They were in "cloud computing" as well. I guess that would probably fall under business hardware/management now though.
They were diversified all over the place. They exited the pc market, were caught with their pants down, and other hardware segments and found their niche just as you mentioned. AMD just needs to find their stride at what they are good at.
Hope they can come up with business strategy that will save them. But sincerely speaking, they need to roll out more improved products on regular basis that will make their loyal customers take away the old and bring in the new. Even if it's marginal performance gain .
The only business strategy that would save them at this point, would be one where they actually release new products at regular intervals and on time.
Their GPU's aren't the problem imo (at least not performance wise). CPU's are. As much as they're not always the top seller, having a top tier CPU is in essence a "display" of prowess as a brand. Kind of like when Audi won their first Le Mans, general interest for Audi cars would most likely see a bump, though it's obviously not the Le Mans car people are buying.
They need to move on to next cpu tech very soon, this will help them recover from AMD FX -- only one time there can be a star.. I think they underestimated FX's per core performance and focused too much on multicore. Now its biting them back. Wiki says Excavator is for y2015, but only in APU..maybe if they make that hUMA for everything including x86 code, then it could change a thing or two for sure. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excavator_(microarchitecture)
That sucks. But, don't worry too much about Intel and nVidia dominating market and forming some sort of price monopoly. Chinese already started investing in creation of new technology, so in maybe less then 10 years, all those technologies might be outdated, and once they enter the market, other corporations will be whipped out (for good or bad). I seriously doubt that Intel, AMD and nVidia can compete with them if they enter, in both prices and technology.
The Chinese are using MIPS.... It's nothing new and it's nothing that's going to suddenly dominate the market. The only advantage MIPS has, is lower power consumption than ARM. The disadvantage is that it's also slower than ARM based processors and nobody wants to code for MIPS outside of China.
They can no longer suffer any marketing blunders. That grace period ran out. Always showing up late to the party, as has been said, killed them. Intel followed the 'ol "Tick - Tock" model. AMD needed to go back to their K2 and KIII days and start over when the first Bulldozer engineering sample flopped. Unfortunately they bet the ship on thinking Bulldozer could still be a success. Bulldozer was a fail. Their financial position did not allow them to have a Plan B so they had no choice but to force marketing to be creative. The market then regulated them to the bargain basement. If they stay there too long, Ron Popeil / Ronco will be their competition. If anyone can polish a turd, that guy can. If Carrizo is such the performance hound, why the short lifespan. It is not because they learned from the past and started to follow a similar "tick-tock" model. Its performance is truly nothing more than marketing hype. You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. They need to reel-in that tongue or Zen does not stand a chance no matter how well it performs.
Intel could bring out a dog of a product, and AMD could bring out a miraculous CPU with AMD Zen, yet most people will still buy the Intel product and think it's superior. I have proof of this concept. History . It's interesting that Intel and Nvidia fanbois are championing the downfall of AMD, yet it is them who will suffer if AMD collapses or doesn't bring out a revolutionary product soon that is a success. Without competition, it will just mean crappier products at higher price. Again I have proof of this... history! I would bet you that if AMD were a strong competitor, that Haswell would have been more different to IVY, they wouldn't have used the TIM on Ivy (and if they did, they would have rectified it much sooner), and Haswell Refresh would have been better also... or you would already have Broadwell. Prices have probably only been kept down from competition in terms of the APU's. The recent restructure of AMD's won't show in these results, you will have to wait until next quarter.
the battle for AMD is on to many fronts The expectations from potential customers is very high on AMD side. first of all, they take the war against the competitors on to many fronts, and to be honest, they dont have the money for that. 1.They need to deliver competitive x86 architecture for desktop /server/laptop 2.They need to deliver competitive GPU's for desktop / server 3.They produce RAM. In comparison, nVidia only competes with AMD only on the GPU market and only produces GPUs and mobile ARM CPUs. What is intel doing? well, x86 CPUs mainly for desktop/server/laptops and some SSDs... So, the idea is, if you battle on multiple fronts with less and less resources , then you probably gonna lose on all fronts...
The way I see it, is that they lost less now then before, so they are working on it. So the AMD is dying talk is not really necessary
I'm not talking about current tech, you never know what may come up, revolutionary technology doesn't happen gradually. Also, not that they care about patents either..., also, there are multiple companies and programs who invest heavily in those sectors, including google even. It may happen very easily that in very short time, old ways could be abolished completely.
AMD doesn't produce RAM..... AMD develops CPUs, GPUs and chipsets. Google isn't investing in China or Chinese processors.
No one will compete with Intel and NV over dekades if AMD will die. If Intel is not able to make competitive GPU over 10 yars, than no "chinese fresh corpo" can do it. Current GPU technology is to much complicated, for any "newbie" to compete or even exist on the same market with NV. The situation in the area of x86 CPU is even more obvious. In the result of the collapse of AMD, our digital civilization will be dependent on three grand monopolies MS, Intel, NV. I don't like this idea. Without competition there is no reason to make any progress in technology. The purpose of the corporation is profit. If profits are not at risk, there is no reason to invest in RD and new technologies. Simply follow the dummy refresh (with some marketing investment), and sell products of similar efficiency, at most, trying to reduce the cost of production.
There is AMD RAM but I think that you are correct that AMD does not make it. I think they pay someone else to make it for them.
The general concept is flawed. No one strives to be No 2. There will always be someone off in the wings waiting to take advantage of a situation. So if no innovation occurs, that company is allowing competitors to enter the market. So whether AMD survives or not, Intel and NVidia will continue to innovate; just not as quickly. If Intel does not push to keep x86 relevant, that sector will become relegated to the annals of history. There is just too much going on with competing technologies that are not reliant on x86 processors. So do not fool yourself. If AMD goes down, all the pressure of that market falls on Intel. They are looking at the AMD situation as an indicator of how healthy that segment of the market is. What kind of pressures the vacuum created if AMD leaves the market, puts on them. Intel is looking very seriously at this. Because what if the downfall of AMD signals the beginning of the death of x86. This is partly why innovation needs to keep pushing forward. Stand too long in one place, you will get passed by. EDIT: AMD's situation is more of a lack of producing what is relevant to the current market. Their innovations are too far ahead of what is relevant to the current state of what the programmers are asked/need to do. They moved too far ahead of the coding curve. GPU wise they are right where the market is at. They just have not succeeded at attaining that relevancy to their cpu side.
Annoying really seeing how they had identical performance and support to nvidia for gtaV. Guess a lot of people might buy AMD next time over the nvidia marketing errors this year though. Next quarter might look very good.