Posts tagged with NFL
No “I” in TEAM
Posted by Kevin Knox in 11:46 am
Loading ...For those of you following this blog, you have probably put it together that I am in fact a long time Pittsburgh Steelers fan. And just for the record, growing up in NY in the 1970’s as a loud-mouth Pittsburgh Steelers fan was not an easy thing. People ask me why I became a Steelers fan and I usually start rattling off the names – Lambert, Ham, Blount, Greene, Webster, Bleier, but in the end it was really the way the Steelers did their talking on the field they made me put up with the constant badgering by want to be Jets and Giants fans. I idolized guys like Dick Butkus and Ray Nitschke both in the way they played the game but also the way they carried themselves on and off the field. Could you imagine TO, Chad Johnson or Tony Romo pulling their antics with Vince Lombardi or Chuck Noll as their coach? To say the game has changed since warriors like Chuck Bednarick or Jim Taylor played would be the understatement of the year.
I guess the one thing that irks me most is seeing a player celebrate a basic play when his team is down 20 points with 2 minutes to play or if he makes a tackle 35 yards down the field. The saying “there is no I in TEAM” does not apply for the majority of the NFL. Football is a team sport and those that succeed are usually those that work together for the better good of the whole. Likewise in business, companies that deliver value through strong partnership are generally those that are most successful. Nowhere is this truer than in the technology market where value is often generated only through the combination or partnership of hardware, software and services.
With our upcoming launch of "Shanghai," we’re seeing an incredible display of teamwork in delivering stable x86 server platforms. As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, our OEM customers were able to quickly validate their platforms and actually pull their launches in. Feedback I’ve received is that they’ve found Shanghai to be an easy platform to bring to market due to the silicon stability and minimal modifications. We had teams of people dedicated to working with each of our OEMs and thanks to this teamwork you can expect to see Shanghai servers in the market very soon. Similarly, we worked in lock-step with our infrastructure partners. Thanks to this cooperation, our channel partners worldwide will be able to offer customized Shanghai platforms.
Our processors are compatible with a wide range of versions of operating systems, and things will be no different with Shanghai. We continued our close technology partnership with the likes of Microsoft, Oracle, Red Hat, SAP and SuSe. This means that customers can expect to find immediate support for Shanghai in all of the leading enterprise applications.
Now for my picks. While it is tempting to blame my 13 year old son for missing both picks last week, I will take full responsibility myself – although Ryan is running a few extra sprints at practice this week to make it up to all the loyal readers 
This week I am pulling out the big guns and having my 15 year old son Tanner making the picks. Tanner plays halfback and linebacker on his high school team and is truly a throwback to the days of Butkus and Nitschke.
Shoe-In = Cards crushing the Niners
Upset = Eagles over the Giants in a close game
Insight = Closer collaboration between hardware and OS suppliers on RAS feature will accelerate the penetration of x86 into the traditionally RISC/Unix mid-range server space
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Kevin Knox is Vice President of Worldwide Commercial Business at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for
The Importance of Consistency
Posted by Kevin Knox in 10:55 am
I was reading today about the Oakland Raiders’ latest fired coach filing a grievance for the salary he still believes he is owed. That got me thinking that just five years ago the Oakland Raiders were in a Super Bowl. I actually had to go back and double check because I couldn’t believe it. Since that time the Raiders have had five coaches in six years. This coach de jour approach makes it near impossible to succeed in the NFL.
I recognize that the NFL is a business and you need to win at all costs. I’m also not going to pretend that I know more about football or how to operate an NFL franchise better than Al Davis. However, I do know a thing or two about the importance of consistency and how churn typically doesn’t have a positive impact on whatever your business may be. My unsolicited advice to Mr. Davis is to find the right guy, help him be successful and stick with him. Oh yeah and don’t forget – JUST WIN BABY. On the flip side, take a team like the Seahawks or Eagles who are consistently at the top of their divisions and look at how long Mike Holmgren and Andy Reid have been at the helm. They say a team takes on the personality of its coach, but this takes consistency, and sometimes patience.
This is what AMD did several years ago and continues to do today with respect to its server roadmap. We sought the advice of our customers, both within our OEM partners and as well as some of our largest end-users, and asked them what some of the key things they needed to see from AMD were beyond the obvious ones like continuous improvements in performance, performance-per-watt and virtualization. The answer we heard over and over again was to keep things as simple and consistent as possible for them as they scale.
Our customers are recognizing the benefit of this today, particularly as we prepare to launch our latest AMD Opteron processor code-named "Shanghai." Shanghai drops into our existing infrastructure which has been in place since 2006. Why does this matter? Well frankly, in the current economic and IT spending climate, we are hearing from our customers that it has never mattered more.
People who have never been involved in managing large amounts of servers tend to overlook the importance of having a consistent processor architecture and infrastructure. A constant churn in processor architecture can result in complexity that can create more costs associated with software and labor.
As technology leaders, we as an industry should be doing everything we can to help our customers win. The best way we can help them is to make things as simple as possible for them when we bring new technologies to market.
Virtualization is a good example of this. As virtualization continues to grow and mature, migration has become a significant buying factor for customers. Having a consistent architecture definitely helps enable a smooth migration process. Our customers constantly highlight this as one of the reasons why they continue to scale with AMD. However, they also want to be able to migrate across heterogeneous processor environments as well. Unfortunately, some solution providers in the virtualization hardware and software ecosystem act as if giving customers the ability to do this (and not get locked in to one architecture) will slow the pace of innovation. More like slow the pace of helping customers win.
OK, I made my shoe in and missed my upset last week and in the spirit of keeping consistency, I asked Mac for the picks this week and he told me to ask his brother because he was gearing up for Halloween. So based on input from my 13 year old son Ryan (#51 OL, DE and kicker) here are the picks for the week:
Shoe-In = Cincinnati staying winless against Jacksonville
Upset = The Boys stealing one from the Giants in NY
Insight = Companies which fail to change their IT management processes and procedures will fail to reap the full benefits of server virtualization
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Kevin Knox is Vice President of Worldwide Commercial Business at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for
the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied. |
Signs of Life
Posted by Kevin Knox in 11:47 am
Two weeks away from the keyboard and it seems like an eternity. My last blog left off with the tie donning Mike Nolan still walking the Niners sideline, the Raiders looking more like a CFL team than an NFL team and AMD in questionable financial condition. Well things have certainly changed on all fronts. And in the end change can be a good thing and can lead to a renewed focus and sustainability.
First, the 49ers announced earlier this week that they were letting go of Mike Nolan and promoting Mike Singletary to head coach. While you can’t help but to love Nolan and his “traditional” approach to football I have to admit that I am a bit surprised it took this long. The Niners just are not winning. Handing over the reigns to a gritty, no-nonsense, hard-nosed ex-linebacker like Mike Singletary will certainly be a contrast in personalities. It remains to be seen whether the Niners can win with the team they have, but I for one am sure excited to see change in San Francisco, especially if the Niners take on the personality of their new head coach.
As for the Raiders, they replaced their head coach three weeks ago, putting Tom Cable in charge, and actually won a game this week, beating the Jets in overtime on an amazing 52 yard field goal by Sebastian Janikowski. Now granted the Jets are not lighting things up themselves and Brett Favre would have to be considered the disappointment of the year thus far (another blog for another day), but a win is a win. The team seems to have a new found spirit and approach to the game. Granted the offense still looks more like the Edmonton Eskimos than the Oakland Raiders, but the defense and special teams has shown a new sign of life.
Speaking of a sign of life, AMD announced last week that we’re shipping our new series of Quad-Core AMD Opteron™ processors – codenamed “Shanghai.” We’ve found our footing and are in the midst of preparing for not only the defense of our server business but also going on the offensive with the gains we expect in terms of performance and power-consumption. “Shanghai” was designed with energy-efficiency and performance-per-watt in mind and based on early feedback, our industry partners are fully recognizing this. Industry analysts are already hearing positive things from their clients and how OEMs are working to build systems.
I can tell you from my own experience, once OEM partners had samples in their hands – the entire game began to change. Because of our commitment to platform stability, OEM partners have been able to quickly validate their new platforms and as a result of this, we expect that you should begin to see the first systems with “Shanghai” available before the end of the year.
I am really proud of our “Shanghai” team, as they have led an amazing turnaround in the way AMD designs and brings to market new processors. Not only has the team achieved the recognition we were seeking, the lessons they have learned, and new processes they have established, are already being applied to future processor programs.
And as my colleague Pat Patla, GM of Server Marketing, said, “We’re firing on all cylinders.”
I have to admit that Mac came through for me last time helping me hit the shoe-in and the upset. This week I am a bit hesitant taking his advice after seeing him skip back to the huddle at his game on Sunday (yes, I told him there was no skipping in football). In any case, here we go:
Shoe-In = Philadelphia at home over Atlanta
Upset = The Colts hand the Titans their first loss of the year
Insight = Consolidation among hardware OEMs will be accelerated by the troubled economy
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Kevin Knox is Vice President of Worldwide Commercial Business at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for
the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied. |
Goal-Line Stand
Posted by Kevin Knox in 3:10 am
OK, I am ready for the criticism, so bring it on. How did I miss the shoe-in pick and nail the upset; well, as they say in the NFL, “On Any Given Sunday”. And I know some of you are saying that I was too hard on Brett Favre last week and how he threw for 6 TD passes this week, but I would just remind you to take a look at who he did it against. The Steelers vs. Ravens game was more like a street brawl than a football game and left both teams bloodied and bruised….the way football is suppose to be played. There was another clash with the Texans (yes I said the Texans) taking the Jags to OT but lost on a FG, and then of course there was the battle of Ohio won by the Brownies over the Bungles (I use the word battle very lightly given how both of these teams are playing). But my favorite game of the week was without a doubt the Bears and Eagles match-up.
Down 24-20 in the fourth quarter, Correll Buckhalter took a first down run down to the Bears 3, leaving the Eagles in position for an almost sure touchdown. With shades of Dick Butkus, George Halas and the 46 Defense, the Bears defense reached deep down and stuffed the Eagles on 3 consecutive plays to keep their lead and go onto win the game 24-20. Yes we could debate why the Eagles ran 3 times from the 1, but you have to give credit where credit is due, the Bears defense stepped up when they had to and stonewalled the big bad Eagles. The momentum swung to the Bears and you knew it was over at that point. So just when things looked to be at their worst, the Bears stepped up, reached deep down and did what they had to do….hats off to the Bears.
Now I’ll share my picks for the week, in an attempt to redeem myself after missing my first “shoe-in”. I actually confirmed my picks this week with my 7-year old son, Mac, who is the anchor of the O and D lines of his pee-wee flag team so we are in great shape:
Shoe-In = New England BIG over the Niners
Upset = Miami at home over the Chargers
Insight = Cloud Computing may not materially change enterprise architectures for 2 years
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Kevin Knox is Vice President of Worldwide Commercial Business at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for
the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
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What’s in a Name?
Posted by Kevin Knox in 10:01 am
Before I get into this week’s thought, let me emphasize the point I made last week regarding the importance of the O-Line as the foundation of the offense. I painfully sat through the entire Steelers vs. Eagles game this week and I can honestly say, I have never seen a worse offensive line performance as I did by the Steelers. Not only was Big Ben under constant attack by the Eagles defense, but the Eagles also held Fast Willie to a handful of meaningless yards. I have never seen an offensive line so overpowered and so confused as the Steelers looked. Of course it is not just the O-Line’s fault, but as the foundation, as they go so goes the Steelers offense. And based on last week’s post, I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge a huge improvement this week by the Bengals O-Line in a tough OT loss to the Giants.
OK, onto my big Week 3 take away. If you would have told me that in Week 3, Kerry Collins, Gus Ferrotte and Brian Griese would have led the Titans, Vikings and Buccaneers to victory I would have told you that you were nuts. Now in an attempt to get the 0-3 Rams ship turned around, they are turning to 15-year veteran Trent Green.. These are guys who could just as easily be retired playing golf as playing football, never mind winning games in the NFL. Meanwhile some of the staples of the NFL quarterback ranks are having somewhat of a tough start. Peyton Manning looks like a rookie rather than a field general, Brett Favre has not even come close to living up to the NY hype and Derek Anderson’s poor play may in fact give Cleveland a reason to let Brady Quinn try and earn some of the millions they pay him.
Point here is, don’t too easily write off players who may have gone through a rough patch here and there, as they may be just what a certain situation requires. At the same time, teams need to be careful not to get so enamored with big name players that they lose perspective on what’s really important…WINNING. For example, I know it’s still early in the season, but it’s apparent to me already that Brett Favre is never going to live up to the expectations that the Jets, the NY fans or the media have set for him. The more interesting question is at what point this year (if ever) do the Jets swallow pride and pull Brett in lieu of a better option at QB (knowing the Jets I would say the answer is never).
Speaking of tough starts and rough patches, AMD had some challenges in bringing our Quad-Core AMD Opteron™ processor, also known as “Barcelona,” to market. And if you were to believe some of the lurid press reports during the past few months, you’d think AMD was on the verge of an early retirement. Yet, within the past year, Barcelona has become a leading performance and performance-per-watt solution for x86 servers across many of the workloads that are critical for enterprise customers today. Just as Collins, Ferrotte and Griese can still contribute and win at the highest level, the AMD Opteron processor remains a leader in the x86 server market. Also, let’s not lose sight of the fact AMD has only been playing in the server market for five years and over that short period of time, we have been able to deliver impressive improvements in performance and performance-per-watt.[1] We intend to continue this trend later this year with the planned launch of our 45nm “Shanghai” processor.
Substance and stability are the backbone of a good football team – not name and flash. The Titans could attest to that while admitting that paying nearly $60 million for a player doesn’t always equal success. Sometimes a good look under that surface will reveal that things may not be as great as they seem.
In the server world, I would suggest that hype is the exact thing you should avoid. Last time I checked a jingle or a guy with his face painted blue is not helping solving datacenter problems. Based on my conversations with customers, improved performance and functionality is critical for IT decision-makers, but equally important is stability and predictability. And Shanghai – without the hype – is being designed to deliver – in a big way – the performance and functionality enterprises need to win in their industries.
Please keep the comments coming – the good the bad and the ugly. One request I have gotten from several folks was to make some predictions on the upcoming week. Rather than predicting the obvious I thought I would give you a “Shoe-in”, an “Upset” and an “Industry” insight:
Shoe-In = Dallas at home easily over the Skins
Upset = Chiefs upset the Broncos for their first win
Insight = Technology and datacenters are a major purchase consideration amongst Wall St. firms looking to acquire one another
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Kevin Knox is Vice President of Worldwide Commercial Business at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for
the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied. |
[1] In 2003, AMD introduced AMD Opteron™ with one-core (130nm) at 1.8GHz (89w) with no L3 cache.
In 2007, we introduced Quad-Core AMD Opteron™ with four-cores (65nm) at 2.30GHz (95w) with 2MB L3 cache and IPC improvements.
The times they are a’changing…
Posted by Margaret Lewis in 6:53 am
Leading into this year’s VMWorld conference in Las Vegas, all the buzz was about changes at VMWare. And after attending the conference, I’m here to tell you that the times they are a’changing. But it’s not all bad news for VMWare – and is an unique opportunity for the emerging virtualization ecosystem.
Sure, there’s new management at VMware, a repositioning to the operating system for the virtual datacenter, and lots of new competition. But what struck me even more than those changes are the fact that the x86 virtualization movement, started all those years ago by Diane and Mendel, is going mainstream, and that’s very very exciting for someone like me, who’s in charge of helping making sure AMD’s customers have the best experience possible in running software on AMD hardware.
One proof point is just the sheer amount of attention VMWorld is getting this year. Who would have ever thought the conference that attracted 1,600 early adopters of x86 virtualization to San Diego in Nov. 2004 would be hosting 14,000 mainstream IT professionals in Sept. 2008? And that the New York Times would write so much about a technology as enterprise focused as virtualization! I think this demonstrates the power that virtualization is already playing in shaping the future of the computing industry.
A second proof point is the amazing number of new servers I see being introduced by everyone from large OEMs to small system builders that are specifically aimed at serving as excellent virtualization solutions. For example both Dell and HP have recently introduced blades based on the energy efficient Quad-Core AMD Opteron™ processor that are designed to handle the rigors of memory-intensive virtualization.
A final proof point that virtualization has gone mainstream is the thriving ecosystem developing around virtualization. Just take a look at the presentations that were given in AMD’s own booth at the show – our “Master of Virtualization” theater was filled with small and large ISVs and IHVs who were showcasing how they are moving the needle on virtualization – including 3Leaf, Broadcom, Citrix, DataRam, Egenera, Microsoft, Novell, Sun, Transitive, Parallels, and Virtual Iron.
So what’s next in these times of change? I believe that as virtualization pushes it way into the main stream – and lights up discussions around topics such as cloud computing, virtual infrastructure, and dynamic data center fabrics – the virtualization ecosystem needs to understand that interoperability, open standards, and vendor cooperation has to be paramount. Customers are looking for choice – and not for technologies designed to lock out competition. They want live migration of virtual machines across different processors and tools that can manage virtual machines created by any hypervisor. Feel free to contact me and we can follow up with more information.
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Margaret Lewis is a Product Marketing Director at AMD. Her postings are her own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied. |
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