This article was reprinted with permission from Superpower.com.
At the end of 2017, AMD RTG department head, chief GPU architect Raja Koduri resigned from AMD, and immediately announced that he had joined Intel Corp. He will lead Intel's high-performance GPU business, which has already announced its entry into the market alone.
Raja's departure has not been announced for a while. One argument is that he is responsible as the supervisor responsible for the performance of 2017 VEGA graphics cards. Another argument is that he is personally willing to leave because AMD cannot see the future of the GPU. NVIDIA competition.
In the field of GPU technology, Raja Koduri is recognized as a technology geek. His evaluation is not less than Jim Keller, AMD's chief CPU architect who left the company.
Raja Koudri was responsible for APU, GPU, semi-custom GPU, and various graphic display technology projects after returning to AMD in 2013. Previous resumes are also very rich. Raja served as the director of Apple's graphics architecture, where he helped Apple develop Mac graphics. Subsystem.
Such an important executive leaving is a loss to AMD, and he went to a competitor to do high-performance GPU business, which is a double disadvantage for AMD.
As for the reasons for leaving the company, there has been no authoritative statement for more than half a year. It is an rumor that he is unfavorable for VEGA graphics cards. Problems with the company's product roadmap will not lead to the dismissal of important executives.
A few days ago, SeekingAphla had an article about the problems faced by AMD. Some of them involved analysts Mark Hibben mentioned that AMD faced two tests and mentioned the reasons why Raja Koduri left:
"AMD is now facing two test problems. The biggest loss is Raja Koduri's departure from Intel and the evaluation of AMD's GPU competitiveness. I'm sure that Raja Koduri didn't leave AMD because he hasn't made money yet, and he left AMD." It's because you don't see the (GPU) future and you have to compete with NVIDIA.'
"After many years AMD had to compete with two rather than one opponent in the GPU market. AMD was struggling to compete with NVIDIA and now has to compete with NVIDIA and Intel."
He also mentioned that AMD is facing another problem, GlobalFoundries, and believes that AMD is betting on core processor business on GF because it is not stable enough.
However, this part of the original text should be last year, which mentioned that 'Intel will mass-produce a 10nm process this year'. This is practically impossible. The government had previously stated that it was possible to mass-produce a 10nm process by the end of 2019. The criticism of GF's 7nm process is not bad news at the moment. AMD CEO Su Zifeng also confirmed that their 7nm chip is progressing well.
According to analysts, Raja Koduri left AMD because he believes that AMD cannot compete with NVIDIA in the GPU business for a short period of time and cannot see the future before leaving. So to say that he went to Intel, he believes that Intel is likely to flex its muscles in the GPU market.
Currently, in the three major business operations of AMD, the Ryzen processor is on the right track, and its performance is getting better and better. The semi-custom processor business has now passed the peak of host shipments. In the past two years, the performance has not been amazing. The next wave of outbreaks Can only wait for Sony, Microsoft's next generation host, and probably wait until after 2020.
AMD's existing business is the most people can not understand is the GPU, last year's RX Vega graphics performance is OK, but the energy efficiency performance is relatively poor, and the HBM 2 memory costs can not fall down, and later met the memory prices , But AMD and NVIDIA are more fortunate than last year since the mining market fire, AMD graphics card has advantages in this regard, so the graphics card is not sold, JPR statistics show that 2017 has sold 4.7 million mine cards, The two are very profitable.
However, since the beginning of the Q2 quarter this year, the mining card market has begun to collapse, and the related companies’ revenues have fallen by 80% in April. The problem of AMD’s lack of competitiveness in the game card market will soon be revealed. In 2018, AMD clearly stated that There will be no new generation of graphics cards, this year is mainly 7nm Vega graphics cards, but this is for professional markets such as deep learning, AI, etc. There is no new product in the consumer market.
