Yes, all good points Steve, I don't disagree. I think that "enemy of my enemy" thing is wishful thinking on the part of AMD backers. Sun's management is going to sabre-rattle in press releases but not when they're thinking about the bottom line.
However, I want to comment on one of your points. If a substantial vendor like Sun/Cobalt comes with sufficient volume projections to AMD and says, "We'll go with your processor despite your relative corporate weakness to Intel, but we need to be assured of supply at the following levels through the following dates at the following prices", and AMD says "No", then one of two things must be true. Either a) AMD can't really compete because of all the reasons you state, in which case AMD isn't really *in* this long-term wholesale business for trailing-edge processors and are fooling themselves if they believe they are, or b) AMD doesn't *want* to be in that business, in which case the people on the AMD thread are fooling themselves.
It seems more likely that people on a bulletin board are fooling themselves than AMD management, but one never knows.
In either case, what you're saying really adds up to the fact that AMD is not even *in* the business that they need to be in to be selected as the CPU vendor for the X-box or the Cobalt box or anything that has an ongoing production time horizon further out than the duration of a pimply overclocker's wet dream. It's not a matter of being outmaneuvered by a rival. It's a matter of a bus company losing business to an airline.
If AMD *does* want to be in that business, they would find a way to work around the limitations you mention and get into it one way or another. If it's impossible for them to do so despite strategic ambitions in that direction, then IMHO it proves that they do in fact remain in business *at all* at the pleasure of Intel.
--QS |
