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

To: Elmer who wrote (106058)	4/16/2000 4:50:00 AM
From: Joe NYC	Respond to of 1574258

Elmer, Here is Tom's report from CeBit: www6.tomshardware.com In a funky glass room AMD showed the air-cooled Athlon 1100 that some of the journalists already knew from AMD's neighborhood-show to IDF. The system ran at exactly 1116 MHz and we took the chance of playing around with the system after the presenter had left the room for a few minutes. All software we could try and that was installed on the system ran without a problem. This time we had requested to look inside the case, to see what Thunderbird (Athlon with on-die L2-cache) actually looks like. I was very impressed to see everybody scramble and look for a screwdriver to fulfill my wish. There you have it. That's what 'Thunderbird' looks like. We also got a look inside the system as you can see above. AMD is very confident that they can keep up with Intel in terms of processor performance and increase their market share even more. Most of you know about AMD's upcoming dual-CPU chipset, the increase in front side bus speed from 200 MHz to 266 MHz, the upcoming quad-processor chipsets developed in cooperation with API and HotRail and finally the fact that the majority of Athlon platforms will very soon be using DDR-SDRAM to compete against Intel's expensive RDRAM-solutions. Tom even includes pictures. Click on the link. I think Willy execution carries a lot of risk, compared to Thunderbird. It seems that Thunderbird is more of a product, while Willy is still only a demo material. While they are supposed to arrive only a few months apart, I think Intel fans have to rely more on their faith than on any evidence available. You seem to stress that Willy actually booted and some other processor (alegedly Willy as well) was able to run for 2 hours. Compare this to a chip that is based on a tested core, which in fact is already sampling. If you read some press reports, Tbird is supposed to be released in speeds up to 1.25 GHz, and reach 1.5GHz in Q1 2001 (according to Jerry). 1.5GHz, you may recall will achieve clock speed parity with Willy. Now if you want to compare vapor level products, I think it would probably be more fair to compare Willy with Mustang, which is supposed to be the clock-rate and performance champion, arriving shortly after Willy. I think the fact that AMD does not feel any pressure to take Mustang on a dog and pony shows like Intel is taking Willy says a lot about who is confident, and who is on defensive. Joe

To: Elmer who wrote (106058)	4/16/2000 9:35:00 AM
From: Scumbria	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574258

Elmer, AMD did a power meter demo at 1.1GHz and you applaude it. Intel does the same thing at 1.5GHz and you call it a fraud. Exactly. The AMD demo was on near-production silicon, and as Joe has already pointed out, was fully robust on all software tested. In contrast, the Willy demo was highly unstable and was primarily intended to defuse customer interest in AMD. Intel also was in the midst of misleading their customers about the status of Coppermine production. Face it Elmer, Intel is looking pretty shabby these days. AMD caught a lot of lawsuits last year over an honest production mistake. Intel's attempt to mislead their customers appears a lot more serious to me. Scumbria

To: Elmer who wrote (106058)	4/16/2000 12:27:00 PM
From: Cirruslvr	Respond to of 1574258

Elmer - RE: "AMD did a power meter demo at 1.1GHz and you applaude it. Intel does the same thing at 1.5GHz and you call it a fraud." ... "AMD didn't do ANY demo at 1.1GHz other than the Motel6 parking lot powermeter because it wouldn't run anything else at 1.1GHz. What did you think? Why didn't AMD run a 2 hour powerpoint demo at ANY speed on the demo device??? The obvious conclusion is it wouldn't work for more than a few seconds or they would have." Elmer, I can understand how you think Willy is very important and that the upcoming future for Intel's high and mid end processors depend on the future of Willy. It must have been tough for you to realize the Athlon was a superior processor and that an even better one is coming by June. (You remember June, right?) Now, all hopes are on Willy. But what I can't understand is how we have pointed out to you a few times that the 1.1GHz Athlon HAS run software demos, but you continue to make the claims I quoted. Since I understand the first part, I'll give you leniency on the second part and not say you are trying to spread FUD. Just give me a number and I will point it out to you as many times as it takes to get for you to actually absorbed it.