back to article AMD shocks the world by only losing $16m

AMD wasn't able to turn a profit this quarter, but analysts are bullish on the chipmaker's solid Ryzen CPU sales. The world's other x86 chipmaker topped estimates with a 21 per cent jump in revenues, but still couldn't quite manage to get into the black. For the FY2017 Q2 period, ended July 1: Revenues of $1.22bn were up 19 …

  1. fobobob
    Mushroom

    Grats

    Good on them; hopefully they're back in the game. Intel needs a nice kick in the nards for running roughshod over the market for the past 5+ years.

    1. Tom 64

      Re: Grats

      Indeed. Intel have been optimising their business for maximum shareholder value recently, screwing their customers and stalling innovation and investment.

      I can't imagine Intel's share price going anywhere but down from here.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Grats

        I can't imagine Intel's share price going anywhere but down from here.

        Mmmm. We all said that when the AMD64 destroyed the P4 in basically every conceivable metric, and then AMD released a true duel core chip than ran relatively cool while the P4's were getting so hot through increasing clock speeds that they could be used for heating the building.

        Then Intel bribed OEM's to exclude AMD from the market, eventually caught up with AMD's advanced designs after a few years and basically wiped them out, allowing them only to survive as a niche market to maintain that Intel isin't a monopoly.

        Never underestimate Intel. This time around, there is again a strange lack of cheap AMD machines from companies that were named in the anti trust thing last time around, which i'm sure is a total coincidence.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Grats

          "Dual" my friend, "dual"!

    2. TVU Silver badge

      Re: Grats

      "Good on them; hopefully they're back in the game. Intel needs a nice kick in the nards for running roughshod over the market for the past 5+ years".

      ^ Absolutely this. Intel needs a serious competitor to keep it from lazy, monopolistic bad practice and unjustified high price rises. Everyone wins that way and I hope that AMD moves into profit by summer next year.

  2. Zmodem

    also have VEGA cards coming soon, where people can actually take control of stream processors like CUDA, which also comes with a CUDA -> openCL bridge if you hunt around abit on http://developer.amd.com/tools-and-sdks/opencl-zone/

  3. Digitall
    Go

    Has it been that long..

    Never been on an AMD system since the Athlon XP Barton CPU era 2003/2004 IIRC, time for a revisit me thinks.

    1. AMBxx Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: Has it been that long..

      Don't forget - it's no longer possible to heat a small house just by using an AMD CPU in your PC.

      Still amazes me that my AMD Six Core CPU runs at 3.3GHz without any fans (OK the heatsink is the size of a small car).

      1. quxinot

        Re: Has it been that long..

        Don't forget - it's no longer possible to heat a small house just by using an AMD CPU in your PC.

        Sure it is. You just haven't pushed the voltage and clocks hard enough yet.

        (True of any chip, really. Watercool it and turn it up until the smoke billows out!)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Has it been that long..

      I'm the opposite, the last Intel chip I bought was a 486SX 25 !!

      1. AMBxx Silver badge

        486SX 25

        I bet you wish you'd spent the extra on the DX. But hey, who needs to do floating point arithmetic

        1. Nick Ryan Silver badge

          Re: 486SX 25

          At this point I believe you could by a separate maths co-processor. Also I vaguely remember a nastily wide range of differing versions of the SX chips, some of which had full maths capabilities.

          1. AMBxx Silver badge

            separate maths co-processor

            I'm sure there was a socket next to the CPU for that. Seems very primitive by today's standards.

          2. GrumpenKraut
            Facepalm

            Re: 486SX 25

            Fun fact: that "co-processor" actually was a full-blown DX.

        2. WolfFan Silver badge

          Re: 486SX 25

          I bet you wish you'd spent the extra on the DX. But hey, who needs to do floating point arithmetic

          Intel at first just had plain old 486 CPUs, no SX, DX. But then they had a problem in manufacturing, and some of the CPUs had problems with floating point. Actually, a lot of CPUs had problems with floating point. If Intel just scrapped the lot of them, they'd lose a lot of money... Hmm. Solution: sell 'em as 486SX CPUs, and the ones which actually worked properly as 486DXs. And put two sockets on the motherboards. Sell a 487 'math chip' which was really a 486DX with an extra pin; when you plugged the 487 into the motherboard it turned off the 486SX, so that the customer paid for two CPUs and got one which actually worked.

          Marketing. I love it.

          And if anyone thinks that AMD wouldn't pull that kind of crap if they thought they could get away with it, have a look at exactly why AMD sold triple-core CPUs. Hint: http://gizmodo.com/373185/amd-phenom-x3-triple-core-processors-are-crippled-quad-cores-in-disguise

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: 486SX 25

          Aah yes - the 487SX! I kind of wanted one just so I could run the whole machine off an "FPU"...

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80487SX

      2. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

        Re: Has it been that long..

        My last desktop one was a 486 DX2 66MHz! (Upgraded from a 33MHz version)

    3. Tom 64

      Re: Has it been that long..

      > "time for a revisit me thinks."

      It absolutely is. I have a Ryzen and it is great. Better yet, I didn't have to give any money to intel (direcly anyway).

  4. tcmonkey

    Shocking, especially seeing that Vega is set to be a disappointment and Ryzen seems to have unresolved silicon issues!

    http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/possible-radeon-rx-vega-3dmark-time-spy-benchmark-result.html

    https://community.amd.com/thread/215773

    Definitely not something this commentard would voluntarily buy!

    1. Fading
      Gimp

      Read your links much?

      The mystery GPU may not be VEGA and may not even be AMD at all (same device ID appeared to better 1080 benches back in December - only card that did that in recent times is the 1080 Ti)

      The segfault problem in Linux builds seems to improve with SMT (Simultaneous Multi Threading - AMDs "hyper threading") turned off. So how you got silicon issue from that I don't know (could be silicon but more likely a problem with the SMT implementation during compiles) . Whilst this is a major issue for some it isn't as if Intel are free from their own issues (google i7 6700 over heating or try https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/01/intel_amt_me_vulnerability/)

      [disclaimer} My main machine is intel with nvidia (3770 + 970) so no I am not an AMD fanboi

      1. Richard 26

        Re: Read your links much?

        ...or even the SMT problems we talked about with Skylake last month: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/25/intel_skylake_kaby_lake_hyperthreading/

        Chips have bugs, film at 11. Might be worth seeing if AMD can patch this bug in microcode (assuming it is their fault). You'll be a long time waiting for a faultless chip of this complexity though.

      2. tcmonkey

        Re: Read your links much?

        Sorry, the link about Vega was the best one I could be bothered locating on mobile, but there are plenty of other places saying similar things about it.

        My concern WRT Ryzen is that it's based on the same tech as the upcoming Epyc server chips, where multithreaded workloads are the norm. Telling your customers to cripple their hardware to get reliability out of it is not going to go down terribly well in the land of Enterprise.

  5. Terry 6 Silver badge

    Comparisons

    Over the years I've looked at AMD based machines many times. Not being an engineer I just don't have the knowledge, skills or, tbh the inclination to compare the cost/power of each type. It's difficult to know what I'm buying just within the one ( Intel) range. Let alone working out whether a given AMD alternative is better/poorer value for money. And the IT magazines don't really help. I've seldom, if ever, seen these things tabulated so that we can compare in the same way they would with different ranges of printers or routers (etc.). The manufacturers, both, come out with chip names and range codes that actually say very little,let alone about how well one chip performs against another. How many users could actually tell the difference between an Intel Cloudy Pussyinthewell chip and an Intel Muddy FishingLake chip let alone compare these to an AMD Athletesfoot CPU or an AMD Tampon CPU. So we end up just going for an Intel i3/i5/i7 because that at least sounds like it makes some kind of sense.

    1. Ol' Grumpy
      Pint

      Re: Comparisons

      Have an upvote for your processor code-names which I demand are adopted by both chip manufacturers immediately.

    2. alcopops

      Re: Comparisons

      I agree, Intel's branding of i3 i5 i7 are much easier than obscure names!

      1. collinsl Bronze badge

        Re: Comparisons

        Now changed to i5 i7 i9 of course :-)

    3. Francis Boyle Silver badge

      Re: Comparisons

      If you don't want t bother looking at the comparison charts (they're out there, I assure you) just use this simple rule - an AMD CPU might not be the fastest money can buy (or the coolest!) but it will almost certainly come out on top in bang for your buck.

  6. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

    I've only used AMD on my desktop systems since the first Thunderbird (which stomped all over Intel's offerings).

    They have always been good value, even when behind on the ultimate performance charts.

    This is good news indeed!

    For Intel $16M would be a rounding error, BTW.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nerds - "AMD? Oh they're awesome cause they aren't evil Intel!"

    Consumers - "AMD? Oh yeah, that's the sticker on those Walmart laptops. I think they make an i1.5."

    1. Zmodem

      AMD always beat intel hands down. nearly all the problems come from wannabe overclockers, leave a system running with everything default and it will run everything just fine

    2. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

      Only goes to show that you too have been had. Did you enjoy it?

  8. conscience
    Happy

    It's good to see AMD bouncing back. Hopefully their great looking server chips coming onto the market can continue them on their upwards trajectory for a while yet and maybe even start take back some market share.

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