalers for integration as well as GTM. Those same hyperscalers are also almost unilaterally driving Nvidia's growth the past few years. The cloud market is still growing…

I think much of this boils down to perspectives some of us have regarding the value of in-house manufacturing capabilities relative to design time & software capabilities. I get arguments that maybe one fab is better than the other, but what about all of them combined ? All of our modern chipmaking capability all at once. Nvidia has no factories. You can ship their output on a USB flash drive. Valuation: ~3.1T. Intel…

Are you saying a software company has less value for some reason? See MS. Or are you saying a hardware company that doesn't own their production has less value? See Apple.

I think we've seen over many years at this point that there is huge value in the final product.

Re: I was at AMD in the mid-late 2000s helping design CPU/APU/GPUs

#58

Post by creativeSlumber »

btouellette wrote: post #51
luyu_wu wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if you're familiar with CPU history, but this is roughly true. Intel's catchup to multicore offerings was trippy and severely lagged behind AMD. I think it's often forgotten that CPU leadership has fluctuated between different companies many times in the past!

I'm quite familiar as I worked for Intel for over a decade as an engineer. It's absolutely true that leadership has fluctuated a lot but the 2003-2010 era had fairly clear cut leaders for each generation. AMD was the choice for just about everything through the Athlon 64 single core era but the Core 2 Duo run had them relegated to superiority in the very bottom end of the market only for a long time. https://www.anan…

Is it possible that maybe your view point is biased against AMD since you worked for for Intel during that time?

Re: I was at AMD in the mid-late 2000s helping design CPU/APU/GPUs

#59

Post by varelse »

woooooo wrote: post #33
basilgohar wrote: post #7

I love this insider view into this interesting point in computing history, especially about AMD. However, I was a little put off by the glorification of nVidia's shady practices and lock-in policies as key to their current leading position. While technically true, I dislike "ends justify the means"-style thinking. All this as the OP glorifies AMD's engineering and grit-based culture to drive through all though tough…

Nvidia was pushing CUDA forward for over a decade before it started getting serious commercial traction. It's not like they blocked anyone else from developing viable GPGPU tech, they were just the only ones pushing it. For like 8 years their drivers on Linux were a nightmare and AMD could have come in and done better.

[dead]

Re: I was at AMD in the mid-late 2000s helping design CPU/APU/GPUs

#60

Post by pjmlp »

doix wrote: post #18
basilgohar wrote: post #7

I love this insider view into this interesting point in computing history, especially about AMD. However, I was a little put off by the glorification of nVidia's shady practices and lock-in policies as key to their current leading position. While technically true, I dislike "ends justify the means"-style thinking. All this as the OP glorifies AMD's engineering and grit-based culture to drive through all though tough…

Yeah, I really feel like AMD is struggling with the software aspect. Even back when they were ATI and AMD bought them, the ATI drivers were garbage compared to Nvidia (from my PC gaming experience). After a few AMD and ATI cards, I just accepted the Nvidia tax, where my cards are more expensive and on paper worse, but in practice worked better. I'm really surprised AMD isn't throwing a whole bunch of money on emulati…

That is what ROMc and HIP were supposed to be somehow, but even that isn't really CUDA, as in the polyglot programming language environment, with C, C++ and Fortran first, plus others, followed by Python JIT, libraries, IDE, and a GPU graphical debugger.
Post reply on HN