AMD's Project Win: A Misunderstanding
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 9, 2011 5:49 PM ESTLast week AMD announced layoffs that impacted 10% of its workforce. A disproportionate number of those AMDers were apparently from the marketing and PR groups, but even engineering was affected. In CEO Rory Read's internal memo announcing the layoffs, he made reference to a mysterious "Project Win" that would be discussed in a webcast on November 9th. That's today, but where's the webcast and what's Project Win?
There was an internal AMD webcast but there's no announcement of a change in corporate direction. AMD's next analyst day in early February 2012 is when we'll officially hear about what AMD plans to do under Read's leadership.
As for Project Win, that's simply an internal codename referring to an effort to streamline AMD's business practices. The project didn't have a name previously but it refers to something AMD has been talking about in its earnings calls for the past couple of quarters. An excerpt from last quarter's earnings call where Project Win was referenced (not by name) is below:
"Last quarter, I described a set of initiatives to streamline business and decision-making processes across our operations, R&D and go-to-market functions. We are in full executional deployment across each of the key work streams. These efforts are aimed at accelerating our transformation to a world-class design company...growing revenue, lowering costs and reducing time-to-market. We expect to see material benefits from this project in 2012."
In short, Project Win is just about making AMD leaner and more efficient. Layered on top of this leaner AMD will be a (new?) product strategy, which we'll hear about in February. Until then, there's still AMD's 28nm GPU launch that we're waiting for...
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
27 Comments
View All Comments
RussianSensation - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link
Hi Anand,Thanks a lot for this update. Good to know that AMD doesn't intend to unveil a major change in strategic direction, at least not on a public basis until next year as you have noted. Looking forward to your 28nm HD7000 series GPU review. Can we possibly expect an update to the game test bench suite, perhaps SKYRIM, BF3?
Dustin Sklavos - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link
Ryan, Jarred, and I are working on revamping our gaming test benches and trying to line them up between graphics, desktops, and notebooks. BF3 and Skyrim are both contenders.tviceman - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link
Try to pick out games that scale well with CPU AND GPU's. Civ V's lategameview benchmark is one example. Far Cry 2 also scaled well, but it's pretty old now so probably not worth having in a current benchmark suite. Since Metro2033 is the current most demanding game out there, it's probably good to keep it in the mix.Klimax - Thursday, November 10, 2011 - link
Would it be possible to include SupremeCommander FA? (I can supply save for SP which can overload CPU - 20/30 FPS on Core i7 920.)It would be good to know if those new CPUs can finally run the game with high number of units...
SlyNine - Friday, November 11, 2011 - link
Here's the thing about SCFA (and I love the game BTW). The default AI caused major slowdown and only used a single core for those tasks whiched caused the slow down. So until we have 10X single core performance default AI won't run smooth on SCFA.I was running a Core I7 860 and I can tell you that with the modified AI (which is much better anyways) there is not very much slowdown.
When I played Multiplayer with huge units on the lan I never had slowdown problems with 4 civs 2000 units a piece.
Now I run a 2600k at 4.4ghz but have not tried SCFA yet ( lost my disc trying to obtain another one)
Try these mods, FA Patch 3603 beta, Sorian mod, and DuncanE's FA AI Patch. Makes the game much much better.
Tormeh - Thursday, November 10, 2011 - link
Little off-topic since it's the CPU, but I've always wanted a CIV V end-of-turn benchmark: How long do you have to wait after clicking the "end-turn" button until the enemy AIs have finished their turn and it's your turn again? It's one of very few instances in gaming where you are actually just staring at your monitor waiting for the CPU to finish.Pretty please? :)
Taft12 - Friday, November 11, 2011 - link
I recall Ryan making a comment once upon a time that he really lamented just how lousy some of the games used in his benchmarks were.I agree, and many users come here looking not for a large selection of benchmarks in games they will never play (F1, Dirt, Crysis) but ones they plan to spend hundreds of hours in like Skyrim, BF3, Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3.
Metro is a must since its still the most demanding game out there, but please, more focus on the best PC games rather than the ones that are the prettiest.
alphacheez - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link
I think it should be called Project Winning and involve Tiger Blood and Warlocks. It would probably make more sense than Project Win.Roland00Address - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link
sigh...I like AMD...but doing one followed by the other is just FAIL :(Operandi - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link
Layoffs are of course not a good sign for the.company but the marketing department indeed failed with the launch of Bulldozer. How they ever gave it the FX designation is beyond me, all they accomplished is ruin whatever good name the FX brand had. The engineering layoffs are more worry some but we really don't know the reasons behind them. Hopefully it results in better products and more timely execution and not the end of completion for Intel on the high-end.I also like Reads comments. Faster moving R&D, and timely product execution is exactly what AMD needs. whether he's the right man for the job or not remains to be seen but something has to be done to get things turned around.