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

To: Elmer who wrote (92287)	2/10/2000 12:11:00 AM
From: Cirruslvr	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1573782

Elmer - RE: "End to the 800MHz PIII bottleneck?" From that article - "Intel, for its part, is working to add manufacturing capacity in order to help curb shortages. Company officials say they expect to smooth out the supply problems by the end of next month." NEXT month? At first resolving the supply problem issue was supposed to occur when the price cuts occured in January, but that didn't happen. And then it was supposed to be fixed when price cuts occur this month, but now Intel is saying NEXT month? Is this an error? If it takes ~10 weeks for AMD to make an Athlon (according to JC) I would guess it is approx. the same for Intel. That means lots of Cumine wafers didn't START until the end of December, when the 750 and 800 were "released". Is that when the Israel fab started producing? Does this sound accurate or am I missing something? PB?

To: Elmer who wrote (92287)	2/10/2000 12:43:00 AM
From: Dan3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573782

Re: End to the 800MHz PIII bottleneck?... It depends, if AMD can't really produce 850s and 900s, the bottleneck is ending. If AMD can produce 850s and 900s, but Intel's new stepping lets it do the same, then the bottleneck is still ending. If AMD can produce 850s and 900s, but Intel, even with the new stepping is limited, for the next few months, relative to AMD, in the numbers it can produce at these speeds, then it has several choices: 1)Announce 850, 867, or even 900 and 933 MHZ chips, perform the usual price cuts, and jump right back into the shortage crisis. 2)Leave prices on the existing chips where they are and price the new ones at a level sufficient to discourage anyone from actually buying any. 3)Grit their teeth and let AMD hold the performance lead in MHZ for a while. If AMD can only produce in volume at 800 for now, they will continue to be in decent shape, and have another big quarterly profit increase (not much downside, still plenty of upside). If AMD can produce volume at 850 and 900, with a sweet spot at 800, they may be able to continue to put (mild) pressure on Intel ASPs (assuming Intel's sweet spot is no higher than 700MHZ). If AMD drops the Athlon 800 to $250 or so, it could become difficult for Intel to get much more than that for their 700. It's going to be an interesting couple of months! Goutama's famous analyses of the chip and board markets should show us how it turns out. Who knows, maybe Intel will maintain a real parity with AMD (at least until Dresden launches - and that could always have problems). But considering that Intel seems to have gotten back into the Pentium II 400 business recently, the notion that nothing coming out of the Intel FABs will be limited to less than 800MHZ doesn't seem likely. Let's see how much chip Intel can ship for $250 and $350 a month from now - and what $250 and $350 will buy from AMD in the same period. Dan