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

To: Charles R who wrote (71495)	9/9/1999 1:23:00 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1573958

<For the record, Intel does a new x86 core roughly every 3 years. Now, the best case situation looks like it will be 5.> I disagree with your tone. Intel leaves one window of opportunity open for AMD, and already people think that Intel has fallen way behind and can never catch up. What do you expect from Willamette, anyway? Just something that can achieve performance parity with Athlon? Would it be too much of a shock if I told you that Willamette will be a major leapfrog? Tenchusatsu

To: Charles R who wrote (71495)	9/9/1999 6:35:00 PM
From: Process Boy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1573958

Charles - <Competitive, like the K6-2 and K6-3 were with their Pentium equivalents. Not, much money in being compeititive, if you havne't noticed. The money is in being a leader.> There is more to "leading" than winning every single benchmark. Still, when say competitive (performance wise), I don't believe Coppermine will be the bomb you make it out to be. I'll reference what the #1 PC maker Dell indicates. They referenced concerns about K7 vs. Platform Performance, and overall performance, as well as volumes. I would expect if Coppermine is going to be a product bomb, you'd hear rumbling of 1st tier PC makers being dissatisfied with the product. I do not anticipate this occurring. <If it is x86 extensions, then the evolution will be natural. The question then becomes, how soon will Intel follow AMD into that market. If they do Alpha, it will be a uphill road. If they do anything else, it is like p*****g in the ocean.> From what I understand, it is not as natural as one might think. I don't know what the long term holds, but after some checking with folks that I trust, aspirations for 64 bit extensions for x86 at this time are ahead of themselves. I must stipulate that my opinion is pretty unwashed in this area, (not my gig). I have to go with what some very smart people tell me, and that is the IA64 platform will be a very compelling solution. I know since the silicon came out and some real OS's and performance metrics have been tested, everyone I talk to seems extremely pleased. I predict that the MerDUD thing will quickly go away. I was even skeptical that Merced would be a market worthy product. The more I learn, the more I am surprised. Expect Merced to hit next year, as a product. Subsequent implementations of IA64 are still firmly entrenched on the roadmap as far as I know. <PB, it occurred to me that you never presented your thoughts on why Intel is so far behind on its next generation core. For the record, Intel does a new x86 core roughly every 3 years. Now, the best case situation looks like it will be 5.> PPro is still doing EXTREMELY well Chuck! As close as I believe K7 and Coppermine will be in real world performance, I am not embarrassed that Intel got so much life out of a very efficient core!!! We both know what is in the pipe. It isn't very far away, despite your dire warnings. In the interim Coppermine will still be a very compelling solution, and probably make a slug of money. It appears the timing of Intel's next generation core will be just about right actually. Pretty good ROI on a very successful core, don't you think? Face it, AMD NEEDED THE K7 DESPERATELY! And it just pulls them close. It is not a blow away product, IMHO. The design may have some compelling attributes, but overall performance against Coppermine will be comparable. Do I believe that between now and Intel's next generation core hits the market that K7 has the total wherewithal to make serious dents in Intel's business? No way dude. Big die, manufacturing questions (OEM adoption), and basically not enough time to put together the coherent broad based response that would be necessary to take Intel on in the high end and draw blood. IMO. PB

To: Charles R who wrote (71495)	9/10/1999 12:09:00 AM
From: Petz	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573958

Chuck & thread -- a long term hedge strategy for AMD: I continue to be intrigued by the possibility of an Apple/AMD collusion, especially for the long term. Why? Intel cannot compete in the Apple CPU market because 1)they have no presence now 2)Intel would be prohibited from using their x86 (or future IA-64) profits from subsidizing competition with Apple/AMD 3)At (currently) less than 10% of the computer market, its too small a fish for Intel to go after. That said, here's how the AMD/Apple combo would work. 1. AMD continues developing and selling its 7th generation Athlon for at least 2 years 2. The K8 is modified by whatever needed to get Apple's committment. For example, take x86 (IA32), add 64 bit registers and addressing, add AltiVec SIMD (better than 3DNow or SSE), lots of registers. Such a CPU could be ready sometime in 2001, depending on how much "IA-Apple" differs from AMD's current design for the K8. 3. If I were Apple, I wouldn't stray too far from IA32. This would allow them to port their OS to both IA-Apple and IA32 simultaneously. 4. Motorola might want to trade its PowerPC division + a few hundred million $ to AMD to get AMD's flash business. Why would this be good for AMD? 1. Less competition in Apple's market segment. Near 100% of a 10% market segment, with room to grow the segment. AMD would continue to compete in the high-end x86 segment with the Athlon. 2. If Apple ports OS to IA32, they would do it in a way that favors AMD, e.g., by optimizing QuickDraw etc. for 3DNow. If they acquired AMD, they would certainly want to do this to keep their "chip division" (AMD) busy. 3. $$$ provided by Apple and Motorola What about consumers? 1. It would give them a real alternative to Microsoft 2. Without something like this, Apple/Motorola might slowly disappear Why would this be good for Apple? 1. Better performance - except for AltiVec, the Athlon 650 beats the PPC4-500 which isn't even out yet, in both FP and Integer (recent SPEC results). 2. Higher MHz - MHz sells 3. Porting OS gives Apple significant software revenues 4. Motorola charges a lot of money for its chips --Apple saves money especially if Apple acquires AMD. Comments? BTW, what about SUN+AMD? Petz