The beginning of the end for AMD?

[mjw21a]

Personally I hate consoles now, I used to play the NES and SNES a lot and occasionally the Playstation 1. I liked the Dreamcast because it was capable of being a pseudo-PC, I had a bootstrap CD of NetBSD and Linux and it ran alright on it (I still have the DC with keyboard & mouse). I have an XBox 360 to play the NHL and NFL series (since their PC versions has stopped or turned into garbage) as well as the Need for Speed series but all of that is behind me since EA makes garbage games now, Forza 3/4 are the only games I play now and my father plays it too so I'll get on when he texts asking if I want to race him. I almost never play online with my XBox, I don't have the tolerance to put up with 13 year old squeaky screamers on chat.

Hey, I love my Retro Duo games console. Plug in some original SNES controllers and it rocks

Here is news just in on AMD over at VR-Zone. http://vr-zone.com/articles/amd-to-announce-its-future-strategy-on-october-29-2012/17551.html#

Here are a couple excerpts ".....The company is dead set on integrating both x86-64 and ARM Cortex cores, with the Cortex-M5 part already announced (x86-64 will be used for general computation, Cortex-M5 will be utilized for encryption)"......"AMD all but confirmed that the company secured design wins for all three consoles - Nintendo Wii U was already known, but Microsoft Xbox Next and PlayStation Next were obvious unknowns..."

Judging by this and other news of late, I don't think AMD is going away anytime soon...

Hmmmm, that does indeed sound promising..... Fit's in with what AMD has been saying for a few years now in regards to heterogenous computing and having multiple difference on die cores..... I wonder though, what is their margin in these deals?

 

[Buddywh]

... That doesn't mean they're anywhere near the end.

Actually, in this case, it very well could... I read somewhere (WSJ, maybe Bloomberg can't remember exactly) but the analyst suggested that at current share prices AMD's market cap is less than it's asset value. That means it's worth more to just sell off inventory and IP than to continue with operations.

Or you could buy it and do it yourself: don't even need the capital. Secure the debt for buying controlling interest with the assets and then sell them off (inventory and IP, most likely in AMD's case) repay the debt and pocket the difference. Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezie and you too can be a billionaire!

In the days of Carl Icahn and the corporate raiders it would have done just that but it's a lot more difficult these days.

 

[Buddywh]

... I wonder though, what is their margin in these deals?

Very small! Look at ARM: a typical ARM core goes for about $12 (compare to $155 for Intel's cheapest x86). But they sold over a BILLION virtual cores last year to phones, tablets and countless other embedded applications. Your computer may have three or four in there. They don't even sell the hardware: they sell, basically, the IP to the vendor to do the hardware and integrate the core in their controller; like a Marvell controller in your SSD which has an ARM core inside.

That's where the business is in the future: not behemoth x86 cores that have to maintain compatibility with legacy CISC instruction sets.