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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: grok who wrote (62841)	6/23/1999 1:16:00 AM
From: kapkan4u	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1579981

From jc-news.com ----------------Kalaran's View------------------------- Here is how things look to me now. AMD has a killer chip in the K7 and they can probably manufacture it(the two different processes in the two fabs are costly to develop and impliment but can also be seen as not putting all the eggs in one basket.) The K7 will very quickly achieve high Mhz and scale well performence wise(unlike the K6-2). Watch the subproducts it will spawn. Once cache is on-die nothing is holding back the K7. Intel has real problems. They are suffering from too many different projects at the same time and have nasty delays on most of them. This has put intel under pressure and we will have to see how they react. I expect it to become more and more apparant that the P3 core is maxed out. It will hit 1000Mhz but it will be a real reach. Look for AMD to take a compelling lead in Mhz. Intel's strong suit has always been manufacturing and they will Not loose money or the majority of the market but without the high-end, profits will be modest and shareholders will want blood. If things play out like it looks today then Intel is in some trouble. I doubt they will be able to control prices without holding the top speed chips. Here is my reasoning. When people buy chips they buy based on relative clock speed compared to what else is out there.(even if real world performence is within a couple %) Basicly there are several tiers of chip pricing. (all prices are from pricewatch)The top two sell for $700 and $450 currently(p3 550 and 500). These chips compose the top/high-end systems and will always be at this price regardless of how Much faster they are than the rest of the chips.These are for people who want the Best. The next two tiers $250 and $160 (p3 450 and 400) are the midrange computers. These can be affected by the low-end chips but will never approach the high-end chips. People who want a "good" computer but don't want to putdoen the big money. The last three tiers are the low-end that we all know so well.These fall in at about $120,$80,$50. People will buy these because they are cheap not for performence. All of the advertizing in the world will not make people think an $80 chip is fast. If intel does not hold the top two speed grades then they will get at Most $300 for their best chip. It is just the way the pricing curve works. The volume of AMD chips in the top two bins is not of great relevence as long as there are enough chips available/in stores to be seen.(can't pull a K6-3) This will make it Very hard for intel to rake in the money like investors are used to. "Intel Inside" is not more powerful than the almighty Mhz(copyright Kalaran) What i expect AMD to do.(yes this should be taken as a prediction) 1) Get out of the low-end as fast as possible. They want to maintain market share but they just aren't making any money.(besides sanders does Not like being the cheap supplier) 2) Maximize the number of speed grades it is ahead of intel whenever possible. A 1000 Mhz chip will Still be $700 and a 950Mhz chip will be $500-$450. Even though they are too close together to really be seperated. The Buyer still sees that 50Mhz not the actual % difference. If AMD is up 150Mhz at some point they will make it 3 speed grades to hurt intel. 3) AMD will hit the server market as hard as they can as soon as they can. Not a hard prediction i know but still i can't leave it out. 4) AMD will target IT and IS people with their ads. Their budget is thin and they need to make it count. The K7 will sell its self to gamers and people who need Real FPU power. Don't expect them to waste tons of money on web banners. These people will already know the stats. The average consumer will not be swayed by ads either. It is not apparant that they just by the highest clock speed. I will expect Some big ads(TV) but mostly magazine and target audience stuff. 5) Amd will release "low-cost" K7 chips as soon as possible to compete head to head with intel in tier 3,4,5. This is the bulk of the market and AMD does not want to ignore it but it also does not want to "lower" the K7 to this task. They will try to preserve the "Athlon" name as the high-end. AMD's "low-cost" chips will not compete with the celeron. The celeron is much better suited to cheap computers because Any K7 based chip would be crippled in the low-end by higher packaging/motherboard costs. Low-end is about price, not performence. Intel has created the celeron, now they have to deal with it. 6) AMD is likely to make some investments in other companies as soon as the financials improve. They will want to get in on motherboards/chipsets(they already hired the people and spent the money,why not?). They will want part or all of a graphics chipset company.(Needed for future intigration in a motherboard or CPU) AMD knows that the K7 will not last forever in the top slot.(such is the nature of the sector. I will be very surprised if the P7(x86,not merced) does not beat K7 pretty good, intel ain't dumb) Because of the limited nature of their window AMD will want to diversify like mad before they loose the top again and have to worry about pricing. what do you think?(be civilized) kalaranview@yahoo.com