Talk:AMD/Archive 3
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Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 |
This is Archive 3, which contains articles started in 2006.
Key staff changes
Shouldn't there be a section about staff changes/resignations, when it seems like they are quite major (long time AMD, ATI staff replaced by ex-IBM people?)
2002 Sanders -> Hector Ruiz
"Ruiz endorsed the decision to buy ATI, which led to a period of financial reverses. Ruiz survived rumors of his ouster in late 2007.[3][4] However, he resigned as CEO on July 18, 2008, after AMD reported its seventh consecutive quarterly loss" [5] (ref in Hector Ruiz
2007 EVP of AMD/ex-CEO of ATI David Orton resigned "It is with mixed feelings that I am leaving AMD,"
January 2011 CEO Dirk Meyer, father of Athlon "resigned in January under pressure from AMD's board" http://eetimes.com/electronics-news/4219307/AMD-appoints-former-Lenovo-exec-CEO
Fall 2011 Rick Bergman, head of Products Group, ex-ATI
Dec 2011 Nigel Dessau, marketing chief
Feb 2012 Eric Demers (Corporate VP & CTO, Graphics Division)
This is from comments on another site:
"month after they fired Meyer I can see why they fired/pushed out his VP & COO/CIO/whatnot Rivet, along SVP Strategy head Seyer"
"now everything is headed by Papermaster, a guy who took the SVP & CTO of AMD as his 4th job within 4 years at 4 companies (pre-AMD was Cisco, Apple and IBM, in reverse order, all since 2008) and keep hiring his ex-IBM buddies. Of course, he was hired by CEO Rory Read who is a 20+ years IBM veteran"
Trademark of Numbers
The article asserts "U.S. Trademark and Patent Office had ruled that mere numbers could not be trademarked.[109]" The link is to an article in the New Yorker which states: "after finding that it was impossible to trademark a number..." I think this is kind of weak as a source, and I believe it to be a stretch of the truth, perpetuating a myth that's been around AMD processors for decades now. Here's a list of numbers registered as trademarks, with citations. Also, here's another that came up in a quick google search. Further, the mark 586 is trademarked by Intel!
Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:880:c000:3062:19fd:52de:c139:d7e7 (talk)
Grammar
This article has various grammatical issues, ranging from minor to severe. There are instances where commas are inserted unnecessarily, adverbs are carelessly strung onto sentences, and there are phrases that just don't make a lot of sense. The article needs to be audited for its grammar.—Kbolino 05:43, 26 September 2005 (UTC)
I wrote most of it, and all the language tests I've done typically put me in the top 1-2% of the population. Writing is as much about style, as applying strict rules. Even the Oxford University grammar guidelines now state that split infinitives can be accepted in certain contexts for stylistic reasons i.e. even world experts on English say there is more to good writing than typing like a grammar robot. As for not making sense, if you don't know anything about technology, thats not really my problem. The page is written in relatively simple laymen terms. Its hardly technical. Timharwoodx 23:06, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Add 2900 bit-slice history
AMD's 2900 bit-slice chip family was legendary for its flexibility, as you could make a processor as wide as you wanted, with your own instruction set. The price for this was the slow speed imposed by inter-chip time (RC) delay.
Paperfoam packaging
The paper wiki article mentions that AMD have begun using 'paperfoam' packaging. Is this worth mentioning in the AMD article? --Aidan 01:54, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
that green crap that gets all over the place? man, i hate that stuff! -Lordraydens 18:25, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
Missing history, missing products, missing concept
this article is good within the limited scope the author has staked out but IMHO falls a bit short as a general history of the firm. the article concentrates mostly on AMD's history as a second source of intel processors, and treats the recent intel-beaters as mearly an outgroath of that relationship. i have a different take on the story. i see amd as an independant processor designer that became a second source for the intel x86 line and over time learned to gain market acceptance for it's own internal architecture by accepting the x86 instruction set as input. a lingua franca for processors, if you will.
as noted in another comment the 2900 series is missing. what falls by the way side with it is the more general notion that AMD was a respected semiconductor firm with a history of quality in house design before they started second sourcing x86 chips. (as noted in another wikipedia article, am2900 products were used in the PDP-11.)
there is no mention of am29K processor in the article per se, even though there is a wikipedia article on it which is linked to at the end of this article. the am29K was an important product for AMD. during it's production lifetime it was one of the most successful risc processors.
the acquisition of nextgen and nextgen's contribution to the AMD product line is given some attention, but a major concept is missing from the treatment.
to the best of my recollection (and i'll admit it's been a while) nextgen's processor understood x86 instructions but used a different internal architecture. it translated on the fly. they're internal architecture wasn't fast enough to do that translation plus it's own work and still yeild the kind of performance needed to win broad market acceptance. they're processor did not take the world by storm, but they had a powerfull idea and experience implementing it.
AMD had experience with the x86 instruction set. they also had a very fast, cheap processor with it's own instruction set that was limited to niche markets because of the installed base of x86 software. what nextgen brought to the party was a way of putting those things together.
as described in the wikipedia K5 article, internally the AMD K series processors in large part constited of sections of the 29K. nextgen style technology was used to translate the x86 instruction set. this time the internal architecture was fast enough to handle the translation and provide a performance gain on top of it.
the rest, as they say, is history. AMD gained flexibility in design was not restricted to simply cloning another vendors product.
Nextgen and AMD transformed the published x86 instruction set from simply the instruction set of a particular processor family to a generalized interface to processors of various designs. since then other vendors have used it this way including national semiconducton, transmeta and via.
wasn't there a compatability issue with early K series CPUs?
i may be wrong about this, but i seem to recall that at the time of the release of the early K chips some popular commercial had exploited undocumented intel x86 features. the K chips which only supported the published spec didn't run this stuff (and i've forgotten what it was) reliably.
- This is highly unlikely. When AMD reverse engineered that Intel instruction set, they did not just go with what was documented. They did complete pin signal level reverse engineering, as well as a lot of software reverse engineering to figure out the entire instruction tree of the Pentium family of CPUs. So AMD was fully aware of even the undocumented instructions.
- Starting with the P6 family however, Intel introduced the concept of "MSRs" or "model specific registers" which are not feasible to fully reverse engineer (there are 4 billion of them, and each may be associated with an internal state machine of arbitrary complexity.) Fortunately, the architectural specification of these registers state that their meaning may change with processor version and that general software should *NOT* rely on their consistent definition -- i.e., only Operating Systems, drivers and special tools should ever use them. Nevertheless in the Athlon, AMD implemented the special "performance monitoring" MSRs as well as write combining and certain cache control MSRs which were either documented, or exposed by software which AMD was able to reverse engineer. In real software, however, there should not be any noticed discrepancy because of MSR usage.
- Another issue, however, was performance of certain instructions. The AMD K6 had an extremely fast "LOOP" instruction. Unfortunately, some poorly written Ethernet drivers used to use this instruction for a predictable delay in speed. As such, Intel had been actually slowing down the relative clock through of this instruction over time, so that its overall speed was roughly constant so that this software continued to work. AMD did no such thing, and when their processors hit 332.5 Mhz all of a sudden these Ethernet drivers started to fail badly. Microsoft eventually issued a path, and future revisions of AMD CPUs were forced to slow down the LOOP instruction just like Intel did. I don't know if they continued this in the K8 line of CPUs.
however, free software also written to published specs ran fine, which made the AMD processors the darlings of the free software world, as they worked fine and were cheap. so AMD may have gotten a big boost from bsd, linux, etc.
- I think both AMD and Intel CPUs work just fine with "free software". AMD's CPUs tend to be *cheaper* which is probably the *real* reason it was considered a darling of the free software world.
i'm really not sure if this is factual or just a nice story, but it would be nice if someone could check it out. if it's correct it probably belongs in the article as it demonstrates the way standards adhearance affects the market.
- Remember, that in a sense, Intel used to *set* the standard, and that included the documentation. However, this has generally been a minor issue with AMD CPUs as their implementations always tended to be extremely close to Intel's standard. (Certainly far closer than Cyrix, or other clone makers.)
- I think that what may be coming to mind was the K6 issue with Windows 95. There was a "software timing loop" issue in certain versions of Windows 95 that caused windows protection errors (and spontaneous system lockup/no boot) due to the high clock speeds used by AMD in the K6-2/350 and up processors. The relevant knowledge base article is here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows95/downloads/contents/WURecommended/S_WUServicePacks/AMDPatch/Default.asp
- This was not a processor issue, it was a software problem (and therefore not particularly relevant to AMD). I suggest someone either address this item in the appropriate processor line article, or simply prune this discussion topic.
Athlon PR rating
Is this really true?
- This definition began to be applied more loosely over time as AMD struggled to compete with the ramping clock speeds of the Northwood core (>3.0 GHz). The credibility of the scheme was only saved by the arrival of the K8, where model numbers once again correlated more reasonably to actual performance.
I've generally followed the processor market fairly closely. I distinctly remember someone (either Anand or Tom I believe) claiming that one or more of the high rated Athlons did no deserve their rating. IIRC AMD responded and said that the PR rating was given based on their performance via a published set of benchmarks. If this was true, and the Athlon really did deserve whatever rating based on these published benchmarks, then this line clearly needs to go. We can make it clear that it was difficult for AMD to compete against the higher end of Intel's performance of course Nil Einne 15:55, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
- Well hang on -- they were, and always have been, AMD's chosen set of benchmarks. I think that the general sentiment at the time was that AMD had been pushing it a little with the last of the K7 line. You should not automatically take the AMD corporate line over Tom or Anand. You may wish to edit this to claim that it was "disputed", but I don't think its easy to claim that its wrong.
Removed statement regarding lawsuit
I removed the following statement
- The easy cooperation by these companies is an early indication of the weakness of this case, and it remains to be seen how far AMD will go when the first hearing is in 2008.
It is unsourced POV. Normally I would tag it with a citation needed but in this case, I removed it because I feel it's a bit weak. I'm not a legal expert but I see no reason to assume the cooperation gives an indication of the weakness of the case. The companies subpoened are not under any legal threat/risk at the moment as the case is against Intel. While a successful lawsuit could potentially damage any relationship they have with Intel and their cooperation could make Intel angry, it's rather difficult IMHO to say for sure what these companies would do. On the face of it, it makes most sense for them not to cooperate too much, but not to be too resistant either. Why annoy either AMD or Intel? But it depends a lot on the circumstances. The companies might not be pleased about losing their rebates etc, but they probably don't like the threats. Also, they might feel they might put themselves at greater risk from either AMD or various governments if they don't cooperate so they might see no reason to put themselves at such risk for Intel (and if Intel tried to harm or blackmail them because of the lawsuit, they could retialiate by giving this info to AMD). Some of the companies might want to send Intel a message by cooperating. Others (e.g. Microsoft) may find themselves more favouring AMD at the moment. Point being, it's rather difficult IMHO to gauge what the cooperation of these companies means. If it were Intel themselves, then we could assume if they we cooperating easily it might indicate they don't think there is any case. But since it's about third parties who are not at direct risk, from the lawsuit, it's rather difficult to say what they cooperation entails. With a reference from some legal source, preferbly one who isn't know to always favour Intel for whatever reason (although even one who does always favour Intel would be acceptable of course) Nil Einne 16:24, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
Should we add a section or a note bout the "Alchemy" processors?
Alchemy was previously produced by AMD, and then it sold all the production lines to another company, should we add something about that? --202.71.240.18 07:14, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
about the reverse HTT article
The article should keep and not to merge to this article, same as AMD Live!, Torrenza, and AMD 64, cause they are seperate techonologies developed/proposed by AMD.
There's an interesting part in zh:AMD article...
There're two timelines in the article[1].
1. The timeline of AMD, and 2. The timeline of AMD CPUs.
I think it is a nice idea to include that in the article, and add the missing items to it. And maybe arranging the sections 3-11 (or maybe 12,13 and 17?)according to the timeline? What do all of you think about that?
--202.71.240.18 09:39, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
AMD Edge
From reading the AMD support forums there is a publication called the AMD Edge. It sounds like a company newsletter focusing on PR for the technology this organization is using in their products. If anyone knows more about this, I think it deserves some mention in this article. Chapium 15:09, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Well, I have seen a magazine named "AMD Accelerate" (Official Address, distributed by Ziff Davis Media) focusing on enterprise technologies (i.e. Opterons) but not "AMD Edge", any links to "AMD Edge"? --202.71.240.18 07:01, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
- EDIT: "AMD Edge" has ended officially on the August 9th, 2005. It was used to promote AMD products, and also held promotions such as giving out CPUs and DDR Kits to attract people joining AMD Edge. The campaign links are still working (FX-55 Promotion and DDR Kit Promotion). However, the link for joining the program have been deleted and the login page will be redirected to the DIY page ([2]). --202.71.240.18 07:13, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
AMD64 - sentence
this sentence doesn't make sense to me, how is it supposed to be correctly written?
...the implementation of an extremely high performance point to point multiprocessor capable interconnect called HyperTransport, as part of a Direct Connect Architecture.
Shandristhe azylean 15:49, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
- "Multiprocessor-capable" should be hyphenated to show intended meaning. But the sentence reads much better, and still quite gets the point across, with those two words removed. The fact that multiple processors can be used is not especially important, and makes the sentence all the harder to understand. — Aluvus t/c 17:39, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
- thanks alot, aluvus, esp. for the quick response :) Shandristhe azylean 19:06, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
Wintel and Lintel
A bit OT but I felt it the best place to get the kind of views I'm after. I noticed in the Parallels Workstation page, Wintel and Lintel are used to describe the platforms. I've never really heard of Lintel before (although it's kind of obvious) and I've never really liked Wintel because it's primarily (IMHO) used by Mac users and also it doesn't really include AMD. But I'm wondering if I'm being a bit silly. What do others think? Nil Einne 20:32, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
- So does that mean we should start referring to new Macs as "Mintel"? scot 18:15, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
Chartered
- Most of the manufactured microprocessors are shipped from Singapore to Taiwanese and Chinese OEM/ODM manufacturing companies that build computers for Lenovo and Dell.
Is this true? AFAIK most normal AMD cores are assembled as processors in Malaysia and I believe some also in China. Does this mean Chartered are actually assembling the processors rather then just making the cores (which seems unlikely) or AMD's vendors are assembling the processors themselves (which seems unlikely to me but who knows?). Also, whatever the case, where is the testing and binning done? Nil Einne 16:08, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
Chartered owns a fab, named FAB 7 which was used to produce the cores. I believe that the chartered finish the cores and send to Malaysia for assemble and test in Suchou, China. --210.0.209.178 03:41, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
Outdated
There's a sentence in the AMD64/K8 section:
"Unlike Intel's dual-core designs, the X2 mates two cores into a single chip, rather than two chips into a single package. Intel's method may have theoretical yield advantages, but gives up some performance advantages since interprocessor communication still happens over external pins, rather than internally."
I suppose this is referring to Intel's Pentium D/Pentium Extreme, which are formed by joining two previously single-core chips into one package. However the chips based on the Intel Core Architecture were designed from the ground-up to be dual-core, so I'm assuming this sentence no longer applies (with the exception of Kentsfield which is two dual-cores put together in the same package). --QTCaptain 02:21, 14 October 2006 (UTC)
Dell servers
Brought over from an edit to the article:
COMMENT: I'm not sure if its public knowledge yet, but Dell does plan to include Opteron 2xx Series models in both the 2U and Blade space. This is in contradiction to the information above.
The above was posted by 69.169.6.22. — Aluvus t/c 03:12, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
Bias
Intel was immediately forced into a panicked internal re-design of the P6 core, which fixed many of the pipeline stalls that compromised its performance. The result was called the "Coppermine" revision. However, the rushed nature of the work put enormous pressure on Intel's manufacturing facilities and, even after it was announced, availability of the improved Coppermine chips was poor.
Can you cite a source? As for the second sentence, how was availability before Coppermine was announced? The wording is rendundant.
The X2 marks a significant step towards even greater productivity and scalability, especially for multi-threaded software applications.
This sounds like marketing material. "Productivity?" Let's keep the article relavant to AMD: the company and products.
AMD has also formed a strategic partnership with IBM, under which AMD gained silicon on insulator (SOI) manufacturing technology, and detailed advice on 90-nm implementation. IBM holds many patents on SOI technology, and Intel is reluctant to implement the process for this reason, despite the significant reductions in power consumption offered.
This statement couldn't be more wrong. Funny how there is no source given. Companies make dubious claims about their process technology. It certainly is not a fact that SOI offers better power consumption in practice than CMOS. If anything, the jury is still out.
Answer: you may not like it, but it is a fact that SOI offers better power consumption. The reason for that is that SOI reduces transistor leakage, and if less energy is leaked, less power is consumed... simple as that. The reduced leakage also enables the transitors to be packed more closely together inside the chip. In practice, manufacturers use the "liberated" space to pack EVEN MORE TRANSISTORS into the chip. The result is that the overall power consumption of an SOI processor may look similar to that of a regular processor, but the performance is quite different (more transistors = better performance). As for references, you can access the specifications of any processor that use SOI technology (I, for instance, found all the information on SOI at the APPLE website in their documentation of the PowerPC processor)
Unlike some other companies, AMD provided the technical details required for the open source BIOS project LinuxBIOS
What other companies? What technical details?
Again, innovation is key to AMD's "Virtual Gorilla" corporate strategy.
Why not include the phone number for the AMD US sales office after this sentence? This may or may not be true, but it reeks of bias and a poor encylopedia article.
- Agree with everything here. I made a preliminary attempt to rewrite the K6 and K7 sections (which were particularly offensive in an autobiographical self-aggrandizement way). MORE WORK IS NEEDED. Falcomadol 16:31, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
AMD64 / K8
On May 31, 2005 AMD released its first desktop-based dual core processor family — the Athlon 64 X2. Unlike Intel's early (Pentium D and Celeron D) dual-core designs,
The Celeron D is not dual-core.
This article is in chaos!
- There's one paragraphs mention the 80-core CPU from Intel...
- There're places where the compeition between Intel and AMD placed in the Fab section.....
- There're "weasel words" all over the place (please do tell me about it...)....
- And most importantly, the section headings suck, "other productions" and the "production history" are seperated!? Aren't they the products form the SAME company, i.e. AMD!?
- That is shall we do it the "TIMELINE" way or the good ol' "CATEGORIZED" way?
- "Production history" and "Products", only one of the two can stay!
- That is shall we do it the "TIMELINE" way or the good ol' "CATEGORIZED" way?
Post the
This article may need to be rewritten to comply with Wikipedia's quality standards. |
tag on, shall we? as well put the cleanup tags in the ATI section.
Post any thoughts below, thanks! -202.71.240.18 08:26, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree with most all the sentiments expressed on this talk page. A firm supporter and devoted customer of AMD, I find that the inaccuracy, bias, and poor organization of the AMD articles hurts the company's image. I fully support a rewrite, and should I find something of value, I will outline it on this page for review.
Just as a suggestion, does anybody know of a benchmark comparison between Intel's Core 2 Duo line and AMD's Athlon 64 X2 series? AMD's website has benchmark comparisons featuring Pentium D processors, but not the new Intel dual core models. Information from such a benchmark test might be relevant in the article on the X2 AMD processors. They Call Me Dick 08:16, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
- Try this site: Tom's Hardware Benchmakrs for 2006. They have extensive benchmarks (but not all of them). --BenWhitey 02:58, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
Re-Write Outline
It's pretty clear that the AMD article currently reflects the execution level of its ATi subsidiary (that is to say, it sucks). In pursuit of making the article...acceptable, I propose we follow this outline. I have not begun work on any section of the outline, (though will commence so after the holiday) - feel free to modify the outline, or take a section to write. For now, I suggest we try to keep it to one person per section, as the "I have interesting fact X about AMD, so I'll stick it in random section Y" strategy is pretty much what got us here in the first place.
For now, I recommend we keep the ATI information in a seperate article - ATI operates currently as a wholly owned subsidiary, not a division of AMD. I suggest we keep the ATI article and make it abundantly clear they are "green team" - and make appropriate lateral references in the AMD article.
I. Introduction:
a) Brief explanation of AMD (Name, company, founded date, primary business (semiconductor manufacturing) b) Vital Statistics Box
II. History
a) Founding of AMD i) Founders - JS III, et al - date, circumstances ii) Initial Products iii) Company philosophy and presence in the market place b) "Formative Era" i) AMD becomes a supplier of Intel "cloned" chips (reasons for doing so, and the circumstances therein) ii) The begging of legal troubles with Intel (brief mention of Intel transitioning from "needing" AMD to protecting their IP, not a lot of detail here c) Transition i) AMD begins to step out of the x86 "mold" ii) Production woes begun to stunt AMD's growth and ability to compete iii) The x86 Patent Settlement d) Techonologically Competitve i) Architechtural decisions that lead to technological leadership ii) How technological leadership became irrelevant in the face of competition iii) Spinoff of Spansion e) A Market Leader i) The release of the K8 signals a new direction and unification of AMD's Strategy ii) Intel Anti-trust suit iii) Purchase of ATI
III. Technology (This section is a simple breakdown of AMD's technology and pace of advancement - detail is to be found in other articles)
a) Early Years (cloner) b) Undertaking Independent Designs c) K-era d) K7 and the 'marketing of technology' (K becomes Athlong) e) K8 - take industry leadership f) Opteron (Compete beyond the package - HT, ccHT) g) Launch of Platform Initiatives (Torrenza, the AMD Chipset business, AMD Live) h) Looking Ahead (K8L, Fusion, K10)
IV. Manufacturing
a) Manufacturing Introduction i) Structure of AMD's manufacturing capacity ii) Overlook of AMD's manufacturing technology (currently 65nm 300mm SOI process) and planned process technology b) History i) Initial Production (sublet) ii) Desire to compete on the "grand scale" leads to pursuit of "fabs" (Jerry Sanders Quote Here) iii) Establishment of First Production Facilities iv) Pursuit of Production Technology Leadership through Partnerships (IBM) v) Production Future (Fab 38, Fab 36, fab 4x (luther hills)) c) Problems i) Financial Proposition (Intel 100bil. market cap v. AMD 10 bil. Market cap - same number of fabs needed) ii) Execution Failures (Late process shrinks, fab engineers unable to execute Architecture at the same level as the competition) iii) Sales growth faster than Production Growth d) The Chartered Solution i) Relationship with Chartered and UMC ii) ATI's affect on relationship in the future
That is all I have at the moment. I hope this table doesn't come out like total snap. Sahrin 05:43, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
- Something still not solved, what about other products (e.g. AMD Live!) and initiatives having codenames only (e.g. Torrenza, AMD Trinity etc.) away from CPU itself, though AMD is mainly a CPU making company now. Away from those, I think this is good layout. :) --202.71.240.18 08:26, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
- P.S. Don't forget to mention AMD64 and TSMC.
- P.S.2 I think you should provide something about "Spansion" and then its spin off. --202.71.240.18 08:29, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
- I agree that there is some material missing, but I think, given the breadth of material in the form of other articles available (on AMD 64, on HT, on AMD Live etc.) - this article is about a public company, it should be structured more like ...an entry in the factbook for a country. In fact, I think we should add a section on a financial performance, but I am not sure if we can a) get that information or b) manage it effectively. I've made some small changes based on your feedback.Sahrin 14:43, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
- I think that it looks good. --BenWhitey 03:00, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
- I agree—this outline covers the matter fairly well. I believe that the information about each generation of processor should be placed in respective articles, instead of being placed in the main article. These individual processor articles are very sparse as it stands.The Squonk 06:25, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
- Good outline, something needs done. I think the main AMD article should deal with the company, and only a brief overview of the products. A list of AMD processors should be a separate article, as should a list of its future products, chipsets, grahpics, services, etc. They all should be seperate articles that only on briefly touched upon in the main article. Nicholas 16:56, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Weasel words, essay format and sources
I've went through the article and tried to consolidate the amount of information. Also I've added many comments that might help give an idea of where issues lie. The article at points seem to be written like an essay on AMD and not a encyclopedic article. This needs changed, as well as the POV statements. Also sources need to be added, using footnotes. The individual product sections are quite long for an article on the company itself. This information should be summarised with a link to the main article which will delve into the details. Old products, current products and future product sections could help, again with mere summaries.Nicholas 18:17, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
- I went through and tried to fix some of what you said. I don't think it needs a complete rewrite. Possibly things could be summarized.82.45.240.51 20:25, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
- Actually, what you did looks great. Breaking the products into distinct categories makes things much easier to read. Myself, and I think others that suggest a rewrite don't mean to start from scratch. Actually, seeing some of the changes, I believe the article looks much better, however it still needs someone to go through and remove POV "weasel words", whether they're biased against AMD or Intel. If you look at Intel's wiki, it's written in a tone and prose which seems (to me) a bit more encyclopaedic than AMD's article. I agree, Intel sucks :) BUT, the article should be as neutral in tone as possible. To me, it seems some things were thrown in at the last minute, such as the mention of AMD's low watt processors at the end of the K8 section. I find the production/fab section a little repetitive, and maybe all the lawsuits with intel (some mentioned at head of article and others at end) could be combined. Also, the external links section is quite extensive and could possibly be checked to insure all the links are valid and to decide if the link is really needed. I guess all I'm saying is the article looks much better than it did earlier today! But it needs a read through to remove those subtle POV statements, generalisations, repetitive information and to try to make it out in a tone and prose of a wikipedia article and not an essay on AMD. AMD deserves better! Finally, and this is quite important: statements, facts, figures need sources. It'd be nice if the sources were done in the accepted footnote referencing format instead of just posting a link to the fact next to it, but I'd rather see some sources done sloppily, than none at all!Nicholas 20:35, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
- Well I did alot of revising. I tried to remove as much POV as I could. I also put things in proper sections and expanded the litigation section, etc. I think any editor interested in this article should read it over and do general clean-up work where needed. I don't think it's so bad anymore as needing a rewrite. Sources are still an issue however. It's hard to make this article neutral due to the whole nature of AMD v Intel, but I did try and I think it's at least tolerable now. There are still some sections that read like an essay; again go through it and revise where necessary. It's definitely in MUCH better shape than it was 12 hours ago. I hope I didn't waste my day :-/ Nicholas 23:36, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Spansion?
Is the information presented in the first couple of paragraphs of the article about owning 37% of Spansion still true? I thought they got out of that business? If it's true then great, but if not it should be pulled and the section relating to it should be revised to show that it was something in the past.Nicholas 21:03, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
- From Spansion.com:
Do AMD and Fujitsu still own stock in Spansion? Yes. On the completion of the offering on December 16, 2005, AMD owned approximately 40% of the Class A common stock and Fujitsu owned approximately 27% of the total stock outstanding
- I don't have anything more current on hand at the moment. AMD's corporate overview from 2005 agrees, but is not any more recent. They haven't released an overview for 2006 yet. — Aluvus t/c 21:40, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
unify dates format.
Either something like
1. January 26, 2007 or
2. 2007-01-26
The whole article are filled with these two kinds of formats showing dates, please unify.
Discuss here. Thank you. --202.71.240.18 12:29, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
- I personally like the first one. --202.71.240.18 12:29, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
- Something to add: I think we should follow the date format recommended by wikipedia at Wikipedia:Date_formattings. --202.71.240.18 12:33, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Cite Tag
The tag currently on the top of the article is not the correct maintenance tag, and I've removed it. That tag is for articles or sections that have no references at all. For instance, this page. What should be done, and taken from WP:Cite:
"It's often useful to indicate specific statements that need references by placing {{fact}} ("citation needed") after the sentence, but be careful not to overuse these tags. Don't be inappropriately cautious about removing unsourced material.
To summarize the use of in line tags for unsourced or poorly sourced material:
- If it is doubtful but not harmful to the whole article, use the {{fact}} tag to ask for source verification, but remember to go back and remove the claim if no source is produced within a reasonable time.
- If it is doubtful and harmful, you should remove it from the article; you may want to move it to the talk page and ask for a source, unless you regard it is as very harmful or absurd, in which case it shouldn't be posted to a talk page either. Use your common sense.
." Nja247 (talk • contribs) 22:56, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Clean-Up
I would like for all of us to consider what clean-up needs done and try to tackle it so we can have an up-to-date article and remove the maintenance tags. Heck, if we do a decent job, we could even submit this article as a candidate for a good article. Post your comments, concerns and ideas here. I'm aiming to have it cleaned-up within a months time. Nja247 (talk • contribs) 23:05, 9 February 2007 (UTC) Also, rechecking the vocabulary used, to less obscure words ("subpoenas").
Barcelona
Information needs updated about the "K8L". According to reports, K8L was for the Turion 64[3], NOT next gen technology platform, which is called Torrenza (according to Tom Yager at InfoWorld on 7 February 2007).
With that said, this all needs to be addressed in the article, because mid-2007 is not far off. Barcelona is supposed to be the first chip released under the Torrenza initiative, and it's to be 40% than Cloverton, and will be released mid-2007 [4]. Further, it's supposed to have 128 bit wide SSE, be 80% faster in floating point over Opteron, offer new VM and power management techniques. Dedicated L2 cache per core, and a L3 cache [5]. So, again, this is the biggest revamp since 2003. The first L3, and 65nm process for AMD [6].
With that said, I need ideas and help on getting this info into the main AMD article. Further, if anyone is up to it, help me fix the erroneously wrong "K8L" article, and update the Torrenza piece. Nja247 (talk • contribs) 12:08, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
- See related talk page for response from other users, there's no need to post a thread like that in two articles. --210.0.209.178 06:47, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
- Actually this doesn't change the fact that information on Torrenza, and more importantly Barcelona need added to this article. Nja247 (talk • contribs) 12:36, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
- And allow me to say, Torrenza is not equal or equivalent to the term "K8L", Torrenza itself has its own article, and that Torrenza is an initiative for coprocessors from AMD back to the year 2005, specialized coprocessors for certain type of calculations such as Cryptography, XML, and so on can use AMD socket(s) as common socket (to accelerate system performance and reduce the CPU workload), to further share system memory under Non-Uniform Memory Architecture (NUMA) or Unified Memory Architecture or Uniform Memory Access (both in short is UMA, I don't know which...) as well as having its own cache; or in another way round, allowing companies to manufacture HTX add-in accelerator cards that is similar to PCI-E add-in accelerator cards (usually for HPC use, instead of consumer PC market. While K8L is a microarchitecture by AMD, with improved IPC and SSE unit width from 64-bit to 128-bit, and other improvements.
If people do not understand the differences between the two different items, I suggest them to SEARCH GOOGLE before saying something stupid. --202.71.240.18 06:49, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
- And allow me to say, Torrenza is not equal or equivalent to the term "K8L", Torrenza itself has its own article, and that Torrenza is an initiative for coprocessors from AMD back to the year 2005, specialized coprocessors for certain type of calculations such as Cryptography, XML, and so on can use AMD socket(s) as common socket (to accelerate system performance and reduce the CPU workload), to further share system memory under Non-Uniform Memory Architecture (NUMA) or Unified Memory Architecture or Uniform Memory Access (both in short is UMA, I don't know which...) as well as having its own cache; or in another way round, allowing companies to manufacture HTX add-in accelerator cards that is similar to PCI-E add-in accelerator cards (usually for HPC use, instead of consumer PC market. While K8L is a microarchitecture by AMD, with improved IPC and SSE unit width from 64-bit to 128-bit, and other improvements.
- Actually this doesn't change the fact that information on Torrenza, and more importantly Barcelona need added to this article. Nja247 (talk • contribs) 12:36, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
This has been established by the other user who posted one day ahead of you. We know it's not. The upcoming architecture and the Barcelona chip should be mentioned in this article, otherwise it's out of date. Nja247 (talk • contribs) 21:38, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
- I do not think so. By not mentioning anything about the "Bacelona" chip does not mean that the article is out of date, this article gives only brief descriptions about the products and technologies from AMD, not detailed specifications. Besides, a section "Ext. 64" was presented in this article, with a very short "description" of the microarchitecture, I think the improvements and changes made to the microarchitecture should be mentioned in that section but not the "Bacelona" chip itself, I do not think that "Bacelona" chip is more notable than the microarchitecture, likewise, nothing related to a single chip was written in each of the sections. Such thing as "The first chip under the microarchitecture is a server chip clocked at 2.x GHz, 65 nm process, quad-core chip codenamed Bacelona, featuring 128-bit SSE units and 128-bit FP units, 2MiB of L3 cache, improved power management (PowerNow!) as well as hardware-assisted virtualization improvements, and paving way for future initaitives as Torrenza and Fusion" are meaningless to the section, I think. --202.71.240.18 10:19, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
Why no info?
Came here expecting some info on this up and coming chip, but there was none at all. Not even a mention of its name. I simply find it odd as it's soon to be released and there's plenty of info on it on the net. 82.45.240.51 17:56, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
Good question. I've already brought it up. I disagree with 202.71.240.18, and believe a very brief mention of the chip and the new tech it brings should make its way into the article. You're free to add as you see fit of course. People probably won't add it until it's out. Nja247 (talk • contribs) 20:32, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
AMD's processor history
Just an FYI. I seem to recall that the Am5x86 was AMD first processor produced that wasn't a direct clone of an Intel. Here is a link to the page. http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_1260_1268,00.html
74.130.163.203 00:04, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
I didn't see a mention of AMD being the first to break the 1 GHz barrier with Home/desktop CPUs. Worth mentioning? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.184.241.144 (talk) 05:13, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
- I think this is worth mentioning. It is overlooked quite frequently and compliments AMD's success in that era of computing. --JonathanRidgway (talk) 23:05, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
"It also owns 21 percent of Spansion, a supplier of non-volatile flash memory.", is it worth mentioning AMD's devision of Flash Memory around the 2005 era? would have to do some research but i think they just owned a greator percent of spansion at the time. --JonathanRidgway (talk) 23:05, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
Something to do with the chipset thing!!
I recall (if correctly) AMD has do chipsets before Athlon XP or Athlon 64, but they're not mentioned in the article, could somebody please add that to the technologies section? --202.71.240.18 13:30, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Where's the second plant?
- Between 2003 and 2005, they constructed a second manufacturing (300mm) plant nearby
Nearby where? Germany or Taiwan? AxelBoldt 07:28, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
- Fab 36? AMD has only Fab 30 (later upgraded to 65 nm and renamed Fab 38, I recall from AMD Analyst day slides) and Fab 36 right now in Dresden, Germany. --202.40.137.202 02:57, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
Financial information necessary?
Is it really necessary to have this information at the top of the article? I'm tempted to move it or delete it. Alex 03:29, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
Five design teams?
"[The Fort Collins design team] complementing the existing ones in Austin, Sunnyvale, Boston and Bangalore"
Is this true? AMD shutted down the Longmont, Colorado design team for Geode, and started this? I need someone to explain this! --202.71.240.18 07:26, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
Recent edits
Okay, I've had a chance to go over this better now. I can see a lot of the content on the main page was migrated to sub pages, as it should have been. But the result has been to break the narrative structure that used to exist on the main AMD page. Having been called too easy to read, the main AMD page is now a jumble of links, interspaced with intermittent narrative, and I'm not sure after all the work, the end result is hugely better. The biggest sin for me is to become a 'parts database.' I'm sorry reference to the 'virtual gorilla' strategy has been removed. I think it was both interesting and informative, to explain to reader how a small company like AMD, was able to compete with a much larger company, Intel. Another observation, is that anyone who knows AMD, knows it was the passion and enthusiasm of Jerry Sanders that repeatedly pulled the company back from the brink of bankruptcy. Sanders went out, recruited people, gave them a vision, and innovated. The emotional side of AMD's history appears to have been de-emphasized, even though that was what drove everything else. Please, don't fall into the trap of thinking re-cycling corporate press releases is a 'scientific' and correct way to write about business. 90.201.130.24 08:25, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
K10
At the start, the summary says that the K10 is a quad-core architecture. Later, it says this: "K10 processors will come in a single, dual, and quad-core versions with all cores on one single die." Is this contradictory or am I missing something? And is Phenom the same thing as K10 (i.e, its brand name) or is it just a subset of K10? because each has its own article (unlike Athlon, which is the brand name for the K7 architecture).
Ǣ0ƞS 07:56, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
- K10 is a "native" quad-core design. The dual- and single-core variants will be quad-core parts with some of their cores disabled. High-end desktop K10 parts will be sold under the Phenom brand; other desktop parts will be sold under the Athlon brand, server parts will be sold under another brand. Similarly, Athlon was the name used for the first mainstream desktop K7 products (later Athlon XP), with the Duron and Athlon MP brands filling in other niches. So yes, the situations are similar. K7 doesn't have its own page, and neither does K8, but other microarchitectures (NetBurst, Intel Core (CPU architecture)) sometimes do. K7 and K8 probably should as well, IMHO. — Aluvus t/c 19:40, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks for the clarifications. IMO it should be clarified in the short summary that some cores are disabled in the low-end variants. Ǣ0ƞS 05:45, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
- K10 Phenom FX/X4/X2 will have L3-cache, K10 Athlon X4/X2 will not have L3. Server K10 will still use the Opteron brand name. --Denniss 13:04, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
Litigation with Intel Section
This section seems quite slanted. The only sources cited are AMD's own statements from its web page. Seems to me it needs some verification from independent sources and a change in POV and tone.
Morrolan 07:25, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
- Independent sources like TGDaily and The Register perhaps? At least most -- not ALL, I believe, but I cannot find one, if you do, drop a link here :) -- of reports copied perspectives from AMD documents (which IS AMD's perspective), then what's the difference to copied AMD perspectives from official AMD documents while the later method gives more creditability and ease to follow? Plus, nothing will be verified if Intel still do PR spins/stunts saying "No, we didn't do that, we always encourage competition(s)." without further elaborations and evidences, at least not until somebody shows that not a single email in the Intel corporate email system was offering "rebates" and "goodies" to OEMs to use plain Intel products (CPU, motherboard, GMA graphics, and wireless etc.) and rejecting AMD products (processors and possible chipsets, before 2002,) but as ALL Intel emails during that period was all "missing," this will remain a non-verified mystery. I agree about the change of tone is needed, but the POV? Nope, we didn't heard from Intel lately about the ATI subpoena in December 2006 after the acquisition besides a "disappointment" to EU's ruling, that is we still do not know Intel's standpoint besides a simple "No." and "AMD is also doing the same thing." (again with no elaborations!) 202.71.240.18 10:46, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
AMDs Problems
Shoudn't we mention the huge financial problems AMD suffers since 3 quarters? --134.155.99.41 03:14, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
AMD fanbois won't allow it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.97.179.205 (talk) 23:26, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
Bankruptcy?
The current article lists AMD as having announced their plans for bankruptcy yesterday. I was rather surprised to see that there was no citation for this recent event. I looked on Slashdot to see what they said but the story, which certainly would have made front page news, was completely absent. I am aware they havn't been doing well recently, but I would think if they actually announced plans to file for bankruptcy it would make Slashdot. I searched Google news and got zero relevant results.
My best guess is that this is just vandalism. I'm marking that as "dubious" and if I don't get sources I'll delete it later today. Anybody have more info?--TexasDex 14:01, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
- Only news I get on a Google news search is an announcement of the quad-core release. I'm reverting. scot 14:31, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
- Agreed. Any unsupported/uncited claims of their bankruptcy should probably be reverted as vandalism from now on.--TexasDex 15:10, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
I ASK FOR THE SEMI-PROTECTION OF THIS ARTICLE, DELIBERATE VANDALISM FOR A FEW DAYS IN A ROW, ESPECIALLY BY 74.215.126.32 Thanks guys! 70.81.157.133 18:22, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
I've always seen hardcore Intel fanatics who keep saying AMD bankrupt by what time and vice versa by hardcore AMD fanatics, on blogs and discussion forums. So these trens already span to Wiki? All this pure spam and misinformation? Just get over it, fanboys, when it comes to Chapter 11, somebody will announce it, but surely it won't be all you Intel fanboys. --Idle.man5216 —Preceding signed but undated comment was added at 09:45, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Intel
Should the lead include which one is the first ranked? Kushalt 00:10, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
Amd selling it's Fabs
I think it is import to have a section mentioning how AMD is selling it's fabs to The Foundry Co. The Foundry is a spin off company from AMD that will take all of its fabs and a few billion of its dept. AMD will own about 50%(i think) of it and the rest is being bought up by some company in Dhubi. I also belive a past CEO of AMD will be the president of the Foundry. Alown (talk) 05:24, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
- First it's called Dubai not dhubi second it's almubadala owned by abu dhabi and i think it owns 90% too bad for AMD because it used to only manufacture Intel processors' clones now it only designs processors, i wonder why AMD did that 41.235.82.253 (talk) 15:00, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
GLOBALFOUNDRIES
The GLOBALFOUNDRIES page should NOT redirect to Advanced Micro Devices as it's no longer a part of AMD, it's a complete spinoff of its manufacturing business. We need to move Production and fabrication into a new GLOBALFOUNDRIES page. Cncxbox (talk) 23:34, 5 March 2009 (UTC)
- I took the liberty of creating a new GLOBALFOUNDRIES page, but its largely incomplete as I have no time to perfect it. Hopefully someone will help improve upon it. Cncxbox (talk) 02:28, 6 March 2009 (UTC)
- In the interest of maintaining a history of AMD, the existing Production and fabrication section should be edited to portray it from a historical point of view. There are too many instances where relevant and valuable history related to computing subjects have been removed giving a misleading view of the subject. Is it beneficial to portray AMD as a fabless developer of microprocessors? Rilak (talk) 06:10, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
AMD won anti-trust suit in European Union
i think we should include info that AMD won there Anti-Trust Suit vs Intel in the European Union, Intel is ordered to stop there tactics and most pay the EU about $1.45 Billion dollars, i also saw something that said the US could take a similar policy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.220.105.110 (talk) 01:01, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
AMD Employee Steals Intel Secrets
This is a huge news and had stirred up a huge controversy. How can we wikify this?
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/AMD-Intel-Stolen-Documents,6565.html
"33-year-old Biswamohan Pani downloaded the confidential documents - worth up to $1 Billion dollars" Komitsuki (talk) 09:33, 1 June 2009 (UTC)
share of the market
in the introduction it says that AMD share of the market is around 18%. consider this http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-amd-cpu-processor-netbooks,14361.html the number here is very different, 10%
- Just to pitch in; The reference does not link directly to the article, which I found: Infoworld. This is in fact a reprint from IDG News Service, and not actually an article by Infoworld. Even if the article will not change, the original source should probably be used instead. --173.66.252.26 (talk) 13:50, 3 May 2012 (UTC)
Automate archiving?
Does anyone object to me setting up automatic archiving for this page using MizaBot? Unless otherwise agreed, I would set it to archive threads that have been inactive for 60 days.--Oneiros (talk) 23:21, 29 December 2009 (UTC)
- Done--Oneiros (talk) 04:12, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
uhm.. I think its broken seeing as Im writing this well over 60 days. -Tracer9999 (talk) 03:45, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
Suggested Edits for AMD Wikipedia Page
Hi All,
I would like to propose a few edits to the AMD entry. I will not edit the actual entry as I am affiliated with AMD, so if you agree with my edits, I would like ask that you make them in the entry. Thank you in advance for your help!
1. AMD sold off their DTV and handheld bussiness in 2008. Therefore I would like to suggest that informaiton related to these division within the entry be deleted or updated to reflect the fact that AMD has discontinued its digital television and handheld businesses. Resource for this edit is here: http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2325946,00.asp
2. AMD currently owns about 9% of Spansion; however the entry says that AMD owns 21%. Resource: http://investor.spansion.com/faq.cfm (Look at answer under second question in the FAQ). - Micro Devices (talk) 20:49, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
I updated amd's ownership of spansion to 8.6% according to the 10k as the faq is as of march 2008. pretty much the same anyway but just a more recent ref. Im not sure about what items are part of the dtv and handheld business so Ill let someone else delve into that one. best to be updated rather then deleted -Tracer9999 (talk) 21:20, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
AMD Live! section needs fixing
I can't make sense of this mess of a run-on sentence in order to fix it. Will someone more knowledgeable please take a stab at it? Thanks.
As of 2007, AMD LIVE! was a platform marketing initiative focusing the consumer electronics segment, with an Active TV initiative for streaming Internet videos from web video services such as YouTube, into AMD LIVE! PC as well as connected digital TVs, together with a scheme for an ecosystem of certified peripherals for the ease of customers to identify peripherals for AMD LIVE! systems for digital home experience, called "AMD LIVE! Ready".
Why not put all AMD Trademark logos in the AMD wikipage like its done on Intels ?!?!
Hii beloved all..,
Why not put all AMD Trademark logos[New and Old] in the AMD wiki-page like its done on Intel's ?!?!
AMD has more logos all together i.e including the Radeons and APU's. All i could find was just one traditional logo some where on the side. This is disappointing that i am not able to get a matured look while surfing. Please put all the logos in asap.
Regards,
JMD — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.99.105.33 (talk) 06:55, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
Radeon logo is on Radeon page, unnecessary to add here. Your friend NorwegianNazgul (talk) 02:08, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
Out Of Date
Parts of this article are severely out of date, use the wrong future/present tenses, and present old facts as news. This article needs some serious cleanup with regards to these. Irazmus (talk) 20:34, 28 September 2011 (UTC)
much of the article is out of date once again. specifically, there is no mention of trinity/piledriver cpus, or 970/990fx chipsets. there may be other significant happenings within the company that are not mentioned in the article as well. Aunva6 (talk) 00:10, 20 January 2013 (UTC)
Overheating issues
AMD had some severe overheating problems when heatsinks were removed, even to the point that Toms Hardware has videos of their chips burning. At the time, AMD refused to refund any burnouts and in some cases didnt officially provide heatsinks. Im sure some AMD rep is going to try and remove this, but it was a big issue at the time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 14.202.233.174 (talk) 16:14, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
Editing AMD Wikipedia Page
Hello - I am contacting you on behalf of AMD. My name is Michael Silverman ([email protected]) and I am a member of AMD's public relations department. The AMD Wikipedia page is out of date and I would like to work with the Wikipedia editorial team to bring the page in-line with current events/facts.
I would like to have the following edits made to the intro paragraphs please:
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. is an American multinational semiconductor company headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif. with more than 50 locations including campuses in Austin, Texas, United States, and Markham, Ontario, Canada, that develops computer processors and related technologies for commercial and consumer markets. AMD's main products include microprocessors, motherboard chipsets, embedded processors and graphics processors for servers, workstations and personal computers and devices, semi-custom processors and embedded systems applications. While initially it manufactured its own processors, the company became fabless after GlobalFoundries was spun off in 2009. AMD is the second-largest global supplier of microprocessors based on the x86 architecture and also one of the largest suppliers of graphics processing units.
AMD is the company that invented the Accelerated Processing Unit, or APU, a chip that includes a CPU and a GPU in a single piece of silicon, in 2011. AMD is the only significant rival to Intel in the central processor (CPU) market for (x86 based) personal computers. Since acquiring ATI in 2006, AMD and its competitor Nvidia have dominated the discrete graphics processor unit (GPU) market.[7]
I would like to add the following paragraphs to the end of the "Corporate history" section:
In response to the declining PC markets, the company differentiated its product line and increased focused on high-growth markets including dense cloud servers, embedded, professional graphics, ultra-low-power client devices, and the semi-custom business. In 2013, AMD processors were included in next-generation consoles including Sony’s Playstation 4, Microsoft’s Xbox One and Nintendo’s Wii U. In June of 2013, Apple announced its latest Mac Pro will feature dual AMD FirePro™ graphics cards.
In Q3 2013, AMD returned to profitability with a third-quarter net profit of $48 million and a revenue of $1.46 billion.
"Processor market history" section is also quite out of date. Suggest that the section be re-written as follows:
Main articles: AMD Accelerated Processing Unit, AMD mobile platform, Bulldozer (processor), and Bobcat (processor) After the merge between AMD and ATI, an initiative codenamed Fusion was announced that will merge a CPU and GPU on some of their mainstream chips, including a minimum 16 lane PCI Express link to accommodate external PCI Express peripherals, thereby eliminating the requirement of a northbridge chip completely from the motherboard. The initiative will see some of the processing originally done on the CPU (e.g. floating-point unit operations) moved to the GPU, which is better optimized for calculations such as floating-point unit calculations. This is referred to by AMD as an accelerated processing unit (APU).[26]
Microarchitectures:
Bulldozer is the codename for an x86 microprocessor microarchitecture developed by AMD for the desktop and server markets. It was released in 2011 as the successor to the K10 microarchitecture.
Bulldozer is designed from scratch, not a development of earlier processors.[29] The core is specifically aimed at 10-125 watt TDP computing products. AMD claims dramatic performance-per-watt efficiency improvements in high-performance computing (HPC) applications with Bulldozer cores. While hopes were very high that Bulldozer would bring AMD to be performance competitive with arch rival Intel once more, most benchmarks were disappointing. In some cases the new Bulldozer products were slower than the K10 model they were built to replace.[30] [31] [32]
Bobcat was put into production in 2011 and the basis for AMD APUs under the “Fusion” brand. Bobcat is an x86 CPU core design targeted at low-power products such as ultra-portable notebooks, consumer electronics and the embedded market. Jaguar is the successor to the Bobcat microarchitecture.
Jaguar is current generation low-power SoC microarchitecture by AMD. It is the basis for four product families: Temash aimed at tablets, Kabini aimed at notebooks and mini PCs, Kyoto aimed at micro-servers, and the G-Series aimed at embedded applications. The Jaguar microarchitecture also forms the basis for AMD’s semi-custom chips built for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
In October 2012, AMD announced it will design 64-bit ARM® technology-based processors in addition to its x86 processors for multiple markets, starting with cloud and data center servers.
Mobile APUs:
Hondo is a previous generation AMD APU used in Tablets [33]. Hondo originally was announced by AMD in October of 2012. Hondo, or the Z-60 at the time, was AMD’s lowest powered APU and was developed for performance tablets and small form factor PCs.Temash, announced in 2013 is AMD’s elite low-power mobility processor for Windows 8 tablets and hybrids. AMD expects “Temash” to be the highest-performance SoC for tablets in the market, with 100 percent more graphics processing performance2 than its predecessor (codenamed “Hondo.”)
Beema & Mullins, announced at AMD’s APU13 developer conference, is AMD’s 2014 mobile APU. Beema and Mullins are projected to deliver more than 2x the performance-per-watt than the previous generation (codenamed Temash).
FX-Series: AMD FX is a series of high-end AMD CPUs for desktop PCs. The first nativ 8-core desktop processor built with dynamic, tuneable performance to handle multiple intensive apps.
Vishera is an AMD FX-series CPU launched in October of 2012. Vishera was an update to the Guinness World Record-setting AMD FX CPU. Vishera was based on the latest “Piledriver” multi-core architecture which offered increased performance at a lower price than the previous generation.
Mainstream/Performance APUs:
Llano was AMD's first APU built for mainstream PCs and notebooks released in June 2011. Llano is AMD’s first implementation of the APU in mainstream PCs, bringing discrete-class graphics and powerful serial and parallel computing capabilities onto a single-die processor.
Trinity is AMD’s 2nd-gneration APU announced in 2012 for mainstream and ultrathin notebooks, All-in-One and traditional desktops, home theater PCs and embedded designs.
Richland is an AMD Elite A-Series APU announced in 2013, delivering increased performance over the previous generation (codenamed Trinity), and innovative user experiences like facial log-in and gesture recognition.
Kabini, announced in 2013 targets ultrathin notebooks with exceptional battery life and offers impressive levels of performance in both dual- and quad-core options. “Kabini” delivers an increase of more than 50 percent in performance over the previous generation of AMD essential computing APUs (codenamed “Brazos 2.0.”)
Kaveri, announced in 2014 is AMD’s most powerful APU ever. “Kaveri” is the world’s first APU to include Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) features, the immersive sound of AMD TrueAudio Technology and the performance gaming experiences of Mantle API. “Kaveri”-based notebooks will be available in the first half of 2014.
Graphics products[edit] See also: Comparison of AMD graphics processing units, Graphics hardware and FOSS, and Comparison of ATI chipsets
AMD's portfolio of dedicated graphics processors includes product families and associated technologies aimed at the consumer, professional and high-performance computing markets.
• Radeon is AMD's line of consumer graphics processing units. They introduced innovations such as modularized RAM chips, DVD (MPEG2) acceleration, notebook GPU card sockets, and power management technology, and have recently launched and implemented Mantle (API) and TrueAudio functionality. In September 2013, AMD announced is newest line of GPUs, the R9 and R7 Series. • FirePro is AMD's line of professional graphics processors for workstations. Based on the Radeon series, it succeeds the FireGL series of workstation CAD/CAM video cards, and the FireMV series for workstations with 2D acceleration. The new Mac Pro is powered by dual AMD FirePro professional GPUs. • Eyefinity – Allows up to 6 monitors to be connected to one card to allow surround-screen panoramic view. • TrueAudio – Allows users to experience directional audio powered through supported GPUs. • Mantle (API) – A low-level API developed by AMD as an alternative to Direct3D and OpenGL.
AMD Catalyst is a collection of proprietary device drivers software available for most platforms, includingMicrosoft Windows, OS X, and Linux. Linux users can also opt to use open-source drivers, whose development is assisted by AMD. Hardware component companies which only provide proprietary drivers have always been urged by the free-software community to make their drivers free software, or at least provide the necessary documentation for the community to write their own drivers.
Since 2007, the AMD has partly cooperated with the development of free graphics drivers, but have not made their Catalyst drivers free. The programming specifications for a number of chipsets and features were published in several rounds. This greatly changed their support of the development of free graphics drivers, as until that moment only unsupported free drivers existed. Besides releasing the specifications, AMD also funded the development of new "open source" drivers, and has even hired some employees to actively work on free software drivers.[36][dead link]
The AMD Chipsets section is also outdated and needs a rewrite. I can provide that information in follow-up. I recommend that the "AMD Live!" section be removed. It is extremely dated and has not been a part of AMD's business for several years.
I suggest the following additions to the "Commercial platform" section:
• AMD Eyfinity Technology supports multiple independent display outputs simultaneously, Eyefinity delivers innovative graphics display capabilities enabling massive desktop workspaces and ultra-immersive visual environments for productivity. • AMD PowerPlay Technology dynamically manages power efficiency and takes control of your performance, delivering high performance features when needed and conserving power when the demand on the graphics processor is low. This technology reduces the power consumption of the AMD Radeon graphics family of products for the optimal balance between performance and power for break-through energy efficiency. • AMD App Acceleration speeds up applications so users can increase productivity and experience better quality within used applications.
I suggest the following additions to the "Desktop platforms" section:
In June 2013, AMD introduced the Elite A-Series Desktop APU codenamed Richland. Elite A-Series APU for desktops powers a diverse range of OEM systems and feature new generations of software and applications that harness the compute power of the 2013 AMD APU product lineup.
I suggest the following additions to the "Embedded systems" section:
In April 2013, AMD introduced the Embedded G-Series System-on-Chip (SOC) platform; a single-chip solution based on the AMD next-generation “Jaguar” CPU architecture and AMD Radeon™ 8000 Series graphics.
In August 2013, AMD announced the Embedded R-Series high-performance computing platform, along with the introduction of a discrete GPU promotional program to provide embedded designers more choices for meeting demanding performance requirements.
In September 2013, AMD announced its plans to bring to market two new high-performance AMD Embedded R-Series processor families: the “Hierofalcon” CPU SoC family based on the ARM Cortex™-A57 architecture and the “Bald Eagle” APU and CPU offering based on the x86 microprocessor architecture codenamed “Steamroller.” The upcoming “Steppe Eagle” APU SoC is designed to provide improved performance while extending the low-power characteristics of the current AMD Embedded G-Series SoC family. In addition, “Adelaar” will bring to market the first discrete GPU based on AMD Graphics Core Next architecture for embedded systems.
I suggest the following additions to the "Other initiatives" section:
• Heterogeneous System Architecture Foundation, founded in 2012 by AMD together with other founders to make it easy to program for parallel computing. Other founders include ARM, Imagination, MediaTek, Qualcomm, Samsung and Texas Instruments.
I suggest the following edit to the opening para of the "Production and fabrication" section since AMD actively uses not one but two foundry partners - GlobalFoundries and TSMC:
Today, GlobalFoundries and the Tawain Semiconductor Manufacturing Company are responsible for producing AMD's processors.
I suggest the following add to the "Events and publications" section:
AMD also holds an an annual developer summit, with the most current event called APU13, attended by developers,customers, partners and thought leaders from across the globe.
===========
Hi everyone,
I am writing on behalf of AMD. We would like to update several sections of our Wikipedia page as the information is out of date. Would everyone be OK if I added content to the page? Specifically, I would like to add information about our new notebook and desktop platforms, as well as our new Radeon graphics cards. Of course all additions will be neutral in tone and will simply help to make the AMD page more comprehensive and current. Please let me know if anyone has issues or concerns.
Also, I've changed my user name to Micro Devices, as I was told that my initial user name AMD Fusion, was not in accordance with the user name policy. Hope this one works better!
Thanks!
Micro Devices (talk) 18:30, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
- Hi Sierra. Just be sure you've read WP:COI. If editors find repeated problems with your edits on the page, please be gracious enough to recuse yourself. Best of luck! carl bunderson (talk) (contributions) 18:17, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
- Hi Sierra, as long as it's going to be a neutral point of view and abiding Wikipedia's rules, there shouldn't be any problems editing the page and add new and relevant information on the page. Cncxbox (talk) 01:54, 4 September 2009 (UTC)
Hi Sierra,..just a few things. Please request consensus prior to removing items from the article incase they can be relocated rather then deleted. Its generally better to update and source the current status rather then delete the items completely. Also, please source any changes you make, I reverted some if your edits today because they were unsourced and unfortunatly... I claim to be an AMD PR rep and have a username resembling amd are not considered to be valid sources. please link the actual newsreleases etc so that the community can verify your edits as we do for everyone else. also, Original research is not allowed. thanks -Tracer9999 (talk) 03:29, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
Hi Tracer9999, Thanks for your advice and guidance. I apologize for the edits I made last week to the AMD entry, as I now realize that I did not go about making these edits in the correct way. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Moving forward, I will not make edits to AMD-related pages, but rather suggest changes (as well as provide valid sources for each edit) in the discussion pages and then ask that the community make the actual edits if they agree with what I've suggested. Best, Micro Devices (talk) 21:36, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
Please provide sourcing. --JustBerry (talk) 22:16, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
Is percent ownership of Spansion still accurate?
The 8.6% AMD ownership of Spansion was added in 2010 per then-current documents, but that was 4 years ago. A court document filed in 2013 states that "AMD has no current ownership interest in Spansion" (page 3): [7]. Don't know (and can't readily find) what happened in the meantime, but this would imply that the article lede is incorrect. Anyone? Softlavender (talk) 04:42, 16 July 2014 (UTC)
Removed section formerly called "Notes"
I removed the following section from the article, as it does not follow any standard Wikipedia style, and its function and meaning is unclear. It had a section heading called "Notes". The commented-out hidden message preceding it said: "Please discuss, integrate into article or remove if not used in this article. To generate references, try this tool: http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/makeref.php".
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x86-64 is a scam
We need to know about their conspiracy with Micro$$$oft . 64-bits just gratuitously breaks backward compatibility and perpetuates the world's least elegant architecture. AMD Sucks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.131.136.147 (talk) 02:19, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
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Radeon Technologies Group
Should Radeon Technologies Group have it's own page? Or, as it is not an independent company and just a division of AMD, should it just be included on AMD's page? Or could even the Radeon page be renamed to Radeon Technologies Group? Pasclaris (talk) 18:06, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
- I think it should have its own entry, but a small section in this article is fine (with one of those 'further' links). I don't think it should be renamed though, it's the most common name for the GPU brand, so that article should reflect that, just as Intel isn't using the full name of Intel Corporation. HempFan (talk) 18:13, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
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Is AMB a semiconductor company?
Lead says "semiconductor company" linking to semiconductor industry. Yes, it was, now is fabless, and maybe that is also considered a semi company, just that the link is to ranking of companies, and I believe AMD is no longer considered, and could then never appear on the list there. comp.arch (talk) 09:41, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
- I see now I may have it backwards, AMD is considered, but foundries e.g. GlobalFoundries are not[8].
Embedded Graphics also here?
See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices#Embedded_graphics — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:810B:C53F:B9E8:C5DC:13CF:6B25:E20B (talk) 14:20, 28 January 2017 (UTC)
CPU Cleanup Needed
Some CPU lines replaced others. Further, some CPU lines have been discontinued. Please point these out accordingly & have the template box up to date. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.140.208.59 (talk) 04:01, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
Organization and cleanup
Hi all, I'd like to clean up this article and have a few ideas. Any input before I get started would be greatly appreciated. I will try to incorporate the other notes here on the talk page not already addressed.
- It seems like AMD's discrete GPU business deserves its own second level section rather than falling under 'Other products and technologies' as this is a major part of their business.
- Platforms should be organized into their own sub-level as this is a reasonably specific topic.
- A specific discussion of the 'semi-custom' business that is a major revenue stream for the company.
- The 'Embedded graphics' table should be moved to a more appropriate list/table article. This is pretty detailed data on a single product line for an article about the business as a whole.
- Technologies are scattered within the article and should be organized into a single section.
- More detailed sub-levels in history.
- Updates as appropriate.
I have no intention of deleting any content, mostly moving content within the article (and perhaps moving specific detailed information to other articles). Dbsseven (talk) 20:32, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
- Relatedly, is there any consensus on how to determine if a product is discontinued? It seems to me we can be reasonably confident the K5, K6 (and others) are discontinued. But companies don't generally announce when a product is no longer produced, only when production begins. Any thoughts? Dbsseven (talk) 20:33, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
- Okay since no-one piped up I am giving this a try. Some notes, I have tried to keep everything that was already in the article there only clean up. Except, I have removed the platforms section (very out of date and a constantly moving target) and the embedded graphics table (moving to a more appropriate page). I have tried to keep the text as prose rather than bullet points where it made sense. I have also added detail and cites to much of the article.
- I realize this is a major change. Please leave your comments here. I am sure there is still work to be done but I believe/hope this is an improvement over the previous version. Best. Dbsseven (talk) 19:23, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
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security vulnerabilities
@Objective3000: I see you have reverted my recent edits about the 2018 security vulnerabilities. I do not see why. You state "revisionist history" but I do not see how that is the case. Dbsseven (talk) 15:39, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- AMD clearly suggested that Spectre would not affect its processors and that it was an Intel problem, resulting in large moves in both Intel and AMD stock. Numerous articles appeared on how datacenters were thinking of switching from Intel and that this was a huge setback for Intel. Spectre wasn’t even mentioned in this article. Yesterday’s admission that Spectre affects virtually all of AMD’s chips for the last 15 years is a dramatic reversal. And the Intel article still makes the discredited performance claim of 30%, while this article makes no such ludicrous claims. O3000 (talk) 15:45, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- Objective3000 Your position of a reversal is in opposition to the cited source which states: "AMD's initial statement last week said, in part, that "AMD is not susceptible to all three variants." In other words, some of AMD's chips are vulnerable to two flaws -- just not all three." (And AMD's risk to Spectre is found in earlier sources too [9]) None of the cited sources state AMD "suggested" it was invulnerable to Spectre, or that this was a reversal of AMD's position. (Though it is a clarification of it's response.) As for datacenters switching to AMD, please provide a source because it is not in the cited sources. (And as we discussed before on the Intel talk page, stock pricing has nothing to do with WP or editorial policy.) Dbsseven (talk) 16:03, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- This is simply not true.
On Tuesday the Register suggested that the flaw did not impact AMD's chips but instead primarily impacted chips from Intel.
One of the many reasons I don’t like The Register as a source. But, this narrative was widely reported and AMD fell silent until yesterday when they reversed course. Numerous articles talked about the opportunity of the AMD CEO to take advantage of the "Intel flaw". Spectre comprises two of the three vulnerabilities, and is the most difficult to deal with as well as resulting in the largest performance hit. Spectre is also the only one that requires microcode changes. Until yesterday, AMD said nothing about a need for AMD microcode changes. I certainly don’t mean to cast aspersions – but an outsider reading these articles will come to the conclusion that we are downplaying the effect on AMD and exaggerating the effect on Intel. [10], [11]- Again, I do not see any source stating "reversal" (WP:PROVEIT). The Register is not cited here, nor has any credible source stated that The Register/CNBC speaks for AMD. AMD continues to state they are less at risk from Spectre: "AMD’s processor architectures make it difficult to exploit Variant 2" (the one where they're releasing microcode). Therefore, an assertion of a "reversal" is OR without a cite. That AMD "not speaking" was tacit approval of the narrative is without a source also (and may be mistaken). (And I would disagree that AMD didn't speak, sources clearly state they did, though the sources also state they should have been clearer [12]) Ptu another way: We need to be clear about what AMD said, and what was said about AMD. Dbsseven (talk) 16:38, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- If we want to include a discuss of market position/competition, that is reasonable, but that should be independent of AMD's risk to this vulnerability. Dbsseven (talk) 16:41, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- The market changes are due to the changes in AMD's position.
AMD rebukes Intel, says flaw poses 'near-zero risk' to its chips.
[13] The claim just wasn’t true. As for the claim that it might be more difficult exploit Variant 2, so what? It must still be fixed by both software and microcode updates and will still impact performance. Spectre affects Intel, AMD and others. AMD did not admit the scope of the problem until yesterday. [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] O3000 (talk) 16:50, 12 January 2018 (UTC)- We must be clear about what AMD said versus what was said about AMD. Multiple of the source you cite there state "AMD said there was “no change” to its position on the susceptibility of its chips" and "...investors believed..." Again, clarification versus reversal. Dbsseven (talk) 16:59, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- Yes, AMD claimed there was no change in position. The sources I provided said there was a change in position. O3000 (talk) 17:06, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- I do not see a conflict between what AMD said then and now. Zero is not the same as near zero. Can we agree on that? (Similarly, I would assert that saying nothing is not the same as saying "we don't need to do anything".) Dbsseven (talk) 17:19, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- We need a consensus on language: Are we to discuss in this article about what AMD said, or what was said about AMD? (And if AMD "implied" something an explicit source is needed. I don't see how we can cite AMD not saying anything). Dbsseven (talk) 17:19, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- Yes, AMD claimed there was no change in position. The sources I provided said there was a change in position. O3000 (talk) 17:06, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- And this section is about security flaws, not market position. That is a fine discussion to have, but probably not in this section and runs the risk of WP:TOOSOON (just as discussing Intel losing market share would be too soon that page). Dbsseven (talk) 17:03, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- I have said nothing about adding any discussion of markets. O3000 (talk) 17:06, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- Perhaps I am mistaken, but if it's not relevant why is it brought up? "large moves in both Intel and AMD stock", "...opportunity of the AMD CEO to take advantage...", "Numerous articles appeared on how datacenters were thinking of switching from Intel and that this was a huge setback for Intel" Dbsseven (talk) 17:12, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- I have said nothing about adding any discussion of markets. O3000 (talk) 17:06, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- We must be clear about what AMD said versus what was said about AMD. Multiple of the source you cite there state "AMD said there was “no change” to its position on the susceptibility of its chips" and "...investors believed..." Again, clarification versus reversal. Dbsseven (talk) 16:59, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- The market changes are due to the changes in AMD's position.
- This is simply not true.
- And if you'd like to discuss Intel's performance I am happy to discuss it on the Intel talk page as there are a number of new and reputable sources discussing performance impacts. Dbsseven (talk) 16:10, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- As for Intel, just dump the 30% number. The Register should not be used as a source. O3000 (talk) 16:13, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- Objective3000 Your position of a reversal is in opposition to the cited source which states: "AMD's initial statement last week said, in part, that "AMD is not susceptible to all three variants." In other words, some of AMD's chips are vulnerable to two flaws -- just not all three." (And AMD's risk to Spectre is found in earlier sources too [9]) None of the cited sources state AMD "suggested" it was invulnerable to Spectre, or that this was a reversal of AMD's position. (Though it is a clarification of it's response.) As for datacenters switching to AMD, please provide a source because it is not in the cited sources. (And as we discussed before on the Intel talk page, stock pricing has nothing to do with WP or editorial policy.) Dbsseven (talk) 16:03, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
Please stop separating one discussion into three. I bring up the market impact NOT because I want this included in the article; but because I do not want Wikipedia to be part of the incorrect messages that have caused market swings. And because it is caused by WP:RECENTISM in the press. I have warned about RECENTISM from the very start of this subject. We avoid recentism to avoid making false statements in WP. So, let's get the articles back on track. The changes you made to this article tend to downplay the effect on AMD chips by removing the useful list of chips and repeating their older claim that effects would be minimal. A claim made when they said there was a near-zero impact. Changing the microcode on all of their chips and requiring OS changes to numerous versions of Windows and Linux is not near-zero. OTOH, the Intel article still contains the ludicrous 30% claim that should never have been allowed. So, we state Intel is up to 30% impact and AMD near-zero. This is false and makes us look biased. What I added to this article is what happened. O3000 (talk) 17:32, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- Thank you for explaining why you keep bringing up the market. However, I believe the current version over-emphasizes a contradiction in what was said about AMD, rather than what AMD stated. (The "near zero" was only in reference to Spectre 2. Form all sources I have found AMD's Spectre 1 solution was always OS patches.) Therefore I propose the following text: "While AMD initially stated architectural differences would result in less risk to its chips, they later announced that software and microcode updates would be made available to further mitigate against these flaws." As for an impact of the AMD fixes, that will require a cite. (As for my writing style on talk pages, I believe it was in keeping with WP:INDENT) Dbsseven (talk) 18:25, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- We need to talk more to what RS say, not what AMD says. I gave six sources that say AMD changed its position. Of course, they said this in respect to AMD stock as they are financial sources. We shouldn’t talk about the stock prices. But, we should say they changed position. I don’t see any evidence that the microcode and software changes “further mitigate” the problem. They solve a problem that had to be solved. There is no reason to believe the problem is any more or less a problem than Intel’s. AMD is still mum about effects. Intel has discussed, to some degree, effects on various OS and chip families. Intel needs to do more along these lines as it would be difficult for a third party. AMD has said nothing about performance effects beyond its original, incorrect statement. O3000 (talk) 18:42, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- "There is no reason to believe the problem is any more or less a problem than Intel’s." this is original research without a cite and contradicts cited/citable sources. For example: If Intel had 100% risk and AMD had 1% risk, AMD and Intel releasing fixes to produce 0% risk does not make AMD's original position incorrect. (Even if AMD realized it originally had 5% risk.) We cannot assume equivalent risk without a cite, and technology publications/cites do not support this. [20][21][22] Dbsseven (talk) 18:57, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- And we cannot discuss impact without a cite (this screams our previous Intel discussion of WP:RECENTISM) Dbsseven (talk) 18:59, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- Proposed consensus language: While AMD initially stated architectural differences would result in less risk to its chips, they later announced that software and microcode updates would be necessary to further mitigate against these flaws. Dbsseven (talk) 19:01, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- Sorry, how can saying we have no reason to believe the problem is more or less different OR? It’s the opposite of OR. I’m saying we can’t make this claim. And of course we shouldn’t talk about impact quantitatively with AMD since they haven’t said anything. And there is no way we should assume that it is less than the effects on Intel chips. This is my problem with the Intel article. It contains a made up number that The Register attributed to an anonymous source. I am opposed to your changes. We have NO reason to believe there was any initial mitigation. That was a prior claim by AMD. AMD reversed its position and there exists no third party evidence that the effect on AMD and Intel chips is any different. Perhaps there is a different impact. But, we have zero AMD benchmarks from any source. We don’t even know if they know as they only say that they plan to make changes. It doesn’t appear that they have solved the problem as of yesterday’s announcement. O3000 (talk) 19:31, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- AMD is currently making the claim that it's architecture is low risk.[23][24][25] AMD is a citable source, even if one would prefer an external source to confirm. (And editor saying they have significant or equivalent risk is definitely NOT a citable source.) And a reversal would require them to have stated they have no risk, something they didn't do and reiterated in the latest sources.[26] Dbsseven (talk) 19:37, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- I did not say they are equivalent. All of the affected architectures are low risk as Spectre II is extremely difficult to hack.(No reports of hacks in 15 years and a billion chips.) I am not the one making any claims about effects on AMD chips. I don’t know the performance effect and am opposed to any such mention or suggestion that the effect on AMD chips is any more or less than Intel chips as no one is making this claim at this point. We must not make the mistake made in the Intel article of publishing assumptions that were bound to change. AMD’s initial statement suggested that no vulnerability had been demonstrated on AMD processors and they would probably not need to take any action. And, they promised no action. And that’s why RS focused on Intel, which had admitted the problem. Only eight days later did AMD admit vulnerability and say they were taking actions -- and RS reacted. I provided a half-dozen sources stating that AMD changed their position yesterday. O3000 (talk) 20:03, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- "I did not say they are equivalent." -> "There is no reason to believe the problem is any more or less a problem than Intel’s." ?! Dbsseven (talk) 20:19, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- Please stop bringing up performance. We agree, it should not be discussed yet. Dbsseven (talk) 20:24, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- So don't say "further mitigate". That indicates there is already mitigation. It suggests a performance impact difference betwixt Intel and AMD chips. The words have no other purpose. O3000 (talk) 20:27, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- It says nothing about performance, relative or otherwise. It addresses risk (And the already present mitigation is AMD's microarchitecture, according to them.) From AMD's site: "While we believe that AMD’s processor architectures make it difficult to exploit... further mitigate the threat" Dbsseven (talk) 20:32, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- So don't say "further mitigate". That indicates there is already mitigation. It suggests a performance impact difference betwixt Intel and AMD chips. The words have no other purpose. O3000 (talk) 20:27, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- I did not say they are equivalent. All of the affected architectures are low risk as Spectre II is extremely difficult to hack.(No reports of hacks in 15 years and a billion chips.) I am not the one making any claims about effects on AMD chips. I don’t know the performance effect and am opposed to any such mention or suggestion that the effect on AMD chips is any more or less than Intel chips as no one is making this claim at this point. We must not make the mistake made in the Intel article of publishing assumptions that were bound to change. AMD’s initial statement suggested that no vulnerability had been demonstrated on AMD processors and they would probably not need to take any action. And, they promised no action. And that’s why RS focused on Intel, which had admitted the problem. Only eight days later did AMD admit vulnerability and say they were taking actions -- and RS reacted. I provided a half-dozen sources stating that AMD changed their position yesterday. O3000 (talk) 20:03, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- AMD is currently making the claim that it's architecture is low risk.[23][24][25] AMD is a citable source, even if one would prefer an external source to confirm. (And editor saying they have significant or equivalent risk is definitely NOT a citable source.) And a reversal would require them to have stated they have no risk, something they didn't do and reiterated in the latest sources.[26] Dbsseven (talk) 19:37, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- Sorry, how can saying we have no reason to believe the problem is more or less different OR? It’s the opposite of OR. I’m saying we can’t make this claim. And of course we shouldn’t talk about impact quantitatively with AMD since they haven’t said anything. And there is no way we should assume that it is less than the effects on Intel chips. This is my problem with the Intel article. It contains a made up number that The Register attributed to an anonymous source. I am opposed to your changes. We have NO reason to believe there was any initial mitigation. That was a prior claim by AMD. AMD reversed its position and there exists no third party evidence that the effect on AMD and Intel chips is any different. Perhaps there is a different impact. But, we have zero AMD benchmarks from any source. We don’t even know if they know as they only say that they plan to make changes. It doesn’t appear that they have solved the problem as of yesterday’s announcement. O3000 (talk) 19:31, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- We need to talk more to what RS say, not what AMD says. I gave six sources that say AMD changed its position. Of course, they said this in respect to AMD stock as they are financial sources. We shouldn’t talk about the stock prices. But, we should say they changed position. I don’t see any evidence that the microcode and software changes “further mitigate” the problem. They solve a problem that had to be solved. There is no reason to believe the problem is any more or less a problem than Intel’s. AMD is still mum about effects. Intel has discussed, to some degree, effects on various OS and chip families. Intel needs to do more along these lines as it would be difficult for a third party. AMD has said nothing about performance effects beyond its original, incorrect statement. O3000 (talk) 18:42, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
try again consensus
Okay Objective3000 I'd like to try again. Starting from the current text I have three larger and one minor thought. Larger:
- I strongly disagree with "reversed" as it not AMD that was reversed, but what was said about AMD's products. Either we should replace the word or, state "AMD said... while commentors stated/believed/assumed...".
- I think the “near zero” quote should be removed. This only ever applied to Spectre 2, and is an incomplete view of AMD's position.
- I also believe it worth noting that AMD stated their products' microarchitecture makes this attack difficult.
Minor:
- Listing the affected products is un-necessary and extraneous. A better descriptor, such as is used in the Intel article (by date range) would be better.
- I will let you propose consensus language, as I have tried previously. Dbsseven (talk) 20:47, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- AMD changed their position. This is important as some readers may have only seen the original position
- Spectre 2 is the difficult one to fix. Near-zero was what AMD said and RS repeated.
- Intel’s microarchitecture is also extremely difficult to attack in this manner. 15 years and a billion chips without an attack. Also, AMD made the statement before they changed their position.
- We don’t have a source for a date range, and might be dates of manufacture, not sale. We have a source for affected chips – which may be of interest to AMD users. O3000 (talk) 21:02, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- Please provide evidence AMD changed their position. I have searched all the cites provided, none say "reversed". One clearly states "AMD clarified that it never said its chips were not susceptible to variant 2"[27] Journalists/commentators/investors may have assumed that this but there is no cite for AMD taking this position. (A number of the cites note this fact.) AMD only said "near zero", not "zero".
- As for the "near zero" quote, then it needs to be clearly stated that this was only for Spectre 2. Otherwise this is unclear and misleading.
- And why bring up Intel? That is irrelevant here. ("Pepsi is a popular cola" cannot be included excluded simply because Coke is popular too.) (talk) 21:11, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- AGAIN, I provided six sources that say AMD changed its position. And you were the one that brought up Intel. This is boring. The absurd, incorrect, 30%, scary as Hell number was forced into the Intel article and you look like you're trying to whitewash AMD's problems and responses in this article. Intel and AMD BOTH have major flaws with the same dangerous effect. Let's not dump on one and act as apologists for the other. O3000 (talk) 21:23, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- Please, no personal attacks. I am not suggesting dump or whitewash anything. But I am saying we should be precise. None of the sources say "reverse". Some say "admits", that AMD argues this is "no change", and that "investors believed AMD’s chips were at less risk".
- The position that AMD and Intel's respective flaws' have the "same dangerous effect" is OR without a cite.
- And I have never supported the 30% number and in-fact just proposed to remove it with updated figures, to which you agreed. But (again) that is off topic here. Dbsseven (talk) 21:33, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- The claim AMD and Intel DON'T have the same risks is OR. They both risk exposure of sensitive information. Both companies have now stated this. It's just that Intel was not silly enough to claim near-zero risk. Investors believed AMD had little or no risk because that's what AMD claimed, before reversing themselves. Admit means: "confess to be true or to be the case, typically with reluctance." O3000 (talk) 21:50, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- No, both companies have stated that exploiting Spectre 2 is hard. We do NOT have a source saying the risks (ease of exploiting the flaw) are equal. And I know what "admit" means. But Reverse "to turn in an opposite direction", is not the same as admit. (I have never heard of anyone to reversing their guilt, or driving their car in admit.) I believe AMD already acknowledged their exposure to Spectre 2 when it was announced on Jan 3rd, and is clarifying now. Investors assumed "near zero" was "zero". Again, AMD said yesterday in the sources you cite "no change", and also "AMD clarified that it never said its chips were not susceptible to variant 2". Dbsseven (talk) 22:01, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- Frankly, I don’t understand how you cannot see the total difference between Intel and AMD’s initial reaction. The investors certainly saw it. RS saw it. And when AMD changed course yesterday, RS saw that too. We now know that both are vulnerable to Spectre. That’s the same. The risk is exposure of sensitive data in both cases. Trying to suggest that it’s somehow better for AMD is not acceptable. I find zero sources with such a claim now that AMD has admitted they are vulnerable. I am assuming good faith. But, your reactions to Intel and AMD, along with the fact that you have created several AMD-related articles suggest you may be unwittingly affected by bias in this area. I’m not casting aspersions. I just don’t see any other explanation for your continuing attempt to ignore RS and use wording that suggests AMD chips are somehow safer. No RS makes this claim. O3000 (talk) 22:17, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- Totally inappropriate, this is the second reference to my editorial style and suggesting bias. And "unwittingly affected by bias" is exactly "casting aspersions". No single editor gets to determine what "is not acceptable" or what the facts are. We discuss them here to find consensus. I am trying to discuss facts and have repeatedly proposed compromise language. My interests do not mean bias, as I frequently edit AMD, Intel, and nVidia pages. To accuse me of bias rather than discussing facts is completely over the line. I should not have to defend myself here just because we disagree. Dbsseven (talk) 22:45, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- I am going to begin a new section, state my issues clearly and propose compromise language. I will also ping a number of editors who have an interest in computational topics, inviting them to the discussion. Hopefully more editors will allow us to find consensus. Dbsseven (talk) 22:57, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- As long as it's not WP:CANVASSING. O3000 (talk) 23:26, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- Frankly, I don’t understand how you cannot see the total difference between Intel and AMD’s initial reaction. The investors certainly saw it. RS saw it. And when AMD changed course yesterday, RS saw that too. We now know that both are vulnerable to Spectre. That’s the same. The risk is exposure of sensitive data in both cases. Trying to suggest that it’s somehow better for AMD is not acceptable. I find zero sources with such a claim now that AMD has admitted they are vulnerable. I am assuming good faith. But, your reactions to Intel and AMD, along with the fact that you have created several AMD-related articles suggest you may be unwittingly affected by bias in this area. I’m not casting aspersions. I just don’t see any other explanation for your continuing attempt to ignore RS and use wording that suggests AMD chips are somehow safer. No RS makes this claim. O3000 (talk) 22:17, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- No, both companies have stated that exploiting Spectre 2 is hard. We do NOT have a source saying the risks (ease of exploiting the flaw) are equal. And I know what "admit" means. But Reverse "to turn in an opposite direction", is not the same as admit. (I have never heard of anyone to reversing their guilt, or driving their car in admit.) I believe AMD already acknowledged their exposure to Spectre 2 when it was announced on Jan 3rd, and is clarifying now. Investors assumed "near zero" was "zero". Again, AMD said yesterday in the sources you cite "no change", and also "AMD clarified that it never said its chips were not susceptible to variant 2". Dbsseven (talk) 22:01, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- The claim AMD and Intel DON'T have the same risks is OR. They both risk exposure of sensitive information. Both companies have now stated this. It's just that Intel was not silly enough to claim near-zero risk. Investors believed AMD had little or no risk because that's what AMD claimed, before reversing themselves. Admit means: "confess to be true or to be the case, typically with reluctance." O3000 (talk) 21:50, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
- AGAIN, I provided six sources that say AMD changed its position. And you were the one that brought up Intel. This is boring. The absurd, incorrect, 30%, scary as Hell number was forced into the Intel article and you look like you're trying to whitewash AMD's problems and responses in this article. Intel and AMD BOTH have major flaws with the same dangerous effect. Let's not dump on one and act as apologists for the other. O3000 (talk) 21:23, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
Community consensus on Spectre language
Okay, so I am trying to find consensus on the language for AMD's exposure to the Spectre vulnerability. I am pinging some other editors interested in computational projects to get additional outside voices. (@DSmurf:, @Ajfweb:, @Intgr:, @Peter K Burian:, @Sbmeirow:, @Wikiinger:)
The current language is:
In early January 2018, it was reported that AMD processors are subject to the two variants of the security flaw dubbed Spectre. The announcement reversed an earlier statement that there would be “near zero” impact on its chips. The older AMD Opteron, Athlon and AMD Turion X2 Ultra families as well as RYZEN and EPYC chips are affected. AMD announced that software and microcode updates would be made available to provide protection against these flaws. The impact on performance resulting from these patches is unknown. GPUs are not affected.
My concerns are:
- I think the “near zero” quote should be removed or clarified
- This only ever applied to Spectre v2, and is an incomplete/misleading description of AMD's statements.
- I strongly disagree with "reversed"
- As I have read the primary and secondary sources, AMD stated the risk was "near zero", but never "zero". AMD's exposure can be found in cites from the beginning [28][29], and reiterated recently.[30] The recent acknowledgement of further mitigation does not conflict with this.[31][32][33][34] And while "admit" in the headlines is florid, the content of the articles do not support a reversal of position. Rather AMD states in many there has been "no change" in it's position and "never said its chips were not susceptible".
- The recent sources, particularly financial, often note that "investors believed AMD’s chips were at less risk". But this was not AMD's stated position, and investors beliefs are not encyclopedic/citable IMO. If we are to discuss other's beliefs, we should be clear who said what with "AMD said... while commentors/investors may have stated/believed/assumed..."
- I also believe it worth noting that AMD continues to state their microarchitecture makes a Spectre v2 based attack difficult.[35]
I realize this is nuanced; but I believe we should be clear in what AMD said, and what was said about AMD. More generally, I believe we should focus on high quality sources, in particular in regards to financial versus technical journalistic sources.
I propose the following language:
In early January 2018, it was reported that AMD processors are subject to the two variants of the security flaw dubbed Spectre. AMD initially stated that Spectre 1 would be addressed in OS patches, while AMD's microarchitecture would resulted in a "near zero risk of exploitation" with Spectre 2. AMD later acknowledged that software and microcode updates would be necessary to further mitigate the threat of Spectre 2. The impact on performance resulting from these patches is unknown. GPUs are not affected.
Thoughts? Dbsseven (talk) 00:11, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
- You state that we should remove the near zero quote – and then suggest we use it in your proposed language.
- You state that it was not AMD’s position that their chips were less at risk, when that was their exact position.
- AMD clearly, substantially changed their position. This is widely reported in RS. Chose a different word if you wish.
- Yes, we all know a Spectre 2 attack is difficult. But, it is difficult in implementations by Intel, ARM, and Qualcomm also. We have no secondary sources attesting to the claim that AMD is any less vulnerable. We only have self-serving statements from a primary source that appears to have been less than forthcoming about the issues. Further, this is meaningless. The fact is that all of these implementations are vulnerable. So, they all have to be fixed. Either you have a security flaw or you don’t. Any security flaw must be repaired. None of them is easy to hack – as suggested by the fact that there have been no reported problems in 15 years and one billion devices. This is weasely.
- Yes, we need to focus on high-quality sources. Bit financial and tech sites both have RS issues. One group is no better than the other in general.
- You continue to use the words: “further mitigate”. Mitigate means make less severe. One would hope they are eliminating the problem, not mitigating it.
- For some reason, you insist on removing the list of affected processors. This is sourced and of immediate concern to many readers. O3000 (talk) 01:34, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
- Further mitigate is appropriate as AMD already states this exploit is hard. That makes this a FURTHER mitigation. (Having a door-lock and stating it can be improved is NOT the same as stating the door was wide open.)
- Mitigate is the correct and common term in the field for fixing this vulnerability.[36][37]
- The discussion of relative risk across manufacturers is not proposed here and off topic (straw man argument). We do not have a cite of how difficult this exploit is across manufacturers; therefore we cannot assume it is the same. (In fact: as this is exploit reads the cache and cache sizes vary, I doubt the risk is he same. But this is my own OR)
- ”None of them is easy to hack – as suggested by the fact that there have been no reported problems in 15 years and one billion devices” this is OR without a cite and a logical fallacy. The absence of proof is NOT the proof of absence.
- The remaining issue of what AMD said, we appear to fundamentally disagree on. I have not seen a source where AMD said “zero” risk. At some point I think there at least needs to be consensus that “zero” and “near zero” are NOT the same thing (IMO anyway, but I’m pretty sure my math is correct).
- you are correct about my proposed language and near zero. Clarifying my own comment Dbsseven (talk) 17:49, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
- No, I am not performing OR. I am using RS. Everything I have said comes from RS. You simply refuse to admit RS state what they state. RS state that Spectre is very difficult to hack, for ALL chips affected. And, I am not the one that wants to edit the Intel and AMD articles in a manner that suggests AMD had less risk. You continue to insist on language in the two articles that favors one manufacturer. (The same manufacturer for which you have added several articles.) AMD said that there was near-zero risk – and then admitted they were wrong eight days later. That’s what RS say. I listed a half-dozen RS that say AMD changed their position. And it only took me one minute to find them as AMD’s admission was dramatic. Further, I still fail to see any reason to remove the list of affected processor families. It is documented by RS and of importance to many readers. Look, this is an easy edit. You just state what RS state. O3000 (talk) 18:18, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
- please, for the third time: No personal attacks. Accuracy or interest are not bias. Please stop suggesting bias without providing evidence to ANI.
- I would suggest reviewing WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV. The reliable sources you cite say AMD stated “no change”. Other recent RS have said “AMD's initial statement last week said, in part, that "AMD is not susceptible to all three variants." In other words, some of AMD's chips are vulnerable to two flaws -- just not all three.” (Entire quote from source, including them quoting AMD) Please provide a cite that says “reversed”, I have searched and not found it. The inclusion of “some outside commentators viewed this as an admission that...”, that would be accurate and could be done in keeping with WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV.
- Again, there is no mention of or comparison to Intel/ARM/others in the proposed language. (And I don’t care about the list, I think it could be done neater but whatever.) Dbsseven (talk) 19:21, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
I don't have time to read all the debates but here's what the Reuters News agency said 2 days ago. And that is a very solid sourcce:
AMD on Jan. 3 also said that its chips were vulnerable to one variant of the Spectre bug, but there was “near zero risk” from the second Spectre variant and vulnerability to the second variant “has not been demonstrated on AMD processors to date.”
In Thursday’s statement, however, AMD said the second Spectre variant “is applicable to AMD” processors and that it would issue patches for its Ryzen and EPYC processors starting this week and older chips in the coming weeks. "While we believe that AMD's processor architectures make it difficult to exploit Variant 2, we continue to work closely with the industry on this threat," Chief Technology Officer Mark Papermaster wrote in a blog post on Thursday wrote. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-batteries/house-republicans-want-answers-on-apple-throttling-older-iphone-speeds-letter-idUSKBN1F12OY
Peter K Burian (talk) 20:51, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
- P.S. On the Intel article, most of the fully-cited content that reflected negatively on Intel was deleted. IMHO, the discussion of the security flaws in that article are a whitewash. Not sure if that applies to this article.
- See the Talk topic at Intel: Let's discuss Security Flaw section
- User:Dbsseven tried to find consensus and he rewrote the content about the flaws, but -- in an attempt to satisfy everyone -- that compromise still omitted most of the content that reflected poorly on Intel. At least that was my perspective as to what happened. Peter K Burian (talk) 20:52, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
- If by “whitewash” you mean your desire to add to the Intel article a suggestion that the Intel CEO had committed a federal crime, that’s a serious BLP issue. If he’s charged, it will be added. O3000 (talk) 21:35, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
Dbsseven, what is your problem with the edit you just removed? It was taken directly from the main article on this subject. Further, it removed the text that you keep complaining about. O3000 (talk) 23:18, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
- Reading the cites, the sentences: "However, AMD later stated that their processors were affected by both variants of Spectre." and "Later reports also noted AMD problems with the security vulnerabilities." refer to the same facts/events. I would suggest one should be removed. Dbsseven (talk) 16:30, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
- I copied these from the Spectre article. I assume they included the two sentences because they refer to different problems. The first sentence refers to the fact that AMD requires microcode and software changes. The second sentence cites a source that talks to the problems Opteron, Athlon and AMD Turion X2 CPUs are currently having with Microsoft fixes. That is, the first sentence talks to protection against future hacking while the second also talks about problems presently affecting users with some AMD chips. I think we should keep the articles synced since that is the main article dealing with this section. O3000 (talk) 17:02, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
- Keeping the articles synched is fine. And if the purpose of the second sentence is to note problems with the update rather than the vulnerability, it is not at all clear. (Also, Intel is having similar problems, so both should be noted on the Spectre page if this is the purpose. [38].) But we should keep WP:RECENTISM in mind, as these sorts of bugs are common in rushed out fixes and not necessarily encyclopedic (IMO).Dbsseven (talk) 17:22, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
- I copied these from the Spectre article. I assume they included the two sentences because they refer to different problems. The first sentence refers to the fact that AMD requires microcode and software changes. The second sentence cites a source that talks to the problems Opteron, Athlon and AMD Turion X2 CPUs are currently having with Microsoft fixes. That is, the first sentence talks to protection against future hacking while the second also talks about problems presently affecting users with some AMD chips. I think we should keep the articles synced since that is the main article dealing with this section. O3000 (talk) 17:02, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
Intel’s 1999 shenanigans against Athlon motherboard manufacturers somehow missing?
An important thing that should be mentioned (e.g. in the litigation section), is that when the Athlon came out, Intel told all motherboard manufacturers that bought Intel chipsets that if they would build even a single Athlon motherboard, Intel would stop selling them Intel chipsets. Which, given the dominance of Intel at the time, would quickly bankrupt them. … I bought an Athlon 800 back then, and remember the impossibility of buying a motherboard, and the monthly news regarding the topic in computer magazines. Only four little-known manufacturers actually sold Athlon motherboard in Germany. Three of them went bankrupt as a result. Including the one I had bought from. … I feel like this is an extremely important thing, that should not be missing from this article. I just am struggling with my health currently, and have little energy to research this to a level that will not be instantly wiped out by the deletion squad (which will definitely include Intel employees, so beware). … @Anyone who has sources (I remember PC Professionell and c’t in Germany definitely having articles about this), please add a section to the article. … — 2A0A:A540:B567:0:8C2D:F09D:8578:BEBB (talk) 23:25, 21 September 2018 (UTC)
Similarly named American Micro Devices
Does anyone have any history of the Minnesota company American Micro Devices founded 1964 and wound up in 1991? Many of the Google hits I get confuse American with Advanced, but there's one site with an old stock certificate that shows this other company existed. --Wtshymanski (talk) 18:21, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
Listed headquarters order?
As AMD's Austin, Texas headquarters continues to take staff, money, focus/importantance, etc... (all C-level executives & major R&D efforts have been in Austin for years now, for ex) away from AMD's original Silicon Valley, California headquarters in Santa Clara, I'm starting to wonder if Austin's the headquarters location that should be listed first (for example, so that it's the city that's listed on Google as AMD's headquarters location when searched, rather than the ever shrinking in size & importance, Santa Clara site). Cooe (talk) 00:57, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
Source
Can someone check sources for this page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by TechmanACE (talk • contribs) 23:23, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 12:52, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
This Article Needs a Great Deal of Work
Sadly, this 8800-word article is so deep in the technical weeds that the reader gets no overall understanding of the purpose, history, politics, finances or flow of this company. To be honest, it's hard to figure out if the company even still exists or not, much less its role in the industry and the history of microprocessing. The technicalities of products and processes should be pushed far down (if not also radically shortened) so that a normal business history of the company can be placed at the top. Peterjharnik (talk) 02:13, 16 March 2020 (UTC)PeterJHarnik
- Fully concur that this article is overly technical. I think the main problem is that relatively few people use AMD products any more, so there just aren't enough Wikipedia editors who have any amount of passion for the company to fix this mess. --Coolcaesar (talk) 05:12, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
- Note that
relatively few people use AMD products any more
is increasingly false, AMD's market share is steadily growing for the last few years. They aren't yet well represented in the pre-built/laptop segments but in enthusiast computers they're already the market leader by sales volume by a wide margin [39] [40] - I don't think it's difficult to figure out "if the company even still exists or not" from the article, given that revenue, income, assets etc are all growing.
- Such "this article is crap" posts hardly ever do anything to improve the situation. There is zero constructive value in the original post. I suggest instead of complaining, invest your time into making even small improvements. -- intgr [talk] 10:10, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
- Well, that's the problem. No one is interested in investing their valuable time in fixing this article because no one cares enough about AMD, let alone any Wikipedia editors. The company simply doesn't inspire the same passion among its small user base as Intel does among its users, because AMD never came up with a catchy slogan like Intel Inside. There's no sign of Weird Al Yankovic or other musicians and artists going out of their way to name drop AMD products, like Weird Al did with It's All About the Pentiums. --Coolcaesar (talk) 19:33, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
- Wikipedia is now about only improving the articles about popular things and about the companies you personally prefer ? TIL. AMD has nearly 80% market share in enthusiast audiences and has had growing market share in other segments for many quarters. Not-enough-failures (talk) 03:48, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
- Yes, that's always been the way Wikipedia works. That's how we ended up with detailed individual articles on every episode of Game of Thrones but the article on Equity (law) is still a giant train wreck because all the people out there with the training, knowledge, experience, and writing skills to clean it up are too busy trying to earn tenure as legal professors or are working as lawyers on real-world legal problems for paying clients. And when they turn to Wikipedia to blow off steam, they prefer to work on nonlegal topics like TV shows. That's the way volunteer projects work in general. Whatever the volunteers love moves forward. Whatever they don't care about doesn't.
- If those alleged AMD enthusiasts love the company so much, they would have fixed this article already. --Coolcaesar (talk) 09:50, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
- Well, if you don't care about AMD, and don't like the company, no one, absolutely no one is forcing you to contribute to the article :) Isn't the free world great ? Now, if we want to contribute, I'm sure you see no problem in us doing so. Not-enough-failures (talk) 07:44, 21 March 2020 (UTC)
- Wikipedia is now about only improving the articles about popular things and about the companies you personally prefer ? TIL. AMD has nearly 80% market share in enthusiast audiences and has had growing market share in other segments for many quarters. Not-enough-failures (talk) 03:48, 19 March 2020 (UTC)
- Well, that's the problem. No one is interested in investing their valuable time in fixing this article because no one cares enough about AMD, let alone any Wikipedia editors. The company simply doesn't inspire the same passion among its small user base as Intel does among its users, because AMD never came up with a catchy slogan like Intel Inside. There's no sign of Weird Al Yankovic or other musicians and artists going out of their way to name drop AMD products, like Weird Al did with It's All About the Pentiums. --Coolcaesar (talk) 19:33, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
- Note that
The section on microprocessors is incomplete.
I see here Zen, Zen+ and Zen 3 but not Zen 2. THIS is what not paying attention to detail looks like, this is incomplete and fools people into thinking zen 2 is just a die shrink. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RhebucksOnRyzen (talk • contribs) 19:04, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
Jan 2022
ROCm updated
Hello, I tried to put ROCm in the spotlight overhauling and tweaking various articles. :) There is still a lot of work in the AMD software area... Maxorazon (talk) 15:35, 23 January 2022 (UTC)
GPU presentation
There is a rewrite overdue for the AMD GPU section. Newcomers are currently greeted with history about AMD that really should be in the history section, and instead they should discover easily current product lines. Maxorazon (talk) 02:54, 25 January 2022 (UTC)