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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices

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To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (86002)1/8/2000 2:21:00 PM
From: kash johal  Read Replies (2) of 1573010
 
Tench,

Re:" Willamette"

It seems that Intel really needs willy to compete with the Athlon and soon.

Athlons seems to be scaling really well - just look at 800Mhz availability. Once cache comes on board by mid-year Athlons will really pull away from Coppermine in per/clock frequency. And if dresden really performs copper should be good for 1 speed grade pick up at least.

In 2H 2000 Athlons will hit low end and high end and even mobiles.

It seems to me that there are several risks with Willamette:

1. Schedule risk - Any decent volumes in Q4 will require release to production by mid year. Seems unlikely considering first silicon is just out/expected. And this platform will surely require its own chipset/MB infrastructure. Lots of stuff that can easily cause a 1-2Q slip - just look at Cumines - due mid year and barely available by now.

2. Market/price risk.

Apparently the die size is large and so expensive.
Apparently RDRAM will be required for optimal performance.
Apparently chip will be unsuitable for mobile apps.

Clearly this will play in the $2000 and above market and likely that will be a smaller percentage of the market right now. In addition I have seen estimates that the mobile space will grow at a good clip in 2000/2001 further reducing the market for super fast desktops.

3. AThlon performance

Intel clearly believes that it has a performance winner on its hands. However AMD may pull a surprise out of the hat by year end as well. At 0.13 micron the AThlon die size will be in 100mm2 range with on chip cache. Thats going to be a low cost high performance die in early-mid 2001. The battle may be similar to the current cumine/athlon battle where Intel wins a fair bunch of benchmarks but AThlon may be very competitive in some.

Overall seems like a large availability of Willamettes in Q4 seems a stretch and will require flawless execution. If a six month slip happens it could be big trouble.

I doubt if a lot of Intel investors realize that the company is behind right now and needs to perform flawlessly to recover over next 6-9 months.

regards,

kash
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