> A big part of AMD's turnaround was going fabless.

Part of it, sure, but they were still fabless and in the ditch before Zen. Unless you're referring to going with TSMC instead of GloFo as going fabless.

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uluyol 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

They had contracts which forced them to buy Global Foundries even lasting into Zen 2 (I believe they used it with the IO die).

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0x457 4 days ago | parent [-]

Yes, but that contract was a result of going fabless and spinning off GloFo into its own entity longer before Zen. AMD went fabless in 2009 during K8 lifecycle. Since then, we had an entire dynasty of failed bulldozer CPUs. I fail to see how going fabless helped them?

What helped them is putting the right people in charge of Zen design and intel fumbling 10nm due to their own hubris.

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wtallis 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

The point is that AMD didn't really go fabless in 2009. They didn't own the fab anymore but were still tied to it, so they were not free to exercise the number one advantage of being fabless until much later.

	▲	0x457 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		In your mind, company that as a contract with a fab is not fabless? Do you think AMD can just stop ordering from TSMC today and call it a day? AMD was fine with having GloFo as a fab until 20nm process. They were already behind, but not terribly. AMD even used TSMC for their CPUs and GPUs before Zen. Ontario was fabbed at TSMC in 2011. Point is AMD as free to shop around. Only in 2016 the agreement was amended that GloFo would be preferred for 14nm and 7nm, but since they decided not to work on 7nm, it freed up AMD.

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babypuncher 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

AMD and GloFlo split in 2009 but AMD wasn't able to start actually manufacturing their chips with other foundries until 2019 when GloFlo got downgraded to only providing the IO die for Zen 2. This is because AMD was contractually obligated to continue using GloFlo for that time as a condition of the split.

Zen 2 is also where Ryzen went from "exciting and competitive, but not top of the line" to actually giving Intel a run for their money in more than just highly multithreaded workloads.

Improved architecture put AMD within striking distance of Intel and the move to TSMC allowed them to pull ahead.

	▲	0x457 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		UNtil 2009 to 2016 AMD was free to use any fab as long as GloFo still has something to do. In 2016, AMD had to pay GloFo to NOT use them for some node sizes. AMD used TSMC for their CPUs (not IO die!) at least for one generation, and TSMC actually dropped the ball that time and AMD went back to GloFo. Once again, AMD was fabless since 2009 it's a fact, and it's also a fact that it didn't help them at all.

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adgjlsfhk1 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

turning anything around when designing chips is at year process. just going from a fully designed chip to shipped is ~2 years in the absolute best case.