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

To: Goutam who wrote (78765)	11/5/1999 2:19:00 PM
From: Charles R	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574589

Goutama, <K6-3 400 MHz shortage - We can pretty much conclude that there is a tight supply of k6-3 400 MHz uP in the channel, based on some reports we had come across recently, Petz's observation(Chipmerachant), and price increase at Pricewatch. My question to you is, what would be the logical reasons behind this shortage? > My take is that this is due to couple of key reasons: - Strong demand patterns that began in early Q3 are still continuing. (Only data point to the contrary is that Niles is expecting business shipments to take a Y2K hit sometime this quarter. No other analyst to my knowledge has said this. Niles is definitely out on a limb on this one but the guy's track record makes him tough to ignore.) - Intel is rumored to be hardballing OEMs on low-end chip supplies. i.e., if a OEM asks for low-end product Intel is saying they are out of product and suggesting the OEMs move up to the higher ASP parts. Some OEMs move and some go to AMD for alternatives. You can see the results of this in the form of increased K6 line of products from various OEMs (laptops and desktops). This is what I keep talking about when I say Intel is ceding the low-end business. As far as the K6-3 specifics are concerned, one possibility is that some of the K6-2 builds are going toward K6-3 because of shortages in SRAMs. I am not on top of spot market prices but I think it may be more economical to build a K6-3 motherboard than K6-2 with 256k or 512K of L2 cache. In otherwords, K6-3 is finally priced to move. Looking back at Q1/Q2/Q3, K6-3 was not priced to move when it was priced to compete with PIII - given the speed grade lag and lack of competitive FPU. There may be other reasons but I think these are the big ones. Chuck

To: Goutam who wrote (78765)	11/5/1999 2:53:00 PM
From: Cirruslvr	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1574589

Goutama - RE: "We can pretty much conclude that there is a tight supply of k6-3 400 MHz uP in the channel, based on some reports we had come across recently, Petz's observation(Chipmerachant), and price increase at Pricewatch. ... What is your take on this? Do you see it as a positive development?" According to Yougang's notes of the CC (http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=11468621) "400MHz will be the minimum for Q4" So AMD must be above this minimum because those K6-III parts are drying up. I think 400MHz K6-III being gone is good. It is larger and probably lower yielding (because it is larger) than the K6-2, but at its current price it costs the SAME to purchase as a K6-2! Pretty stupid if you ask me. It should have been phased much longer ago... Hopefully K6-III 450 production will soon die away because its current price is getting close to K6-2 pricing. Now they gotta finally come out with the K6-III 500.