Why amd failed

However, that same AMD insider says it was a lack of a leader, not just a lack of leadership, that led to AMD's stumbles. While he characterized Rory Read as a zealot on a crusade — pushing out AMD's old guard in favor of like-minded individuals blindly marching towards innovations like modular chips — he doesn't blame Read for most of the issues that AMD has seen.

Our source characterized it as "lots of people just floating in a purgatory place. Last month, analysts had the same worry. Though AMD has fully spun out Globalfoundries, it still has a symbiotic relationship with the company due to its orders of chips, and it may have the power to renegotiate its contracts since Globalfoundries would be adversely affected if AMD had issues.

In some ways, that gets us right back where we started, though: AMD weighing difficult options including selling off important assets — intellectual property — that it claims will be critical for future business strategies. AMD wants to lead the market for microservers using new bit ARM cores , and offer up pick-what-you-like custom chips for embedded applications in the long term.

How does AMD turn things around until those businesses can take off? Nathan Brookwood, an analyst at semiconductor consulting firm Insight 64, said that it might just require running the traditional business without mistakes for a while.

Just when you think it's going to be there, there's an interception," he told The Verge. The last time AMD was in dire straits, Brookwood recalled, an acquisition was what got the company out. In , when its Pentium competitor didn't meet expectations, AMD bought Nexgen to acquire talent that helped it design future processors.

Also, though many people have left, it's not like the company is running out of people. AMD still has around 10, employees. It's a big firm. Brookwood also told us that while he takes executives at their word that they aren't actively looking for a buyer, he believes AMD has some definite value to the right company.

There's some speculation that AMD would be difficult for another company to purchase because of Intel lawyers, who would take it as an opportunity to terminate the special x86 license that allows AMD to produce chips. Brookwood pointed out that Intel also relies on a license to AMD's bit extensions to produce its own processors.

It's a mutually beneficial, mutually destructive relationship, and Brookwood believes it could protect any theoretical buyer of the company. So now, we wait and see whether AMD can deliver compelling enough products, soon enough, to get it out of this ditch Subscribe to get the best Verge-approved tech deals of the week. Cookie banner We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from.

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North America. See more. Matt Hanson. See more Processors news. This is not to claim that PowerGPU was deliberately inaccurate in its own tweet — AMD is working with the company now to identify what may be going on — but its experience does not appear reflective of the wider market.

This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use. In addition, the 4 out of 50 Ryzen X units were dead on arrival, while the number was the same for the Ryzen X units. Lastly, 3 out of the Ryzen X units the PC builder received were also dead on arrival. It said the failure rates seem to have increased since the launch of the chips. All this could be down to AMD scurrying to meet demands, which is driving quality downwards.