An interesting part of computing history came to light on LinkedIn. Renato Fragale, who is the Senior Director of Gaming and Client Business at AMD, shared how the work his team did on the PlayStation 4 helped the company stave off bankruptcy. Sony used a custom APU dubbed Jaguar in both the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 4 Pro as it made its way to pole position during that console generation.
This information was backed up by another AMD employee. Phil Park, a Memory Systems and Interconnect Performance Architect, posted on the X social media platform about having “lived through this.” He says that it’s very much true, as AMD struggled mightily because of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.
Park mentions that the company was forced to make moves in order to survive, including selling off multiple pieces of intellectual property such as Adreno. During this lowest point, AMD’s stock price hit an astonishing $1.87 and things were looking bleak for the company. It even got to the point that some AMD employees felt it necessary to take “temporary pay cuts.”
Learning the story of AMD’s miraculous escape brings up a lot of thoughts about what the PC landscape would look like right now if AMD didn’t get the cash from its PlayStation 4 deal. AMD’s Zen architecture probably never sees the light of day. Without Zen hitting the market, Intel might not have made the move to its hybrid design because there wouldn’t be any competition pushing it to make such a move. It’s also possible that PC builders and buyers may not have gotten the high core counts seen in CPUs today, though all we can really do is speculate.
How different do you think things would be today with a continually weak AMD or no AMD at all? Let us know in the comments below.