Talk:Advanced Micro Devices

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Advanced Micro Devices article.
Article policies
To-do list for Advanced Micro Devices: edit · history · watch · refresh

Here are some tasks you can do:
  • Verify: Check that all information on future products in up-to-date.
  • Cleanup: Work on citations where appropriate, unify dates in article using WP:DATES.
  • NPOV: Try your best to ensure a neutral, balanced tone throughout the article.
  • Other: Add Barcelona and Torrenza information. K8L NGMA details need to be updated.
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Contents

[edit] Weasel words, essay format and sources

I've went through the article and tried to consolidate the amount of information. Also I've added many comments that might help give an idea of where issues lie. The article at points seem to be written like an essay on AMD and not a encyclopedic article. This needs changed, as well as the POV statements. Also sources need to be added, using footnotes. The individual product sections are quite long for an article on the company itself. This information should be summarised with a link to the main article which will delve into the details. Old products, current products and future product sections could help, again with mere summaries.Nicholas 18:17, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

  • I went through and tried to fix some of what you said. I don't think it needs a complete rewrite. Possibly things could be summarized.82.45.240.51 20:25, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Actually, what you did looks great. Breaking the products into distinct categories makes things much easier to read. Myself, and I think others that suggest a rewrite don't mean to start from scratch. Actually, seeing some of the changes, I believe the article looks much better, however it still needs someone to go through and remove POV "weasel words", whether they're biased against AMD or Intel. If you look at Intel's wiki, it's written in a tone and prose which seems (to me) a bit more encyclopaedic than AMD's article. I agree, Intel sucks :) BUT, the article should be as neutral in tone as possible. To me, it seems some things were thrown in at the last minute, such as the mention of AMD's low watt processors at the end of the K8 section. I find the production/fab section a little repetitive, and maybe all the lawsuits with intel (some mentioned at head of article and others at end) could be combined. Also, the external links section is quite extensive and could possibly be checked to insure all the links are valid and to decide if the link is really needed. I guess all I'm saying is the article looks much better than it did earlier today! But it needs a read through to remove those subtle POV statements, generalisations, repetitive information and to try to make it out in a tone and prose of a wikipedia article and not an essay on AMD. AMD deserves better! Finally, and this is quite important: statements, facts, figures need sources. It'd be nice if the sources were done in the accepted footnote referencing format instead of just posting a link to the fact next to it, but I'd rather see some sources done sloppily, than none at all!Nicholas 20:35, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Well I did alot of revising. I tried to remove as much POV as I could. I also put things in proper sections and expanded the litigation section, etc. I think any editor interested in this article should read it over and do general clean-up work where needed. I don't think it's so bad anymore as needing a rewrite. Sources are still an issue however. It's hard to make this article neutral due to the whole nature of AMD v Intel, but I did try and I think it's at least tolerable now. There are still some sections that read like an essay; again go through it and revise where necessary. It's definitely in MUCH better shape than it was 12 hours ago. I hope I didn't waste my day :-/ Nicholas 23:36, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Spansion?

Is the information presented in the first couple of paragraphs of the article about owning 37% of Spansion still true? I thought they got out of that business? If it's true then great, but if not it should be pulled and the section relating to it should be revised to show that it was something in the past.Nicholas 21:03, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

From Spansion.com:

Do AMD and Fujitsu still own stock in Spansion? Yes. On the completion of the offering on December 16, 2005, AMD owned approximately 40% of the Class A common stock and Fujitsu owned approximately 27% of the total stock outstanding

I don't have anything more current on hand at the moment. AMD's corporate overview from 2005 agrees, but is not any more recent. They haven't released an overview for 2006 yet. — Aluvus t/c 21:40, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] unify dates format.

Either something like
1. January 26, 2007 or
2. 2007-01-26
The whole article are filled with these two kinds of formats showing dates, please unify. Discuss here. Thank you. --202.71.240.18 12:29, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

  • I personally like the first one. --202.71.240.18 12:29, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
    • Something to add: I think we should follow the date format recommended by wikipedia at Wikipedia:Date_formattings. --202.71.240.18 12:33, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cite Tag

The tag currently on the top of the article is not the correct maintenance tag, and I've removed it. That tag is for articles or sections that have no references at all. For instance, this page. What should be done, and taken from WP:Cite:

"It's often useful to indicate specific statements that need references by placing {{fact}} ("citation needed") after the sentence, but be careful not to overuse these tags. Don't be inappropriately cautious about removing unsourced material.

To summarize the use of in line tags for unsourced or poorly sourced material:

  1. If it is doubtful but not harmful to the whole article, use the {{fact}} tag to ask for source verification, but remember to go back and remove the claim if no source is produced within a reasonable time.
  2. If it is doubtful and harmful, you should remove it from the article; you may want to move it to the talk page and ask for a source, unless you regard it is as very harmful or absurd, in which case it shouldn't be posted to a talk page either. Use your common sense.
    ." Nja247 (talk • contribs) 22:56, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Clean-Up

I would like for all of us to consider what clean-up needs done and try to tackle it so we can have an up-to-date article and remove the maintenance tags. Heck, if we do a decent job, we could even submit this article as a candidate for a good article. Post your comments, concerns and ideas here. I'm aiming to have it cleaned-up within a months time. Nja247 (talk • contribs) 23:05, 9 February 2007 (UTC) Also, rechecking the vocabulary used, to less obscure words ("subpoenas").

[edit] Barcelona

Information needs updated about the "K8L". According to reports, K8L was for the Turion 64[1], NOT next gen technology platform, which is called Torrenza (according to Tom Yager at InfoWorld on 7 February 2007).

With that said, this all needs to be addressed in the article, because mid-2007 is not far off. Barcelona is supposed to be the first chip released under the Torrenza initiative, and it's to be 40% than Cloverton, and will be released mid-2007 [2]. Further, it's supposed to have 128 bit wide SSE, be 80% faster in floating point over Opteron, offer new VM and power management techniques. Dedicated L2 cache per core, and a L3 cache [3]. So, again, this is the biggest revamp since 2003. The first L3, and 65nm process for AMD [4].

With that said, I need ideas and help on getting this info into the main AMD article. Further, if anyone is up to it, help me fix the erroneously wrong "K8L" article, and update the Torrenza piece. Nja247 (talk • contribs) 12:08, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

See related talk page for response from other users, there's no need to post a thread like that in two articles. --210.0.209.178 06:47, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Actually this doesn't change the fact that information on Torrenza, and more importantly Barcelona need added to this article. Nja247 (talk • contribs) 12:36, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
And allow me to say, Torrenza is not equal or equivalent to the term "K8L", Torrenza itself has its own article, and that Torrenza is an initiative for coprocessors from AMD back to the year 2005, specialized coprocessors for certain type of calculations such as Cryptography, XML, and so on can use AMD socket(s) as common socket (to accelerate system performance and reduce the CPU workload), to further share system memory under Non-Uniform Memory Architecture (NUMA) or Unified Memory Architecture or Uniform Memory Access (both in short is UMA, I don't know which...) as well as having its own cache; or in another way round, allowing companies to manufacture HTX add-in accelerator cards that is similar to PCI-E add-in accelerator cards (usually for HPC use, instead of consumer PC market. While K8L is a microarchitecture by AMD, with improved IPC and SSE unit width from 64-bit to 128-bit, and other improvements.
If people do not understand the differences between the two different items, I suggest them to SEARCH GOOGLE before saying something stupid. --202.71.240.18 06:49, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

This has been established by the other user who posted one day ahead of you. We know it's not. The upcoming architecture and the Barcelona chip should be mentioned in this article, otherwise it's out of date. Nja247 (talk • contribs) 21:38, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I do not think so. By not mentioning anything about the "Bacelona" chip does not mean that the article is out of date, this article gives only brief descriptions about the products and technologies from AMD, not detailed specifications. Besides, a section "Ext. 64" was presented in this article, with a very short "description" of the microarchitecture, I think the improvements and changes made to the microarchitecture should be mentioned in that section but not the "Bacelona" chip itself, I do not think that "Bacelona" chip is more notable than the microarchitecture, likewise, nothing related to a single chip was written in each of the sections. Such thing as "The first chip under the microarchitecture is a server chip clocked at 2.x GHz, 65 nm process, quad-core chip codenamed Bacelona, featuring 128-bit SSE units and 128-bit FP units, 2MiB of L3 cache, improved power management (PowerNow!) as well as hardware-assisted virtualization improvements, and paving way for future initaitives as Torrenza and Fusion" are meaningless to the section, I think. --202.71.240.18 10:19, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Why no info?

Came here expecting some info on this up and coming chip, but there was none at all. Not even a mention of its name. I simply find it odd as it's soon to be released and there's plenty of info on it on the net. 82.45.240.51 17:56, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Good question. I've already brought it up. I disagree with 202.71.240.18, and believe a very brief mention of the chip and the new tech it brings should make its way into the article. You're free to add as you see fit of course. People probably won't add it until it's out. Nja247 (talk • contribs) 20:32, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] AMD's processor history

Just an FYI. I seem to recall that the Am5x86 was AMD first processor produced that wasn't a direct clone of an Intel. Here is a link to the page. http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_1260_1268,00.html

74.130.163.203 00:04, 2 March 2007 (UTC)


I didn't see a mention of AMD being the first to break the 1 GHz barrier with Home/desktop CPUs. Worth mentioning? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.184.241.144 (talk) 05:13, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Something to do with the chipset thing!!

I recall (if correctly) AMD has do chipsets before Athlon XP or Athlon 64, but they're not mentioned in the article, could somebody please add that to the technologies section? --202.71.240.18 13:30, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Where's the second plant?

Between 2003 and 2005, they constructed a second manufacturing (300mm) plant nearby

Nearby where? Germany or Taiwan? AxelBoldt 07:28, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Fab 36? AMD has only Fab 30 (later upgraded to 65 nm and renamed Fab 38, I recall from AMD Analyst day slides) and Fab 36 right now in Dresden, Germany. --202.40.137.202 02:57, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Financial information necessary?

Is it really necessary to have this information at the top of the article? I'm tempted to move it or delete it. Alex 03:29, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Five design teams?

"[The Fort Collins design team] complementing the existing ones in Austin, Sunnyvale, Boston and Bangalore"

Is this true? AMD shutted down the Longmont, Colorado design team for Geode, and started this? I need someone to explain this! --202.71.240.18 07:26, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Recent edits

Okay, I've had a chance to go over this better now. I can see a lot of the content on the main page was migrated to sub pages, as it should have been. But the result has been to break the narrative structure that used to exist on the main AMD page. Having been called too easy to read, the main AMD page is now a jumble of links, interspaced with intermittent narrative, and I'm not sure after all the work, the end result is hugely better. The biggest sin for me is to become a 'parts database.' I'm sorry reference to the 'virtual gorilla' strategy has been removed. I think it was both interesting and informative, to explain to reader how a small company like AMD, was able to compete with a much larger company, Intel. Another observation, is that anyone who knows AMD, knows it was the passion and enthusiasm of Jerry Sanders that repeatedly pulled the company back from the brink of bankruptcy. Sanders went out, recruited people, gave them a vision, and innovated. The emotional side of AMD's history appears to have been de-emphasized, even though that was what drove everything else. Please, don't fall into the trap of thinking re-cycling corporate press releases is a 'scientific' and correct way to write about business. 90.201.130.24 08:25, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] K10

At the start, the summary says that the K10 is a quad-core architecture. Later, it says this: "K10 processors will come in a single, dual, and quad-core versions with all cores on one single die." Is this contradictory or am I missing something? And is Phenom the same thing as K10 (i.e, its brand name) or is it just a subset of K10? because each has its own article (unlike Athlon, which is the brand name for the K7 architecture).

Ǣ0ƞS 07:56, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

K10 is a "native" quad-core design. The dual- and single-core variants will be quad-core parts with some of their cores disabled. High-end desktop K10 parts will be sold under the Phenom brand; other desktop parts will be sold under the Athlon brand, server parts will be sold under another brand. Similarly, Athlon was the name used for the first mainstream desktop K7 products (later Athlon XP), with the Duron and Athlon MP brands filling in other niches. So yes, the situations are similar. K7 doesn't have its own page, and neither does K8, but other microarchitectures (NetBurst, Intel Core (CPU architecture)) sometimes do. K7 and K8 probably should as well, IMHO. — Aluvus t/c 19:40, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarifications. IMO it should be clarified in the short summary that some cores are disabled in the low-end variants. Ǣ0ƞS 05:45, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
K10 Phenom FX/X4/X2 will have L3-cache, K10 Athlon X4/X2 will not have L3. Server K10 will still use the Opteron brand name. --Denniss 13:04, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Litigation with Intel Section

This section seems quite slanted. The only sources cited are AMD's own statements from its web page. Seems to me it needs some verification from independent sources and a change in POV and tone.

Morrolan 07:25, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Independent sources like TGDaily and The Register perhaps? At least most -- not ALL, I believe, but I cannot find one, if you do, drop a link here :) -- of reports copied perspectives from AMD documents (which IS AMD's perspective), then what's the difference to copied AMD perspectives from official AMD documents while the later method gives more creditability and ease to follow? Plus, nothing will be verified if Intel still do PR spins/stunts saying "No, we didn't do that, we always encourage competition(s)." without further elaborations and evidences, at least not until somebody shows that not a single email in the Intel corporate email system was offering "rebates" and "goodies" to OEMs to use plain Intel products (CPU, motherboard, GMA graphics, and wireless etc.) and rejecting AMD products (processors and possible chipsets, before 2002,) but as ALL Intel emails during that period was all "missing," this will remain a non-verified mystery. I agree about the change of tone is needed, but the POV? Nope, we didn't heard from Intel lately about the ATI subpoena in December 2006 after the acquisition besides a "disappointment" to EU's ruling, that is we still do not know Intel's standpoint besides a simple "No." and "AMD is also doing the same thing." (again with no elaborations!) 202.71.240.18 10:46, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] AMDs Problems

Shoudn't we mention the huge financial problems AMD suffers since 3 quarters? --134.155.99.41 03:14, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

AMD fanbois won't allow it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.97.179.205 (talk) 23:26, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bankruptcy?

The current article lists AMD as having announced their plans for bankruptcy yesterday. I was rather surprised to see that there was no citation for this recent event. I looked on Slashdot to see what they said but the story, which certainly would have made front page news, was completely absent. I am aware they havn't been doing well recently, but I would think if they actually announced plans to file for bankruptcy it would make Slashdot. I searched Google news and got zero relevant results.

My best guess is that this is just vandalism. I'm marking that as "dubious" and if I don't get sources I'll delete it later today. Anybody have more info?--TexasDex 14:01, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Only news I get on a Google news search is an announcement of the quad-core release. I'm reverting. scot 14:31, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
Agreed. Any unsupported/uncited claims of their bankruptcy should probably be reverted as vandalism from now on.--TexasDex 15:10, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I ASK FOR THE SEMI-PROTECTION OF THIS ARTICLE, DELIBERATE VANDALISM FOR A FEW DAYS IN A ROW, ESPECIALLY BY 74.215.126.32 Thanks guys! 70.81.157.133 18:22, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I've always seen hardcore Intel fanatics who keep saying AMD bankrupt by what time and vice versa by hardcore AMD fanatics, on blogs and discussion forums. So these trens already span to Wiki? All this pure spam and misinformation? Just get over it, fanboys, when it comes to Chapter 11, somebody will announce it, but surely it won't be all you Intel fanboys. --Idle.man5216 —Preceding signed but undated comment was added at 09:45, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Intel

Should the lead include which one is the first ranked? Kushalt 00:10, 27 December 2007 (UTC)