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  • wumpus - Saturday, April 15, 2017 - link

    Either Ryzen sales have been even more brisk than I (and more to the point, the motherboard manufacturers) could imagine, or they've been selling stock (after a nice rise, I must point out) again (are people buying AMD bonds? I guess they would be above junk, but still not ideal).

    I really wonder where AMD gets its money (although after seeing that Ryzen can actually compete it would be easier to lend AMD money). This isn't really an attack on AMD: they wisely spent nearly all their money on Zen, now they probably need all the things they couldn't afford when designing Zen (and have a much better chance of getting the money).
  • prisonerX - Saturday, April 15, 2017 - link

    What a stupid comment. You don''t know how much the acquisition cost and you erroneously think that AMD is on the verge of bankruptcy or something.
  • webdoctors - Saturday, April 15, 2017 - link

    I thought AMD's worth was negative in the past and there was rumours of bankruptcy/takeover by HP:

    This article mentions AMD debt being more than the assets (i.e. negative worth) in the last 2 years:
    http://amigobulls.com/articles/the-advanced-micro-...

    I don't know how to read a balance sheet so the article might be BS, maybe someone can confirm, here's the financials:

    https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AAMD&...

    This aquisition was probably really cheap, 20 employees at lets say $500K each (generous and contingent on them working another 2-4 years at AMD), $10M cost. The IP is probably worth $10M? $50M? I dunno, so lets say total cost to buy was $60M. That's nothing for AMD, when they lose or spend $1B+ to buy stuff like SeaMicro and write it off. They're quarterly losses or writedowns can be higher so this stuff is noise.

    This probably is good news for their custom silicon group. They'll be a one stop shop where you can buy a game console SoC that has built in wireless for VR, GPU, CPU , and all the other IPs for your appliance. Also potentially for laptops that don't require third party IPs either.
  • ddriver - Sunday, April 16, 2017 - link

    If you calculate the net performance of AMD for the last 20 years, you'd realize that the company is a black hole that keeps on devouring money. The few quarters that they made money are completely offset by the predominant heavy losses.

    How and why the company is kept alive is a complete mystery. My theory is that intel is secretly funding it to keep an impotent pseudo competitor to downplay their defacto monopoly on the market. Every once in a while, amd gets to make a good chip, which is a good way to make quick money by hijacking the wild fluctuation of share cost when that happens.
  • ddriver - Sunday, April 16, 2017 - link

    On the acquisition - such things are rarely, if ever, worth the money. It is being done to blow up the bubble. It would cost much less to develop the tech from scratch.

    And besides, compared to having a big box strapped to your face, a cable seems a minor nuisance. It would seem the best solution is a thin, coiled, stretchy high bandwidth optical fiber. Sure you won't have full freedom of motion with it, but at least you will save on latency big time. VR is already laggy enough without wireless video transfer and the mandatory extra level of compression and decompression to make it feasible.

    Other than that, pack a PC in a backpack and you are set. Full freedom. 5 kilos of weight outta be enough to get ya an hour or two of VR freedom experience. VR is a perf hog, requires bulky hardware, even bulkier cooling, and that sucks a lot of power.
  • twtech - Wednesday, April 19, 2017 - link

    A cable, that you can't see with the headset on, and could easily tangle and pull out - if not actually trip over it - with room-scale VR. It's not just a "minor nuisance".
  • 0ldman79 - Wednesday, April 26, 2017 - link

    The cable will contribute to neck strain. The wireless will help with the length of time someone can use the VR headset considerably.

    I think that is going to be the final push that will let VR become more mainstream. Whether or not it will be AMD doing that remains to be seen.
  • Lord-Bryan - Sunday, April 16, 2017 - link

    Thats some interesting postulation you've got there
  • Reflex - Monday, April 17, 2017 - link

    Ask him about Korea sometime. Or don't, if you value rationality.
  • ddriver - Monday, April 17, 2017 - link

    You confuse mainstream conformism for rationality. A common trait amongst the ignorant irrationals ;)

    rational: adjective
    "based on or in accordance with reason or logic"

    The opinions I express stray far from the mainstream precisely because the are rational, that is based on logic and reason, in contrast to the "acceptable mainstream", which is based on manipulative garbage commercial media. To the indoctrinated mind, trained to conform through peer pressure, the free and rational mind is a complete mystery, and what you actually perceive as irrational is expressing an actual individualistic opinion, because it doesn't generate peer approval, which people like you crave, because for you it creates an illusion of self worth, while in reality being nothing more than cattle mentality mechanism of conformity.
  • Reflex - Monday, April 17, 2017 - link

    You do a good job describing the mental trap conspiracy theorists find themselves in. Read "Why People believe Weird Things" by Michael Shermer of Skeptic Magazine sometime. Your posts here provide some object lessons in much of what is explained in there. You may even find it useful, that book and a few others on logic helped me clean up my own belief system, not by telling me what to think but by laying out guidelines for how logic actually works, and what traps humans often fall into including the evolutionary basis for why those are mental weak points.

    Your assumptions about me are amusing, btw. ;)
  • ddriver - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link

    "Belief system" - sorry dude, I don't do "belief". I know, I postulate, I extrapolate, I estimate. But believing anything or anyone - that's just silly. I'd rather "not know" than to believe.

    About "conspiracy theories" - let's just say this has become the go-to solution to cover up every actual conspiracy. To the indoctrinated mind, just labeling something a "conspiracy theory" is somehow enough to discredit it. Amazing. It's like a magic word, no thinking required.
  • Reflex - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link

    Well you are doing it wrong. Your conclusions bely logic, and seem to be based mostly on demonstrating cleverness by bucking conventional wisdom and knowledge. You demonstrate bias in your posts, and seem incapable of absorbing new information that counters your chosen narratives.

    As I said, I'd read the book I mentioned. It's a great tool for cleaning up your logical processes and teaching you how to recognize when you are operating on unsupported assumption.

    You could be a positive contributor on these forums. I used to be like you, quick with my opinion and dismissive of other information and people with opinions other than my own. I grew up and started recognizing that my own point of view was not automatically more correct than others, and that I did not, in fact, know everything. Looking at my early posts here and elsewhere I have to chuckle at my behavior, it wasn't really informative, I was simply a bully who could brook no disagreement. I've learned far more since I lost the attitude than I thought I 'knew' before then.
  • Meteor2 - Sunday, April 16, 2017 - link

    AMD has a pile of cash from somewhere; I believe it's helping keep it afloat. Didn't the money come from a payout from Intel over something?
  • ddriver - Sunday, April 16, 2017 - link

    It was like a billion or so. Which AMD burns through in about 2 years.

    Here is their net performance 2001 to 2015:
    https://www.statista.com/statistics/267874/amds-ne...

    In 2016 they lost another 420 million. So if we sum 2001 to 2016, we get a little over 3 billion of LOSS. 3 billion to keep alive for 15 years, this is actually quite affordable for someone like say intel.
  • frenchy_2001 - Wednesday, April 19, 2017 - link

    Zen is a last ditch effort from AMD. They have indeed been losing money, quite fast at some time, for years. To offset those losses, they have been selling parts of the company for that long too (their fabs, their buildings and more recently their backend testing equipment). They have reached the end of their assets though, so if Ryzen does not bring back profitability, AMD may have to sell its graphic division (they have reorganized in preparation for it).
    So far though, Ryzen seems to be a success and should allow their CPU division to regain profitability.
  • Meteor2 - Saturday, April 15, 2017 - link

    I've been disappointed that wireless displays and charging isn't further along; I want to be able to drop my tablet on a desk, look at it (face recognition) and be logged into a full desktop. And, of course, I want wireless 4K VR! I'm glad things are still progressing.
  • yannigr2 - Monday, April 17, 2017 - link

    Too much wireless tech on you, all over you? Maybe not so healthy. Laugh at it, probably, but also think about it.
  • Reflex - Monday, April 17, 2017 - link

    You are surrounded by it all the time. Even with no devices in an area without cell coverage. A large misunderstanding is that these devices are somehow exposing you to more or less EMF radiation. The EMF radiation is already there, both from the sun and background. Wireless devices are simply sending signals across it. There is no additional risk.

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