Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Fred Fahmy who wrote (62994)	6/23/1999 6:23:00 PM
From: Scumbria	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1571043

Fred, As you well know, Intel paid a huge price to punish AMD this quarter. They basically sold off several hundred dollars per Celeron/PIII. How many billions of dollars will this cost Intel this year? Scumbria

To: Fred Fahmy who wrote (62994)	6/23/1999 6:44:00 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 1571043

I think the scariest thing is that AMD wasn't able to produce more than 3.7 million units this quarter. Why the shortfall in production? Several possibilities: 1) Speed bin sorts aren't producing the expected percentage of higher speed parts. Perhaps AMD couldn't sell off those lower-speed parts, thus building up the inventory rumored to be at two million units. 2) AMD is having problems ramping up the K6-III and the Athlon. (BTW, that Athlon name is kind of growing on me.) A lot of production capacity has to be devoted toward this task, meaning K6-2 production has to be sacrified. 3) Intel is gaining back retail marketshare, which goes along with the first possibility of AMD sitting on a huge inventory of unsold K6-2's. This would fly in the face of the theory that AMD can sell everything they make. 4) AMD shipped more Athlon parts than we realized. This doesn't make sense, or else AMD wouldn't be reporting such a huge loss this quarter. 5) Plain old yield problems again. (This is different from speed bin sorts.) I don't think this would be the case either, or else AMD would have told us a while ago, lest they want to be hit with more shareholder lawsuits. My guess would be mainly #1, with a little bit of #2 and #3 mixed in. And this really doesn't bode well for Athlon. AMD may announce that initial speeds of Athlon have reached 600 MHz, but how many of those bad boys can AMD actually produce? Seems to me that the vast majority of Athlons will be at 500 MHz, maybe some at 550 MHz, but practically none at 600 MHz until perhaps Q4. In the end, how many Athlons will it take to plug that gaping $200 million wound? Seems the situation just became more dire than ever before. Tenchusatsu EDIT: I forgot about the dumping of Cyrix parts. I wonder how many of them got dumped after Nat. Semiconductor fled the x86 scene. Nevertheless, I still feel that the notion that "AMD can sell everything they make" is in question.