AMD Is Currently Hiring More Linux Engineers

[bridgman]

I am still wondering, why the heck AMD will produce all this hype around its GPUs, when they can't sample them, even for reviewers. I am AMD fan(and user) from K6-2 days, but this just ruins your reputation.

I think the quick answer there is that we knew there would be a period where TSMC capacity would limit what we could produce (because of the console startup surge) and planned for that, but we probably got surprised by some of the other shortages, from substrates to voltage regulators to shipping containers.

[L_A_G]

Well that sure looks interesting... Too bad it's U.S only (I live and work in Finland) because I do actually fulfill the "Linux Engineer" requirements (graduated with an MSc in Computer Engineering in 2016) and if I lived in the U.S, specially if I lived in Texas, I'd probably apply for that position.

[Drago]

I think the quick answer there is that we knew there would be a period where TSMC capacity would limit what we could produce (because of the console startup surge) and planned for that, but we probably got surprised by some of the other shortages, from substrates to voltage regulators to shipping containers.

Okay, fair enough. But my second statement remains. Why Dr. Su didn't explained all this on CES, instead of remaining silent pretending that everything is okay, and talking almost an hour of nonsense. CES is the consumers(i.e. people buying form the stores), not investors. Please don't become another intel. We need to know your status, and eventually wait for your great products.
Also why you didn't included RDNA2 UVD for Cezanne? Every third video I see on YT is AV1 now, let along several years from now.

[bridgman]

Okay, fair enough. But my second statement remains. Why Dr. Su didn't explained all this on CES, instead of remaining silent pretending that everything is okay, and talking almost an hour of nonsense. CES is the consumers(i.e. people buying form the stores), not investors. Please don't become another intel. We need to know your status, and eventually wait for your great products.

I can't really comment on CES - but I think most people would think about aiming discussion about manufacturing capacity at investors rather than at consumers. As far as I know channel sales (ie DIY market plus people upgrading OEM-built systems) is smaller than the OEM market and the "direct from AMD" supply challenges only really impact channel sales and that would have been seen as a small portion of the CES audience. Just a guess though.

Also why you didn't included RDNA2 UVD for Cezanne? Every third video I see on YT is AV1 now, let along several years from now.

I think it was a matter of what we could fit into the market cycle. The OEM business is pretty much "if you're two weeks late you miss a year".

BTW my recollection was that YouTube went through a negotiation process with the browser to decide what format to stream, ie AV1 would only be sent if it was supported on the browser side. Do I have that wrong ?

[Drago]

I can't really comment on CES - but I think most people would think about aiming discussion about manufacturing capacity at investors rather than at consumers. As far as I know channel sales (ie DIY market plus people upgrading OEM-built systems) is smaller than the OEM market and the "direct from AMD" supply challenges only really impact channel sales and that would have been seen as a small portion of the CES audience. Just a guess though.

First, thanks for the fast reply.
Next, I can hardly imagine CES audience as regular moms & pops OEM consumers. Also OEM manufacturer representative probably has other channels to receive info directly from AMD. Not to mention how CES is just the essence, not giving details OEM manufacturers need. No, CES is for DIY / PC enthusiast & Gamers market, ...i.e. the people who most often than not will advice moms & pops what to buy. And believe me, these people have huge interest in what is going on with AMD and TSMC/GloFo.

I think it was a matter of what we could fit into the market cycle. The OEM business is pretty much "if you're two weeks late you miss a year".

BTW my recollection was that YouTube went through a negotiation process with the browser to decide what format to stream, ie AV1 would only be sent if it was supported on the browser side. Do I have that wrong ?

Well, I guess browsers support all the formats via Software Decode, and I guess Google will want to save every byte (on storage & network), and push the cost on the consumer. I am receiving lots of AV1s on my Linux/Chromium/Renoir APU. Eventually, there might be a switch forcing YT serving me VP9 videos instead of AV1. Will investigate.

[Guest]

Good to see, but this is also extremely late. If they had started hiring engineers to work on CPU support in Windows or started to create Ryzen Master only now, how well would Ryzen CPUs have been received?

In business, you invest first and then get returns. It's what they had to do on Windows, and for consoles. So they still treat the Linux desktop like a second class citizen.

It's going to take some huge changes for me to improve my opinion of AMD.

Edit: Also, they'd better be going back and fixing up their shit support for all Ryzen CPUs on Linux, not just future products that will launch 2 years later. Otherwise, this is still crap compared to Intel.

[Guest]

Well, for starters - it was a rhetorical question, as indicated by the lack of a question mark at the end.

Second - if amd was after maximizing their profits, they'd do more to squeeze market share out of their competitor. They already have the performance edge, so any price discount will act as a multiplied at making intel look that much worse in comparison.

Take amazon for example - they have the common business practice to lower prices to the extent of suffering loss, in order to destroy competition and seize their market share, then jack the prices back up. It is something that has been proven to work time and time again. Then again, amazon does that for a single product group, and recoup their losses from their other offerings, and sadly, amd doesn't really have that much else going for it right now, maybe this year we will finally see its graphics division making a stand.

But then again, we are in a manufacturing capacity shortage, so amd might be trying to maximize the profit they can extract from what little they can afford today, so they can secure more capacity for tomorrow, and then squeeze out intel. Alas, that will also give intel time to improve its offerings, although from the looks of their efforts so far, it is not something worth holding the breath over.

At any rate, I do agree - amd is out to make money, not do anyone any favors. I personally never bought into the "good guys" image their long standing underdog position has gained them in the public eye. IMO companies are like governments and any other large composite entity - they are all bad, as bad as they can afford to be. So for such entities, goodness only exists as a relative, not as an absolute metric.

Still, investing into linux is a smart move, this will be very good for their enterprise business, and luckily, I am also in a position to appreciate it. Both of its major competitors - intel and nvidia, have been suppressing it by means of their software investments for a very long time, and to a surprisingly great magnitude, especially for graphics, where nvidia's "we'll optimize your game for ya, and give you worthless trinkets if you don't bother to optimize for amd" came close to destroying amd's graphics division.

I don't think NVIDIA had anything to do with AMDs bad Windows drivers. I used to believe in such conspiracy theories, not anymore.

I tried out DXVK Windows build with AC Origins. It's soo much better. The problem lies in AMDs Direct3D driver, not with games "optimising for NVIDIA only".

[Guest]

I would prefer more efforts in bug fixing.
The bug list keeps growing and crossed recently over 1000 open bugs.

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues

The bugs I have reported for Renoir Vega 7 are open for a long time and don't seem to get solved; my laptop keeps crashing usually on the AMD iGPU.
I am not blaming the existing developers; they are probably doing as much as they can within their boundaries (read: manager's priorities).

But I bet having _more_ developers working on the existing bug reports, might get a more stable Linux experience.

So, hooray for more AMD kernel developers!

True. In my experience, with AMD, if you want to get shit fixed, you have to do it yourself. Don't wait around and hope it will get fixed. I did that for 10 years, shit either never got fixed or happened several years too late.

Either do it yourself, live with the bugs or switch to Intel/NVIDIA.

[Guest]

We probably have directors like that but that's not the kind of job I'm looking for (although I guess it might be a nice stepping stone towards retirement). This kind of interaction I mostly do when I can't sleep but am too tired to work.

And yes the monitor is set to cut out essentially all the blue light at night

The blue light thing was disproven recently, it has no basis in science. It's more like urban legend that almost everyone believed.

[Guest]

Not exactly with that Linux Technical Lead position but seems like there is obvious overlap and more focused on partners / distro vendors than the 'community'. Would be fun though having to stop worrying about ad-blockers and other such annoyances...

Don't forget the fun legal agreements you have to sign, could prevent you from reporting anything negative or publically leaked secrets about AMD in the future.........