Xy,
Is Intel caught off guard by the AMD onslaught? Maybe they haven't been paranoid enough? Looks like some very promising news coming out of CeBIT in Germany. Maybe the veil of silence has been lifted. Better jump on that AMD bandwagon.
Profits
AMD to Pit K6 Against Intel's Celeron
By Aaron Ricadela
Hannover, Germany
12:00 p.m. EST Mon., March 23, 1998
In a disclosure that appears to have caught Intel off guard, Advanced
Micro Devices said it plans to position its K6 processors directly
against Celeron, Intel's forthcoming low-end chip, this spring.
As PC vendors start shipping machines based on AMD's K6 3D processor in late May, AMD will begin positioning its current generation of K6 chips as a consumer alternative to Celeron, said Robert Stead, AMD's European marketing manager, at the CeBIT '98 trade show here Friday.
Stead said as AMD builds up U.S. production of its enhanced 3-D
processors this spring and summer, the company will price its "K6
classic" chips so manufacturers can deliver PCs starting at $800.
Indications are that AMD's K6 lineup will begin at 233MHz in Q2.
"We'll maintain our competitive position against Pentium II [with K6 3D] .... and we'll position the K6 classic directly against the Celeron in the market below $1,000," Stead said.
The strategy would apply pricing pressure on Intel. The first shipments of Intel's Celeron, a processor based on Pentium II architecture (but without a level-two cache), are expected in mid-April at 266MHz. Intel has lost retail market share to AMD, mainly because its Pentium line has no chip for sub-$1,000 computers. AMD held 40 percent unit share of the U.S. retail desktop market in January, according to PC Data, Reston, Va.
An Intel executive reacted to Stead's statement with surprise.
"The positioning of K6 classic has always been against Pentium with
MMX," said Gordon Graylish, director of Intel architecture marketing for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. "I haven't heard that before."
Intel plans to price Celeron so vendors can offer PCs at $999 to $1,200, Graylish said. Celeron's P-II board architecture would deliver better performance at those price points, he added. "The advantage of Celeron is we're designing a product using today's technology. ... The
difference between the high end and the low end isn't that the low end
wants [the high end of] two years ago," he said. |
