I hope you do a multipart series on AMDs history. It is truly fascinating. There are as many bold moves as there are instances of jeopardizing the company out of an insistence on treating employees like team members rather than consumables. That AMD survived from 2008 to 2014 is surreal in it's own right, and the comeback after that is even wilder.
Jerry Sanders the 3rd, his guerrilla tactics against Intel around 1995-200x, contracting the DEC Alpha CPU design team at discount price to launch K7 and Amd64. Amd releasing the first (x86) 1 ghz CPU in great quantities, and Intel only faking to release a 1 ghz Pentium 3 in limited quantities. Those are histories that deserve to be told I think. Best wishes.
I think AMD survived largely because of anti monopoly law, strict licensing potential issue (so practically limits who can buy them) and they were in such dire situation that nobody dared to invest on them knowing how hard to make profits from the potential acquisition.
Wow, Jocelyn Lleno is sill active in the industry. She was working at the San Francisco fab wiring circuits onto wafers by hand and now is in a senior position at Global Foundries in Upstate New York.
She basically stayed with the same company for all her life (Considering Global Fundries is an AMD spin off). Lesson: treat your employees right, and you will get lifelong loyalty in return. Global Foundries is an AMD spin off. .
@@SirMo Not really, she went to work to many non AMD or GF companies in between according to her linkedin ha ha. What a crazy world we live in. Best wishes.
I got to say AMD's pro employee culture seems to be continuing. Last year I did a 3 month internship with them and I had death in the family. They told me I didn't even have to fill out paper work or take time off. It was a very good place to work.
Please never change Asianometry. I work in semiconductor distribution/recycling and your videos have peeled back the history of this industry space for me like I’ve never seen centralized before .
Didn't know AMD's logo is unchanged. From one perspective it's nothing special, but it is very easy for them to use at any scale, works well on screens, and is kind of ahead of its time, so ultimately was a great choice.
AMD doesn’t exactly have a color on the logo itself but it’s overall theme and product packaging shifted from green to red. AMD’s simple logo design is definitely scalable and long lasting Kinda reminds me of Mitsubishi that also has simple shapes and timeless logo.
Literally _why_ we jokingly referred to AMD as Advanced Marketing Devices for years. They didn't advertise their products because they were mostly knock-offs.
I gotta say, "Advanced Micro Devices" is a truly brilliant name for a semiconductor company. - Self-explainatory: straight to the point of what the company is all about. - Short, handy acronym that rolls off the tongue very easily. - Built-in advertising slogan: promises cutting-edge products.
15:09 the very first impression of the building sends out a feeling of acception to everyone. Ahead of the mainbuilding, round in shape and so seemingly open in every direction the entrance speaks the founders and company philosophy. Love it.
I deeply miss companies with leadership that values it's employees. They certainly still exist, but at the same time, treating employees badly has become far more accepted than it should be. It's not 'just business' when you are interrupting people's lives.
$45,000 annual pay... That's $386,857 today. A *YEARS* salary severance. According to Glassdoor, so grain of salt, AMD's current Marketing Director is pulling $410,298/yr. Kinda feels like it should be a lot more today.
Starts with a generous stock program for employees, transitions that into a profit sharing one and has a 'lifetime employee' system for a while. This Sanders guy seems pretty decent in my book 😀
The oldest continuously operating chip fab plant in the world is a former Fairchild Camera plant here it South Portland, Maine it is now split into two plants, one owned by Diodes, the other by TI.
@@ntabile Yeah I get that, times are different obvious but from people in recent times, I've heard AMD isn't too bad culture (except the RTG division, especially when Raja worked there) But lots of historical accounts say Intel was and still is a ruthless ahole company, to it's people except top management and to the general industry from get go and nothing has changed in 50+ years. That said, seems that don't even look after their top management anymore either since they kick them in the ass and churn them over like disposable items if they don't do well.
Fun fact: Jack Gifford (one of the founders of AMD) would later go on to found Maxim Integrated, a leading analog IC company recently acquired by Analog Devices. Really cool stuff!
Jerry Sanders the 3rd, his guerrilla tactics against Intel around 1995-200x, Nexgen Nx686, contracting the DEC Alpha CPU design team at discount price to launch K7 and Amd64. Amd releasing the first (x86) 1 ghz CPU in great quantities, and Intel only faking to release a 1 ghz Pentium 3 in limited quantities. Those are histories that deserve to be told I think. Best wishes.
Man, there is so much to this story that you could literally do 10 episodes on it and that would still be leaving a lot on the table. The rivalry between AMD and Intel (or shall I say, Intel's numerous illegal and immoral legal shenanigans against AMD) is of course very interesting but even their very recent history, including their incredible comeback with Ryzen, is fascinating. I look forward to hearing you tell more of this story in the future!
Keep in mind AMD is no innocent saint. It has much less sins I think as it was the little one of the two. But they have "evil" actions, if not so many as Intel. Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely. Intel was much more powerful much of the time, and probably still is. If AMD was the powerful one, the things would be almost surely reversed. Best wishes.
@ajax700 This is true, of course, but we can still feel bad for AMD as the victim of intels Shenanigans. Intel literally paid companies not to use amd products. This doesn't even mention the multitude of other companies that don't exist anymore because intel crushed them.
I used the Am2901 ALU +Am2910 microsequencer in '80's to develop a new 16 bit bit-slice CPU (4 bit*4 AM2901) circuit and wrote microcode myself. It was arduous job. There was no CAD tools back then. I had to design the circuit by hand and write software tools for it on PDP-11 mini computer. Everyone who is really interested in computer hardware architecture should try to design new CPU with Am2900 series bit-slice chips.
The boy's from New England ! Yeah, they took their sweet time getting distributors to sell their wares. I still remember buying directly from AD well into the late 80s !
I was introduced to the Fairchild 303 and series 70 around 1981. What a PITA! (The series 70, the 303 was pretty decent) FYI, we used a lot of AMD 8088s on the IBM PC/XT production line.
its mirace how its core employees still going through together in the moment,i would say a "nothing else to lose " moment with zen 1,and then survive,miracle
Jon, one of your best videos! You rock man! We have an accelerated learning program in our elementary school and the teacher was blown away learning of your channe. Thank you for what you do and keep the videos rollin' !!!
I truly love this channel... and I think the vintage sounding text-to-speech bot you are using is so satirically good. Better than any human could deliver this content.
@@lahma69 Yes, but I'm just clowning.. i love this channel and also think he does a great job... just the right amount of humor, amplified by the deadpan voice. Laughing with, not at.
Just wanted to say I have been a fan of Volvos since I was a kid (before you were born)! Our 1995 940, with the looks of a chest freezer but an awesome turbo 4 cyl. capable of 140 mph, got us through three kids over 19 years and more than a quarter-million miles. The guy we sold to had added another 100k miles at last report. Best car we ever owned!
If you had bought a single share of AMD for $15.50 when they went public today the share would be worth, $266,693. Really glad you're doing a series on AMD. It's such an interesting Cinderella story that should be studied in business schools.
@Doctor Whowhotheowl There was 500,000 shares issued originally. Today there are 1'613'000'000 shares. Meaning each share back then is equal to 3,226 shares today (1613000000 ÷ 500000). This is not ideal as there was dilution, but there was also stock buybacks. So this number isn't perfect but it's the best I can do without going through each 10K since the beginning of time.. If you have 3,226 shares of AMD based on the current price of $82.67 price per share, you would have $266,693 value.
Main beneficiaries there are those that bought a lot to begin with (faith in the company). Held on long term like 20-30 years (retirement investment), and reinvested dividends in buying more stock (growing the investment, and countering any fees and inflation).
awesome video, I enjoyed it, but I hope you will make a part II from 1980s until today, it's a fascinating history and I wish to know how it continues...
My Father made 2 friends during his Apprenticeship at GEC in 1957, John Carey was one of them. They went on to work at GEC defence department where Germanium transistors were being produced. John Carey left in 59 and moved to Canada, to Fairchild them help start up AMD. My Father remained with GEC, then Marconi space and Defence for his whole working life. He worked on Polaris then Trident guidance systems and was the longest serving Englishman on the ICBM projects.
Not related to the AMD story, but the footage at 12:03 with the warehouse forklift operator ... I would have some serious word with anyone who drives like that. He has a impaired line of sight due to the hight of the payload, a huge safety risk. Driving reverse with a free line of sight is mandatory.
another grrrreat video, and what a conclusion "after reaching the Company's 1980 sales goal, AMD CEO Jerry Sanders draws a slip of paper from a bowl containing the names of all company employees and 21 year old Josie Lleno, a recent Filipino immigrant making less than $4 / hour on the graveyard shift, struggling to support an extended family, wins $1,000 / month for 20 years for the purchase of a $250,000 house in California (worth ~ $50 million today).
The architecture team for the 2900 family was re-tasked in late 1984 to do the AM29000. Eventually some of that team moved to AMD Austin and worked on the K5 on-wards. (also, thanks for the compliment)
great great video! can I help you do one on Digital Equipment Corporation, my father was an executive there, starting in the late 1960's and until the end of the company and I met almost all the key people there.
@@me0101001000 TSMC is in part owned by it's own clients. Continuing to push semiconductor technology has gotten exponentially more expensive each generation, so I honestly think that TSMC will eventually become a client owned state licensed monopoly. That is, TSMC will forever be barred from entering any other market than chip manufacturing and advanced packaging and will have a maximum allowable profit margin in exchange for servicing every chip design company in the world.
Are you sure? zen 4 is a botch so bad they resorted to make zen 3 again (58003d), their GPU division is on flames, and the only winner they have is servers. Although those console contracts are juicy but profit wise are ok.
@@goa141no6I have absolutely no preference for AMD or intel over each other, if you look at the performance metrics from almost any perspective with any objective mindset, you cannot possibly say zen 4 was so botched they made it twice, at worst its performance was at least at parity with Intel’s equivalent generation, and in many cases exceeded Intel’s value proposition even in gaming performance, the X3D variant, while not really more cost-effective, did supersede Intel’s offerings at the time in single threaded gaming performance in the vast majority of games by a very appreciable amount. They have gained a massive amount of marketshare back from Intel over the past several years at a pretty consistent rate, ever since first GEN ryzen, which did have quite a few issues even all the way through third GEN. But as of now they are doing absolutely fantastic. They’re highest end GPUs leave some to be desired, but their mid tier offerings are still extremely compelling value propositions, and even on the high end it’s not so bad for them because of just how out to lunch in Nvidia’s pricing is for the significant majority of gamer budgets.
Loving the history and the next part 👍 - my introduction to AMD was deciding on a S7 K233 over Intel back in the late 90s when I built my first PC - I always had a soft spot for the underdog 😊
But which year was the money needed? ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-mb53IYjZlNc.html We get to know the money was tight back then, which year?
AM2900 isn't a full processor itself, it's bitslice chips that you can use to build a microprogrammed CPU from a set of those chips. At my university, they were still that series as an example for a microprogrammed CPU in 2010, and we even had to write microprogram instructions for such a CPU in the practical part of the course. The AM2900 was one of the standout AMD products.
Hey just a question, you showed a pic of Manilla's manufacturing space. Whereas you mentioned that it was in Penang, Malaysia. Two different countries countries btw
I suspect he knew that, since each were correctly identified. I thought the same thing, but the clip art was correctly referenced, even if it was during the time of mentioning the other location. I bet the producer could not find an original image of the correct facility!
Truly fascinating story of the AMD company. Its founder Jerry Sanders built an inspiring and future proof company philosophy, that serves as a role model and inspiration for many companies even today. This is a real and valuable proof that even a simple ideas can flourish thx to hard work and belief of a view can steer the others on their side. AMD today is an important player and living legend.
Wow, that's an inspiring history of AMD & its values of treating its people right with a positive moral workplace philosophy in practice // really amazing !
