KitGuru KitGuru.net – Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards
Without doubt, AMD’s least successful arm in the past has been workstation.
Sure, they have produced interesting products, but the width and depth of nVidia's penetration into this area is truly impressive.
Specific example?
In each of the past 5 years, Hollywood has voted for a special effects Oscar at the Academy Awards, by choosing among 5 contenders.
That’s 25 films in recent history. All of the winners were powered by Quadro, which is logical given that every film that was short-listed used nVidia's platform.
Byrne thinks this is changing.
“In terms of workstation sales, 2013 was a great year for AMD”, he begins. “We were seeing a split around the 90:10 level a couple of years ago, but now AMD has picked up an additional 10% of the market to give us an 80:20 split. We think this trend will continue”.
“To succeed here, you need 5 things”, he said. “Number one is the hardware, closely followed by fully certified software and then you’re ready for number 3, design wins, picking up significant business from serious customers”.
“Extending your success gives you item four, which is having the right people in the right regions and, finally, at number five you need local field application engineers who can provide grass roots support where it's required”, Byrne told us.
“We’re fully committed to doing this”, explained Byrne. “We'll have new hardware, which will have all of the required certifications. You will find more and more systems with FirePro on our customer’s websites”.
“All of this hard work brings momentum which, in turn, leads to better operational efficiency and increased quality all round”.
Speaking with John Byrne it's clear.
Not only does he thoroughly believe that AMD has a winning strategy in place, he is also sure that the organisation is executing on that strategy and that the company, overall, has the financial structure necessary to deliver.
KitGuru says: With more than 100 million APUs in the market already, the launch of Mantle as a new approach to graphics performance, the HSA plans that everyone expects to land soon, brand new FirePro technology launches that started with the W9100 and the ambidextrous strategy that has been tied down with ARM – AMD is clearly leading in a lot of markets. If you focus only on high-end desktop CPUs, then there's no doubting Intel's supremacy. Open up your definition to include other markets and the future certainly looks a lot rosier for AMD that it has done at any point in its recent past. We thank John Byrne for taking the time to speak with KitGuru.
Using a broader definition of ‘the market', do you feel that AMD is leading? Join more than 185,000 fellow KitGuru readers over on Facebook and let us know.
I’m happy that AMD is making a recovery and I wish it good luck, but it’s a pity that desktop enthusiasts don’t see to be part of the roadmap.
AMD get a lot of stick in the CPU sector, but they offer a lot for budget users. I am sure they will get high end processors out again in 2015 to target intel.
Their GPU’s are very strong this year and have caused nvidia some serious embarassment. TITAN Z for instance? it was delayed after they saw the performance of the R9 295X2.
Heres to the future !
R9 295X2 has been the best video card release ever IMO. I can’t afford one, but the value is actually very strong and the performance at Ultra HD 4K is incredible. First watercooled reference card ever 🙂 CPU’s – been a while since I have owned AMD – Intel are just so far ahead. I think AMD did well from console sales on Xbox one and PS4. must have made them billions already.
AMD totally lost the CPU wars, and the gpu war is also on a loosing side. Although 295×2 is a monstrous gpu, it is far too expensive for most people, only enthusiasts with really deep pockets can get one (or more). From my point of view, a PC enthusiast with a relatively small budget, AMD has basically nothing to offer. Intel cpus trample amds to death, and for the same price, an Nvidia gpu will be overall better performance wise. Console-wise speaking, yeah, they kind of won, but that is not enough to keep them afloat… Let us hope they will have something better to offer in the period to come.
@Wolf…
” Although 295×2 is a monstrous gpu, it is far too expensive for most people, only enthusiasts with really deep pockets can get one (or more). ”
Hmmm… and nVidia’s Titan Z at $3000 is what, somehow a better deal?
295X ATE nVidia’s lunch. So much that nVidia canceled the release.
Alexander Wolheart: Master of the Non-Sequitor.
@ CSO John Byrne
If you atre reading this then when is AMD gong to release multi socket Kaveri?
Twin or Quad APU’s would be a real monster both in Compute performance and graphics.