Clarifications about AMD TLB L3 bug

nobody RemoveThis @nowhere.net wrote:
>>Whatever. Such recalls do happen. It's a seruoius blow to AMD (as it delays
>>their more competitive products and causes the to loose Christmast season),
>
>
> The affected products are high end server CPUs. Ever heard of a
> regular home user Joe 6pack running virtualization stuff???<grin/>
> Sales thereof may be affected by the holiday season only in a negative
> way. Buying new servers is probably not the first priority of execs
> during these days. Ever heard of anyone getting a server as
> Xmas/Hanukka/New Year/whatever present?

On the other end the year end is often fiscal year end and money assigned to
be spend but not spent yet should finally. Or that old stupid fallacious
logic could fire: you didn't spend the money this year so you don't need it,
so you won't get'em next year.

rgds
\SK
 >> Stay informed about: Clarifications about AMD TLB L3 bug 

Robert Myers wrote:
>>>AMD bought it on this one. Perhaps AMD should have had
>>>you go out and address investors. You'd have been a big hit.
>>
>>>Your comment that "both AMD & Intel fixes reduce the perofrmance [sic]
>>>a bit" is like Yousuf coming out with the item about Intel's bug right
>>>after the AMD bug, as if they canceled one another out. Go look at
>>>the financial press,
>>
>>Whatever. Finacial press is a poor source of techical info.
>
> You think the articles (and press releases) you get on the internet
> are a *good* source of information?

Stock price is a very poor indicator of performance.

>
> Your contempt for markets is revealing. A stock price is the
> cumulative opinion of many people who follow the stock and who wager
> actual money (not usenet bandwidth) on their opinions.

The vast majority of stock is traded without tracking the companies. Ever
heard about algorithmic trading? Then vast majority of human traders base
their opinions on varius indicators not connected directly with company
product. And the reason is simple -- they do not understand what's the product.

> The United
> States (in particular) has companies like Intel (and, yes, even AMD)
> because it so efficiently predicts and rewards success and predicts
> and punishes failure through market mechanisms.
>
> Chattering away like this is an interesting pastime, but it doesn't
> affect anything of importance. Even much less so now than it used
> to. You may not think much of the dimwits who majored in management,
> but they can buy and sell as many techies as they need to find out
> what's going on.

Then such great manager who does not see the difference between a can od
soft drink and a computer drives the company to the edge of bancrupcy.

Even noticed that those most succesfull technical companies are lead to
their biggest success by people who know the technical stuff. Just notice
Intel or Microsoft. Then compare Intel & AMD -- both started as Fairchild
offsprings, Intel was lead by guys who were semiconductor specialist (behind
being good managers) and AMD was run by Jerry Sanders, who was just
management specialist. Compare the performance of the both.

And great technical companies have trouble if there are taken over by those
management majors you're praising. See Apple, DEC and even Intel at it's
time of little trouble.


>>>and see if anyone but AMDroids (or anyone that
>>>matters) reads it that way.
>>
>>Whatever. Such recalls do happen. It's a seruoius blow to AMD (as it delays
>>their more competitive products and causes the to loose Christmast season),
>>but such things are none the less reality and they do happen to everyone
>>from time to time. AMD has still enough money to wether that one (with their
>>current burning rate then can go for about 2 more years). And some of that
>>buring is one time (ATI acquisition costs are big, but one time expense)
>
> The question here is whether AMD will even survive. For one thing,
> the stock is selling below book.

Not for the first time.

> That makes AMD a takeover target.

Book value of high tech companies depracates quickly, fab now worth 3
billion is not worth half as much 5 years down the road. So either stock
price must plummet much deeper or potential buyer shelling out those
billions must be pretty sure the company will be profitable and be more
profitable than other available ways of investment. Past history of AMD puts
serious doubdts about that.

> Would an AMD that was bought in a leveraged buyout continue the
> ruinous war with Intel it's undertaken?

They have no other option, unless they buy for much much less than it's
worth now.

> I certainly hope not.

AMD is now just two pony ride. No one can turn it around without throwing
out much of the company.

> Only
> time will tell.

That's for sure

[...]
> The sum of the opinion here is that it wishes to minimize the
> seriousness of what has happened with AMD.

This last thing is just a little addition. AMD was worst performer of the
league the entire year. The stock was below 8 before the news wrt that bug
struck anyway. So they "worked" on their current evaluation whole year.

rgds
\SK
 >> Stay informed about: Clarifications about AMD TLB L3 bug 

On Dec 20, 8:22 am, Sebastian Kaliszewski
<s... RemoveThis @get.it.off.to.reply.informa.pl> wrote:
> Robert Myers wrote:

>
> The vast majority of stock is traded without tracking the companies. Ever
> heard about algorithmic trading? Then vast majority of human traders base
> their opinions on varius indicators not connected directly with company
> product. And the reason is simple -- they do not understand what's the product.
>
You are simply amazing.

Peter Lynch, the founder and long-time manager of the Fidelity
Magellan Fund and widely regarded as one of the most successful
institutional investors of all time, famously taught: "Buy what you
know."

It's true that program trading can produce fast "technical" moves in a
stock; that is to say, moves unrelated to fundamentals. Program
trading can't explain AMD's 2007 performance, and the most recent
stock price slide isn't just a coincidence with the Barcelona fiasco.
Under other circumstances, Barcelona might be a minor fumble, just as
some fumbles in football are of little consequence. When the clock is
running out and you are driving for a touchdown you need and you
fumble the ball, that's like what just happened with Barcelona.

AMD has introduced a product that I really like, something that I've
been wanting a major chipmaker to make for a long time: a GPGPU stream
processor with double precision floating point. It will turn vector
computers into commodities. Unfortunately, it will never be more than
a footnote on AMD's balance sheet. How do I conclude that? The Wall
Street Journal didn't even mention the product introduction.

> > The United
> > States (in particular) has companies like Intel (and, yes, even AMD)
> > because it so efficiently predicts and rewards success and predicts
> > and punishes failure through market mechanisms.
>
> > Chattering away like this is an interesting pastime, but it doesn't
> > affect anything of importance. Even much less so now than it used
> > to. You may not think much of the dimwits who majored in management,
> > but they can buy and sell as many techies as they need to find out
> > what's going on.
>
> Then such great manager who does not see the difference between a can od
> soft drink and a computer drives the company to the edge of bancrupcy.
>
CEO's are a different matter, entirely. More and more, CEO's are
given incentives to drive stock price. That often leads to short term
thinking and decisions that are bad for shareholders. The day you see
me quoting a CEO on a company's prospects is the day you will be
justified in speaking to me the way you have.

> Even noticed that those most succesfull technical companies are lead to
> their biggest success by people who know the technical stuff. Just notice
> Intel or Microsoft. Then compare Intel & AMD -- both started as Fairchild
> offsprings, Intel was lead by guys who were semiconductor specialist (behind
> being good managers) and AMD was run by Jerry Sanders, who was just
> management specialist. Compare the performance of the both.
>
You've just lost the AMD supporters. Jerry Sanders placed a hugely
risky bet on Opteron, and he won. He was a true visionary, a cowboy
almost, in his willingness to take on Intel. I wouldn't have taken
the Opteron bet for any reason, but, then, I'm not Jerry Sanders. I'm
only a techie.

One can look at Intel and see just the opposite. Intel became
obsessed with its stock price and seemed to forget that physics do
matter, even though the company was famously founded and run by
scientists. It mismanaged Itanium horribly, and got away with it only
because it is so wealthy. Stockholders have not been well served by
Intel management, at least not until Core 2.

> And great technical companies have trouble if there are taken over by those
> management majors you're praising. See Apple, DEC and even Intel at it's
> time of little trouble.
>
Management is a discipline for a reason, and I don't identify classic
management types with the troubles of any of the companies you name.
For a classic management failure, look to Home Depot, where a General
Electric (known for producing sought-after management talent) alumnus
stumbled badly. It happens.

>
> > The question here is whether AMD will even survive. For one thing,
> > the stock is selling below book.
>
> Not for the first time.
>
You really don't understand what a problem this is. Buyers don't want
to see problems on the balance sheets of vendors. AMD worked long and
hard to get rid of its reputation as a fly-by-night company always
teetering on the edge of collapse, and, almost overnight, it's got
that reputation back.

>
> AMD is now just two pony ride. No one can turn it around without throwing
> out much of the company.
>
That's what turnaround and buyout specialists are about. Without
looking, I think that AMD's current market cap is less than what they
paid for ATI. IBM doesn't want AMD out of the x86 business, but IBM
has to do things at arm's length, because IBM wants to be able to do
business with Intel (which also wants to do business with IBM). There
are people who are pretty good at these things who wouldn't know a
pole from a zero.

>
> > The sum of the opinion here is that it wishes to minimize the
> > seriousness of what has happened with AMD.
>
> This last thing is just a little addition. AMD was worst performer of the
> league the entire year. The stock was below 8 before the news wrt that bug
> struck anyway. So they "worked" on their current evaluation whole year.
>
Barcelona was supposed to pull them out of that hole. And, guess
what? Markets tend to find these things out before they make the
news.

Robert.
 >> Stay informed about: Clarifications about AMD TLB L3 bug 

The little lost angel <a?n?g?e?l@lovergirl.lrigrevol.moc.com> wrote in part:
> <rbmyersusa DeleteThis @gmail.com> wrote:
>>What's the difference between this and Intel's botched
>>FDIV bug? Very, very simple. At the time of the FDIV
>>bug, x86 was for "peecees," and no one cared if Intel made
>>mistakes that IBM (or DEC or Sun) never would. Now they do.
>
> Actually, I think the real difference between the two is that
> nobody saw it was a mistake Intel couldn't recover from. However
> for AMD, this would look like a killing blow on top of the
> underwhelming performance against competition for a new product
> generation. While I vaguely remember outcry against Intel for
> that bug, I don't remember anybody saying that it's going to
> sink Intel. There just wasn't sufficient competition capacity
> to takeover a company with over 90% of the market share. Thus
> the difference in perceived impact.

In addition to this very valid commercial argument, there is also a
fundamental difference between this AMD "bug" and the Intel FDIV bug:
the AMD bug might slow machines a bit under unusual circumstances.
The Intel FDIV bug gave erronious results in a few cases.
People worry _far_ more about data corruption than machine speed.
The FDIV bug might well have sunk AMD. This will not.

Actually, I find the continued harping on the AMD bug interesting
in and of itself. No-one complains of things they don't consider
a threat. AMD must be considered a serious threat. I'm not sure
why: AMD milked past superiour performance into higher ASPs
which Intel first was happy to follow, then started to undercut
to recover market share.

I believe actual performance is increasingly hard to measure.
MHz hasn't cut it for a long time. Intel has focussed on
bandwidth and cache. AMD has worked on latency. As a result,
each processor excels at some tasks and is only mediocre
at others. There is no one "best" CPU.

-- Robert
 >> Stay informed about: Clarifications about AMD TLB L3 bug 

Robert Redelmeier wrote:

>In addition to this very valid commercial argument, there is also a
>fundamental difference between this AMD "bug" and the Intel FDIV bug:
>the AMD bug might slow machines a bit under unusual circumstances.
>The Intel FDIV bug gave erronious results in a few cases.
>People worry _far_ more about data corruption than machine speed.
>The FDIV bug might well have sunk AMD. This will not.

Huh? Were there not work-arounds for the FDIV bug that eliminated the
chance for "data corruption"? Really, from my understanding, the FDIV
bug affected only a TINY percentage of users. The AMD's bug affects
EVERYONE.

>Actually, I find the continued harping on the AMD bug interesting
>in and of itself. No-one complains of things they don't consider
>a threat. AMD must be considered a serious threat.

What silly, saccharin cheerleading. Go AMD!

>(snip)

More of the same.

>I believe actual performance is increasingly hard to measure.

I believe different. Why would it be "increasing hard" to measure?

>MHz hasn't cut it for a long time.

Yeah, we know that.

>Intel has focussed on
>bandwidth and cache. AMD has worked on latency. As a result,
>each processor excels at some tasks and is only mediocre
>at others. There is no one "best" CPU.

Sounds like what someone who is getting their ass kicked in the
benchmarks would say.
 >> Stay informed about: Clarifications about AMD TLB L3 bug 

chrisv wrote:
>>In addition to this very valid commercial argument, there is also a
>>fundamental difference between this AMD "bug" and the Intel FDIV bug:
>>the AMD bug might slow machines a bit under unusual circumstances.
>>The Intel FDIV bug gave erronious results in a few cases.
>>People worry _far_ more about data corruption than machine speed.
>>The FDIV bug might well have sunk AMD. This will not.
>
> Huh? Were there not work-arounds for the FDIV bug that eliminated the
> chance for "data corruption"?

Nope. Nothing except not using FDIV instructions (and emulating it in
software). If every piece of software was not individually patched (with
performance effects of course) users coul'd not belive the results of FP
division of their chips.

> Really, from my understanding, the FDIV
> bug affected only a TINY percentage of users.

But it affected seriuos users.

> The AMD's bug affects
> EVERYONE.

EVERYONE of the few who bought the thing. Not too many. And the workaround
works once and for all. Costing performance. But still the thing is faster
than others company offerings (as it's still not enough to counter Core2 is
another matter).

rgds
\SK
 >> Stay informed about: Clarifications about AMD TLB L3 bug