Nv-fans 发表于 2012-11-24 12:34
Brennanhay
The author is mistaken in so many points in this article....
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is in serious trouble. In the most recent quarter, the firm swung to an operating loss in its core CPU/APU division to the tune of $114M. This was due to a combination of inventory write-downs on stale inventory, a drop in market share from 18.8% to 16.1%, and lower average selling prices across the board. Intel (INTC) has proven that it is the clear leader here, and given the broad industry shift to more efficient designs in everything from notebooks to big-iron servers, it would take a significant misstep on the chip giant's part for AMD to even come close to building a comparable solution, let alone a better one.
However, AMD -- thanks to its $5.4B acquisition of ATI Technologies -- has traditionally had a strong hand in the discrete graphics business. Discrete graphics chips are used in gaming computers, professional workstations, and even in supercomputers (albeit slightly modified to be floating point co-processors rather than graphics cards). In this space, there's only one competitor: Nvidia (NVDA). Generally speaking, Nvidia has traditionally been the market share leader but the gap between them was generally not too wide (usually a 40-45% share for AMD and 55-60% for Nvidia).
However, the recent market share reports confirm that the balance of power is worsening for AMD.
Q3 2012 - Things Are Looking Lopsided
In Q3 2012, according to the latest data, AMD's share in desktop computers dropped to 35.7% from 40.7%, and in notebooks, it saw share plummet from 44.8% to 34.2%. Of course, as there are only two players in the industry -- it shouldn't be too hard to figure out where those missing percentage points went.
In the quarter, net revenue for graphics was $342M, with net income a startlingly low $18M. In contrast, Nvidia's gaming graphics division saw sales of $739M and an operating income of $193M. Nvidia's professional solutions division -- which is broken out separately for Nvidia but lumped in with graphics for AMD -- turned in a solid $220M in sales and operating income of $100M.
The balance of market share and profits in the graphics business is starting to look eerily like that between Intel and AMD in the CPU space. This has very serious implications.
So, What Does This Mean?
In a nutshell, this means that Nvidia simply has a lot more money to reinvest in its core business. That means stronger R&D, which leads to dramatically better products, better marketing of said products, and a much healthier competitive landscape from the perspective of Nvidia.
An example of this was actually seen with the latest generation of graphics cards. AMD put out its biggest, baddest Radeon 7970 with a365mm^2 die size and for the first quarter of 2012, managed to take the performance and performance/watt lead with its products. However, Nvidia was able to successfully compete on performance and performance per watt with a chip that only weighed in at 294mm^2. With a 19% smaller die size (this means cheaper to produce), Nvidia was able to sell cards at the same price point as its rival. This meant better margins and higher operating profits than its peer.
Explaining AMD's Market Share Decline
Many will say, "well, AMD's products perform similarly to the Nvidia products in the same price point." Surprisingly enough, they would be correct. On paper and in most gaming benchmarks, AMD's products are extremely competitive across the board. The gap in terms of performance that we see on the PC processor side is simply not there. So what's going on?
Well, it really comes down to a number of things on the consumer side:
On the brand equity side of things, Nvidia simply takes the cake. Why? Nvidia, first off, has a number of programs and promotions that help customers feel like they are part of a legitimate ecosystem. For example:
On the latter point, Nvidia's strong developer relations and software teams do actually enable a few fundamental features critical to the user experience that AMD does not offer. For example:
Okay, What About In HPC/Professional?
In the professional space, Nvidia is eating AMD's lunch because it simply builds the better mousetrap with much better software/driver support. In a recent review of AMD's latest FirePro professional workstation cards, the verdict -- especially compared to Nvidia's products -- was not favorable:
To be perfectly candid, we found the W8000 and W9000's performance disappointing, and their proposed price/performance ratio isn't so hot either. If AMD had kept to its previous price structure, the W9000 would've slipped in nicely at $2500 and the W8000 at $1149. At $4000 and $1600 against the Quadro 6000 (also $4000) and the Quadro 5000 ($1849) though, AMD's prospects at this time aren't very good. The situation may change with future driver revisions if AMD is able to wring more performance from the GCN architecture in professional applications, but the current state of the software is what it is and the W8000 and W9000's performance didn't scale as expected.
Professionals using these cards to make serious money will not mess around with second best. And, unfortunately for AMD, that's precisely the position that it is in.
But The Next Generation Of Products Can Fix This, Right?
This brings us to the next question: can the next generation of products tip the scales? Well, it's absolutely not too late to try to change course and really buckle down and focus on the graphics space. All of the puzzle pieces are there. The problem, though, is that AMD is spreading itself too thin to be truly effective at anything that it attempts. It doesn't have enough time or money to try to sow a million seeds and hope something starts sprouting.
AMD is in the process of axing its staff as we speak in an attempt to cut costs. While it lays off engineers (and I'm sure the very best and brightest that remain are giving Intel, Qualcomm (QCOM), Nvidia,Samsung (SSNLF.PK), and others a call looking for new jobs), it is simultaneously trying to develop two distinct lines of X86 processor cores, an ARM (ARMH) based system-on-chip for servers, X86 SoCs based on the two aforementioned lines of cores for everything from entry level PCs to servers, and next generation graphics. All while running either money-losing or barely profitable businesses!
Simply put, AMD is trying to do too much with too little, and it needs to buckle down and focus on something. Unfortunately, discrete graphics and HPC accelerators don't seem to be what management -- or Wall Street -- wants. Even if it's the one place where AMD could truly bring the fight to Nvidia.
Nvidia is quickly about to become the Intel of discrete graphics in every sense of the word, and I suspect that the firm will continue to bleed AMD's market share dry until that $18M operating profit swings to an operating loss. And when the discrete graphics part of AMD stops innovating because it has simply run out of money, then this will not only have serious repercussions for its competitive position in the GPU space, but in the integrated graphics space, where Intel is doubling graphics performance with each new processor. There will be no low end for AMD to retreat to since it faces competition from Intel and its own APU products down there.
Things do not look good for AMD in the discrete graphics space. It lost the X86 CPU space by falling too far behind, and it is now about to lose the graphics war for good if it does not continue to innovate where it counts by developing products that carry high margins and sell well. Shifting focus to ARM-servers with SeaMicro fabric all sound great... until you realize that this will likely be a super cutthroat, low-margin business that will be swallowed whole with Intel's upcoming "Avoton" server SoC. Built with Intels' very own, license-fee-free, 22nm cores.
At least Nvidia doesn't have a manufacturing process lead.
Nv-fans 发表于 2012-11-24 12:34
Brennanhay
The author is mistaken in so many points in this article....
Nv-fans 发表于 2012-11-24 12:34
Brennanhay
The author is mistaken in so many points in this article....
asdfjkl 发表于 2012-11-24 14:13
我仔细读了读，觉得这个分析师讲的很靠谱呀，把AMD的几个弱点一针见血的戳到了！
Nv-fans 发表于 2012-11-24 12:34
Brennanhay
The author is mistaken in so many points in this article....
px002 发表于 2012-11-24 20:32
说的都是老调调. 54亿收购ATI. 显卡市场不断下滑..
Xenomorph 发表于 2012-11-25 11:24
bobcat酱好过分噢……人家晚上23：00前就休息了咩……1：00发个帖子2：30编辑掉，早上7：00起来看到心都碎了 ...
coollab 发表于 2012-11-25 11:27
别傲娇了
Xenomorph 发表于 2012-11-25 12:01
别引用啦……都怪您……现在完了……被看光光了……要是她生气就严重了……
coollab 发表于 2012-11-25 12:38
哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈，好好笑～
Nv-fans 发表于 2012-11-24 12:34
Brennanhay
The author is mistaken in so many points in this article....
Xenomorph 发表于 2012-11-25 13:23
看着coollab卖萌……
飞行线条 发表于 2012-11-26 10:59
看你们俩拌嘴也是有趣的一件事哈
AMD的新闻最近爆料不少啊
G70 发表于 2012-11-26 16:45
IBM当年不是帮NV40做layout，然后据说IBM是AMD背后的男人，后面AMD的产品都有它的影子在
G70 发表于 2012-11-26 18:04
[laugh> 是CPU，米田共龙。不过我也是半信半疑。
Xenomorph 发表于 2012-11-26 18:11
Phenom II X6还不错……
伪娘死光光！！ 发表于 2012-11-26 18:14
只能说在农企的产品里面还算不错喵~
G70 发表于 2012-11-26 18:46
45nm指conroe？米田共龙conroe也不见得能追上。
G70 发表于 2012-11-26 18:46
45nm指conroe？米田共龙conroe也不见得能追上。
Xenomorph 发表于 2012-11-26 18:26
在45nm下算是相当好的啦……如果对比Intel的45nm处理器，能耗比并没有劣势，而且得益于频率和核心个数，绝 ...
伪娘死光光！！ 发表于 2012-11-26 18:59
这个嘛偶觉得亲爱的得这样看
倘若把45NM给兲朝研究一万年偶相信也会是宇宙最牛拜的45NM喵~
G70 发表于 2012-11-26 20:56
Phenom 出来的时候不是比A64还差（单核同频）？推土机继承了而已啊。
Xenomorph 发表于 2012-11-26 21:29
好像是这样……
Vendicare 发表于 2012-11-26 21:47
AMD只是习惯发布不成熟作品而已，phenom出来的时候有TLB错误所以性能会无端下降。而且phenom架构基本上就是 ...
flhssnake 发表于 2012-11-26 22:32
喵 星猫妹子 你对amd多此一举的7930 有何看法？
我觉得7870已经很优秀了...........当然在660ti面 ...
flhssnake 发表于 2012-11-26 22:32
喵 星猫妹子 你对amd多此一举的7930 有何看法？
我觉得7870已经很优秀了...........当然在660ti面 ...
Xenomorph 发表于 2012-11-27 19:05
在下很困惑为什么AMD要屏蔽MC部分……这好像是AMD历史上的第一次？
伪娘死光光！！ 发表于 2012-11-27 19:27
7930和8850之间将见证新老GCN效率上的差距：其实不过是半斤八两而已[w00t>
Xenomorph 发表于 2012-11-27 19:29
最后就是频率决定性能了……
伪娘死光光！！ 发表于 2012-11-27 20:13
下一代卡有神马新的消息吗喵~
Xenomorph 发表于 2012-11-27 20:17
硬碰硬……
伪娘死光光！！ 发表于 2012-11-27 20:49
这个不算新消息喵~[shy>
Xenomorph 发表于 2012-11-27 20:56
不知道……
伪娘死光光！！ 发表于 2012-11-27 21:25
今晚偶要惩罚乃，乃记得带上皮鞭
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