If AMD breaks even this quarter I will be surprised. I do expect them to cut losses substantially though.
ATI division is showing promise and will yield profits. Chipset business will also make money. The real drag is the AMD CPU sector. Phenom/ Barcelona was not slam dunk but has promise and as soon as the problems with the die are sorted out they should be able to increase margins due to better performance.
AMD need to put their collective heads down and try to deliver products on time and to spec. They also need to concentrate on what they do best. Entry level and mid range. Sell product to OEMS. New X2 and X3 for laptops.
Barcelona will prove to be viable in the server space as it matures.

I still have this nagging feeling that the 65nm process is a stopgap measure though and AMD is focusing more on 45nm. We shall see in 2008.

They need product that can compete with intel otherwise they get sales from people on a budget that can't afford performance.

They need a gaming cpu, gaming video card if they can make something that can beat intel and nvidia.

A gamer does not want a dual quad core system games do not take advantage of that many cores.

The problem is they have lost touch with the consumer, i use to sell lots of ati cards during the 9700 pro days now i can't give them away.

Everyone wants an 8800 video card they want fast.

Wow, thats going to get them no where fast. AMD is screwed, I used to love AMD but they just stopped innovating and trying to milk to much money, probably a top down issue. This doesn't bode well for lower cost CPU's in the future if they fall apart. Buying ATI was a dumb move for them too, buy Nvidia if your going to buy a graphics card make lol.....

Ruiz is such a tool.

"The number one goal is to achieve profitablity." Is this not the nuber one goal for ANY company. Maybee they should have though about this during the early phase of testing the phenom chips. Then maybee they wouldn't have try to market a inferior product to it's customers.

I am so glad Ruiz is on the way out.

Is this not every companies main objective? Did Hector Ruiz just figure this out?

All I know is that I'm buying more stock while the getting is good.

As much as I don't really like the idea of them having their primary R&D team be based in India, it's not really that bad of an idea. Intel's Core 2 architecture is based on a design that came from one of their development teams in Isreal, and if a team in Isreal can design a successful microarchitecture, then why can't a team in India do the same thing?

I'm going to a company like this, I'll call it capitalism!

The main differente between ruiz and all us is that our mexican friend Ruiz owns AMD.........and we do not !

Dude, there is no such country!

Israel has a ton of very high tech research teams across the spectrum of technologies.
India is generally where you go when you want something done and you want it done cheaply, mostly without regards for the end result.
In other words, India is to technology what China is to labor.

It'll be nice to buy in when they've finally hit their low.

Phenom is not phenomenal and HD 3800 series falling behind 8800 series it's Nvidia turn to squeeze ATI. No need for Intel or Nvidia to introduce new products any faster if AMD can't compete. Profitibility is a wish not reality. Prediction-A long cold winter.

I was taught to believe that a for-profit company had a primary responsibility to shareholders to be profitable. If they weren't after profits, then doesn't that violate a law or code of business or something?

They let me punch each one of them in the eye.

Im so tired of them making promises and not following through.

A punch in the eye amd product = a good price/performance ratio.

whats the problem with india? i dont get it, americans think they invented everything in the world.

do you realy compare israel and inidia?
if so why not open R&D in Vitnam, it is even cheaper
Israely engineers have proven themselves for a long time for being great, and creative.
Indian engineers have only proven themthelves to be decent, cheap and with almost unlimitted number.
this is not what AMD needs

The number one goal of every company is not always profitability. A goal can be market share at the expense of medium-term profitability. The #1 goal can be building brand value at a loss for a while. When a company first starts profitability in NOT high on the agenda as it is commonly known that it will typically take at least two years. Building the business is number one in that case. And so on.. Designing products in a market this competitive and complex involves taking risks. Just because things turn out badly doesn't make someone an idiot. If you look through the list of American billionaires many of them could just as easily have failed on their main ventures and many of them have taken massive loses throughout their business lives. A high tech company designs things that will rely technologies and methods that don't yet exist or that they haven't yet figured out 'in house', for example. It's a huge risk. but when it works it pays off. The 45nm process appears to have been such a calculated risk on AMD's part that they are struggling with. (considering the differences between cherry-picked engineering samples and other phenom processors.) Some web-hater calling Ruiz a tool is precious. You probably couldn't even handle reading what he has to in a day.

What you Forcast your buisness to do and what
it actually does can and often is two different
things. Some predict low and some predict high, and no you don't always prodict or promise profit
in a quarter or year. It depends on the gadget
you make and who else makes it VS. the Economy Vs.
your cash on hand and Supply cost and Product
demand and awhole list of other stuff dictate
weather your going to be profitable this quarter
or the next. There are always things that come
in to play durring a fiscal period that noone
probably could predict. That's Buisness, and
buisness can be tough.

This is just another way of saying lots of layoffs, selling property, getting rid of baggage. Cutting costs. It's another term that means reorganization.

If Intel wasnt using its monopoly position to prevent AMD from gaining market share during early Opteron Dual core days when AMD was the best processor for everything perfomance, price, and power effiency. How does a company like AMD be the first to 1ghz range, first to 64 bit on x86 that the great Intel said was not possible. The first to Dual Core and true Dual Core not phony cross bar tricks. First to True Quad Core not have more market share and profits. AMD has been kicking Intel's tail and Intel knows it thats why they cheat with half @$$ed cross bar technology and pressuring vendors to not accept a better product by AMD. On the India issue AMD needs more Fab manufacturing plants no matter where it is to help with production and meeting deadlines/launches. AMD needs to be profitable to whether Intel's cheating ways and remain a huge success in defiance of the evil empire.

[The European Commission agreed with you, though not specifically abou the "evil empire" bit. :) -Rick]

The only way AMD is going to recover is if they Leap Frog Intel.

Wow, for pretending to be someone who "knows" you sure don't seem to know a lot Dan S.

AMD isn't 2 years old, more like 30, and when you have no cash in the bank and billions of $'s in debt, profitability HAS to be your first priority. Period end of story.

Second AMD isn't using a 45nm process currently, and aren't on track to put one out until 2Q/3Q of 08.

Get your facts straight before trying to sound smart.

In fact that is why some people tend to cryticise AMD...
And that is also why not everybody is Ruiz...not everybody can build a company like AMD !!!!

The last person leaving AMD toward the Intel's Future Camp... Please turn off the light.

[LOL! -Rick]

Granted, the bulk of the work in India is lower-end grunt work, but India is really coming of age in R&D. Everyone from LG to Intel to Cisco is doing it, why not AMD?

I don't really like the idea of R&D in india either. Especially with the problems we have in that area of the world. I really doubt this will help them very much. Phenom would be a lot better if it weren't for that design flaw that causes it to crash at higher clock speeds. nVidia would not have let AMD purchase them, they stated that in an interview.

Above all, AMD has not used such dirty tricks to get ahead as Intel has. Though, they are beginning to lose respect.

Its perfectly viable for a company to lose moeny for a period of time and accumulate debts.

Think about this, have you never had a year where you have spent more then you earnt? perhaps you own a house and still are paying it off? For a company to also go into both debt and lose money in the short term to develop something that would exceede profits in the long term then the profits seen by staying where they are is a better decision.

Don't know about engineers in India being just decent. As far as I remember, a year ago, India had the top engineering school in the world.

I'm a casual gamer but when I play a game I'd like to have the experience as if I'm playing on a 10 000 dollar machine.

Oh, yeah and I want it mobile!

I think that that this segmentation is so bad for users at least in the graphics area.

That's why I'm still keeping my 3 years old machine and I'm going to use it until it dies and I'm not going to buy a new one because I know - I still won't be able to play any descent games.

In these days gaming sucks so much. When I was a child and I played my games on my super ancient Apple II they all run smooth and I was so happy although they were so stupid.

What's the difference if I buy a typewriter for 500 dollars or for 1500 dollars? But I won't pay 3000 for something that I don't really need. I better spend the money and travel to South America or Australia.

For them to sell more than 10 Phenom chips they need to either get it to where Intel has it's midrange cpu's(3.0Ghz), or drop the price of their current 2.3Ghz line. They are matching prices with the Q6600 with outperforms the fastest Phenom in every benchmark. Does AMD want to die? I don't get it.

And as far as Israel comparing to India- are you kidding? Einstein VS ?.. ?.... Yea.. don't go there. Whereas Indians read books, the Israeli's write them. I agree that AMD needs smart people. Not outsourced Phd's that couldn't put an alarm clock together.

But it may be too late. An Arab country bought 10% of AMD's stock. Hector should have bought Nvidia. At least their drivers work. The Phenom cannot clock to 2.5Ghz without freezing. And even at 2.4Ghz, it still gets wiped by Intels midrange- for the same price. They are selling SLOWER hardware for the SAME PRICE as their competitor... I would also buy stock if I thought they would survive. Guess we'll see.

How are you going to return to profitability when your major competitor is putting out a better product, thus forcing you to drop your price to an unprofitable pricing level?

launch speeds for and Barcelona and Phenom are pathetic.

AMD needs 3.2GHz and 45nm - and they need it now! they need it cool and quiet {and power efficient}.

they need to scrap the 9500, and 9600
and only sell the 9700 at the price of a 9500

the X2 5000 BE is one of the finest chips they have produced {to bad it is not really worth it and came out WAY TO LATE for its target audience}

ATI needs a card that can compete with the 8800 GT directly {same performance same price}.

[AMD is a publicly traded company. Once they commit to some things they can't just turn around without being answerable to someone (the shareholders). Also, according to Dirk Meyer, they're well aware of their short-comings in the 65nm to 45nm conversion. It's not boding well for the little green chipmaking company that (almost) could. -Rick]

I don't know why some people have this idea that somehow the IITs are the best engineering schools on the planet...
It must be perpetuated by cheap managers and the graduates themselves.

According to the THES, in 2006, the IITs were ranked 57 globally in engineering. That's pretty unremarkable.

Also, they have extremely tiny research output, compared to other top universities in other countries.
They basically equate to high-powered ITT Tech institutions.

Also, if they were so good, more international students (ie non-Indians) would be attending them. Currently, they have EXTREMELY low international attendance.

What they are is an overhyped collection of technical vocational colleges aimed at cheaply producing viable technical workers. That isn't to say that they suck, because they don't, but it IS to say that they are nothing special.

Why do you think that Indians who have the money to do so come to America and attend MIT, CalTech, or RPI?

They may be fueled by foreign students, but just the same, MIT, UC Berkley, U of I Urbana-Champaign, Stanford, Cornell, and others are absolutely where it's at with engineering.

They aren't fueled by students from just one region, they're fueled by the very best students from the world over. Don't be ridiculous, there is no way, no chance that India has THE top engineering school in the world, there is no possible way for this to be the case. Not even in one of the Engineering fields. India's top students are received with open arms, and open wallets in America, there is absolutely no reason for them to stay in India. Certainly not in bulk. And I'll tell you, the very very top of these students is a diverse lot, filled with women, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, European, as well as American kids that grew up down the street from these schools.

Not that it matters, b/c it really doesn't. Though most of the top global schools are geographically located in the United States, they are staffed and attended by people from all over the world. Do you really think a $35,000/year tuition is going to get in the way of educating the world's elite? Heck, I imagine Europeans are sending their kids in record numbers with the devaluation of the dollar.

There is certainly no reason to be historically inaccurate. Beam theory (Civil Engineering) was practically invented at the University of Illinois. What does OpenBSD stand for? Belkley Software Distribution.

There is in fact so much historical innovation that affects the world in so many ways that came from American Universities, that if they shut down today, and never did another ounce of research, they'd be the top research schools for decades.

Amd has been here before. They will rise above
the Ashes to Live another Day, bank on it because
it's as sure as the Sun will rise tommorow.

Are the extra line breaks for poetic effect?

WTF

US is not the centre of the universe you know. It's a bold claim to say that if American Universities shut down today they'd still be the top research schools for decades. What about the Russian Universities, some of them must have been decent if the first satellite was Russian and the first man in space. If the current generation of Russian fighter jets is the most maneuvrable in the world. The best surface to air missile systems (S400), the best ground attack choppers (Ka52), the baddest thermonuclear weapons. Surely they must have had some top research institutions.