AMD Is Preparing to Ship K7 Chips
That Will Outperform Those of Intel
By DEAN TAKAHASHI
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Advanced Micro Devices Inc. said it is
preparing to ship K7 microprocessors that will outperform the fastest
available chips from Intel Corp.
Burned by similar promises in the past, analysts are withholding their
judgment on the new AMD chips until they ship later this month. But they
acknowledge that AMD's chance to catch up with Intel is better than ever.
Dirk Meyer, an AMD vice president and architect of the K7, said at an
industry dinner on Thursday night that the chip will be faster than an Intel
Pentium III chip with an equivalent megahertz rating on key performance
measures, including crunching numbers for a spreadsheet or creating
graphics and video for a game. He said AMD's tests show the K7 beating
comparable Intel chips by 7% to 42%, depending on the software being
run.
Mr. Meyer said that an initial version of the chip, to ship in small volumes
to key computer makers later this month, will operate at 550 megahertz. A
version operating at 600 megahertz is expected later this summer(my note: If the article is based on the Dirk presentation, it is certainly wrong on the 600 part. Dirk said clearly according to the audio file that 500, 550 and 600 to be introduced this month, RDM confirmed that Takahashi was not at the presentation. Takahashi did not do DD well); AMD
expects to field a 1-gigahertz, or 1,000-megahertz, K7 in 2000, he said.
That's in the same megahertz range as Intel is expected to offer. In the
past, AMD has lagged behind Intel in that key performance measure, in
part because of manufacturing problems.
"It's a watershed event that the fastest PC microprocessor isn't going to be
coming from Intel," said Michael Slater, principal analyst at Micro Design
Resources in Sebastopol, Calif. "It could have the emotional effect of
changing perceptions about AMD's role in the market."
Intel officials declined to comment. But some Intel engineers privately
question whether AMD's comparisons are fair. They noted that AMD also
must work with other companies to make ancillary chips and
motherboards, the main PC chassis that chips plug into.
Mr. Slater and other analysts said that AMD must prove it can produce
high volumes of the chip quickly. The company made similar promises with
its last two microprocessors, the K5 and K6, only to stumble in
manufacturing them profitably. Such issues forced AMD to report a
$128.4 million loss in the first quarter ended March 28.
The K7 could help. Mr. Slater estimates that AMD could sell the chips for
$400 to $700, far above the $78 average selling price for its chips in the
first quarter.
Mr. Meyer said the K7 design makes it easier to boost the megahertz
rating of the K7 chips without straining the tolerances of its manufacturing
equipment. But Intel still has the financial resources to keep building
advanced factories more quickly, Mr. Slater noted.
Atiq Raza, president of AMD, said in an interview that AMD needs the
K7 to expand into Intel's last big stronghold in commercial computers,
especially in workstations and servers where Intel gets much of its profits.
He said that AMD has been vulnerable to Intel's price-cutting in the
low-end retail market because it had no other markets except portable
computers to rely upon for profits. |
