Amid challenges, chipmaker AMD sees a way forward:
For more than two decades, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. has been the comeback kid of computer-related electronics.
The chipmaker has worked itself into difficult places only to make Houdini-like escape through clever and pioneering products, acquisitions, business restructuring and through winning legal settlements.
Now AMD finds itself in another difficult place — and company leaders think they know the name of the potential escape hatch. It is called Zen — a microprocessor design project whose results are expected to start showing up in a family of new products starting in 2017.
Zen is a new design for an advanced processor core, or data-crunching engine, that will be used in a wide range of AMD chips to be brought to market over the next several years.
“If Zen hits, they are back in the game,” said analyst Patrick Moorhead with Moor Insights & Strategy in Austin.
“Everything is riding on Zen,” said analyst Nathan Brookwood with Insight 64. “They are shooting for performance parity with where (arch-rival) Intel will be. AMD understands that they have to succeed with Zen. If Zen fizzles, they will really have to do a lot of running around.”
By that, Brookwood means AMD could be in trouble if Zen is not successful.

Advanced Micro Devices is counting on its new Zen advanced processor core will help boost the company’s fortunes. members or the Zen design team are: Mike Clark, front left, and team leader Suzanne Plummer, and in background from left are Teja Singh, Lyndal Curry, Mike Tuuk, Farhan Rahman, Andy Halliday, Matt Crum, Mike Bates and Joshua Bell.
Suzanne Plummer, the veteran Austin chip engineer who heads the Zen team, exudes confidence about the project.
“It is the first time in a very long time that we engineers have been given the total freedom to build a processor from scratch and do the best we can do,” Plummer said. “It is a multi-year project with a really large team. It’s like a marathon effort with some sprints in the middle. The team is working very hard, but they can see the finish line. I guarantee that it will deliver a huge improvement in performance and (low) power consumption over the previous generation.”
Plummer has worked at AMD since 2002, when it acquired the startup she was working for, Alchemy Semiconductor.
If Zen-based products don’t ship in volume until 2017, what will AMD depend upon in the meantime? It has a new family of promising lower-power chips based on a current generation design called “Carrizo.” It has made advances in graphics processors should translate into stronger sales. And it expects to sell more “semi-custom” processors into non-computer devices such as game consoles and other products.
If AMD can return to prosperity, that should make a difference in the computer industry, where it is an important alternative source to Intel Corp., and to Austin, where the company remains a leading tech employer. AMD has about 1,600 workers in Austin, which is about half the local employment it had several years ago.
http://www.mystatesman.co...sees-a-way-forward/nngdf/
De ZEN team word/werd trouwens geleidt door Suzanne Plummer en niet door Jim Keller. De toekomst van AMD ligt in handen van bovenstaande team. Ben echt benieuwd of ze kunnen leveren.
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