Re:Lisa Su Saved AMD. Now She Wants Nvidia's AI Crown
by williamDafoe on Friday June 02, 2023 @05:33PM
(#36171043)
AMD wasn't very profitable until 2018. The company's debt to equity ratio was terrible (due to previous CEO mistakes 2000-2012) until they paid off their huge debts with Ryzen 3 in ~2021. Be patient, grasshopper ..
https://www.google.com/search?q=amd%20debt%20to%20equity%20r...
Re:Lisa Su Saved AMD. Now She Wants Nvidia's AI Crown
by BeetleB on Friday June 02, 2023 @06:14PM
(#36171489)
> They've been getting piles of money from Ryzen for 5-6 years now
Hardware is very capital intensive. They've not been making much until much more recent. From 2012 through 2017, almost all years were a net loss. They hit $1B net profit only in 2020. I imagine quite a bit of that money went into keeping/accelerating the pace of Ryzen, and paying off debts. Only now do they have more breathing room for other endeavors. If they diverted a chunk of that change to AI, they probably would have a lower performing Ryzen right now.
So no, they did not have piles of money.
According to the latest ROCm release notes, it supports Navi 21. Well, at least the pro models. It doesn't even mention the 5000 or 7000 cards. My current understanding is that 7000 support is mostly there a few months late and 5000 was abandoned partway done after years of vague promises.
At least it might support windows soon. Not my sub-4-year-old GPU, of course, god forbid. But most of the rest of them.