星期五, 3月 02, 2012

AMD Acquires Seamicro by iStockAnalyst and ZDnet AMD買下SeaMicro (文/蘇文彬)


AMD: Seamicro Acquisition A Longer -Term Positive

By: iStockAnalyst  | Mar 01, 2012 | 

Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE:AMD : 7.51, 0.16) said Wednesday it would buy SeaMicro for about $334 million to boost its low-cost server offerings.
The acquisition of SeaMicro, which is backed by leading venture capitalists including Khosla Ventures and Draper Fisher Jurvetson, would help AMD deliver cost-efficient server technology to its original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) serving cloud-centric data centers.

"We do believe that power efficient servers sold into cloud applications are driving growth in the server market," Jefferies analyst Mark Lipacis wrote in a note to clients.

SeaMicro's intellectual property is based on three elements: 1) I/O virtualization technology, which enables it to remove all but three kinds of chips in a server, the multi-core processing unit (MPU), DRAM and a custom chip (ASIC), 2) TO or Turn-it-Off technology, where the ASIC can reach into the MPU and turn off certain circuits, and 3) A supercompute style fabric that enables a high speed connection between MPUs.

AMD's revenue largely depends on PCs and tablets. However, a recent data from market research firm Gartner showed worldwide PC shipments slid 1.4 percent from last year to 92.2 million units. Gartner had projected a 1 percent decline.

AMD, which lost $177 million in Q4, said in November, they will cut 1,400 jobs, or about 10 percent of its global workforce as part of a restructuring plan to improve productivity and enhance growth as it strives to align with key industry trends.

In order to diversify its revenue streams, AMD is now focusing more on servers and the red hot cloud-centric data center server market. SeaMicro noted that it was seeing most success with companies that use servers in data centers under heavy workloads, and consider servers to be a core part of their business. Longer term, the company expects to have increased success in high performance computing.

SeaMicro said current systems featuring its technology typically use one quarter the power and take one sixth the space of traditional servers with the same compute performance, yet deliver up to 12 times the bandwidth per core.

For the full year 2011, worldwide server revenue increased 5.8 percent to $52.3 billion, and worldwide unit shipments rose 4.2 percent to 8.3 million units, according to IDC. IDC has predicted that cloud data centers would be the fastest growing part of the server market through 2015.

SeaMicro currently offers Intel (NASDAQ:INTC)-based processors including Sandy-Bridge-based Xeon processors and Atom in its server systems. SeaMicro would continue to offer Intel-based systems to distribution and, at the same time, offer AMD's Opteron-based processors to OEM customers.

"Ultimately, we would expect AMD to adopt the SeaMicro architecture and integrate the fabric technology into AMD MPUs," Lipacis said.

AMD plans to offer the first AMD Opteron processor-based solutions that combine AMD and SeaMicro technology in the second half of 2012. AMD said it remains firmly committed to its traditional server business, and will continue to focus and invest in this area.

"The acquisition makes us incrementally positive on the stock, as we believe that longer term, it could drive sales of high margin server products from AMD," Lipacis said.



AMD's SeaMicro purchase: All about pushing Intel out of microservers

By  | March 1, 2012, 11:25am PST
Summary: AMD’s acquisition of SeaMicro was well received, but channel conflict with partners remains a big concern.


AMD’s $334 million purchase of cloud microserver maker SeaMicro was all about nudging its way into a hot market at Intel’s expense.
A day after AMD’s surprising purchase of SeaMicro, analysts were largely gushing about the deal. Meanwhile, new AMD CEO Rory Read showed he’s willing to make large strategic bets. The rationale for AMD goes like this:
  • AMD can put its chips into SeaMicro gear, which until today has revolved around Atom and Xeon processors from Intel.
  • The company has an outlet for its server chips and can validate AMD’s power/performance technology.
  • There’s channel risk since partners HP and Dell make microservers, but it’s manageable.
  • AMD is looking for double-digit server market share, up from about 6 percent today. To make that jump requires a few big bets.
Read said on a conference call:
This is AMD’s time, and we’ll create our first list of value creation by becoming a solid execution engine and delivering on our commitments. At the same time, we will drive a second lift of value creation by positioning ourselves to capture the opportunity this market inflection point brings. That is exactly what the acquisition of SeaMicro helps us to do. We will embrace these changes in the market and seize the opportunity to step out of the shadows and lead.
For server buyers focused on dedicated cloud computing AMD’s move is good news. You want AMD to be aggressive and push Intel on pricing somewhat. It’s unclear whether AMD’s SeaMicro bet will work, but it’s a bold move that opens up a new market.
Analysts were generally impressed with the move. Here’s a sampling of comments.
Oppenheimer analyst Rick Schafer said:
We like the deal and see it providing a spark to the AMD story. The AMD/SeaMicro combination presents a potential threat to Intel’s server dominance while upping the competitive ante vs. fellow ARM-based server players.
Williams Financial analyst Cody Acree said:
SeaMicro should help AMD accelerate its share gains in the highly lucrative, rapidly expanding, server market. Cloud computing and data centers are driving the segments growth and low-power combined with high-performance are keys to winning market share. We expect SeaMicro’s existing customers, who are using Intel’s chips today, will shift to AMD, over time.
Barclays Capital analyst C.J. Muse said:
Challenges remain as AMD balances servicing SeaMicro’s existing customers with integrating own chips with SeaMicro. Other concerns remain around Opteron’s ability to scale <30W and competition with its own customers.
The obvious issue that looms for AMD is channel conflict. SeaMicro competes with Dell, HP and IBM. If AMD sells SeaMicro servers, it’s likely that Dell and HP will think twice about using the chipmaker in its gear.
“The acquisition appears to put AMD at odds with current system level customers. If AMD decides to back away from selling servers to avoid competing with its OEM customers, SeaMicro could represent a high-priced IP acquisition,” said Schafer.
Read, however, downplayed the potential conflict. “AMD is firmly committed to bringing interesting and capable, advanced technology to our customers and partners, in order to help them win in the marketplace. We will not compete with our customers,” he said.
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AMD買下SeaMicro強化微型伺服器市場佈局
文/蘇文彬 (記者) 2012-03-01
AMD以3.34億美元買下微型伺服器業者SeaMicro，以強化AMD在省電、大量佈署的微型伺服器市場佈局，融合SeaMicro技術首款產品將在今年下半年推出。
AMD宣佈以3.34億美元買下專門提供高能源效率、高頻寬微型伺服器業者SeaMicro，該購併案將強化AMD在雲端資料中心的伺服器技術。

AMD認為，SeaMicro在佈線和系統設計方面的能力使AMD可以在伺服器產業取得獨特地位，針對網頁內容，社交網路、搜尋和影音內容提供專用的伺服器技術。雙方技術的結合將為資料中心提昇效能，同時效降低複雜性、成本及能源消耗。AMD將在今年下半年推出第一個融合雙方技術的Opteron處理器。

SeaMicro成立於2007年，主要提供資料中心大量伺服器運算技術，以包括處理器設計、虛擬化、超級運算與網路架構提供大量佈署的微型伺服器，以因應網路、線上遊戲、搜尋及索引運算等應用。

AMD總裁暨執行長Rory Read表示，併購SeaMicro後將加速AMD轉型朝向靈活、資料中心創新者的方向發展。結合SeaMicro低耗電伺服器技術，AMD將能在快速成長的伺服器市場取得差異化位置。

和傳統伺服器相比，AMD指出，採用SeaMicro技術的伺服器只需要四分之一的用電和六分之一的空間就能提供相同的效能，同時每個核心提昇12倍的頻寬。透過SeaMicro在超級電腦運算上的線纜技術，可連接數千顆運算核心、記憶體、儲存和I/O流量，允許多顆處理器共同執行。

AMD併購SeaMicro後，承諾繼續對原有SeaMicro客戶的支援，而SeaMicro執行長Andrew Feldman將轉任AMD新成立的資料中心伺服器部門擔任總經理一職。

隨著雲端運算興起，資料中心對大量佈署的微型伺服器需求增加，英特爾去年也鎖定網路內容應用發表微型伺服器專用處理器，與伺服器業者合作推出省電、高密度的微型伺服器。如今AMD加強對此市場佈局，兩大處理器業者競爭從主流伺服器市場延伸至微型伺服器市場。
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