Nope, they are not identical.

I agree with that if most of the cuts are in Austin, given my understanding of AMD's roadmap and the horror stories (i.e. blatant generalized incompetence) I've heard from there. However, in order not to affect the morale of other design teams, I feel that it is necessary for AMD management to emphasize that and make clear that beyond a very small initial number of cuts, other design locations shouldn't worry about layoffs.

It might be able to allow them to strive for "profitless prosperity" and survive a very long time, yes. However right now, obviously they aren't very profitable by being the low-cost alternative. The problem with that also is you can't compete in the server market under those conditions, and that's a very lucrative area that they'd be quite damaged from losing share in. Anyhow, I agree they could survive quite well in the *low-price* market, but for that they need to achieve *low-cost* too. With Barcelona, that's clearly not the case. I am optimistic about the 0MiB variant of Shanghai though, we'll see how that goes.

Remember I'm reusing the same thread for 2 news items, and there has been plenty of regular news on the subject from other sources. I don't think this is an incredible amount of comments given that, but I see your point.

What gives? Not much except those reporting that data right now being idiots. I reported the EXACT same story with the EXACT same numbers, just with even more raw data thanks to Jon, on February 3rd: http://www.beyond3d.com/content/news/579

It just so happens that one website, I think The Register, decided to 'news' this now either without realizing or without pointing out that it's incredibly old stuff. And then a couple of other websites didn't bother to properly check if it's new informaztion and they reported it too. Many of those are sites which did not even report it when it came out, and their current analysis is also flawed. So I honestly don't think I'm the one who should be asked 'what gives?' ;)

I sourced The Inquirer once because our own internal source confirmed the story indepedently from both Inq and TGDaily. As for Fudzilla, his track record for management-level AMD rumours is truly excellent lately; he has had pretty much everything right and had exclusive information on a lot of stories in that category. I want to use reliable sources as much as possible and that generally doesn't include Fudzilla, but for this kind of rumour it very clearly does.

How do you know of this horror stories?

If I recall correctly a large part of Intel's 10% was planned to be via attrition. Don't know how it worked out though.

*unrealistic deadlines*?! Phenom was postponed several times, last 2 of which by *errors* which could've been avoided. Don't tell me that Hector Ruiz is the one to blame for these. :P

Phenom as we know it was only started after several false starts that pushed things back by at least six months.
Look at how long it took K8 from demos of functional silicon to when it was released, Phenom in comparison is a rush job.

The TLB bug may very well have been caught 6 months ago or never would have happened if the 10h design effort wasn't cutting it so close.

well, the CEO can give directions, but if designers under-deliver, what can he do?
I bet, Hector really hoped any of cancelled projects (k9, k10 etc) will be worth the effort.

I don't blame Hector for a fair amount of the 10h debacle.

I've said before that there were other execs and directors who most likely had a more direct hand in this, including the man so many think would be so great as his successor.

The engineers and designers were forced to a last-resort evolution of K8 in a comparatively short time. If the leadership either had more balls or was more decisive earlier, the development teams would have had more time.

This is turning into another Doom and Gloom thread...http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/newstex/AFX-0013-24440500.htm

It began today: Advanced Micro Devices Inc. cut 420 jobs today, including 215 in Austin, as the chip-maker took the first steps toward its major worldwide staff reduction that will continue for the next six months....http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-blogs/washington/plugged/entries/2008/04/17/amd_starts_layoffs_in_austin_u.html