Ted, 1 and 2 go together. Intel has never promised big volumes of P4, and all indications are that it's not supposed to go mainstream till the .13um process is available. There's lots of bits and pieces that fit in with this, the ones that come to mind, again, are RDRAM, big die, Albert Yu's "100s of thousands", $75 northbridge and dual channel RDRAM= expensive mobo, and the 50 new pins coming up in the next version, leaving the initial version with no upgrade path.
To simplify things at this point, I am figuring AMD needs to hold on until Mustang comes out. From what I can see, Mustang should be able to compete effectively with the P4. I am assuming a Mustang launch near the end of 2001 which would put it on schedule with the Intel DDR chipset.
Until then, we know that the P4 is dependent on the RDRAM supply, that none of the RDRAM producers will overtly favor Intel as the customer of first choice; that most of the P4's probably will go into NT workstations which AMD has little presence currently; that most consumer PC's with P4's will be Dell's and most likely "collector's items".
Are those fair assumptions?
If so, we know that the P4 will no be an overt threat to AMD until at least Q3 in 2001. However I still do not have even guesses for the actual number of chips....maybe there are way too many variables to get a handle on actual numbers.
From the figures in
idc.com,
Intel can no doubt produce enough to sell into the so-called workstation market, although even there they may be a bit hobbled by lack of MP support.
Great numbers in this article........but there is no way of knowing how much RDRAM producers can ramp up to meet demand. When you say MP support...don't you mean MB support?
As for possible early DDR chipsets, it doesn't really make sense for anybody to make a new chipset when the P4 pinout is supposed to change for the real high volume part.
Yeah, you are right....I suspect first support will come from Intel's own 870.
As for the P4 advertising threat, I am not sure that Intel will push P4 that much if supply is limited. I don't think Intel can afford to be too aggressive....it may only hurt their image further. Going forward, I think they will be much more sensitive.....even the spin over the preannouncement has been poorly done and they know it.....the crack in their credibility is real.
And if they don't fully realize the ramifications, they could easily end up with egg on their face once again....either way its to AMD's advantage.
Do you agree?
ted |
