Normally, this would've been the right strategy - if done 2-3 years ago. But at that point whoever was running AMD was still being dismissive about ARM and the mobile market. Now they realized they shouldn't have been, but it may be too late.
This is why it pays to have a visionary CEO, one that can feel where things are moving years ahead of the others, instead of a mere "manager". Transitions to disruptive markets can literally kill your company if you're not doing it on time. By the time a "pragmatist" manager - one that looks only at present data - realizes what is going on, it's already too late.
Flawless execution for the switch to ARM may not be enough. They may need a good differentiation strategy, too. If they knew they would do this, it may have even paid off to be the ones buying the MIPS architecture. The ARM market is starting to consolidate right now, and I'm not sure there will still be room for AMD's stock ARM CPU's (and probably stock GPU's too?) by 2014.
Exactly. The hindsight bias that is present when discussing CEOs, failed companies, successful companies and business in general is absolutely stunning.
Well no one on the ARM market other then AMD has the expertise in Server CPU. Nvidia may be able to do a very High Performance ARM CPU for HPC but it is completely different matter on Server. There will also be NAS, Small Server, etc and whole not of other market where a big name ARM player could help. Although most of that wont happen till 2015. I am not sure if there is enough time for AMD.
And given the recent sales figures that 70-80% of CPU sales are coming from APU, the APU is rasiing, CPU is a shrinking business, it makes sense for AMD to consolidate and make that 80% better and slightly more profitable rather then trying to complete with an aggressive Intel.
IIRC they did have this sort of visionary CEO, but they sacked him because he was spending too much money developing new technologies.
OTOH I expect AMD will do pretty well in the lightweight thread server market. They've got server experience and infrastructure, they've got a decent low-power x86 core, and they've spent of lot of time thinking about having cores with different instruction sets living together.
You're correct about the server market. AMD acquired SeaMicro earlier this year who specialize in high-density, lower-power x86 servers. They've already stated their intention to produce ARM servers.
Comments
Normally, this would've been the right strategy - if done 2-3 years ago. But at that point whoever was running AMD was still being dismissive about ARM and the mobile market. Now they realized they shouldn't have been, but it may be too late.
This is why it pays to have a visionary CEO, one that can feel where things are moving years ahead of the others, instead of a mere "manager". Transitions to disruptive markets can literally kill your company if you're not doing it on time. By the time a "pragmatist" manager - one that looks only at present data - realizes what is going on, it's already too late.
Flawless execution for the switch to ARM may not be enough. They may need a good differentiation strategy, too. If they knew they would do this, it may have even paid off to be the ones buying the MIPS architecture. The ARM market is starting to consolidate right now, and I'm not sure there will still be room for AMD's stock ARM CPU's (and probably stock GPU's too?) by 2014.
>"This is why it pays to have a visionary CEO, one that can feel where things are moving years ahead of the others"
The problem is, you only ever find this out with hindsight.
Exactly. The hindsight bias that is present when discussing CEOs, failed companies, successful companies and business in general is absolutely stunning.
...and even then, it's hard to know whether the CEO exercised brilliance, luck, or a combination thereof.
Well no one on the ARM market other then AMD has the expertise in Server CPU. Nvidia may be able to do a very High Performance ARM CPU for HPC but it is completely different matter on Server. There will also be NAS, Small Server, etc and whole not of other market where a big name ARM player could help. Although most of that wont happen till 2015. I am not sure if there is enough time for AMD.
And given the recent sales figures that 70-80% of CPU sales are coming from APU, the APU is rasiing, CPU is a shrinking business, it makes sense for AMD to consolidate and make that 80% better and slightly more profitable rather then trying to complete with an aggressive Intel.
IIRC they did have this sort of visionary CEO, but they sacked him because he was spending too much money developing new technologies.
OTOH I expect AMD will do pretty well in the lightweight thread server market. They've got server experience and infrastructure, they've got a decent low-power x86 core, and they've spent of lot of time thinking about having cores with different instruction sets living together.
You're correct about the server market. AMD acquired SeaMicro earlier this year who specialize in high-density, lower-power x86 servers. They've already stated their intention to produce ARM servers.
http://www.seamicro.com/products/sm10K_overview