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To: neolib who wrote (12362)	10/9/2014 1:17:05 PM
From: Pravin Kamdar	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 73985

My thoughts on AMD: While I'm sure that Lisa was being groomed for the CEO position, the timing suggests some kind of internal "fall out" that accelerated events. I don't believe that a CEO leaves eight days before an earnings CC because he can not face reporting weaker than forecast results. Nor do I believe that the board would force the CEO out in such a sudden manner for such results. This could be as simple as Rory saying, "One of my SVPs just got a $2,000,000 bonus. I want $10,000,000. What? No? I quit." Now, given Rory's departure, I would guess that any prospects for a near term buyout are not in the works. A CEO amasses extreme personal wealth when his company is bought out. He would have stuck around had such negations or prospects been in the works. Even before this event, the stock price was getting crushed. This is for good reason. There must be a huge inventory problem that everyone knows about. This is due to Intel taking business at the low end, and consumer graphics being hit my Maxwell and simply no need for discrete graphics for the majority of users. It won't be until the end of 2015 until we see how AMD's ARM business, with custom designs, will pan out (and at what margins -- given the competition). It won't be until 2016 until we get real information about how good the new x86 design is. One or two semicustom design wins in the $200-500 million life time revenue does not do much for the bottom line. AMD always has "bumps in the road" even when they forecast that everything is peachy. When the CEO states that there will be "bumps in the road", this means mountains -- not bumps. On the positive side, there could be upside in AMD's use of HBM in graphics in 2015, if they indeed have a one year lead over nVidia. There could be upside if AMD can close the technology gap with Intel through GF and Samsung at the 14 nm node, but Rory gave the impression that being an early adopter of FinFet would be too expensive. I see a potential big positive in SeaMicro. While it has not lived up to expectation, I think that with Lenovo's purchase of IBM's x86 server business, Lenovo will have to have a competing product to HP's Project MoonShot. This could be rebranded SeaMicro dense servers. It is not even out of the realm of possibility that AMD could sell SeaMicro to Lenovo to raise cash. It seems to me that the SeaMicro 3D torus fabric is better than the MoonShot 2D torus fabric (it would be nice if one of you with the technical knowledge could assess the two). It also seems to me that if AMD were working on moving the network switch into a dense server APU specifically targeting the SeaMicro fabric, they would have a big winner on their hands. I would hope that they are doing this. The question remains if AMD can survive to 2016 and have new products that will allow them to be profitable after that. I don't think there will be profit in IoT. If that is Lisa's vision, I would have my doubts. Pravin.

To: neolib who wrote (12362)	10/9/2014 1:19:31 PM
From: Vattila	Respond to of 73985

The comment section below that article has another glowing endorsement of Su's personality by Junko Yoshida, one of the EETimes reporters. Of course, I would be biased, if I say that so-called people skill is the hallmark of female executives. But in this instance, I'd have to confess that I've always enjoyed talking to Lisa Su, since she was with Freescale. And I took a pleasure in her company because she is so personable. Knowing technologies is essential to be the head of a chip company. But knowing how to work with people -- on all levels, including a lowly reporter like myself -- is absolutely a must-have quality for a leader, I think.