Hi KeepItSimple; (* OT *) About INTC and AMD: The ongoing Rambus fiasco is also going to play out to an advantage for AMD. Intel tied themselves to an almost unmanufacturable new technology, one where the cost of memory is way too high, and this is going to open their high end products, to competition. Companies using the INTC part are going to be killing each other for the few RDRAMs available, and that is going to shift a lot of business over to AMD.
I also agree that the cost is the most important thing. It is true that INTC has had higher margins on chips than their competitors, but this is not due to some manufacturing advantage, it is instead due to a market advantage. This fact can be proved if you compare the cost per mm squared for the various company's silicon, and also take into account the comparative line widths. As an example, INTC is able to sell a 0.18u 100 mm sq chip for (historically) up to 100% more than their competitors, thus the great profit margins. This is not due to their products being faster, just that they are the standard. (The Intel Inside stuff.) I'm not a market analyst type, but this advantage is something I can see easily going away. The customer really doesn't care that much who made their processor, just that the company they are buying it from is reputable.
As far as AMD being unable to manufacture in volume, that is untrue.
-- Carl |
