CRN: AMD Exec Discusses Barcelona Debacle

[Periander6]

http://www.crn.com/white-box/204800718


A senior executive at Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE:AMD) said Monday that launching the first quad-core Opteron server chip to great fanfare in September was "a stupid decision" given a glitch that has halted distribution to all but a few customers, but insisted that it was "the right decision" at the time.
"Now if I was to do it all over again, I have to tell you, with the data I had at the time, I would make the same decision again. With the data I have now, clearly, that was a stupid decision. But with the data I had that day, it was the right decision," said Mario Rivas, head of AMD's Computing Products Group.


More.

"AMD's Rivas On Barcelona Bug's Channel Impact"

http://www.crn.com/white-box/204800713

[alucasa]

In other words, AMD had no other choice.

[Zytek_Fan]

Clean up the mess and get on with life is all I have to say.

[Nanometer]

yawn AMD, take your time. I'm enjoying offerings from another quad core provider.

[CyberDruid]

When your finger goes through the TP do you smell it? Do you run out of the john and show it off? Or do you finish wiping your ass and wash your hands and move on?

AMD got the stink finger...now they need to move on...

[terrace215]

http://www.crn.com/white-box/204800718

A senior executive at Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE:AMD) said Monday that launching the first quad-core Opteron server chip to great fanfare in September was "a stupid decision" given a glitch that has halted distribution to all but a few customers, but insisted that it was "the right decision" at the time.

"Now if I was to do it all over again, I have to tell you, with the data I had at the time, I would make the same decision again. With the data I have now, clearly, that was a stupid decision. But with the data I had that day, it was the right decision," said Mario Rivas, head of AMD's Computing Products Group.


Okay, fine. But get a load of this whopper:

Both the Opteron and the desktop Phenom chips suffer 5 to 20 percent performance hits as a result of the BIOS fix. But Rivas clarified a point about the quad-core Phenoms, which were launched in November and have been shipped with the workaround in place at the ramp-up AMD planned. Those processors are listed at clock speeds that account for the degradation from the BIOS fix, he said, explaining why the first available Phenoms have listed speeds and prices below those AMD initially projected for fourth-quarter shipments.

That's a COMPLETE lie. The Phenoms run at the advertised clocks. They made sure the reviews were done without the fix. They are stuck with slow clocks due to other process & design ramp issues, not the TLB bug. And therefore, they are priced low, because they don't perform well vs the competition.


And who really buys this?

"It was not until mid-November that it actually moved from just being an observation in a testing environment to being a more serious bug. We tried to do BIOS workarounds, we looked for board modifications, even in some instances, for some patches we could do that would not degrade performance," he said.

When AMD came to the decision that the glitch could "affect a real-world application," Rivas said the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based chipmaker quickly alerted customers.

"When we reached that point, it was a Friday and we started notifying the customers on Monday," he said.

...

At no time, Rivas said, did AMD consider shipping Opterons with no warnings once the glitch was discovered.

"Once we determined that this problem could be found in a real situation, we said, 'We need to tell our partners.' At no point did we say, let's hide this and hope nobody finds out," he said.

Suuuuure you didn't.

[thephenom]

I'm buying that story, if AMD wanted to cover up the whole story, you think they'll give techreport all the information they posted on their new article?

So if AMD is ready to admit fault here, I don't see what the big problem is. You can't always engineer perfection, I just hope there's some internal shakeup for catching the errata so late in production.

[Bao01]

Those processors are listed at clock speeds that account for the degradation from the BIOS fix, he said, explaining why the first available Phenoms have listed speeds and prices below those AMD initially projected for fourth-quarter shipments.


So... AMD has accounted for the degradation from the BIOS fix by listing Phenoms that run at 2.2 and 2.3GHz as 2.2 and 2.3GHz Phenoms. Otherwise they would be listing them as running at some clockspeed other than the clockspeed they actually run at.


That's so cute.

[TorquedJetta]

Thats a great way to maybe cover their butts on the fact they couldn't deliver the part they said they would produce.

[Zytek_Fan]

:shakes: There needs to be some adjustments with executives at AMD. So many of them don't seem to get how to run a CPU and GPU maker...

[alayashu]

hmm? so they are telling us the 2.3 Phenom is actually ~15-20% higher clocked and
rated as 2.3 due to the bugs? weird CPU, weird company..

[Brother Esau]

When your finger goes through the TP do you smell it? Do you run out of the john and show it off? Or do you finish wiping your ass and wash your hands and move on?

AMD got the stink finger...now they need to move on...

LOL:rofl:

[saaya]

so basically hes saying its not his fault cause he didnt know any better.

thats BS! its his job to get the needed informations to be able to tell if its ready for launch or not. Its like releasing a new car after youve done only half the usual crash tests and then later say "i couldnt possible know the car falls apart if it gets hit on a certain spot, its not my fault!!! :("

Of course its his fault! he pokered and lost!
and now he doesnt have the balls to admit its his fault... :down:

Its clearly his mistake, if they would have done the propper testing and have come to the conclusion the rev works fine, then he would have said "our tests were not able to detect this error" but he didnt say it because they didnt run extensive enough tests.

and again amd management proves to be highly professional, and yet again there will be no consequences to somebody completely failing at his job.
WAKE UP AMD!

[zakelwe]

I'm surprised when he said

"And you have to remember, too, that the Phenom parts that we launched were really targeted at the mainstream computer user and not the enthusiast guys. So the mainstream computer user really isn't going to notice any impact. It all depends on the workload, obviously. But to touch the workloads they're running, they aren't going to really notice this. "

That's like an old person buying sold a car with a 200bhp engine it that only does 180bhp but it does not matter as he drives slowly most of the time. Is that ethical?

That came just after the claim that a certain speed is actually the speed as they have already factored in a degredation. No, I did not understand that either....

Looking to the future he said:-

"and as long as we have architectural advantage, our 45nm will be as good as the other guy's 32nm."

What architectural advantage is that then? Already Intel has greater IPC and the area's where it loses out ( FSB and off die memory controller ) will be no longer an issue by it's 45nm Nehalem architecture, never mind 32nm.

I don't think many people currently think AMD's Shangai is going to beat Intels Gesher or whatever 32nm version of nehalem is called.

Finally, and most worryingly he said, of revision B3 :-

" We will get samples of the device in the January timeframe, but then we need to do our own validation because if we just assembled them and shipped them prematurely and there is another big bug, the tempest of press that we have right now would get even worse. We're going to go through a very rigorous verification process and then hit the market with samples. And once customers validate them themselves, then we will pursue shipping in mass"

So they will not even know until January whether the new spin is going to fix the current issues and not bring other bugs about - so nobody knows yet whether the light is actually at the end of the tunnel.

Regards

Andy

[YukonTrooper]

Yay! AMD keeps talking and not delivering!

[Bail_w]

Disappointment, as long as AMD keep messing up, we will get better deal from Intel.

[naokaji]

Of course its his fault! he pokered and lost!
and now he doesnt have the balls to admit its his fault... :down:



and again amd management proves to be highly professional, and yet again there will be no consequences to somebody completely failing at his job.
WAKE UP AMD!

didnt you know that when you loose at poker its because either the others cheated or due to having bad luck with the cards. its never the player that sucks:p:

well, the whole stuff they say to the public prolly gets filtered by their marketing department, so we dont really know if they knew what k10 would end up like or not.

but yeah, amd seriously needs to wake up and clean up that mess.

[saaya]

andy, its more like a old guy buying a 200hp car and it does have 200hp but as soon as hed actually use 200hp the car would break down :D

this doesnt make it any better though... i dont think they knew about the problem, they wouldnt be THAT bold, but they didnt wait for the rev to pass all the testing before they released it. which isnt as bad as selling bad stuff knowing its bad, but it is quite a catastrophee...

[terrace215]

http://www.crn.com/white-box/204800713?pgno=2

Phenom is shipping now, and it's got the workaround in place. To what level does that workaround affect performance on Phenom specifically, and will future editions of Phenom be corrected at the design level in the same manner that Barcelona will be?

[AMD's Mario Rivas]: I'll answer the second part of your question first. Yes, it will be corrected.

When we launched the devices rated at a particular speed, that already includes the degradation. So that's why you saw those lower clock-speed parts first, with future speeds to come. So you don't have to go and say, 'Well, jeez, if you have a Phenom running at 2.0 GHz, then I have to take 5 to 20 percent of performance off it.' No, I'm already doing that.

And you have to remember, too, that the Phenom parts that we launched were really targeted at the mainstream computer user and not the enthusiast guys. So the mainstream computer user really isn't going to notice any impact. It all depends on the workload, obviously. But to touch the workloads they're running, they aren't going to really notice this.



Can you say, "shareholder lawsuit" ? I mean, are AMD execs routinely encouraged to simply lie to the public?

[xVeinx]

The obfuscation present in the interview is pretty insane. The product doesn't perform as intended, is buggy (to what degree I don't think we truly know-it may be less than we think, maybe more), and ultimately appears to be sold to those who won't know the difference. The product that will be "suitable" for the enthusiast and server markets won't be available likely until late spring, meaning that AMD will have a 6 month delay until they have a true product on the market. If the shareholders have any common sense, then there should be a nice fireworks show at the meeting...

[terrace215]

My only question is, is Mario lying, or really so incompetent as to get something so simple completely wrong?

Either way, exec management of that caliber is not good for AMD.