AMD Highlights Path To The Future
Summary
- After a gangbuster performance on the stock market for the last several years, Advanced Micro Devices, its CEO Dr. Lisa Su, and its executive leadership team have been under the glare of a lot of media attention recently.
- Despite the apparent pressure, however, the company keeps coming out swinging and the announcements from last week's Financial Analyst Day indicate that AMD is showing no signs of letting up.
- All told, it was a very impressive set of announcements that highlights how AMD continues to build on the momentum it started to create a few years back.
After a gangbuster performance on the stock market for the last several years, Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD), its CEO Dr. Lisa Su, and its executive leadership team have been under the glare of a lot of media attention recently. Despite the apparent pressure, however, the company keeps coming out swinging and the announcements from last week's Financial Analyst Day indicate that AMD is showing no signs of letting up.
In fact, the key takeaway from the event was that the company leadership - and apparently many of the financial analysts who attended - now have even more confidence in the business' future. (The company was even willing to reiterate its guidance for the first quarter, which, given the impact of the coronavirus on many its customers and the tech industry as a whole, was an impressively optimistic statement.)
As a long-time company observer, what particularly stood out to me was that the company has now built up a several-year history of achieving some fairly grand plans based on big decisions it made 4-5 years back. In the past, previous AMD leadership has also talked about big ideas, but frankly, they weren't able to deliver on them. The key difference with the current leadership team is that they are now able to execute on those ideas. As a result, the credibility of their forward-looking plans has gone up significantly.
And what plans they are. The company made a number of important announcements about its future product strategies and roadmaps at the event, most all of which were targeted around high-performance computing, both for CPUs and GPUs. On the GPU roadmap, a particularly noteworthy development was the introduction of a new datacenter-focused GPU architecture named CDNA ("C" for Compute) - an obvious link to the RDNA architecture currently used for PC and gaming-consoled focused GPU designs. Full details around CDNA and specific Radeon Instinct GPUs based on it are still to come, but the company is clearly focusing on the machine learning, AI, and other datacenter-focused workloads that its primary competitor Nvidia (NVDA) has been targeting for the last several years. One key point the company made is that the second and third generation CDNA-based GPUs would leverage the company's Infinity interconnect architecture, allowing future CPUs and GPUs to share memory in a truly heterogenous computing environment, as well as providing a way for multiple GPU "chiplets" to connect with one another. The company even talked about offering software that would convert existing CUDA code (which Nvidia uses for its data center GPUs) into platform-agnostic HIP code that would run on these new CDNA-based GPUs.
AMD also talked about plans for future consumer-focused GPUs and discussed its next-generation RDNA2 technology and its Navi 2X chips, which are expected to offer hardware-accelerated support for ray tracing, as well as improvements in variable rate shading and overall performance per watt. Notably, the hardware ray tracing support is expected to be a common architecture between both PCs and gaming consoles (both the PlayStation 5 and next-generation Xbox are based on custom AMD GPU designs), so that should be an important advancement for game developers. The company also mentioned RDNA3, which is expected in the 2020-2021 time frame and will be manufactured with what is described as an "Advanced Node." Presumably that will be smaller than the 7nm production being used for current RDNA-based GPUs and those based on the forthcoming RDNA2 architecture.
Speaking of production, the company discussed how it intends to move forward aggressively, not only on smaller size process nodes, but also to add in 2.5 and 3D chip stacking (which it termed X3D). Over the past year or so, packaging technologies have taken on new levels of importance for future semiconductor designs, so it will be interesting to see what AMD does here.
On the CPU side, the company laid out its roadmap for several new generations of its Zen core CPU architectures, including a 7nm-based Zen 3 core expected in the next year or so, and the company's first 5nm CPU, the Zen 4, planned for 2021 or 2022. AMD made a point to highlight the forthcoming Ryzen Mobile 4000 series CPUs for notebooks, expected to be available later this month, which the company expects will boost them to the top of the notebook performance charts, just as the Ryzen Zen 2-based CPUs did for desktops. The company also mentioned that its 3rd-generation Epyc server processor, code named Milan and based on the forthcoming Zen 3 core, is expected to ship later this year.
For even higher-performance computing, the combination of Zen 4-based CPU cores, 3rd generation CDNA GPU cores and the 3rd generation Infinity interconnect architecture in the late 2022 time frame is also what enables the exascale level of computing powering AMD's recent El Capitan supercomputer announcement. Built in conjunction with HPE on behalf of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and the US Department of Energy, El Capitan is expected to be the fastest supercomputer in the world when it's released and, amazingly, will be more powerful than today's 200 fastest supercomputers combined.
All told, it was a very impressive set of announcements that highlights how AMD continues to build on the momentum it started to create a few years back. Obviously, there are enormous questions about exactly where the tech market is headed in the short term, but looking further out, it's clear that AMD is here to stay. For the sake of the overall semiconductor market and the competitiveness that it will enable, that's a good thing.
Disclaimer: Some of the author's clients are vendors in the tech industry
Disclosure: None.
Editor's Note: The summary bullets for this article were chosen by Seeking Alpha editors.
This article was written by
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Comments (121)
10 Serious/Criticalwww.worldometers.info/...That seems very far lower than what Johns Hopkins, is predicting, for hospitalized, and ICU?Maybe because most of the 2,238, are new infections, and might become Serious/Critical later? It still seems like a big dependency. Also, I know a nurse, who's working 7 days a week, but there are only 3 CV19 patients at the hospital. They are very busy with people with other repository infections, that are worried, and wanted to go to the hospital. There is already, very little free space, in her hospital.
9.6M/80K=120
1.4B/0.3B=~47
120*47=56405640 times more severe, amazing! Is JH funded by the world's largest zoo? :-)
Currently reported, we have:
2,238 Active cases
10 Serious/Critical"Utterly meaningless when there is little testing being done. John Hopkins is using standard epidemiological extrapolation procedure based on the actual verified characteristics of the coronavirus, the size, density, mobilization and social practices of the target population and the span of time the coronavirus has been spreading without hindrance in that population. There are models and formulas that take into account all these factors and more. At that they were undoubtedly chose conservative numbers from the range of severity that was computed. The John Hopkins projections will closely follow what actually occurs with the exception it might be modified by the unexpected speed and magnitude of the social distancing measures that have been imposed over the last 96 hours.
Are you still hanging in there?
I entered stocks here in Europe early on Friday morning.
NYFed is supplying long term loans to banks and Asia have few new cases. The Chinese are synthesizing the effective components of natural remedies which are proving very effective.
As for myself, a mouth rinse or simply inhaling tea-tree oil knocks out bacteria and viruses in the respiratory tract.
I bought the best European bank, Intesa, and also DB for half price, likewise Eni. When New York opened I bought a company I have had my eyes on for some time, ACI, they are the 'new' Visa even though they have been around for 25 years. This is due to real time payments that ACI handles for banks through every payment-method available to consumers.
The governments will spend to keep things afloat, giving helicopter stipends to citizens if needed. This is supportive of stocks in the short term and inflationary further out, (similar to government wartime spending). What do you think, how do you see things now?
Has someone hacked your account...? Yes, AMD is facing an uphill battle with a monopolist but every stock in my SA sidebar is DOWN at least 10%...This is a macro situation and AMD is still firing on all cylinders... Leaks say the 4000 APUs are due next week... They are still winning supers and even the Chinese EPYC is on the Top 500 - even higher than the ATOS system in France... Hawk will go up on the next list and should be #16...Zen2 desktop owns DIY\retail and even HEDT workstations though it's more of a low volume market in comparison...Intel WAS at $62 now it's at $45...Still long EPYC...
When should we panic? When SP500 is at 1500, thats when we panic.
Sooooooo close!
1. As the the virus adapts to humans it is mutating and BECOMING MORE CONTAGIOUS.
2. As the virus adapts to humans it is INFECTING ADDITIONAL AGE GROUPS.
3.The virus is ASYMPTOMATIC. It is contagious throughout it's current 3 to 14 day incubation period.
4.The virus has SILENT VECTORS. That is people can become infected and continue to spread the virus without becoming sick or showing any symptoms. The 'Typhoid Mary' syndrome.
5. The virus remains contagious and virulent after a chain of AT LEAST three human transmissions. It is not growing weaker as it passes from human to human, it is getting stronger and more virulent.
6. Genetically this is a new never seen before coronavirus. IF an effective vaccine is possible, it will take TIME to develop and manufacture it, during which time what is happening in Wuhan will be repeating in cities around the world.Understand due to the above factors there are ALREADY thousands to tens of thousands of infected humans scattered throughout the world, each currently spreading the virus at a rapid rate, and THOSE infected then continuing the chain. While feeling fine and exhibiting no symptoms until the incubation period is over.That is why this cannot be contained. It has already spread throughout the planet.A straightforward chain of logic based on those revealed points lead to a simple conclusion:
This is a deadly worldwide viral pandemic infection that cannot be contained and will be spreading at an exponential rate from the thousands of already infected travelers that are now scattered throughout the world.Turn EVERYTHING into cash, do it ASAP, and concentrate on pure physical survival.Supply chains will be shut down. Manufacturing will be shut down. Public gatherings will be shut down. Stock markets will be shut down. The world economy will be shut down.Make no mistake, unless this virus miraculously and radically changes it's characteristics the world will be brought to it's knees and it will radically disrupt civilization and do so for a very long time.
DIY and retail have always been consistent markets for AMD... Right before Core 2 Duo, AMD had 80% of US retail (2004-2005)... And we're saying a faster movement towards it with Ryzen 3000...Ryzen 4000 APUs should be a real game changer with RX5000M chips.. AMD said there are 100+ designs coming and recent leaks show that the launch at retail will happen next week... ASUS TUF is for Mar16 and others are Mar18 (videocardz.com)...That and the shortages are why Digitimes said AMD will get 20% mobile soon... There's also leaks of the PRO versions for business up to a 4750U... And there will probably be a 4000G series for desktop... I actually think AMD should use a cutoff point and say 8C and lower gets a GPU while 12C and higher don't... APUs may never get an IOD though because it's not really needed except for server with HBM...5nm or 6nmm - depending on what they do may move APUs to 12C... But I hear that RDNA2 may not even be EUV because it will have Ryzen-level circuit optimizations (16C in 105W)...They can the split off arch based on volume and margin where EPYC gets EUV, RDNA gets DUV (it's basically mature now)... 6nm and 5nm may be $1B per design (7nm was reported as $750M) so fortunately all CPUs are made from the same chiplet...EUV could provide a Zen2+ with higher clocks and less power for desktop... We'll see I guess...Still long EPYC...
