Personal computing discussed
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cynan wrote:You do understand the relationship between supply and demand, right? Vega's HBM2 supply issue has been rehashed repeatedly since (and even before) Vega's launch.
Though news that AMD's HBM2 supply issues are persisting is unfortunate.
Is there any NEW information here?
chuckula wrote:Is there any NEW information here?
Yes there absolutely is: AMD said third-party board makers would have Vega parts in-hand by over a week ago and it never happened. Meaning that this is a real story about a real event, while you prefer to hide the severe issues at AMD that have likely cost Raj his job and want to chase after the usual suspects whining about Intel to generate clicks.
As for rumor articles whining about Intel, bear in mind that Intel was showing off 10nm wafers less than 24 hours before Wccftech needed to post more clickbait.
https://hexus.net/tech/news/industry/11 ... jing-show/
And remember that Coffee Lake, which is launching in just over 2 weeks and well ahead of quad-core APUs based on Ryzen wasn't supposed to launch until next year too.
And remember that Skylake X wasn't coming out until 2018 either https://www.reddit.com/r/intel/comments ... d_to_2018/
freebird wrote:
What severe issues at AMD??? Fudzilla was claiming AMD is losing money on early Vega cards (which maybe, I have no idea, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is nearly a break-even scenario on the RX Vega 56) but if that is true wouldn't it be "smart" on their part to "slow roll" the release of a money losing card? You are acting like this is a "Barcelona" delay or manufacturing problem, when I highly doubt it is... more likely just high cost of HBM2 and perhaps with 3rd party packaging of the GPU & HBM2 on the interposer. Overpriced is also subjective to the buyer is it not? I thought the 1080 & 1070 were over priced when 1st released, but the 1070 turned out to be a "steal" at $400 and under prior to the Crypto-craze driving up prices. Prices on the 1070s are finally coming down some (may go right back up due to GDDR5 memory price increases however) to where you can find them back under $450 and as low as $415 I've seen this week.
Airmantharp wrote:I look at it pretty simply: between gamers, high-end compute, and cryptocurrency miners, AMD can't make enough; rather, if they could make more, they would. There's a production problem somewhere, else AMD would step up to the demand.
I'd also hesitate to draw any conclusions between the yields and availability of Ryzen and Vega. Even if produced at the same foundry (and I don't believe they are), they're two different animals. Size and HBM2 are both real manufacturing limitations that Ryzen doesn't have to deal with.
Airmantharp wrote:I look at it pretty simply: between gamers, high-end compute, and cryptocurrency miners, AMD can't make enough
Vega graphics. The beast behind the beauty.
When we considered how much we wanted this iMac to be capable of, it was clear that only one graphics chip would do — but that chip didn’t exist yet. So iMac Pro is debuting a new one. The Radeon Pro Vega is over three times faster than any previous iMac GPU, packing the power of a double-wide graphics card into a single chip. All of which translates to higher frame rates for VR, real-time 3D rendering, more lifelike special effects and gameplay at max settings. It’s one huge reason iMac Pro is power incarnate.
Radeon Pro Vega
11 teraflops single precision
22 teraflops half precision
8GB or 16GB High Bandwidth Memory
400GB/s memory bandwidth
HERETIC wrote:freebird wrote:
What severe issues at AMD??? Fudzilla was claiming AMD is losing money on early Vega cards (which maybe, I have no idea, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is nearly a break-even scenario on the RX Vega 56) but if that is true wouldn't it be "smart" on their part to "slow roll" the release of a money losing card? You are acting like this is a "Barcelona" delay or manufacturing problem, when I highly doubt it is... more likely just high cost of HBM2 and perhaps with 3rd party packaging of the GPU & HBM2 on the interposer. Overpriced is also subjective to the buyer is it not? I thought the 1080 & 1070 were over priced when 1st released, but the 1070 turned out to be a "steal" at $400 and under prior to the Crypto-craze driving up prices. Prices on the 1070s are finally coming down some (may go right back up due to GDDR5 memory price increases however) to where you can find them back under $450 and as low as $415 I've seen this week.
I think you just about nailed it there.
My opinion-reading between the lines in various stories-
AMD offering $100 rebate to sellers to keep prices down puts them in a position where they could actually be loosing money on each sale.
This has come about by being forced to use the more expensive Samsung option until cheaper Hynix option becomes available.
I don't think AMD has manufacturing problems with its Vega chips,but being the beginning of a new chip when yields are at their lowest don't help much.
Kougar wrote:Probably another one of those multiple contributing factor situations, not just an HBM2 shortage. Especially when there are two different versions of the Vega 64 product as mentioned before.
By AMD's own slide deck the Z-height is different between versions. The HBM2 stacks are not flush with the die on one of those versions. The width and length also differ between versions. As such I imagine OEMs are having to sort out Vega packages into two different manufacturing lines to match them to an appropriately fitted cooler.
Krogoth wrote:I don't think Vega SKUs are being sold at a "loss" or razor-thin margins. Performance GPUs are never sold at a loss. They always have some kind of profit margin in their MSRP. It is just Nvidia is making killer profit margins on their GP104 (mainly 1070s) and GP106 due to the lack of fierce competition like Evergreen versus Fermi days. The main problem is that high-end GPUs are high-margin/low volume products and they ultimately make small money. The real money in discrete GPUs is mid-tier stuff through sheer volume and Nvidia is holding onto the market with an iron-fist (1060s-1070s).
Airmantharp wrote:I look at it pretty simply: between gamers, high-end compute, and cryptocurrency miners, AMD can't make enough; rather, if they could make more, they would. There's a production problem somewhere, else AMD would step up to the demand.
I'd also hesitate to draw any conclusions between the yields and availability of Ryzen and Vega. Even if produced at the same foundry (and I don't believe they are), they're two different animals. Size and HBM2 are both real manufacturing limitations that Ryzen doesn't have to deal with.
Krogoth wrote:If Vega had such thing margins then why bother with making gaming SKUs at all? It would just make more fiscal sense to sell them as Froniter/FireGL SKUs. Vegas are making ~$50-$100 of profit per unit sold, while Nvidia is enjoying 2x to 3x times that much on their gaming SKUs. Nvidia's recent fiscal reports makes this painfully evident. Nvidia shareholders would love to maintain such margins.
cynan wrote:Krogoth wrote:If Vega had such thing margins then why bother with making gaming SKUs at all? It would just make more fiscal sense to sell them as Froniter/FireGL SKUs. Vegas are making ~$50-$100 of profit per unit sold, while Nvidia is enjoying 2x to 3x times that much on their gaming SKUs. Nvidia's recent fiscal reports makes this painfully evident. Nvidia shareholders would love to maintain such margins.
Because AMD is desperate to stay relevant as a gaming "market leader" for the sake of things like game developer relations, the viability of Freesync, VR - which all relates heavily to their competitiveness of their Vega APU products and as chip suppliers for future consoles, etc.
Krogoth wrote:AMD already concided being a leader in the gaming market since Maxwell. Their shareholders would never allow product to sold at a loss to retain a trivial mindshare. It would be fiscal suicide. It appears you quickly forgotten how high-end gaming GPUs used to have MSRP around $399-$499 when there was heated competition. Nvidia took over with Kepler and Maxwell. They decided to push premiums up and knew that high-end market could bear it. There was little or no price pressure due to lack of competition. The new paradigm is $599+ for high-end GPUs. The cost of making them hasn't gone up. It is actually going down for smaller SKUs.
cynan wrote:When AMD was mapping out Vega, they probably had at least 20% of the non-pro discrete GPU market.
Topinio wrote:cynan wrote:When AMD was mapping out Vega, they probably had at least 20% of the non-pro discrete GPU market.
34-41% from 2010 to 2014, fluctuating, of the dGPU market according to Jon Peddie Research, and given NVIDIA's greater dominance in the workstation GPU market I'd say you're out by a factor of 2.
cynan wrote:Guess you've not familiar with understatement for emphasis.
NovusBogus wrote:Stands to reason. Also, on the mining front, "but we think it's just a short term fad" isn't such a great justification for not increasing supply any more given that GPU mining has been a thing for, what, about five years now? It ebbs and flows, sure, but so does gamer demand based on what AAA titles and/or console hardware improvements are happening in a given year.
Airmantharp wrote:NovusBogus wrote:Stands to reason. Also, on the mining front, "but we think it's just a short term fad" isn't such a great justification for not increasing supply any more given that GPU mining has been a thing for, what, about five years now? It ebbs and flows, sure, but so does gamer demand based on what AAA titles and/or console hardware improvements are happening in a given year.
It's also an exceedingly poor justification given that the demand for high-performance compute is skyrocketing in the enterprise space. When AMD talks about a lot of the features that uninformed AMD gamers get excited about (that will never be used for gaming), that's where they're actually going with it.
And that reinforces my point above, in support of the OP: something's broke. There's no rational reason for AMD to not be producing as literally as many Vega parts as they possibly can.
Krogoth wrote:It is because making big pieces of silicon in bulk isn't easy or cheap to do. Nvidia isn't exactly making a ton of GP100 and GP102 chips either but they really don't need to from a fiscal standpoint. Their bread and butter in the gaming market has always been mid-tier SKUs. GP100 is still kinda hard to get if you really want one. GP102 stuff isn't exactly that common either. There's just enough stock to satisfy current demand for high-end gaming market and professionals. The key difference is that Nvidia typically waits for their reserves to build-up before "officially" launching their product to the general market. AMD RTG couldn't afford to do the same thing. If AMD RTG waited too long then Volta would have practically destroy Vega line-up. AMD RTG had to launch Vega before Volta or it would have never sold in any significant numbers = total loss which is far worse than a lackluster launch.
Airmantharp wrote:Krogoth wrote:It is because making big pieces of silicon in bulk isn't easy or cheap to do. Nvidia isn't exactly making a ton of GP100 and GP102 chips either but they really don't need to from a fiscal standpoint. Their bread and butter in the gaming market has always been mid-tier SKUs. GP100 is still kinda hard to get if you really want one. GP102 stuff isn't exactly that common either. There's just enough stock to satisfy current demand for high-end gaming market and professionals. The key difference is that Nvidia typically waits for their reserves to build-up before "officially" launching their product to the general market. AMD RTG couldn't afford to do the same thing. If AMD RTG waited too long then Volta would have practically destroy Vega line-up. AMD RTG had to launch Vega before Volta or it would have never sold in any significant numbers = total loss which is far worse than a lackluster launch.
Sure, and it means positioning an expensive, hard to produce product against Nvidia's consumer-focused half-GPU, which since Kepler, has been competitive against AMD's best in the gaming market.
And that's just poor design and planning from AMD for gaming, both in unoptimized architectures and the exceedingly poor decision to go with HBM/HBM2.
Airmantharp wrote:And that's just poor design and planning from AMD for gaming, both in unoptimized architectures and the exceedingly poor decision to go with HBM/HBM2.