Re:AMD Reports Q2 2020 Earnings
by simlevesque on Wednesday July 29, 2020 @09:30AM
(#23986420)
The problem with "they have 5 to 10 years to come up with something" is that they had 5 to 10 years leading and they came up empty handed.
Considering fabs take so long to build and get processes functioning well, it's likely they have another 5-10 years to blow their lead entirely. Rome didn't fall in a day
On the other hand, Colosseum did not work until the version 1.1.
> _Rome_ didn't fall in a day
Nice.
Re:AMD Reports Q2 2020 Earnings
by zitterbewegung on Wednesday July 29, 2020 @11:26AM
(#23987674)
I agree with your points but the game has changed.
It’s not AMD vs Intel
It’s AMD vs INTEL vs Apple vs Amazon (and nvidia might be next.
And Nuvia, Qualcomm, Huawei and whoever else decides to get TSMC to make some killer Arm-based SoCs. Seems like the playing field is about to get a lot bigger.
Well it won't be Huawei
Re:AMD Reports Q2 2020 Earnings
by andromeduck on Wednesday July 29, 2020 @12:19PM
(#23988473)
Google also makes TPUs, which competes with GPUs and Nvidia, in addition to making ARM SOCs, is one of the key stakeholders behind Power PC now.
Re:AMD Reports Q2 2020 Earnings
by justicezyx on Wednesday July 29, 2020 @01:17PM
(#23989182)
No, you cannot buy TPUs. You can only buy their usage hours from GCP.
I wonder whether the Apple silicon will also feel like "buying usage" or if we'll have low-level enough access to feel like we own it.
I don't think having physical possession of the thing is always the best criteria for whether you really own it.
https://cloud.google.com/edge-tpu/ has a "Buy" button that leads to https://coral.ai/products/ . They appear to be available for purchase?
edit: reading more on the edge-tpu page, they definitely appear to be of limited use compared with the ones available to google's hosted plans.
Re:AMD Reports Q2 2020 Earnings
by justicezyx on Wednesday July 29, 2020 @01:38PM
(#23989489)
Edge TPU is not TPU in GCP.
Re:AMD Reports Q2 2020 Earnings
by andromeduck on Wednesday July 29, 2020 @06:52PM
(#23992445)
And your point is what exactly?
2. Everybody loves a good "underdog takes over from the big bad empire in decline" story, both the press and the commenting public. The stories about big companies absolutely crushing their competitors in quality are just not as interesting.
3. AMD can't scale up as rapidly as a SAAS because fabs take a while to build. I'd wager Intel has (at least) five to ten years to come up with a good processor design before they get overtaken by AMD in sheer volume.
4. There are no doubt Chinese competitors with even lower sales and even higher P/E and growth rate than AMD. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out.