AMD Pushing the AMD+AMD Strategy with Executive Promotions
by Ian Cutress on January 25, 2019 9:00 AM EST
Today AMD is announcing some realignment of its executive team along with some promotions. The idea behind the changes boils down to AMD wanting to focus its efforts on bringing the CPU and GPU strategy together, for future AMD+AMD combinations. The goal is that users should want to pair Ryzen with Radeon, or EPYC with Instinct, and by aligning the hierarchy behind that goal, it should be easier to manage and achieve.
There are several big announcements in AMD’s team today:
Darren Grasby, the long standing SVP of Global Computing and Graphics Sales will now become SVP and Chief Sales Officer, covering both consumer and enterprise, as well as becoming the President of AMD EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa). Darren has been at AMD over twelve years, and has been instrumental in the last couple of years for driving the adoption of Ryzen and Radeon as well as the sales message behind the product portfolio. His remit now covers all of AMD’s enterprise products, as well as the embedded products.
Dr. Sandeep Chennakeshu has been hired from his role as President of Blackberry Technology Solutions to become Executive Vice President of the Computing and Graphics group. Under this role he will manage the strategy, business, and engineering for AMD’s PC, graphics, and semi-custom product lines. Dr. Chennakeshu’s history includes time at Freescale (while Dr. Lisa Su was there), as well as President at Ericsson Mobile Platforms and CTO of Sony Ericsson.
Mark Papermaster, current SVP and CTO of AMD, is promoted to Executive Vice President. This is in recognition of his expanding role within AMD.
Forrest Norrod, SVP and GM of AMD’s Datacenter and Embedded Solutions Group, will now be in control of and have responsibility for both the EPYC and Radeon Instinct product lines.
The idea here is that AMD is going to push prioritize a synergy between Ryzen + Radeon or EPYC + Instinct across the company, leveraging on the success of partnering both sets of products together. In order to do this, it requires upper management to know what both sides are thinking, which is why we are seeing key employees now taking strategy and business roles covering both CPU and GPU product lines.
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DeepLearner - Friday, January 25, 2019 - link
EPYC is great for deep learning but as far as GPUs go: you can pull CUDA out of my cold, dead hands. ROCm is really interesting but I'm not messing around with production systems or spending big money just to test how the AMD GPGPUs do. Best of luck to them though, I'd love to see competition drive down nVidia's pricing.FreckledTrout - Friday, January 25, 2019 - link
The only issue is the more people that think like you the less likely they will drive down Nvidia's pricing.danjw - Friday, January 25, 2019 - link
They need to get their GPUs to be as competitive as their CPUs. It really is that simple. Right now they aren't there. It sounds like they may make some progress this year, but they don't have any ray tracing technology and it isn't clear when they will have that. Their position is that Nvidia, was too early on that technology, but that is just because they don't have it.Frankly, I would really like to see laptop makers introduce mobile Ryzen laptops with discrete Nvidia GPUs. I think that makes sense. So, trying to push further bundling with the way things are, just isn't going to work.
They need to spend the time to revamp their Radeon GPUs to make them truly competitive. A reorg may be what they need to do that, I don't know. But, they need to do the same sort of execution on their Radeon line they have been engaged in with their Ryzen CPUs. They need to put technologies out there that will have Nvidia responding to them, rather than the other way around!
Tewt - Friday, January 25, 2019 - link
Everytime I read this type of comment all I see is "AMD must make it faster, use less power and cost less than Nvidia competing products. There is no way I will buy it if it is faster and uses less power but costs more or the same."The fact is they are competitive. Did I say better? No, I didn't. Competitive doesn't always mean better similar in performance like within 5 or 10% and in AMD's case, it is cheaper so yes they are competing. Many tech writers think the same way but I guess Nvidia fans think there is only one strict definition of being "competitive". Even with the current Ryzen line I've read the same opinion at least when it comes to gaming on Intel.
webdoctors - Friday, January 25, 2019 - link
I don't think AMD has been less power in more than a decade, but in the other areas even when they're on par in perf/price the features are lacking. Stuff like geforce game streaming to your TV or nvidia experience where there's presets for your game are nice free features. AMD could add those for free to users too to get parity. You can get game streaming to even Amazon fire TV devices. Otherwise you'd need to buy a steamlink.Driverwise, I think they're both the same on Windows, but if you're gaming on Linux just use Nvidia. Ignore the ppl online saying AMD for Linux, unless you enjoy pain.
That's why I think AMD does need to compete on price. They can't release a 2080 equivalent product (perf-wise) for the same price. They need to discount it 10% or so, because there's intangibles that consumers know and use to buy stuff. Just look at the steam survey:
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/
The game bundling helps a bit but its not enough.
Right now the sweet spot is a Ryzen CPU + Geforce GPU. If AMD wants to change that, they need to make a better feature filled product or reduce prices to get a complete AMD+AMD combo. Shuffling corporate chairs won't be the answer. Like Papermaster going from SVP/CTO to Executive VP, that sounds like a pretty lateral move. What's the difference between senior VP to executive VP. Place is starting to sound like a bank.
danjw - Friday, January 25, 2019 - link
I really want to see AMD bring real competition into the GPU space. I really don't like how much Nvidia has increased their prices of late. But, they get away with it because they have the superior technology. Yes, both faster and lower power. Nvidia does need to be careful not to price itself out of the market. AMD needs to catch up on with their technology before competition.I am no ones fan boi. I am a consumer. I like what I am seeing from AMD with Ryzen. I have both an AMD powered desktop and laptop. I have an Nvidia GPU in my desktop. I am price conscious, so I really want to see AMD get to the point where their technology is on par with Nvidia. But, they don't seem to be executing on their GPU business as well as their CPU business.
I really wanted AMD to win with freesync, which they now have. They went with an industry standard that didn't need a special proprietary chip. I think that is a big win for the industry and consumers both. I have not seen any reviews of the coming Radeon GPUs. I am hoping they that will move them closer to Nvidia on technology. But, they do not have ray tracing technology in the coming generation. That is a concern.
Like I originally said they need to get to where Nvidia is responding to them, if they want to really take them on. Like they have done with Intel. Intel would have happily kept their desktop CPUs at 4 cores for as long as they could. Now they are responding to AMD. AMD needs to start throwing the same kind of curve balls at Nvidia.
PEJUman - Friday, January 25, 2019 - link
While I agree with most of your statement, I tend to think AMD's statement that the ecosystem is not ready for ray tracing is correct. They been working with both consoles, they are working on these console next gens, and without the console biting ray tracing, it is unlikely to take off. Think prior Nvidia technology that failed to gain foothold due to consoles not biting: tessellation, hairworks, FXAA/'latest buzzwordAA here', etc.I think it is a simple business equation, and without consoles developers being able to easily port their AAA to use it ray tracing is unlikely to gain a majority hold on the market.
Nvidia finally letting freesync works on their GPU, AFTER consoles can do it over HDMI. I think that's Nvidia trying to salvage whatever marketing steam they have left in G-sync before the news of G-sync LCD being discontinued breaks out...
just4U - Saturday, January 26, 2019 - link
In the laptop world I think Amd's integrated graphics work quite well.. but OEMs need to pair it all with some of their higher end chassis and displays. The problem is they make it all to cheap and then the end user experience is not as good as it could be.In the desktop market.. while I'd love to own a 2070 or 2080ti I'd take a 580 in a heartbeat for 1080p and a vega over everything else except a 1080 and above including the 2060 which in my opinion is way over priced
Spunjji - Tuesday, January 29, 2019 - link
I disagree that AMD's claim about it being too early for ray-tracing is entirely about them not having products that support it. Indications so far are that it's performance heavy to implement, it's very expensive to produce a chip capable of it, and the visual benefits in games are debatable.For further reasons to believe it's not entirely about marketing, they never said it was "too early for DX10" when their cards were late to market and their performance sucked (HD2900) - they just went back to the drawing board and made better cards. This situation is arguably very different.
AlyxSharkBite - Friday, January 25, 2019 - link
This works great for mid and low range systems AMD has great mid range and low end GPUs but there’s nothing worth pairing with a 2700X or Threadripper.