Paul and thread,
Eric Savitz of Barron's had this to say about INTC and competition in a feature article published this weekend (page 58):
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".... AMD, as it happens, kicked off the Microprocessor Forum last week by unveiling a detailed product roadmap: early next year, AMD will follow up its K6 processor with a new version, the K6-3D, which can power souped-up 3D graphics; in the second half of next year comes an even faster version called the K6-Plus3D. In 1999, the company plans to unveil an even spiffier chip dubbed as k7. And work on K8, says AMD Chief Jerry Sanders, is underway. AMD, of course, had a miserable quarter of its own, as production snags hurt its ability to meet the considerable demand for its low-cost wares.
Unfortunately for AMD, until those difficulties get worked out, no one will much care what's in the pipeline. Indeed, some observers have given up on AMD, citing not the company's short-term manufacturing problems, but rather some long-range technical issues. The problem: a change in the way Intel chips hook up with the rest of a PC innards. Intel is switching from an architecture called Socket 7 to another, called Slot 1, which is supposed to improve performance. AMD, it turns out, can't use Slot 1, for patent-related reasons. AMD has been working on ways to get around the problem, but there is wide-spread skepticism that the fixes will provide effective competition. John Levinson, head man at Westway Capital, which runs a tech-oriented hedge fund from Westport, CT, is short AMD. "It is a troubled company for technical reasons," he says. "Intel has changed the rules of the game."
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More in the next post.
Ibexx |
