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Comment by ldrndll | Hacker News Reader

Do you mind elaborating on what seeds you’re referring to. Or just some pointers on what to search for or something. I’m ignorant to the history here but would like to learn more.

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I'm not a HW person but as I understand it, the latest chips AMD produces seem to have something in common with NVIDIA GPUs .. they have these blocks that they can essentially copy and paste. In NVIDIA parlance, these are SMs. I think what the OP is referring to may be the interconnect and this sort of simple architecture. You get the power from scaling the blocks (not from a more complex individual block). My previous gen Ryzen is slower on an individual core basis than the comparable Intel part but I went for it because of the core count. What is interesting is that as TSMC improves their process and they both move to a smaller node, it makes it possible to fit more blocks on an area of silicon and it gets better (power-wise?) Would be interesting to hear from an EE if my thinking is on the spot or if I am in error.

I think they're referring to how AMD threw everything out and started from scratch on their Zen CPU architecture in 2012 (when their stock was near rock bottom)

This and the decision to go fabless (Intel mocked them relentlessly for it).

Which is pretty funny because Intel probably knew it was a smart move; AMD probably wanted to do this earlier. They spun GlobalFoundries out in 2009, but only after a settlement with Intel allowing them to do so. Part of their patent cross-licensing agreement with Intel was (allegedly) that they had to produce chips in-house.

Intel pretty much deserves to see themselves in the position they're in now. Microsoft made more headlines over the years with their anti-competitive behavior, but Intel was just as bad.

Different company, but Lam Research had a finance CEO, he had to 'resign' because he liked leading women on with career advancement promises more than running a critical infrastructure company. Now there's an ex-engineer/project-manager in the CEO position. So, according to the board members of these companies, finance heads are out, engineering-heads are in. Let's hope it works and lets hope it sticks for good.

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