1. Hard to be Intel, Huida But AMD technology is not as good as TSMC, Samsung;
There have been many personnel changes in the recent processor CPU and graphics processor GPU industry. It seems that personnel changes may seem irrelevant, but they also seem to hide mystery.
After Chao AMD (AMD-US) former GPU developer Raja Koduri jumped into Intel Intel (INTC-US) earlier this year, Jim Keller, the new Ryzen series designer, and Chris Hook, Global Marketing Director, also followed Koduri.
Raja Koduri / Photo: AMD
Since then, David Wang, AMD’s new GPU development chief, implicitly denounced prior development at Computex Computex in Taipei. AMD executives Forrest Norrod also condemned Koduri for wasting the company’s GPU development at The Information, and it seems that Koduri has changed Become a scapegoat and make excuses for AMD's recent development failure.
After that, Intel announced that it will launch its own GPU in 2020 and compete with AMD and Nvidia Nvidia (NVDA-US) in the GPU field.
The question of investors emerges: What is the long-term strategy of AMD?
According to Gizmodo data, AMD is currently the exclusive supplier of chips for Xbox and PlayStation. AMD launched the Radeon RX 460 GPU in June 2016. Although it is pursuing the marketing strategy of "terminal game player", there is news that Its development purpose is only one, it is for big customer apple company Apple (AAPL-US).
The famous writer Jason Evangelho pointed out that the Radeon RX was developed for the 2016 Apple MacBook Pro laptop, and the Vega launched in 2017 is also designed for Apple's iMac.
AMD Ryzen CPU Product Promotion Map / Photo: AMD
Although AMD’s marketing strategy is for primary gamers and low-power users, the iMac Pro launched in June 2017 was using AMD’s Vega Pro 56 GPU. In August 2017, AMD introduced the popular RX Vega.
Tom's Hardware, a well-known technology analysis website, also pointed out that Vega had a large gap with the Huida GeForce GTX 1080 when it was driving at a high speed. This is because the original design was for low power consumption and was precisely the feature of the iMac.
Because selling Apple is a business model for receiving orders, when AMD announced what is known as the best integrated CPU and GPU in history, investors should not forget that this product is a cooperation with Intel Kaby Lake-G.
Not just pick up the apple
At E3 in June 2016, Microsoft Microsoft (MSFT-US) introduced the new Xbox One X, which uses the AMD GPU architecture Polaris, and the Polaris architecture's popular retail Radeon RX 40 0 is also available later.
Polaris is designed for game consoles, although the margin is low, but the amount is very large and stable. Although AMD has not released detailed data, without a doubt "orders" in retail revenue is greater than the brand.
AMD Revenue Distribution Figure: AMD
As the reader will continue to do reasoning, Apple should also account for the vast majority of revenue Vega chip and Radeon Pro's.
The just concluded 2018 E3 though unpublished Playstation 5 (PS5) Sony Sony (6758-JP) there are rumors that AMD will PS5 7 nm architecture Navi supplied, but the news also reported Navi will not work with Hui up to high-end GPU rival, will go in the end of the line, similar to the Radeon 500.
AMD products take the middle route / Picture: AMD
This also confirms that the supply of game consoles is mainly based on retail sales of terminals. Since most game consoles do not require high-end GPUs, they are more energy-intensive.
Evangelho also broke the news that one of the reasons why Raja Koduri left AMD was that two-thirds of his team was moved to meet Sony's orders instead of developing retail high-end GPUs. In solving Sony's Navi problem, Vega's design team also It becomes even weaker.
Usually, the development of the chip is started by the computer. Because the driver does not need to be fine-tuned, the product does not need to be calibrated after the product is played, such as the clock speed, and not the reverse development like AMD.
This also means that AMD Executive Director Lisa Su’s Freescale Semiconductor background has deepened her “creative thinking” and couldn’t take a brand for a long time.
In this regard, AMD is not Intel or Huida, but is more like a professional foundry of TSMC (2330-JP) or Samsung (005930-KR), but the technology may not be as advanced as these two foundry giants, while AMD 7 Nano is not mature, let alone 3 nanometer process.
This also led investors to speculate that AMD's business strategy is likely to be followed by orders, and then develop products in accordance with customer needs, not to produce products in advance to sell to customers, and AMD seems to have been a strategy for several years.
However, after Intel enters the GPU field, AMD's road ahead will be even more difficult. Market analysts believe that AMD needs to face its own position more honestly in order to be effective.
However, the dilemma is whether AMD will take the path of ODMs and orders to compete with Samsung and TSMC, or whether it will take the retail brand road and Huida, Intel's competition. It is estimated that these two are very difficult choices.
2. AMD's new Navi series or customized for the PS5: The fastest 2020 launch;
Microsoft may usher in the new Xbox codenamed 'Scarlett' in 2020, and Sony's PS5 also has more news. According to Forbes, AMD's previously announced new generation of GPU architecture is customized for the PS5, and It is very likely that Sony will use the independent combination of Ryzen and Navi instead of a custom SoC that uses CPU and GPU's all-in-one'.
According to reports, as the world's first 7nm architecture GPU, Navi is still under the leadership of the former Radeon technology leader Raja Koduri, but the price comes at the expense of the Vega architecture, because Raja has to be three-thirds The R&D team of the second invested in the development of Navi, which caused Vega to perform poorly in the confrontation with the N-card camp in the same period.
AMD made this decision is also due to CEO Su Zifeng favor semi-custom business rather than the desktop graphics sector, AMD and Apple, Microsoft and Sony have a very close cooperative relationship.
Previously there was news that AMD's Navi architecture will not be involved in high-end products. The flagship product performance comparison Vega will not be much improved, and the 7nm architecture will bring more significant improvements in power consumption and heat generation. This upgrade seems to be more in line with the needs of the host product.
If all the previous news is true, it means that AMD chose to work alone with Sony and would not hesitate to develop Navi at the expense of Vega. Perhaps Microsoft may also choose Nvidia and consider this time point in 2020. It is also fully capable of providing products that meet the needs of next-generation mainframes. GamerSky
3.AMD: Cannot Skip Zen 4 Processor
Intel's 10nm process is difficult to produce, 7nm process has not been traced, and AMD has started running on the 7nm node. At the beginning of the month of Taipei Computer Show not only demonstrated the 7nm Vega graphics core, also announced the 7nm Zen processor, which is the second generation The EPYC processor, codenamed Rome Rome, is expected to begin sampling in the second half of this year and will be released next year. In addition, AMD also mentioned that their Zen architecture will not skip the Zen 4 generation, and there is a generation architecture between Zen 3 and Zen 5 .
AMD is holding the first anniversary of the listing of the EPYC processor. Forrest Norrod, senior vice president of AMD, Data Center & Embedded Solutions, revealed some progress in the AMD EPYC processor. Last year's 14nm Naples processor was already available. The 7nm Zen 2 processor has been demonstrated, this time starting for the second-generation EPYC processor, code-named Roma Rome, which is expected to be shipped to customers in the second half of this year.
As for the mass marketization of Zen 2 core processors, AMD is expected to be in 2019, but there is no specific time. The desktop version will certainly be upgraded to the 7nm Zen 2 architecture. The Ryzen generation in 2017 and 2018, the second generation is in 3, 4 respectively. Released on a monthly basis, this time will probably be 2019.
After 7nm Zen 2 is the Zen 3 architecture, the process technology will be upgraded to 7nm+, which is 7nm based on EUV lithography process. At present, we only know the version code Milan Milan, but the mass production, time to market, and the performance of the architecture and other information is not available. As far as I know, the approximate time is before 2020.
After Zen 3? Officials of AMD disclosed that they have started to develop the Zen 5 architecture. Analysts said that AMD is likely to skip the Zen 4 generation. After all, this name is not very good in China, but Forrest Norrod celebrated this time. The event revealed that AMD will not skip the Zen 4 generation, after which it is the Zen 5 architecture.
Of course, the Zen 3 architecture is a mystery. Zen 4, Zen 5 is still in the process of development of the processor even more accurately broke the news, the more critical is that the process process after the 7nm node is still full of suspense, Globalfoundries has not yet opened The plan to build a 5nm fab may also be to skip 5nm and go straight to 3nm. Everything is still inconclusive.
