--! Update: I decided to set this post as a kind of a STICKY right next to Scientia's link. Feel free to dump any false claims or predictions made. Hopefully it encourages Scientia to be more prudent the next time. !--
Aside from getting a lot of things wrong this year, Scientia may have also misjudged the resolve of his readers in pointing out his mistakes after he proclaimed he never got anything wrong and challenged his readers to make a list. But as soon as the list was posted by some of his staunch critics, Scientia quickly deleted the posts. Unfortunately for him, his predictability in response to strong criticism made me realise that I needed to copy the entire thing before the censorship arrive. Anyway, here they are, the deleted posts Scientia doesn’t want you to read!
core2dude said...
Scientia: This speed could also roughly match Clovertown. However, 2.5Ghz for dual core K10 would lag behind 2.93Ghz Conroe.
On what benchmark? specfp_rate? It is amazing how you pass on such blatently baseless statements in abscence of any benchmarks. And spare me the rant about architectural improvements in Barcelona. I will believe it when I see it.
The bottom line is, the only benchmarks on which Barcelona has publically been evaluated are pov_ray and cinebench. And in both of these benchmarks, Kentsfield/Clovertown owns barcelona, clock-for-clock.
In abscence of any other demonstrations, all we can say is, Clovertown leads Barcelona 2-0.
Would my credibility be higher if I cherry picked the news and allowed all the gutter rats to do troll and flame posts like 180 and roborat do?
What makes you think you have any credibility? Case in point, you keep on claiming that Barcelona yields are great. While AMD's partners say that the yields suck. Either prove to us that you work for AMD, or just accept the possibility that the yields suck.
July 03, 2007 1:08 AM
Pop Catalin Sever said...
"Either prove to us that you work for AMD, or just accept the possibility that the yields suck."
Scientia works from AMD wheter payed or voluntary. Having and AMD centric (not biased) blog kind of makes you work for them. The bias problem is questionable even if you work or are just a fan. So no point in aguing about this. Actually Scientia's otpinions whould hold much more value if he was indeed AMD insider.
Anyway the yield statement is very odd, no one can possibly gues yields :) (especially whout any meaninfull data) there are the best keept secret, so either Scientia knows them or this is simply a trace of bias.
July 03, 2007 1:29 AM
core2dude said...
Anyway the yield statement is very odd, no one can possibly gues yields :) (especially whout any meaninfull data) there are the best keept secret, so either Scientia knows them or this is simply a trace of bias.
Very true! And for a good reason. If your yields suck, you do not want your investors to know about it. If they are great, you do not want your haggling customers to know about it :).
July 03, 2007 1:58 AM
Mo said...
You know what, I'm not gonna sit here and quote everything you said and reply to every little thing because I don't have the time for it. I will wait till Barcelona is fully here and then we'll see who's right and who's wrong.
But I'll do a quick search because the Great Sci believes he's never wrong. You gotta admit, you gotta pretty cocky to admit you're never wrong.
here's a quick run through of your blunders.
1) "AMD never does a launch without chips available." Scroll up to see this blunder. you obviously retract that statement now.
2) "AMD could do a release today at 2.2Ghz without any problem if the errata were fixed. Errata do not reduce chip speed and the last I heard AMD was hitting 2.4Ghz internally." Posted June 20th on AMDZone. I guess 2.2 and 2.4 are currently out of the question even if errata were fixed. Opps.
lets go back to 2006
3)"That tends to add weight to the idea that K8L will appear Q2 07." ERRR WRONG!
4)"I would say that K8L might hit 3.0Ghz at launch. 3.4Ghz by Q4 07 would be a reasonable ramp in clock. " hahahha
5)According to the supercomputer schedules for which contracts have already been given, AMD will have to supply Barcelona chips in the 2nd quarter of 2007.
Of course, someone could say that these are special chips and AMD won't have volume until 3rd quarter. This notion is extremely unlikely.
It has been AMD's policy for quite some time to have processor reviews and release on the same day. It wouldn't make any sense for AMD to be delivering somewhere around 20,000 processors and yet delay release for another month or two. Realistically, if you put 20,000 processors out in the wild some are bound to end up being previewed if the regular chips haven't been released yet.
Also, there is no reall reason why AMD cannot begin making Barcelona's about mid November. What a lot of people don't understand is that mid November is the cutoff; any chips started after then will not arrive until 2007. In fact, some of the 4th quarter chips were made in the 3rd quarter. I don't think it is any coincidence that Intel will release Kentsfield mid November. Intel too is aware that no new chips can be started after then that will effect Q4 sales. When mid November hits, Intel as well will start looking to Q1 07.
If AMD begins making Barcelona mid November then the first chips would roll off the line January 2007. These should be the first test batches. This would still give enough time for two or three more batches before mid May. At a reasonable rate of 4% this would be something like 750,000 chips. So, I would assume that the official release would come somewhere between the beginning and end of the 2nd quarter. The only way I could see that this could be moved up any further would be if Barcelona has already been fully checked out and the batch started in mid November would be available for sale. If this actually happened it would move the release date up to about mid February.
That was posted Oct. 2006. You didn't get a single thing right in your "guess" or what ever you wanna call it.
6)The critical thing is the date for the first supercomputer that uses Barcelona. It is my understanding that this machine will be live at the end of the 2nd quarter. This would imply that the Barcelona chips will be delivered several weeks prior to that. I'm certain that the hardware is being system tested in small scale with X2's and the hardware itself with some preproduction Barcelona's. It is reasonable to assume that if AMD feels that it can deliver the Barcelona's in Q2 07 that they must feel that the design is either complete or very nearly complete.
Errrrrrrrr wrong again.
Thats half a dozen I scooped up in just 1 1/2 thread in about 5 minutes. I could sit here and will probably find 2 dozen easily. There's nothing wrong with admitting that sometime you're just plain wrong in your guesstimates.
July 03, 2007 2:15 AM
13ringinheat said...
Add to the list his famous wait till 4x4 is displayed on numa aware OS and turns out it was still a dud......
And his constant crying about how core 2 duo benchmarks are unfair but the same benchmarks used to compare athlons and p4s were completely fair.....
That was a great read Mo though i am afraid it will get deleted as scientia doesnt like view points contrary to his own in this blog.....ask roborat..
Scientia if you "guesstimate" "speculate" and give out ridiculous opinions based on your bias expect to be laughed at when you are wrong almost brings you pretty much in sharikou territory actually.
July 03, 2007 2:42 AM
Ho Ho said...
scientia
"Curiously, bumping the clock speed down a grade to allow for the shift from dual to quad core we get 2.25Ghz which is about what the unofficial roadmaps showed at 2.3Ghz."
AMD seems to have new speedgrades now with only a measily 100MHz differences. Way too little difference in my oppinion. Intel has 266 MHz differences for 1066MHz FSB and 200MHz differences for 800MHz FSB models.
"This would be the first time AMD has made both standard and low power parts immediately available as part of a new processor launch.
Yes, it is. Though has anyone any information about the TDP of the CPUs? Inquirer reported those having 95W, were they correct?
"They did say higher frequencies in Q4 but this could mean just a single bump from 2.0Ghz to 2.2Ghz.
Again, that would be two speedbumps because of having only 100Mhz difference between models.
"This would mean 8 cores total but I wonder if there are any games at this point that can use that many cores."
No, there are none yet. There might be some in a few months, though. If desktop versions are indeed released as late as Q1 then by then we should have at least a few games that can use >4 cores.
"The 65nm version of R600 (R650) is also due in Q3 along with the finished drivers."
No it is not. There is no such thing as 65nm R650 and also no 670. It was just a planted rumor to catch the one who leaked information.
As for drivers I still have huge doubts in them. I don't remember seeing too big gains in performance in the last couple of updates. Sure, there were some speed gains in specific games but not an overall speedboost.
"If the launch is actually August (which is the way I read it) they would have to be shipping processors at least 3 weeks prior because AMD never does a launch without chips available."
I read "AMD expects that the processors will begin shipping for revenue in August 2007, with systems from AMD platform partners beginning to ship in September 2007". If partners would be getting chips three weeks before launch they would be selling systems based on Barcelona at the same time AMD releases them, not in September.
"So, why is the situation today worse than it was in 2003?"
How much money had AMD loaned in 2003?
In Q4 last year majority of the 500M loss was because of ATI. Suddenly in Q1 this year they made a huge loss of 600M and ATI is not to blame in that.
How can they turn that loss into less loss that fast? Sure, you have said that they have DTX coming and also K10 finally shows up but this is not in Q2. What makes them loose less money in Q2 with all those price reductions? Would it be impossible for AMD to post even greater losses in Q2 than they did in Q1?
Also those quoted loss numbers are a bit off in my opinion. With 100M steps from Q1 this year the table looks something like this:
Q2 500M
Q3 400M
Q4 300M
Q1 200M
Q2 100M
Total: 1.5B in five quarters
13ringinheat
"That was a great read Mo though i am afraid it will get deleted as scientia doesnt like view points contrary to his own in this blog.....ask roborat.."
He also doesn't like too long and detailed posts. Several of mine were cut shorter some time ago since supposedly they didn't contain any meaningful information.
July 03, 2007 3:27 AM
gdp77 said...
Scientia: Some have even insisted that AMD should price its X2's below the lowest priced C2D, the E4200 but this has not happened. I still see the arguments popping up, groundless though they may be. It seems that some just cannot understand that the fact that E6700 is faster than FX-62 doesn't mean that all C2D's are faster than all X2's. The AMD X2's priced similarly to E6300, E6400, and E6600 have similar peformance for most tasks.
Well AMD finally understood what the pricing of their chips should be, didn't they?
The best situation for Intel would be that the market expands rapidly which would allow Intel to grow faster than AMD since AMD will be capacity limited through most of 2007. With normal expansion, Intel is likely to continue to slowly lose share to AMD. This may seem unfair however AMD has cultivated better relationships with customers than Intel has in the past. By the time Intel has demonstrated any change AMD will have K8L
no comment
They will introduce K8L Barcelona in Q2 which should make 2007 K8L's year in the same way that 2006 was for C2D.
This would put the Q2 08 speed of 2.6Ghz ahead of the current fastest K8.
In terms of single socket in 2007, AMD's competitiveness is somewhat split. For dual core, this would be a 2.9Ghz Kuma versus a 2.93Ghz Conroe. This is a trivial 1% difference in clock, so probably even. However, for quad core this would be a 2.5Ghz Agena versus a 3.0Ghz Kentsfield. This is a not so trivial 20% difference in clock. I'm guessing Intel will stay ahead on this one although I suppose being competitive with the second fastest clock (2.6Ghz) is a lot better than having no quad cores at all.
I don't want to continue. U asked for a listing of your mistakes / misspredictions. Here it is.
Apologies for the very long post, I didn't realize how much Scientia deleted.
16 comments:
I have a theory on yields. AMD has been tooting its horn on 40% better than Intel on SPECfp_rate2006 on the assumtion that they could deliver 2.6GHz. They are still tooting that horn, but compared to K8 and not on SPECfp_rate2006. Launch at 2GHz, only a dodo would say yields are fine.
1) "AMD never does a launch without chips available."
Ha
the last I heard AMD was hitting 2.4Ghz internally
Delusion
3)"That tends to add weight to the idea that K8L will appear Q2 07."
Ha
4)"I would say that K8L might hit 3.0Ghz at launch. 3.4Ghz by Q4 07 would be a reasonable ramp in clock. "
I can't take it, someone stop!
"The 65nm version of R600 (R650) is also due in Q3 along with the finished drivers."
For one thing, 65nm R600 doesn't exist. For another, a shrunk R600 would still be painfully be behind G80. On top of that, Nvidia will release G90 this year. For shame, I will resort to AMDroid tactic of referencing FUD.
"If the launch is actually August (which is the way I read it) they would have to be shipping processors at least 3 weeks prior
Shipping in August, available September, it's not that hard to understand!
because AMD never does a launch without chips available."
o.o
"So, why is the situation today worse than it was in 2003?"
Still in denial. AMD lose.
OWNED
thats all, Just owned
roborat, you sir are a legend
Scientia just recently said:
It isn't about a different point of view; it's a matter of respect. I agree with very little that Sharikou says yet I have never attacked him personally the way that I have been.
Funny because this is what he wrote at AMDZONE forum on May 29, 2007:
At the end of the day, the same bloggers who say that Sharikou is a nut are also quick to accept negative informaton about AMD with a similar lunacy value. Sharikou sees bigfoot behind every tree while bloggers like 180 and Roborat insist that bigfoot can't be real because the unicorns chased them away.
Again, the false statement continues. I am not aware of saying anything worst than what he said about me but you don't see me whine about it. If he thinks agreement is a requisite for respect then he has a lot of growing up to do. I just found it ironic that he mentions the word "respect" when he seems to be the only blogger that I know that uses the delete button to make an argument.
I suppose I could have been nicer to roborat but it is difficult to show unlimited respect...
Now he's just mistaking me with someone who's bothered... ;)
That's okay. I left a purposefully respectful statement indicating my disappointment in his deleting the posts, and he deleted that too.
And I think my record stands- I'm no fanboy- just trying to insert some critical thinking into the debates. Sigh- another blog circling the drain.
Scientia doesn't like to admit when he is wrong. He is questioned about his unsupported claim that "AMD never does a launch without chips available", and he simply ignores it. If he doesn't like what you have to say, he deletes your post.
Sorry Doc Yield,
This time around, I didn't manage to save what you posted! I did think it was a very constructive post so I am as surprised as you are. Just shows you never know.
Clearly, AMD has some real talent in its designers.
I'm not biased, I just like AMD.
It is possible that the 1333Mhz FSB
will only be seen on a low volume of extreme edition 3.33Ghz chips, at least until late 2007.
What, I wasn't wrong, what are you saying? *delete*
Intel is still way behind in terms of innovation. It has nothing like 4x4.
AMD is all about innovation
Intel is in for a lot more pain before 2009.
AMD kicked ass in Q406.
Also, I'd really like to see a genuine comparison of Conroe versus FX where the AMD chip isn't handicapped with 5-5-5-15 timing.
All sites are biased to give a 0.1% advantage to Intel.
Intel's behavior reminds me a lot of the propaganda from the old USSR. They never admitted any problems and always exagerated results. According to their characterizations everything was going wonderfully right up until their economy and government collapsed. In reality, the problems had been there for decades.
AMD is good.
When is Intel going to dig in and do some real work for a change?
Intel is bad.
It can't compete at the high end enthusiast area against FX with 4x4 because the dual bus motherboard would be considerably more expensive for Woodcrest.
1 chip beats 2, Intel paid the reviewers!
Who cares about 4x4 anyway? Wow! AMD got ASUS to make them a motherboard with TWO sockets. Never before has there been a motherboard with TWO sockets! This is REVOLUTIONARY!!
There are tons of articles on the Internet that show the FX-74 4x4 can barely keep up with Intel's cheapest quad core, the Q6600.
Compare that TDP as well. 105W vs. 2x 125W!
4x4 totally destroyed in benchmarks: http://techreport.com/reviews/2007q2/core2-qx6800/index.x?pg=1
Also check those power consumption numbers! They're so bad that TechReport said:
Power use on the Quad FX systems is... embarrassing.
AMD kicked ass in Q406.
Yeah! Since then until now AMD has lost over $1.1bn and about 6% of CPU market share. But I can see where you're coming from. Things are just swell over at AMD aren't they?
Why are you posting old news from over a year ago? The facts speak for themselves. AMD is losing market share, declining ASPs, losing tons of $$$ and they will go BK in Q2'08.
1 chip beats 2, Intel paid the reviewers!
I laugh every time I read this. Intel has bribed every tech hardware site out there! They are deliberately slandering AMD! AMD is not posting losses, losing market share etc. Clearly, AMD's CFO is a paid Intel pumper!
AMD BK Q2'08.
Well I overestimated Scientia's tolerance for comments that don't jive with his worldview and so I neglected to save my comment to his most recent blog entry. To my surprise he deleted it even though it was on topic and simply disputed a recent claim he made about what AMD's "asset light" strategy is all about.
I told him that the more he continues to make claims without basis in fact, the more he will continue to eat crow as AMD proves him wrong.
So Scientia has recently been claiming that "asset light" refers to the outsourcing of the fabrication of ATI's GPUs. I explained why that's a foolish prediction and would soon result in Scientia eating more crow. That's probably why he deleted my post.
AMD first hinted at "asset light" AFTER suffering through a horrendous Q1 07. From Hector's comments it's clear that he is referring to a forthcoming fundamental shift in AMD's CPU operations:
http://chip.seekingalpha.com/article/33060
ATI has always outsourced GPU fabrication. If Hector had meant "asset light" to refer to GPU outsourcing, why would he bring it up three quarters after announcing the ATI acquisition? Clearly, Scientia's ability to use common sense and come to logical conclusions has derailed. Going by his many false predictions over the last year, it derailed quite a while ago.
Mark my words, Hector will explain "asset light" in more detail during the Q2 CC or the July Analyst Day presentation and he will make clear that AMD will, over the next year, be making fundamental changes to their CPU business that involve outsourcing more CPU production and possibly selling some assets. Scientia will soon be eating crow big time.
I'm glad that this blog respects free speech like most blogs do; it's sort of an unspoken rule of blogging. Deleting or editing comments simply makes the blogger appear to be a manipulative censoring spinmeister trying to distort the truth, whether the commentators are telling the truth or not. And I've never understood Scientia's fascination with the "gutter rat" anonymous posters and why he wonders that bloggers tolerate them. Intelligent folks can quickly and efficiently filter through a reasonable amount of crud to get to the meaningful information. By censoring at will according to his worldview, insightful and meritorious opinions are inevitably lost, along with the censorer's credibility. You can't hide the truth forever.
Axel said: "So Scientia has recently been claiming that "asset light" refers to the outsourcing of the fabrication of ATI's GPUs."
I agree with you. Scientia is not business orientated so you have to forgive him. Just add this to his long list of mistakes. The fact that AMD themselves said that they want to leverage on ATI experience in outsourcing suggests that this is about the logic side of the business. Plus the fact that AMD's revenue has shrunk to the point it cannot support 2 fabs means it is seriously considering a massive shift in its business model. Clearly scientia doesn't know what he is talking about.
And I've never understood Scientia's fascination with the "gutter rat" anonymous posters and why he wonders that bloggers tolerate them..
it should be obvious now more than ever that he's just afraid of criticism. i seriously don't think that he is mature enough to rise above insults whenever they are thrown at him. And I have to agree, the moment you delete a perons post, it is you that actually loses the debate.
When Operon was first released back in 2003 it only hit 1.8Ghz compared to Barton's 2.2Ghz. If we apply this same ratio to K8's current 3.0Ghz then we come up with 2.45Ghz. Of course, Opteron and Barton were both single core. Curiously, bumping the clock speed down a grade to allow for the shift from dual to quad core we get 2.25Ghz which is about what the unofficial roadmaps showed at 2.3Ghz. So, it looks like AMD is down about 1.5 speed grades.
I love the voo doo math here !
"I suppose I could have been nicer to roborat but it is difficult to show unlimited respect... "
Let's face it, Scientia's attitude has clearly changed and there is an obvious reason why:
When AMD was doing well in 2005/2006, he did not have to make up stuff or worry about trying to refute people's opinions because the facts were on his side. He could therefore afford to take the high ground. He also did not need to swing every marginal fact into AMD's favor - like doing a comparison taking AMD's best possible PAPER clockspeed for K10 and calling it reasonable, while using Intel's DEMO'd Penryn speed and calling it "cherry picked"
Now AMD is struggling and the facts do not support his opinions / hopes so he has to carefully pick and choose his fights and ignore others when the facts are not on his side. This will obviously continue until (or if) AMD rebounds.
People should notice he is attacking people whether it be the "gutter rats" or 180 or Robo, but he rarely attacks the arguments... when the facts are not on your side attack the messenger, this is a classic political strategy. When you can't refute an argument attempt to discredit the source or change the argument.
Sincerely,
Gutter Rat #4
"I expect AMD to continue to slowly gain share at the rate of about 0.66% per quarter. I expect AMD and Intel to be roughly equal on the desktop in Q3 07."
"AMD for its part may begin construction of a third FAB, possibly after mid 2007."
"As to the idea that AMD won't deliver K8L on the desktop until Q4 07, AMD has contracts with one supercomputer that will be running by end of Q2 07 so K8L production has to start in Q2. Desktop versions of K8L will come out in Q3"
"Further, Intel's gains have mostly been on the desktop which is the least profitable area."
"I would expect AMD to end 2007 with a gain of about 2.4% in volume share."
"Intel is also unlikely to improve its popularity with vendors."
(This was Nov06, any thoughts on how vendors perceptions between AMD and Intel has been since then)
". Today, Intel's margin at 49.1% is still below AMD's at 51.4%. I find it amazing that some don't see how noteworthy this is. "
(This was Q3 - Scientia fails to ntoe of course that AMD's margins were based on ~100% CPU sales, while Intel's margins were a mix of CPU, chipsets, flash, mobos....)
"In 2008, less than half of Intel's FABs will be 45nm while both of AMD's 300mm FABs will be ramping to 45nm."
"These reductions in cost should pull up AMD's margin even if Intel continues the price war." (Q3)
"AMD has at least two other possibilities to compete with Intel's 45nm in 2008. These include the possibility of using TTRAM or Z-RAM for cache."
(Ahh.. ZRAM - seen any reports on this FANTASTIC technology lately? Can you say reverese hyperthreading?!? Actually that's not really fair as ZRAM is a real technology it will just not likely make it's way into CPU's anytime soon)
"I don't honest see how Intel could realistically take back share from AMD given all of AMD's proejcted advantages with cost, volume, and the partners and customers it has lined up. I expect AMD's margins to rise regardless of Intel's pricing strategy due to AMD's conintued drops in costs."
"In contrast, the phoney forecast is often based on a trivial surface view of the market rather than anything in-depth. These forecasts are often grounded in emotion rather than analysis and are never counterintuitive to the author since they are often based on the author's biases more than anything else......
For example, Intel supporters were often quite vocal in stating that Intel couldn't lose ground to AMD because Dell was Intel only and Dell had a very high volume. The association of Dell with Intel gave Intel a guarantee of a high volume customer and therefore lots of sales. Curiously, these same people are now saying that AMD is being hurt because of the supposedly low prices it is getting from Dell for its chips. This is an odd argument because these same people were never concerned about the wholesale price to Dell before."
I just want to take a second to apologize to Scientia - I was one of those fanboys (gutter-rats) that though Dell's aggressive pricing and demands for guaranteed volumes would hurt AMD, apparently I was wrong. The whole Dell thing seems to be working out above all possible expectations for AMD.
"Unfortunately, Intel has cut back on its capital spending severely while AMD has increased its by 50%. This would certainly suggest that AMD inteneds to have more FAB capacity in the future while Intel is cutting back."
"And, if AM2 and F are a secret then 4X4 would make the CIA and the US military envious. I've seen demonstrations of future weapons and spy devices that won't be released for two or three years. 4X4 is due within 3 months but the technical detail available when written down would still leave space free on the back of a postage stamp."
Hmmm...looking back now, I wonder why the 4x4 details were such a "secret"...
"Therefore, we must assume that Intel is not dropping the FSB. This also has to mean that Intel is not releasing CSI in 2008 and is not following AMD's lead to an onboard memory controller."
"In the near term, 4x4 should make AMD competitive again in the FX range."
And the best one....
""Intel will release the Kentsfield quad core equivalent of Conroe later this year and probably the Clovertown quad core version of Woodcrest in 2007. These chips however are far less ambitious and leading edge than Conroe. In fact, they are essentially the same strategy as Intel used to lackluster effect with Smithfield. If Smithfield is any indication, Kentsfield is destined to be the quad core version of Celeron by end of 2007."
"The interesting part is that AMD officially says mid year 2007 for release. However, this estimate is similar to the current end of year estimate for 65nm chips. In both cases, AMD allows itself some padding so that if problems occur it can still meet its estimated delivery. If things go well, it can always move its release forward. This is why it seems likely that 65nm will appear in October rather than in December. Likewise, K8L could arrive in the 2nd quarter of 2007"
65nm in Oct'06? K8l in Q2'07... "juuusssttt a bit outside..."
The only padding was the in the room Scientia must have been in when he thought this one up. (OK...that was a low blow...)
"The interest on the debt is mostly offset by the cost savings of merging AMD and ATI so the debt itself is the biggest factor. However, Intel's unprofitable sections and its current large inventories are likely to hit its stock harder than AMD's"
"ith Dell's increased AMD offerings combined with the increased server offerings from IBM, Sun, Dell, and HP it does seem unlikely that AMD will see any large reversals soon."
Here we are tearing down his blog and he expects us to track down 1000 (10%) errors from the zone lol. Imagine a journalist or a doctor or a scientist with such a record! Poor wife of his.
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