Re: still routing for AMD, despite all that's collectively happened to them
I think you're confusing me with woodworker Paul, who routs (though not for AMD!). Did you mean to post that I root for AMD?
:-)
AMD has been planning to shut down it's 2 oldest FABs for several years, by doing so a little sooner than expected they guarantee that they can keep pumping out high end CPUs for years - no matter what Intel does and no matter how bad the market.
The recent events in New York have killed off PC sales but should stimulate Cell phone sales. AMD, with its large flash business, will likely be in the black for Q4.
And some things have changed quite a bit. For the past two years, AMD was fighting to get the Socket A platform established, while Intel had the well known, well supported, and inexpensive Socket 370 going for it. AMD now actually has considerably better chipset support for its platform than Intel does for the version 1.0 Socket 478 (we now have VIA, SiS, NVidia, ALi, and AMD putting out standard, integrated, and performance chipsets) AMD is now shipping a second SMP chipset and SMP prices for AMD are holding up better than expected.
AMD has also lost the handicap of higher power consumption that formerly made it difficult for it to approach the corporate market. With P4 replacing PIII, and Palamino replacing Thunderbird, AMD desktop processors now use less power than Intel desktop processors, allowing AMD systems to be competitive in terms of case size and fan noise.
AMD is continuing to gain share in the mobile market, an indication that Intel is having trouble with its copper process (Intel slashed prices in a failed attempt to slow AMD's entry into the mobile market - if Intel were able to produce the chips its been marketing, there is no way AMD would be making such rapid market share gains in notebooks).
AMD will be able to supply close to 50% of the market next year, and could supply that much of the market profitably with total revenues on the order of $1 Billion per quarter. VIA will be able to supply another 20%. What will Intel do when it is faced with cutting prices or losing share of that magnitude?
The value of Intel's assets is down $10 Billion in the past year and it looks like they can look forward to losing another $10 Billion in the coming year.
As I've posted before, AMD is hunkered down for a brutal price war, with minimal costs and no illusions. With its corporate costs now even lower than before, AMD is prepared to pump out high numbers of desktop, mobile, workstation, and server chips at market shaking prices indefinitely. Intel still behaves as though it can do no wrong and continues to pull stunts like the limiting 845 to SDRAM.
Intel needs close to $25 Billion per year to break even, AMD now needs about $3.5 Billion - let's see how things are looking 6 months from now. |
