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Comment by gscott | Hacker News Reader

AMD gave away the farm but the money (I think 300 million) saved the company. All of this new innovation from AMD certainly arises from that money. Now however China has easier access to CPU's to build new supercomputer's find find ways to nuke the USA in new novel ways.

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> All of this new innovation from AMD certainly arises from that money.

Just to be clear:

Zen microarch design work started circa-2012. The USD$300m deal was circa-4/2016.

It's accurate to say the capital from the deal likely helped AMD finalize, produce, and distribute Zen / Epyc.

But the microarchitecture design innovation predated the cash infusion.

>It's accurate to say the capital from the deal likely helped AMD finalize, produce, and distribute Zen / Epyc.

It didn't, it just gave a pass / access to Alibaba and Tencent as well as other Government related project to use AMD CPU.

We're not talking about the same thing. You're talking about the deal, I'm talking about what AMD did with the cash from the deal.

Look at their balance sheet, and note that without the $300M infusion, the market would have been spooked by their debt levels.

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AMD/cash-flow?p=AMD

Amd also gave away the GPU farm when it made a similar deal with Intel. Both are shortsighted.

AMD delivered completed physical GPU components to Intel, which Intel then stuck next to their CPUs. They didn't give Intel anything Intel couldn't get by walking over to MicroCenter.

(So far as I know anyway)

Yes, what AMD did was basically give intel a dedicated GPU die with HBM which was then glued on the same package as the CPU.

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