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

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (86002)	1/8/2000 7:32:00 AM
From: Process Boy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572942

Ten - <I'm also worried about the real possibility that Willamette might be more than the public is willing to handle.> Worried? Gamers and high end is always there. Coppermine seems fairly comparable to the competition, especially for integer, and I'm fairly certain Coppermine derivatives are going to be around for quite a while yet. Are you getting concerned about the PC market in general, e.g., in the middle between Willy and Timna, the market is going to contract, or are you worried about some other aspect w.r.t. Intel's positioning in desktop SKU's? Care to elaborate? PB

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (86002)	1/8/2000 12:02:00 PM
From: Cirruslvr	Respond to of 1572942

Tench - RE: "Which release date are you talking about? The only one I know of is Q4 2000, which is the most realistic date to me." If that is Intel's current estimate, yeah. But we don't know if it will be a Intel launch, circa pre-1999, or an Intel launch, circa 1999. "MHz should be up there. So should performance." But that's expected. "Cost should be relative to a high-end desktop today." Maybe for the processor, but the platform cost depends on whether Intel commits to DRDRAM and if so, what prices are at the time. Or they may stab RamBUST's back again and go with DDR SDRAM. Cost of platform is up in the air as far as I'm concerned. "I'm also worried about the real possibility that Willamette might be more than the public is willing to handle." Then I can't wait to be blown away. ;) I'm in no way trying to say Willy is going to be a dud. I'm just being realistic before it is crowned whatever people expect it to be crowned.

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (86002)	1/8/2000 2:21:00 PM
From: kash johal	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1572942

Tench, Re:" Willamette" It seems that Intel really needs willy to compete with the Athlon and soon. Athlons seems to be scaling really well - just look at 800Mhz availability. Once cache comes on board by mid-year Athlons will really pull away from Coppermine in per/clock frequency. And if dresden really performs copper should be good for 1 speed grade pick up at least. In 2H 2000 Athlons will hit low end and high end and even mobiles. It seems to me that there are several risks with Willamette: 1. Schedule risk - Any decent volumes in Q4 will require release to production by mid year. Seems unlikely considering first silicon is just out/expected. And this platform will surely require its own chipset/MB infrastructure. Lots of stuff that can easily cause a 1-2Q slip - just look at Cumines - due mid year and barely available by now. 2. Market/price risk. Apparently the die size is large and so expensive. Apparently RDRAM will be required for optimal performance. Apparently chip will be unsuitable for mobile apps. Clearly this will play in the $2000 and above market and likely that will be a smaller percentage of the market right now. In addition I have seen estimates that the mobile space will grow at a good clip in 2000/2001 further reducing the market for super fast desktops. 3. AThlon performance Intel clearly believes that it has a performance winner on its hands. However AMD may pull a surprise out of the hat by year end as well. At 0.13 micron the AThlon die size will be in 100mm2 range with on chip cache. Thats going to be a low cost high performance die in early-mid 2001. The battle may be similar to the current cumine/athlon battle where Intel wins a fair bunch of benchmarks but AThlon may be very competitive in some. Overall seems like a large availability of Willamettes in Q4 seems a stretch and will require flawless execution. If a six month slip happens it could be big trouble. I doubt if a lot of Intel investors realize that the company is behind right now and needs to perform flawlessly to recover over next 6-9 months. regards, kash