Think where AMD might be today if not for Jerry.
Selling tweaked out K6 cores competing with VIA, out of CPUs, or bankrupt - take your pick.
Jerry and his people bet the farm on K7, and with their then, very limited resources, they beat Intel.
They envisioned the possibilities of the K7 mated with the direct connect platform. Looking at old presentations from before K8 was released, full of ideas that didn't all pan out, one can almost *feel* their giddy excitement over their new baby.
So far, what does Hector have to show for himself of a technical nature ? For how long is he going to take a free ride on the fruits of Jerry's and his team's ideas and work ?
In fact, years ago, members of the old team left AMD because of disagreements over the company's new direction. They wanted to pull a "K7" on Intel once more - create a wide super brainiac with memory reordering, result speculation, trace cache, SMT, hardware scout - you name it.
Jerry was betting on out-innovating Intel, by betting the farm a few times until AMD was big enough to survive by more conventional business strategies.
Hector has obviously decided this time has come, and is planning on out-business Intel.
So far I'd say he's doing a poor job.
Jerry handed him a golden opportunity, and he squandered it by being a year late with FAB36.
I think Jerry would have had the confidence in his latest baby (K8/Opteron) to pull out all the stops, and manage to have capacity in time to take full advantage of their technical superiority and momentum.
Think where Intel might be today if not for Hector. |
