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Nvidia: AMD can't afford to compete
According to Nvidia’s chief scientist, David Kirk, AMD needs to fund four projects to survive, but doesn’t have the money for even one
It’s not often that a company says what it really thinks about its nearest competitor, but Nvidia’s chief scientist David Kirk has revealed his thoughts about the future of AMD in a revealing interview over at Bit-Tech.
‘AMD has been declining because it hasn’t built a competitive graphics architecture for almost two years now,’ said Kirk, adding that ‘They have to do four things to survive, but I don’t think they have enough money to do one thing.’
According to Kirk, the four projects AMD needs to complete to survive are building new fabs to compete in the CPU business with Intel, designing its next-generation CPU and GPU architectures and getting its Fusion (integrated CPU and GPU) architecture working. ‘They have to do these four multi-billion dollar projects,’ says Kirk, but ‘they’re currently losing half a billion dollars per quarter and they owe eight billion dollars.’
According to Kirk, AMD’s ‘market cap is about three billion.’ As such, he says that ‘it’s hard to see where the future is in that picture. Really speaking, they’re going to have to pull not one, but several rabbits out of the hat.’
This is a damning picture of AMD, but then it does come from one of the company’s competitors in the graphics business. Is it really all doom and gloom at the AMD? To find out, we recently discussed the company’s financial situation with the guys at AMD themselves – look out for the full story later today.
Check out Bit-Tech for the full interview, in which David Kirk also discusses Larrabee, ray tracing and CPUs vs GPUs.
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There was a time when no one building a gaming machine would touch INTEL now they are at the forefront of everyone's mind they are cheaper and faster than anything AMD can supply the same goes when they bought ATI - Its was a great move and again people building a gaming rig would always opt for ATI - but now NVIDEA's middle range cards outperform the high end ATI ones.....I am sorry to say it but AMD is well and truly DEAD.
Comment by skyline at 1:51pm 7th May 2008
The CEO AMD.... hes gonna cost less to pay off than it will for the company, and get rid of some of this executives, they havent the slightest clue on how to outperform intel and nvidia. They sat back on one idea that their AM2/939 is always going to be great, then BAM... intel throws in a shit load of cash loaned, bangs up the biggest named factory processors, and builds what looks to be a fascinating future for themselves, and everyone who buys them !... AMD Wake Up
Comment by Lightning_Pete at 12:24pm 2nd May 2008
All AMD really needs to do is to hire the right people who will then bring the innovation and expertise to make the next big cpu architecture. How about a collaboration with Sony/Toshiba/IBM? Throw Via in there also. Because everybody will win, the money will follow. Hmm, maybe I should be a CEO...
Comment by rocketman0441 at 5:47am 2nd May 2008
y'all forget that AMD managed to beat Intel when they first started -- with multiple manufacturers competing in the CPU arena (Intel, Cyrix, AMD, IBM, etc) - of which only Intel and AMD have dominated. and during the Athlon 64's hayday both with desktops and Opties (though not in the dual CPU market). all of which without the financial grunt that its main competitors had, esp IBM and Intel. i dont think much has changed --- its just the fact that AMD's architecture is so damn friggin old - way past the 'tick-tock cycle'. and that can be both a good and bad thing.
Comment by thegreat0mi at 12:56am 2nd May 2008
i think that this is going to be a tough challenge for amd, but i think that they can at very least survive it. if they have no options left they can sell ati off to a competitor, drop the fusion project and pull all the money they can out of it, and use the resulting money to fund their other projects. i don't think that they really need fusion that much anyways, it's main appeal was to the low-buget market, and amd already has the best systems for truely minimum cost systems, their onboard graphics are better than anyone else's. of course they could theoretically pull off all four projects somehow, this is just my idea opf how i might go down.
Comment by yougotkicked at 10:16pm 1st May 2008
This article is dead on. Anybody who has been watching AMD or has or "had" stock in the company (like me) and watched their money disappear knows that it's true. They took on too much and started a price war they couldn't win because their products can't compete with the competition! It's as simple as that...they can't compete! The only reason to buy AMD is if you have no money as there is a better alternative everywhere you look!
Comment by Warrior24_7 at 4:46pm 1st May 2008
i like that someone is trying to help the competition, and i do think that its great you are doing this, because you dont need the worlds fastest Nasa beater just to play a few games. also your helping yo save us who enjoy this as a hobby, and even helping some of us to keep a job... because if there was no new hardware that makes a difference for at least 2-3 years then no employer would require you to keep upgrading their systems. and i'll say it again, thank you for helping to keep the world of IT moving forwards.
Comment by NikoBellic at 2:12pm 1st May 2008
It's a lame story as it only points out the obvious to anyone who reads anything about the PC industry. Same old, same old. As for some of the comments on here... Same old, SAME OLD. Do you (directed at only some people in hey... lol) EVER listen and have something new to say? You just love to see your name on the comment sheet apouting the same stuff for month on end. Blah blah blah is all I have to say to you.
Comment by PokerMuppet at 2:06pm 1st May 2008
i had just said to them that the enthusiasts are starting to look for a new competitor and this seems the best time for them to join the competition. although just me telling them this seems rediculous, i was hoping that more people would contact them about this too, because this is definately the best time for a new competitor.
Comment by NikoBellic at 1:57pm 1st May 2008
I'm about to start buying parts for my Phenom/Crossfire rig. Yeah the top end Phemon's are a little more than the Q6600, but thats offset by the fact that AMD 790 boards are cheaper than X38/48 and the 3870X2 is much cheaper than the 9800GX2. :D
Comment by D_Cypher at 1:59pm 1st May 2008
Maybe I am not the only one who thinks this afterall then... "I told you so".
Comment by C7ouD at 1:35pm 1st May 2008
``Nvidia is a fighter,'' said Matt Shaw, chief technology officer of EA Mythic, a unit of Redwood City, California-based Electronic Arts Inc., the world's largest video-game maker. ``They manage to create some incredibly powerful 3-D chips on a regular basis.'' ``This is an area Intel's not very good at,'' Mosesmann said. ``This is Nvidia's sandbox.'' - today by Bloomberg News
Comment by cookie at 1:23pm 1st May 2008
If I'd just tried to take the public and media for fools with chipsets that were no faster than the last range - except the one which needs a wind tunnel to cool and costs as much as a PC build by itself - I'd slag off my competition as well. Perfect distraction.
Comment by KHenry_07 at 1:12pm 1st May 2008
Do any of you think that this may be the best time for VIA to jump into the enthusiast market?, i think it may be time we start looking into new competitors...
Comment by NikoBellic at 1:00pm 1st May 2008
...if this was completely true. AMD's situation on paper does look grim. On top of that their hard core fan base is reducing by the minute, with Intels range of massivesly overclockable chips proving too attractive to pass up out of principle for many people (including myself).
Comment by cpj_187 at 12:06pm 1st May 2008
although i think that now we may be in big trouble if the 4870 doesn't save them, then we'll have to rely on VIA to provide the competition, if not, then we (the consumer) may be in big trouble, and i think we'll have to start looking into, buying a new setup, maybe once every 2 years, because it'll be way too costly to be building computers as a hobby, and i think that the speed of the evolving technology may come to a stand still, so for real performance difference we would have to wait every 2 years anyway, afterall, just look at what Nvidia are doing now with the "nametag" changes, i think that the market will always be like that if there is no competition, so i think we'll just have to pray that AMD will survive this, and that all of the AMD fanboys keep on buying their products. i think i might even move back to AMD, just for the sake of saving the IT market, and its not like i am in desperate need for the worlds fastest tech, i just want my hardware to play my games at 30fps, and i am sure that the 4870 shall give great performance too!.
Comment by NikoBellic at 12:25pm 1st May 2008
AMD has been on the backfoot for ages now, with the recent massive layoffs, they are obviously in a bad financial state at the moment. It is such a shame they had to pull ATI down the drain with them, as I can remember ATI was competiting quite well with Nvidia (X800, X1800 ..) back then before being taken over by AMD. Now as the result of the take over, AMD can't compete with Intel in the processor market, and Nvidia in the graphics card markets, added with the huge financial debt created by the take over. Its all bad news for us as consumer, Nvidia has been abusing the market position by releasing renamed products since the start of the year, and Intel's 45nm Quad core is still way above the reach of the average user.
Comment by Wolfinton at 12:10pm 1st May 2008
Not one of you can deny his logic. AMD have soo much ground to make up with very little resources. Hopefully they have the 4xxx series gfx chips ready to ship and they'll be awesome. I'd hate such a large company to fall.
Comment by joeamnesiac at 12:06pm 1st May 2008
...if this was completely true. AMD's situation on paper does look grim. On top of that their hard core fan base is reducing by the minute, with Intels range of massivesly overclockable chips proving too attractive to pass up out of principle for many people (including myself).
Comment by cpj_187 at 12:06pm 1st May 2008
Nvidia also recently said "The CPU is dead" and went on a tirade about Intel. They talk too much...
Comment by NotFred at 12:06pm 1st May 2008
... mud-slinging and bitch-slapping begin.
Comment by toobigtohide at 10:47am 1st May 2008
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