Do remember that Meltdown and Spectre affected literally everyone else in the industry (including POWER, ARM, and SPARC) and it's only by chance that AMD's branch predictor happens to be relatively difficult to train to follow a predictable path (which is a necessary condition for some of these exploits). Intel isn't cheating any more than anyone else, AMD got lucky.

Cascade Lake and the latest Coffee Lake (and Comet Lake) steppings have hardware mitigations for all the previously known exploits (although there is a new batch) including some for which AMD still requires software mitigations themselves (Spectre V2).

So, AMD got lucky 218 times?

https://windowsreport.com/amd-intel-security-vulnerabilities...

Most of those exploits are software/driver vulnerabilities, and AMD has plenty of their own. Like when Threadripper drivers installed an out-of-date web server running with SYSTEM privileges, or when a series of PSP and BIOS bugs let an attacker escalate from VM guest to control of the PSP and BIOS persistence. If you're not finding vulnerabilities in your software, you're not looking.

Intel is in a lot more verticals than AMD is - networking, storage, etc - and all of those get their own CVE number. But that's a more nuanced approach than "big number bad" isn't it?

Specifically, Intel is finding a lot because they're doing an enterprise-wide initiative to lock down their IPs. Is AMD making the same effort, or are there more vulnerabilities in those GPU drivers or in the chipset drivers that they're not looking for? After all, a year ago they were at the stage where they were installing an out-of-date Apache instance along with your motherboard drivers... doesn't sound like security is priority #1 for them.

Again, low number sounds good. But if you're not looking, it's actually not good.

And researchers are not looking on AMD much either. AMD is less than 5% of the server market right now, you get the big headlines from finding vulnerabilities in Intel now, not AMD. Give it another 5 years and there will be more scrutiny on AMD's hardware/software.

> Specifically, Intel is finding a lot because they're doing an enterprise-wide initiative to lock down their IPs.

Do they now? Why may that be? Not voluntarily i guess, with all the mess, others have found first, they fear losing ground, and shareholders blood thirst.

Last I read AMD processors aren't affected by the Meltdown bug. And the overall performance hit was 9x as large for Intel.

However, if that’s wrong I would love to read about it.

Like I said, AMD was unique on Meltdown in that their branch predictor uses a neural-net based approach that is difficult to train to follow a specific path. It affected everyone else in the industry - Intel, IBM, ARM, Oracle, everyone.

I think you are confusing Meltdown with Spectre V2.

Isn't the reason that AMD isn't affected, that they don't prefetch / cache pages before checking instruction's access privileges?

So researchers aren't checking AMD.

A bit later, AMD was uniquely not affected. But they were investigated, yes?

Seems like you like Intel more than AMD.

No problems with that, I'm the other way around :)

If that’s what you meant then saying ‘Meltdown and Spectre affected literally everyone in the industry’ was literally false. Perhaps you could say almost everyone else in the industry in the future.

As to being lucky, I have no idea what their internal process is or what they considered. But luck seems like an odd way to talk about such things.

Well, maybe. Probably so, in part, but intel makes large dies rather than AMD's style of multiple smaller dies, which means signals have less far to go (and possibly don't have to be boosted to get between mini-dies).

Perhaps someone who knows about this stuff can comment.

Edit: the mini-dies are chiplets/CCDs. Couldn't remember the name.

As I understood, they had to much hick-ups going to smaller dies because of internal issues.

They plan to recover in the end of 2020, while temporarily leaving the market open for AMD. Accepting that made them willing to fix their security issues, which decrease performance.

Since they have no product line in response to AMD for now, that was not an easy call for sure.

>Ps. Long AMD

So you recommend to buy AMD stock now? Or TSMC? Or is it already too late for that? The share price already went up from 28 to 38 since October

AMD has been overbought by brand fanboys/"amateur investors" egging each other on (see: r/AMD_Stock) and is now effectively pricing in a massive amount of expected future growth. Probably decades worth.

For context: Intel currently has a P/E ratio of 13.57, which is 70th percentile of tech stocks. AMD currently has a P/E ratio of 201.89, which is 5th percentile of tech stocks.

https://www.gurufocus.com/term/pettm/intc/PE-Ratiottm

https://www.gurufocus.com/term/pettm/intc/PE-Ratiottm

AMD as a company has great potential in the long term, but still barely makes any money today. Like, AMD is hoping to double their server marketshare (only part of the company) by the end of 2020... which will take them to... almost 10% of the market. It's real easy to make big percentage gains when you have 0% share of the market. The AMD of 2016 had nowhere else to go but up.

Server, desktop, laptop and video cards.

Lots of room if they break Intel's monopoly though.

Intel had 16 billion revenue in 2018 and AMD "profits" from TSMC and their clients ( eg. Apple, Nvidia,... )

In the server market, it seems that they are partially breaking Intel's monopoly. Today's news in Intel won't change that perspective. P/e is also a bad ratio if a company invests a lot.

But yeah, a lot of hype on the stock.

Intel is keep getting hit hard though. Benchmarks, security issues, delays, failing at 7-10nm. They are currently still holding the monopoly though.

Fyi, Amazon's P/e was even 1.100 at a time. P/e is not the best indicator for a company investing/researching and selling in lower prices. The AMD product line-up proves that they are investing a lot.

What I see lately is that AMD is raising prices. This seems like a good indicator of how they are positioning themselves versus the market.

Your bias is showing with your "brand fanboys/amateur investors" slurs.

Their P/E is an irrelevant measure for AMD's market value, as it was for AMZN when they were aiming for 0 profit and re-invest everything towards growth. They're obviously interested in maximizing R&D and selling their chips at very competitive pricing over profit which currently offers much better value over Intel's chips.

AMD only made 120M in profit last quarter on 1.8B revenue up 9% YoY, Intel made 6B profit down 6% YoY. How much more likely is AMD to double their profits to 240M then Intel is to 12B? If the market perception of AMD's chip superiority and OEM vendors start preferring AMD over Intel it could happen within the very near future, not decades out.

Amazon only recently started to turn on profits after achieving dominance in a number of markets, I don't expect AMD to focus on profits until they're able to get much higher market penetration so I expect their focus is going to continue to be on R&D and low margins. So their P/E will remain high along with their potential for future growth.

I won't recommend anything. The p/e is too bad to recommend it, Warren Buffet would think I'm a fool :p

But I do think that AMD has enough space too grow the next year:

- servers

- laptops

- desktops ( OEM )

And I'm curious if their video card line-up will be as good as their CPU line-up.

Intel had 16 billion revenue in 2018. My guess is they will take a lot of that the coming years.