Aceshardware

Paul DeMone · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 376 Location: Great white north

who? wrote:

JoeP wrote:

Who cares?

no, i don t care ... and a billion is a billion ...

A half billion dollar losing quarter here, a billion dollar loser quarter
there. Pretty soon that is going to add up to some real money. :-P

Let's see:

4Q06 - loss of $576m
1Q07 - loss of $611m
2Q07 - loss of $600m
3Q07 - loss of $396m
4Q07 - loss of $1.77B
1Q08 - loss of $358m
2Q08 - loss of what... $800m, $900m? more?

The critical thing is AMD's cash reserves. If drops too low some
loan convenents associated with the Dresden fabs kick in and
a chain reaction of a lot of bad things for AMD could be set in
motion as its creditors move to protect themselves.

who? · Joined: 01 Sep 2007 Posts: 464

i think you are missing the point of atom, performance per watt is watt matter there.

try to put those other processors into a small foorm factor ... the c7 in the OQO IS ALREADY TOO HOT, 1 HOUR OF BATTERY for a system suppose to be your corporate mail, it does not cut it.
today s goal of atom is to get slick form factor, long battery life , and x86 compatibility.

in 2008, you ll get incredible prof of concept, stop beating on the dog, it is not born yet...

who?

Hans de Vries · Joined: 07 Aug 2007 Posts: 74

With the sudden comeback of ATI's graphics division it's probably the last
time that AMD get's a change to create tax-benefits by writing of goodwill.

Note that the write-off is on goodwill related to the consumer electronics
division of ATI. It would be hard to do this on the GPU division now.
Caching in on the benefits is another story of course but it would be
plain stupid not to write off.

AMD is allowed to write off ATI goodwill because it is an acquired intangible
asset. AMD is not allowed to write off it's own goodwill which was build
up over the years.

It seems that between 2.6 and 3 billion of the total of 3.2 billion goodwill
(out of a total of the 5.4 billion cost price of AMD) is now written of.

Funny to see how amateur investors can't distinguish between writing
off goodwill, (which doesn't cost you a cent but has a potential to bring
in money later) and for instance the (real) cost incurred by restructuring.

Regards, Hans

no@spam.com · Joined: 07 Oct 2007 Posts: 53

> i think you are missing the point of atom, performance
> per watt is watt matter there.

Unfortunately Atom's perf/watt isn't impressive. Perhaps
you missed the RWT thread back in April, which abruptly
ended when I posted numbers:

http://realworldtech.com/forums/index.cfm?action=detail&id=89505&threadid=89138&roomid=2

| 1.2 GHz Efficeon 90 nm @ 4 W in 2004 with ICC 8.1 = 526
| 1.2 Atom 45 nm @ 2 W in 2008 with a current ICC = 439
|
| As I said, I find Atom utterly disappointing: two process
| generations and several ICC versions later, it gets 0.84x.
| At half the power you say? Not really... because it still
| needs an external North Bridge (the SCH).

On a related note...

It will be interesting to see which of the small cores -- Atom
or the P54C-derived Larrabee -- will ultimately survive, and
make it into future heterogeneous multi-cores.

who? · Joined: 01 Sep 2007 Posts: 464

no@spam.com wrote:

> i think you are missing the point of atom, performance
> per watt is watt matter there.

Unfortunately Atom's perf/watt isn't impressive. Perhaps
you missed the RWT thread back in April, which abruptly
ended when I posted numbers:

http://realworldtech.com/forums/index.cfm?action=detail&id=89505&threadid=89138&roomid=2

| 1.2 GHz Efficeon 90 nm @ 4 W in 2004 with ICC 8.1 = 526
| 1.2 Atom 45 nm @ 2 W in 2008 with a current ICC = 439
|
| As I said, I find Atom utterly disappointing: two process
| generations and several ICC versions later, it gets 0.84x.
| At half the power you say? Not really... because it still
| needs an external North Bridge (the SCH).

On a related note...

It will be interesting to see which of the small cores -- Atom
or the P54C-derived Larrabee -- will ultimately survive, and
make it into future heterogeneous multi-cores.

look at the OQO C7 ( www.oqo.com ) , if you can touch one, you ll figure out very quickly that C7 is too hot at 4 Watts, while 2 Watts is ok .. double is double !!!
To have a good product, you got to be at the right power point, and offer the best performance at this spot. This is what Atom is doing.

4 Watts is too much for slick device, and please ... don t use SPEC for Mobile Internet devices ... Those device use optimized code, the XML parser for example. When you get one of the Atom MID, you get the optimized code with it.

I have an OQO, I wanted to test it ... If you put it in your pocket not turned OFF, you ll burn after a while ... Efficion is hotter than C7, so, welcome the Pocket BBQ. The real $ are in the slick MID business!

who?

Paul DeMone · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 376 Location: Great white north

Hans de Vries wrote:

Funny to see how amateur investors can't distinguish between writing
off goodwill, (which doesn't cost you a cent but has a potential to bring
in money later) and for instance the (real) cost incurred by restructuring.

It is funny how certain partisan folks don't realize that writing off huge
amounts of goodwill is a tacit admission that AMD grossly overpaid for
ATI in the first place with its carefully horded cash reserves but also
by borrowing a huge pile of real money from folks who damn well
expect to be repaid. Of course some of us knew this from day one
and said so. The money vaporized in 2006 but it wasn't counted as
a loss back then. But bit by bit it becomes official. Too bad AMD's debt
won't go away nearly as easily as its corporate valuation.

The funny thing is the remaining book value of ATI is approximately
AMD's current capitalization. So do you think ATI's true value is still
overblown on AMD's balance sheet or is its MPU business worthless? ;-)

no@spam.com · Joined: 07 Oct 2007 Posts: 53

>> | 1.2 GHz Efficeon 90 nm @ 4 W in 2004 with ICC 8.1 = 526
>> | 1.2 Atom 45 nm @ 2 W in 2008 with a current ICC = 439
>> |
>> | As I said, I find Atom utterly disappointing: two process
>> | generations and several ICC versions later, it gets 0.84x.
>> | At half the power you say? Not really... because it still
>> | needs an external North Bridge (the SCH).
>
> [... C7 is too hot at 4 Watts, while 2 Watts is ok ...]
> [... don t use SPEC for Mobile Internet devices ...]

Since you seem to be touting that 2 W number as crucial... you
might want to (a) start including the SCH power (at which point
Atom no longer fits into 2 W) and/or (b) reduce performance of
the products you are comparing with to Atom's lousy levels (at
which point they can match its power consumption).

who? · Joined: 01 Sep 2007 Posts: 464

no@spam.com wrote:

>> | 1.2 GHz Efficeon 90 nm @ 4 W in 2004 with ICC 8.1 = 526
>> | 1.2 Atom 45 nm @ 2 W in 2008 with a current ICC = 439
>> |
>> | As I said, I find Atom utterly disappointing: two process
>> | generations and several ICC versions later, it gets 0.84x.
>> | At half the power you say? Not really... because it still
>> | needs an external North Bridge (the SCH).
>
> [... C7 is too hot at 4 Watts, while 2 Watts is ok ...]
> [... don t use SPEC for Mobile Internet devices ...]

Since you seem to be touting that 2 W number as crucial... you
might want to (a) start including the SCH power (at which point
Atom no longer fits into 2 W) and/or (b) reduce performance of
the products you are comparing with to Atom's lousy levels (at
which point they can match its power consumption).

I did not say that everything is perfect, you have a point here, fix is in progress, as it appear on the roadmap

who?

JoeP · Joined: 28 Jul 2007 Posts: 52

Paul DeMone wrote:

The funny thing is the remaining book value of ATI is approximately
AMD's current capitalization. So do you think ATI's true value is still
overblown on AMD's balance sheet or is its MPU business worthless? ;-)

I guess neither is really true... you sort of make an arguement to invest in AMD if you look at it that way :p

lux_interior · Joined: 26 Jul 2007 Posts: 235

who? wrote:

4 Watts is too much for slick device, and please ... don t use SPEC for Mobile Internet devices ... Those device use optimized code, the XML parser for example. When you get one of the Atom MID, you get the optimized code with it.

How is that optimized XML parser magically used by all applications? Do Atom devices come with a special hand-crafted Linux distro?
Or is the optimized XML parser the Intel equivalent of AMD's custom 64-bit gzip binary with which they were boasting huge 64-bit performance increase some years ago? (how ridiculous it is now in retrospect...)

Paul DeMone · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 376 Location: Great white north

Paul DeMone wrote:

Let's see:

4Q06 - loss of $576m
1Q07 - loss of $611m
2Q07 - loss of $600m
3Q07 - loss of $396m
4Q07 - loss of $1.77B
1Q08 - loss of $358m
2Q08 - loss of what... $800m, $900m? more?

Uh, more.

2Q08 - loss of $1.19B

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/080717/20080717006045.html?.v=1

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AMD (NYSE:AMD - News) today reported second quarter 2008 revenue from continuing operations of $1.349 billion, a seven percent decrease compared to the first quarter of 2008 and a three percent increase compared to the second quarter of 2007. As part of its previously communicated review of its non-core businesses, AMD decided to divest its Handheld and DTV product businesses, and therefore is classifying them as discontinued operations1 for financial reporting.
In the second quarter of 2008, AMD reported a net loss of $1.189 billion, or $1.96 per share. For continuing operations, the second quarter loss was $269 million, or $0.44 per share, and the operating loss was $143 million. The results for continuing operations include a net favorable impact of $97 million, or $0.16 per share as described in the table below. Loss from discontinued operations was $920 million, or $1.52 a share, including asset impairment charges of $876 million, or $1.44 a share.

In contrast on Tuesday Intel announced record second-quarter revenue
of $9.5 billion, operating income of $2.3 billion, net income of $1.6 billion
and earnings per share (EPS) of 28 cents.

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/080715/20080715006436.html?.v=1

Desti · Joined: 09 Aug 2007 Posts: 33

Ruiz steps down.

MadRat · Joined: 22 Jul 2007 Posts: 128

I bet the DTV division was pretty well stifled by the Tivo lawsuit's outcome.

Paul DeMone · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 376 Location: Great white north

Intel continues to ratchet up the pressure:

http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/15155

Intel cuts prices, pins Core 2 Quad Q6600 at $193

Paul DeMone · Joined: 29 Aug 2007 Posts: 376 Location: Great white north

AMD unit market share drops below 20% in Q2 according to Mercury

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080722/amd_mover.html?.v=1

AMD shares fall 5 pct on market share losses
Tuesday July 22, 1:54 pm ET
Shares of Advanced Micro Devices fall as chip maker seen losing market share to rival Intel

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Shares of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. tumbled 5 percent Tuesday to a multiyear low as fresh data emerged revealing that the slumping chip maker lost more market share to bigger rival Intel Corp.

[...]

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel, the world's largest semiconductor company, boosted its total market share from 79.2 percent in the first quarter to 80.5 percent in the second quarter, with AMD essentially owning the rest of the market, according to the Mercury Research findings.