Willy Willy Willy...
This is the real cloud hanging over our little AMD. I think we should spend more time dealing with it, and less talking about Macro.
Personally, I'm betting against Intel, and thus Willy. Why? Because I see Intel as unique among big high tech companies as having a large contingent of disgruntled employees. Is this a misconception?
Intel did demo a 1.5 gig Willy at IDF, but didn't they also demo a 1 Gig P3 at the IDF a year before that? We still haven't seen the earlier promise (in volume), so is it unreasonable to BET that the Willy promise isn't all its cracked up to be? Foster has already been delayed to Q1 2001.
I think that the pattern of technical screwups that Intel has had over the last 12+ months is indicative of a significant brain drain. Elmer, what is your take? Is this pattern just a random concentration of bad luck, or is there something more significant?
I went to monsterboard.com, and search jobs by company name. Intel had over 1000 jobs posted, of which 589 had the word "engineer" in the job description. Of that 589, 180 were located in Portland, home of Intel's famed Willy design team. I'm not in the industry, is this normal? How many people are at Intel Portland?
AMD posted 39 job vacancies on Monsterboard.
I did this search because a few years ago when I was looking for a job on monster board (keywords= math, physics), I kept getting irritated by the high number of AMD process engineering jobs that were clogging my search. This was about the time of the K6 manufacturing tragedy ('97).
I realize that Intel is a much bigger company, and the two may use different sites for recruitment. Would Intel employees shed some light on this?
But back to the sorry pattern:
Rambus (ditto)
Itanium (a lot of money for a demo, and why is HP still designing new RISC chips?)
Timna (consumers want 3D- maybe it will cannibalize the business market)
canceled chipsets (what canceled chipsets?)
MTH (management translation hub?)
Famed manufacturing (too bad about the demand!)
I'm starting to rant. So lets turn it around and say that Willy executes according to plan. What does this mean for AMD? Basically, AMD still makes prints money while the P3 remains in Intel's roadmap. This is at least until Sledgehammer. I think that AMD controls their own destiny.
BTW- Isn't Intel planning to move P3 to 0.13? If Willy is so great, why do this? |
