A Day in the Life of an AMD Salesman
Vendor (Rod Macpherson, thinking aloud):
"We think that ... <the real thinking is snipped>...
Let me ask him just a few tough questions."
Vendor: How many processors can we put on our servers?
AMD salesman:
We were under impression that you are making mostly
personal computers, are not you? I agree, the market
for servers is growing as everything else, but not
too big to deal with: for every server people would
need at least two dozen PCs. I personally would
assemble two uniprocessor servers and get exactly
twice the throughput than a single two-processor
unit with only 40% performance increase at a cost
of three.
Vendor: How much more are the mobile versions?
AMD salesman:
Not too much, really. Especially for you. See this
notebook with sales database? It is made by some
large (yet Asian) manufacturer and runs K6 at 233
out of standard battery and without a cryogenic
cooler. Cool? Your customers are probally ready
to pay high bucks for this book.
Vendor: Is the bus speed equal to Pentium II?
AMD salesman:
Which bus you are talking about? Since what time a
CPU was residing on PCI bus? Ahh, you are not sure.
I see. By the way, for your safety I would recommend
to stay with 66 Mhz system bus for a while, to
reduce your cost and for better realability.
Maybe later you can migrate to 75 or 83 Mhz,
when your printed circuit technology and motherboard
designers will be able to handle these speeds
reliably. You know, some wires must be traced really
accurately to run at 100Mhz to avoid clock skews,
reflections, etc. What? Never heard about skews?
No problem, we will work it out with you later.
You know, our buddy Intel did really smart move with
SEC, but I am not sure your company can handle the
cost of migration.....
Again, the higher speed DRAM would cost you too
much. Of course, you always can fool your customers
with impressive numbers that buys no performance.
Anyway, with our huge internal caches you will not
see much performance difference because the cache
miss rate is small, and our CPU does effective
prefetching when it continues to execute RISC
instructions internally. Hello, are you with me,
sir? Good.
What? Video subsystem? Did you try the Intel 3D
tests on their hottest Pentium-Pro? Or Pentium with
MMX? Good... Remember what frame rate it was?
Correct, typically 2 frames per second, maximum
about 6. Right. Do you remember what kids want
to play 3D games? 30fps? Right, good job,
you would need a 1000Mhz Intel CPU to keep up
with this.
AGP? How much the AGP would accelerate the
screen texture painting? Maximum four times
(33->128), but this works for painting only,
which is about 30% of the entire 3D engine.
Do your math and see - no real gain. Go and buy
3D-righteous or rendition or other accelerator
for $200 and enjoy the real game.
Need to learn more? Sorry bud, no more time
for education, only after you sign the sales
contract. OK?
Vendor: Is there an upgradable plug-in?
AMD salesman: What?
Come on pal, any Intel upgrade costs more than
a new MoBo with new (AMD) processor. I really
wonder who buys these upgrades today?
By the way, who really cares if your PC will
pop-up a window in 15 milliseconds faster? What
really does matter is the cost of a PC, and with
K6 it may be way below $1000. You can put your
savings into high-quality 17" monitors. This
would make your staff feel better with much
higher office productivty. Think about this.
Vendor:
Hmm, I was told by TV that Intel i233 is way better
than i200. But now, doing some math (233/200=1.15),
I see that the total premiun seems to be too high:
mobo redesign, mechanical unrealability, heat problems,
non-handlable power requirements. The whole new
product line. And all this for nothing. We are tired
to keep up with Intel innovations. With 6 months
product life cycle, there in no time to make any
profit, only Intel's pockets are getting fatter...
yehh... We need really to do something. Right now.
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