>AMD will have a very hard time surviving the might of Intel unless Intel wants them to, for monopoly reasons. Buying SGI would be worse than death for them and SGI, both are losing propositions. They should be happy to settle for Intel's crumbs<
How about a little bit different scenario:
1) AMD strikes a foundry agreement with IBM, similar to the one Cyrix struck for the 6x86, whereby in exchange for low foundry costs to AMD, IBM gets to keep half the Appaloosa and Barton processors they produce to be sold under the IBM brand, with IBM also being licensed to produce one Barton processor for every Clawhammer processor AMD produces.
2) All desktop Barton and Appaloosa processors are produced by AMD.
3) IBM is also licensed to produce large cache versions of Barton into the enterprise/workstation market under the same terms.
4) The agreement is forward looking in that IBM will gain a license to produce all the desktop variants of Hammer when AMD migrates to K9.
5) The goal is that, by the time Fab35 begins to ramp, AMD takes a 30% market share by units, IBM takes a 30% market share by units, and Cyrix, Intel, and Rise split the remaining 40%. |
