David,
I have been an occasional poster and regular lurker on this thread for a long time and I am constantly amazed at how hard some people have worked at trashing AMD and defending Intel. Why so much effort for such a poor performing company as AMD has been? You guys have lots of good info to relay that isn't just a waste of everyone's time and bandwidth. How about a little less rhetoric and some more info.
Well, you see a lot of trashing and rhetoric from both sides of the fence. Don't believe me? Then ask anyone about Fuchi and his obsession with Intel's downfall.
As for AMD trashing, I think Elmer said it best. He and I don't necessarily hate AMD as an engineering firm itself. We just don't like Jerry Sanders, the CEO. I personally believe that AMD has and will implement some nice design ideas, like the easy-to-implement 3D-Now instructions and the Super 7 platform. I know very little about the upcoming K7 and its platform, but I'm willing to bet that the design will be a very good one as well. Plus, the K6-2 is the currently the best of the non-Intel x86 processors out there.
However, Jerry Sanders is so intent on playing chicken with Intel that AMD is betting the entire farm on a high-risk business strategy. They are expanding their manufacturing capacity well beyond the needs of the market, meaning that they MUST take market share away from Intel, or they'll lose big time. But in order to take that market share, AMD is pricing their products so low that it's unclear whether they'll ever make a profit in the near or far term. This low-ball strategy may be great for the consumers, but it pisses the heck out of AMD's shareholders. Intel's shareholders are peeved as well, since AMD is not only forcing Intel to partially cannibalize it's historically high margins, but also forcing the entire x86 market into a bloody battle where even the victor (whoever it might be) won't emerge unscathed.
OK, so Intel's high margins wasn't going to last forever, and it does take an AMD to force Intel to redirect its own business strategies around a new "inflection point" of sub-$1000 PC's. But it still does not change my opinion that AMD is being run by an egomaniac who would sacrifice profitability in order to pull down the "800 lb. gorilla."
Tenchusatsu |
