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

To: Yousef who wrote (69562)	8/22/1999 7:55:00 PM
From: Dan3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574384

Re: better for you to stick to HYPE'ing AMD.... But Yousef, hypeing AMD is exactly what I've been doing! Both process and something to make with it are needed for a successful new CPU. Whatever AMD designed and however they are building it, it seems very clear that it's beating what intel has right now. Finding out more about what and why AMD is doing things is interesting and somewhat helpful, but the bottom line is... it's working. And whatever Intel is doing right now... is in a bit of a mess. Process technology is a part of the equation, processor design another part, memory architecture another part, system bus design another part, relationships with motherboard manufacturers another , relationships with OEMs another, relationships with the software companies that ultimately determine how much of a CPUs potential becomes useable perhaps the most important. You have to look at the whole commercial environment in which these parts must exist. Do I have more knowledge about every one of these areas than anyone else? Nope. Do I need to? I hope not, because there will always be domain experts with better specialized knowledge. But as an investor, I need to synthesize an opinion using information from all of these areas. Right now I see: AMD is, amazingly, shipping (just starting, I know, but they are definitely shipping), CPUs considerably faster than anything Intel has to offer, and that's while running code optimized for the Intel chips! Intel has run into system architecture problems due to rambus being very late, and - we don't know for sure yet but probably - slower and more expensive than expected. It seems to have confused the chipset division at Intel and the resulting BX/ZX fiasco has pumped credibility and cash flow into VIA, SIS, and ALI just when Intel most needs leverage over the industry in this area. Past actions have evidently (why else would they be supportive of AMD) caused the tier 1 vendors to be very receptive to the brand new Athlon, and very willing to support a high end alternative to anything Intel manages to come up with. I'm unsure of the whole history behind their relationship with Intel, but Microsoft has issued some of the most glowing press releases I've ever seen regarding Athlon and made it very clear that they are giving Athlon their total support. It's all of these things taken together that lead to my opinion of AMD and Intel as investment prospects. As fascinating as the process used to build the CPUs is, and as critical as it is to the product's success, I have to look at much more, and let the bottom line performance of the chips tell me most of what I need to know about them. So should you, Dan