Cloud Computing: AMD Vows Not to Be Road Kill
February 8, 2012
AMD Thursday told financial analysts it’s gonna try not to become road kill by addressing the "trends around consumerization, the cloud and convergence" and switching to a new "ambidextrous" strategy that includes other people’s technologies and IP to deliver differentiated products such as a tablet.
That means AMD might pump for mobile maven ARM, whose low-power chips are challenging Intel enough for AMD CEO Rory Read to prophesy "the breakdown of proprietary control points." Such a move has been suspected.
The fact that AMD didn’t have a mobile strategy cost the company’s last CEO Dirk Meyer his job…
So now AMD is adopting a modular SoC-centric approach to processor design that’s supposed to "speed time-to-market, drive sustained execution, and enable the development of more tailored customer solutions."
Aside from Windows-powered tablets, the roadmap modifications include ultra-thin notebooks, all-in-ones, desktops and servers focused on low power, emerging markets and the cloud. AMD will steer clear of phones.
It’s now got a second-generation mainstream Trinity chip and a low-power Brazos 2.0 APU for notebooks and desktops on the roadmap; Hondo, an 4.5W APU specifically designed for tablets; and new CPU cores including Piledriver and its successor Steamroller as well as Jaguar, the successor to Bobcat, due in 2012 and 2013.
Evidently the 40nm Hondo will be AMD’s first tablet part followed by Temash next year. It claims it can get to under two watts on x86 chips that run Windows 8 and guarantee long battery life.
AMD also expects to introduce four new Opteron processors this year.
AMD expects its Q1 sales to drop maybe 11% quarter-over-quarter to a mere $1.5 billion due in part to the flood-created HDD shortage. It cut 10% of its people in November to save $200 million a year after encountering problems making its 32nm PC chip. It’s supposed to try to clean up its execution.