Radeon Technologies Chief Raja Koduri leaves AMD
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xIcarus
It doesn't really matter, he's responsible for RTG and RTG fucked up.
As for the probability for each of those situations, I doubt the company fucked up considering Ryzen has been a monumental success and AMD as a whole has been doing really well lately.
It looks like he or his team messed up. And it doesn't make a difference which, as a leader you're supposed to identify problem points and address them. And most of all, you're supposed to NOT hype your damn products if you're not confident you're going to deliver.
Or I'm completely wrong and he left because he's frustrated with the company or something.
The problem is that the next person probably needs to significantly alter the architecture as it doesn't seem to be working so well in the high-end. People bash Nvidia for lower compute performance and 'lack of proper async support' (here we go again with the most uselessly overhyped tech of last generation) but I'm convinced that the low complexity is the main reason why they're doing so well in the gaming space.
I know right? Something smelled weird about the whole situation considering Vega didn't meet expectations.
Of course, people gave me weird looks when I said that.
CPC_RedDawn
Anyone else thought it could be personal reasons??
sverek
It could be mixed. I think he could stay, if he decided to. But pressure perhaps would be way too high and atmosphere would be not ideal.
CPC_RedDawn
Maybe he has had a better job offer elsewhere and he is trying to help AMD by stepping down and talking good about the company to maybe save a potential return later if a new job does not work out.
It could be anything, we are all just speculating.
Scoica
good riddance
Kaarme
I think you need to contact the major dictionary publishers/sites and explain to them what a Sabbatical Leave is. They clearly didn't know. While you are waiting for their replies, you can always edit the Wikipedia page by yourself.
Yeah, there were some of us who had their doubts about this very well timed "sabbatical" right after the Vega launch was a year late and even then there are no custom cards on the shelves. Not to mention Vega wasn't super impressive, even though I'd certainly love a custom 56 if the price wasn't so high (why not a 64 as well, but realitically speaking its price would be outside of my comfort zone in any case). But in the end Vega couldn't beat a competitor that had been in the market for a year already.
fantaskarsef
Well, I thought it might have been his away time, and the way he wrote it in the letter (if the letter is from him), he made it read like during his time off he made the decision to leave. Might not be true or what really happened though, I'm with you on that one.
Weecka
There's a rumour going around that he might be joining intel. I wouldn't be surprised since we just had news about intel and amd partnership (makes me laugh though: amd and intel working together...) . And amd is gonna be delivering the gpu side of it. Time will tell
user1
I don't think the problem is the uarch, i think the problem is budget constraints.
nvidia has so much more R&D that they have the gp 108,gp107, gp106, gp104, gp102, and gp100 chips for pascal alone which all launched roughly within a year and a half, in the same time amd launched the P10,p11 and p12 which dont compete with gp104,gp102 or gp 100 at all , and now even with vega it just barely competes with all 3 of those chips and doesn't compete with the new GV100. Amd STILL sells hawaii based firepros because they have nothing else that can do fp64 with reasonable performance.
nz3777
As long as we have Dr Lisa Su we will be ok lol.Farwell dude.
H83
This^^ I was part of the group that said that sabbatical was just a nice way of saying that Raja was going to leave AMD after the Vega fiasco. And i have no problem admitting that is probably the last to be blamed for Vega´s issues but someone has to be "sacrificed" to appease the shareholders calling for blood and in the end AMD sacrificed him... Good thing is sacrifice includes a nice compensation package...
SHS
That what I think it is or it could other reason.
What Vega fiasco ? you mean that disappoint that it didn't do better then nVidia but it funny that GTX 1070 Ti didn't better then Vega 56
Evildead666
Feeling lots of undeserved hate towards this man.
He did what was needed.
i would think that during his Sabbbatical, he was approached by people throwing money at him.
They couldn't do this while he was working full time at AMD/RTG.
He then probably considered the Pro's and Con's of staying on at RTG, and chose to leave.
Navi, if it is using multiple, small, GPU's glued together, is the way of the future. AMD and Nvidia are going to HAVE to go this route at some point.
That includes having to go HBM, because you just cant fit 1024bit GDDR interface on a card.
I would say the work has been done, and the future parts after Navi, will be incrementally better than Navi, as is what usually happens with generations of GPU's.
I think he might just want some more excitement in his work, more interesting R&D. And thats not going to be available at RTG for the current future....
sverek
Hear hear
JamesSneed
At least she is an engineer and can understand the direction of RTG at a high and low level. AMD is lucky they have someone like Lisa instead of the suits they had prior. I hope this works and and I really hope Navi is very competitive, we need that competition back in the GPU space.
chispy
I'm not surprised at all , i was expecting this exactly. I hope he goes on with his life and have a bright future.
Emille
Thanks fot the underwhelming vega GPUs that lead to nvidia raising their prices of 1080ti's thanks fam, you are a god amongst men.
alanm
No, the fiasco was that it took them over a year to do it. Thats a considerable period in the product generational race. Not to mention a years lost sales in the high end. Next Nv gen (Volta) will also be out far sooner than AMDs Navi, so expect more sales lost for AMD to Nvidia due to that as well.
schmidtbag
Am I the only one here who doesn't think Vega has to do with it? I mean sure, in terms of AMD's reputation and as a gamer's product, Vega was an overall failure. But its compute performance is extremely competitive, and to my understanding it was a financial success in the sense that it sold well and demand for it raised its value.
In other words, sure, Konduri and his team may have screwed up Vega, but if I were Su I'd be like "you barely got away with this and succeeded by pure luck: you get one more chance". Vega was hardly AMD's worst failure (it's not even the worst failure of ATI's history), so it seems a little odd to me that this is the reason he is leaving.
EDIT:
I can't imagine RTG had the time, engineers, or funding to come up with something better than Vega. Sure, HBM2 was probably a very poor oversight that added unnecessary complications (and in turn, production issues, cost, and time) but at the same time I think the development is necessary. If they left it to Nvidia to do all the work, AMD would've been even more behind. So I don't really see how things could've been better.
H83
Well alamn already answered for me. No matter how good or successful Vega may be in the future that fact that it was an year later and left Nvidia with the high end market for themselves has to be considered a fiasco.
