> Imagine AMD simply put that $665M into tooling and driver development
Feels like a company saying they're going to "spend a few weeks paying down tech debt", which generally amounts to nothing getting done. Progress happens in creative pursuit of another goal and with hard constraints, in my experience. You can fix a specific piece of tech debt while working on a product feature that's adjacent to it, and you can create some great tooling and drivers while working on a product that needs them, but just setting aside the money for greenfield development often/usually ends up with it being set alight. I have worked at least one very well-funded place where the lack of product focus and thus lack of any constraints has just led to endless wheel spinning under the guise of "research".
Feels like a company saying they're going to "spend a few weeks paying down tech debt", which generally amounts to nothing getting done. Progress happens in creative pursuit of another goal and with hard constraints, in my experience. You can fix a specific piece of tech debt while working on a product feature that's adjacent to it, and you can create some great tooling and drivers while working on a product that needs them, but just setting aside the money for greenfield development often/usually ends up with it being set alight. I have worked at least one very well-funded place where the lack of product focus and thus lack of any constraints has just led to endless wheel spinning under the guise of "research".