Ugh, it was my birthday...

that's not an HP shirt

My friend over at PhoneTag, James Siminoff, thought it would be funny to hand over a Macbook Air as a "gift" after I blew out the candle on a birthday cake. I immediately used it to cut the cake, it's so damn sharp it did a fine job. People thought it was funny enough to blog. So before this thing spreads, I thought I'd explain myself: It was a combination of some fantastic wine, constant ribbing from my friends, and a hand rolled cigar that did this.

As I see the Mac fans are coming out in droves, much respect... and um... it was a joke - I guess you had to be there ;) I assure you no Macs were harmed in the taking of this photo.

...and for those of you who keep emailing me to send you the Mac, it's not really mine, it's my friend who was hosting the party. They are constantly ribbing me about the Mac vs PC debate and thus the reason I was presented with the Mac as a "gift" -- get it? Now smile a little, it helps the day go by.

Ahh well, I wouldn't be needing this notebook for long anyways... :) Stay tuned for more...

AMD Breakup

I wrote this article for the latest issue of CPU Magazine, it's about AMD's next steps. I have written about this before, talked about what I would do if I was them -- and now I'm just exploring this a bit further.

AMD is at a major crossroads, the big question is what’s next for them?

In 2006 when AMD started to crack into the mainstream they broke into one of the biggest OEM accounts that very few people expected them to get. I was convinced it would happen, so sure that I made one of the dumbest bets ever (it has gone down in our PR history as one of the best moves ever). I did end up winning the bet, but in the meantime there were a few moves that AMD made that I still question to this day.

For example, at the time AMD had a very compelling offering. Their prices were competitive, they had a much more efficient processor than the competition, and everyone wanted to work with them. So why is it that they opened up the floodgates and all but killed their channel business during one of the most insane expansions ever? I never did quite get it – the channel was dry of AMD parts, high margin parts to boot. In the meantime AMD was busy ramping up low margin (or negative margin?) business with one of the world’s largest OEMs.

When AMD announced that they were buying ATI I was quite bullish about their future prospects. Not only could they position themselves uniquely from the competition, but they could potentially create new products which would be heavily differentiated in the market. Buying ATI and implementing their vision of Fusion would essentially give us a fresh unique way of designing new innovative platforms. Personally I was hoping that this deal would happen much sooner than it did – but for one reason or another it happened very late. Better late than never, I suppose, but there are still many challenges ahead for these guys. For one, Fusion is still a dream – perhaps a wet dream for those who like to think about the future of technology, but a dream nonetheless.

So now what’s up? You have a giant company, completely undervalued from a market capitalization vs. technology standpoint. They have excess capacity, and they are hemorrhaging money. The biggest reason for their dismal valuation is their excess foundry capacity. So how can they possibly fix this?

One of my good friends at AMD always says “We’ve been here before, we were always the underdog, and we’ll come back again…” – and while much of this may be the case, I would disagree that they have been here before. You see, AMD was once an incumbent, a tiny company trying to be relevant. For years they tried to position themselves as a viable alternative to Intel, and while it took almost forever they succeeded. They broke into the largest OEMs, and they are now considered a viable alternative.

Their trouble now is they have successfully commoditized themselves in the process. They went from being Gordon Ramsay to Ronald *@#ing McDonald.

So now their challenge is they are competing head to head against a giant in a battle that they cannot win. They cannot win the commodity battle, they certainly cannot win the process or volume battle, and for them to try to sell three cores for the price of two at the cost of four is insane!

I have suggested this one before, but I think it’s more likely now than before. AMD should really split the business. No, they should not break off ATI; rather they should split their business into a foundry and a fables semi-conductor. This isn’t as easy as saying “okay let’s split” – it would require some serious partnerships, agreements would have to be modified, creative accounting, and their X86 contract would need to be tweaked. More important they would have to find someone who wants to invest in the foundry business.

Finding a savvy investor to invest in a foundry would be like asking Gordon Ramsay if he could dress up as Ronald McDonald and take over McDonald’s kitchen. It is just not an easy problem to solve. There are limited companies and/or people who would be interested in such a thing.

Then again, AMD could partner with Charter Semi, maybe TSMC, or IBM perhaps, who knows.

Splitting AMD would create a fab-less semi-conductor with huge value to Nvidia, or perhaps someone else. We have all seen Jen-Hsun Huang attack Intel openly at what seems to be the most inopportune for Nvidia…maybe this is just some foreshadowing.

Whatever it is, there will be change and we’ll be ready.

Audi & Lamborghini...

I haven’t really had time to update the site lately as I have been on a whirlwind travel schedule. Between getting my wisdom teeth removed I have also found myself in Atlanta, NYC, DC, and Toronto. Next week I’ll be in Montreal, and then Seattle – and finally San Francisco, and San Diego before heading back to Calgary. Then Europe… ahh yes, my life isn’t getting any easier, but I don’t expect you to feel sorry for me.

I wrote this article for Custom PC Magazine in the U.K and thought I would include it on the blog.

In this industry there are quite a few of us who appreciate cars. I appreciate them so much that we built a strategy around a direct parallel in the car industry. In 1997 Audi acquired Lamborghini. Back then Audi cars had some of the coolest ground breaking technologies in them including the highly regarded Quattro all wheel drive system. Although the design of Audi vehicles was somewhat “boxy”, they were incredibly good - and more importantly they had unique innovations that Mercedes or BMW did not. Audi made quality cars packed with incredible innovations, and I think if there was one thing that was obvious it was that their style was somewhat conservative.

In 1997 Lamborghini shipped a little over 200 vehicles for the year. Their cars featured aggressive design, no compromise service, and great performance, but the quality was somewhat inconsistent. Believe me I know, imagine getting stuck inside the car with no way to open the door. Yes, it’s true, the cars had many problems, not least of which was the fact that the door latch would get stuck – and in the event of a vehicle fire you were basically screwed. So you would end up dropping well over a hundred G’s on a car and sometimes you would catch yourself in a very embarrassing situation. That was over ten years ago, mind, and a lot has changed since then.

Since the acquisition of Lamborghini, Audi invested a great deal of resources into the company to get them moving in a positive with profitable growth direction. Not only are new Lamborghini cars such as the Gallardo and Murcielago amazing, but they leverage innovations from Audi such as the Quattro AWD system. All Lamborghini’s now feature all wheel drive! The quality of their cars has never been better – if you ask anyone now with a Lamborghini what they hate most about the car it’s likely the attention they get from driving it around (and we know how much they really love the attention).

2007 Lamborghini Murcielago

On the flipside, Audi has completely changed their outlook. Their designs are more aggressive, and their vehicles continue to raise the bars of innovation and engineering. Take for example the Audi R8, one of the best cars ever released by any car manufacturer. Audi has certainly come a long way – and while ten years ago they struggled to position themselves as an alternative to BMW or Mercedes, they have now put themselves ahead of both companies in many aspects.

2008 Audi R8

I always tend to borrow analogies from the car industry to get people to understand parallels between what they’re doing to what we’re doing. It also sets an attainable vision for all of us to consider as we go forward.

Pay attention to this blog, because soon we’ll have a huge announcement. We look forward to sharing it with all of you!