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

To: Yougang Xiao who wrote (107124)	4/20/2000 8:15:00 PM
From: Yougang Xiao	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573927

Q2 will be blockbuster for AMD! Message 13474730 While Intel is desperately moving capacity to PIII to make its Q2 number, AMD will be happily selling more K6 with little price presure or maybe upward price tick in low end. The AMD story is too good to be igored by the Street!

To: Yougang Xiao who wrote (107124)	4/20/2000 8:30:00 PM
From: Epinephrine	Respond to of 1573927

RE: <Intel delays Celerons because of manufacturing crunch> Yougang Xiao (Yougang), I wonder if AMD somehow got some advance hints at this delay and if so then maybe the rumored increase in socketA chipset orders to Via was an attempt to take advantage of the situation. Hmm, very interesting :) Regards, Epinephrine

To: Yougang Xiao who wrote (107124)	4/20/2000 8:52:00 PM
From: Goutam	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573927

Yougang Xiao, < Intel delays Celerons because of manufacturing crunch > <EDIT>Text deleted </Edit> Regards, Goutama

To: Yougang Xiao who wrote (107124)	4/20/2000 9:03:00 PM
From: 5dave22	Respond to of 1573927

Forewarning, a very sophomoric post following ... <Intel has pushed back the release of two desktop processors because of a manufacturing crunch that has created shortages.> This deserves a Homer Simpson style "DOOOOOHHHH!!!" Bring on the Spitfire! Otellini, you da man! Where's Dell?! Where's Paul?! Tax season is over!! Dave Lovin' it!

To: Yougang Xiao who wrote (107124)	4/20/2000 9:49:00 PM
From: Cirruslvr	Respond to of 1573927

Yougang - RE: "Intel delays Celerons because of manufacturing crunch" Thanks for the link! Earlier in the day, I wrote this - "I searched Dell's and Gateway's website and there are zero Celeron 566MHz or 600MHz systems for sale. Compaq has one 566 Celeron system intended for retail and you can configure a system with a 566 or 600 Celeron. Pricewatch has 8 vendors selling the Celeron 566 and two selling the Celeron 600. Have even the Celeron "releases" become a joke? Since these new Celerons are based on the new stepping, there is a chance the binsplits are so good that there aren't many 566 and 600 parts. We'll know if this is the case when we determine Celeron 633MHz and 667MHz availability." How naive I was to give Intel the benefit of the doubt! Before we jump on Intel and only claim this is the result of an earlier problem somewhere in between going from wafer to final product w/Cumine, this delay may have something to do with Spitfire not coming out until June because of Thunderbird. I think this delay is partly strategic because of the potential AMD situation. Of course, if Spitfire ends up coming out in April, Intel will have a big pie in its face. Also, since Intel has publicly said supplies will be tight until the end of Q2, they may not want to bring in higher MHz Celerons which may take away sales from the more richly priced Cumine which is already in limited quantities. The April release of Celeron 633MHz and 667MHz was on Intel's roadmap since as late as the end of February, according to roadmaps at Tom's Hardware and The Register. The News.com article says these will now come out at the end of Q2, in June. That means wafer starts for these processors probably didn't start late mid-Q1 (since Elmer says ~12 weeks from wafer start to store shelves). Intel knew of this delay before their Q1 CC. If you see Intel's balance sheet from the Q1 earnings, you will see work in process is higher (6%) than it was at the end of Q4, but raw materials is substantially higher (24.5%) than it was at the end of Q4. Whatever problem Intel had, they didn't solve it until either during the middle or end of Q1, but it seems they are NOW full steam ahead. It would be interesting to compare this info to the dates Elmer posted Intel has no problems. Anyone want to? I hope this thread sighs a collective breath of relief with me knowing higher MHz Celerons are delayed, EVEN IF Spitfire comes out this month. Now is the time for AMD to react and try to get Spitfire and its higher MHz out ASAP. Unfortunately, motherboards may be a problem. This doesn't affect K6-2 much since they are already sold out this Q. There is a chance its ASPs will go up some, but with Spitfire out soon I don't see that happening.

To: Yougang Xiao who wrote (107124)	4/21/2000 9:53:00 AM
From: pgerassi	Respond to of 1573927

Dear Yougang: I just thought of why Intel is capacity constrained and allows all of their public statement to be true. They get a process working on one line and then they make exact copies for all the lines they plan to install. They ran into a problem with the process in Q3-99 and had to delay Coppermine for a time. Then they fixed it on that line ran it for a while. Since it still looked good, they duplicated the line in all the fabs. They ran for a while and the output on the new lines just was not working out right. So shortage Q4-99 happened. They thought that it was a problem with their copying. But they changed some parameters on one or two lines and they got those additional lines working. But the new changes failed on all their new lines and any they copied of the new settings. This is the Q1 shortage. They kept working on the problem and just realized that the first line just happened to use a set of settings that just happened to work but, the setting tolerances are so hard to duplicate that they are just better to qualify each line separately or get rid of the process entirely. This causes the Q2 shortage. I think that they get such benefit from the process that they must give up on "Copy Exactly". This will slow down the ramp, which is what we are seeing. Capital spending is going up because they are now searching for a process that gives them the benefits of the current one but allows for "Copy Exact" to work while at the same time qualifying each new line separately which causes the delay in ramp. "Yields are Fine" continues to be true but, bin splits are lousy until tweaked on each line. "Demand is Good" due to they say they will "Flood" and they can't yet (each fix will be able to be copied or so they plan). This in a smaller scale happened to AMD Q4-98 to Q1-99. So now the "Shoe is on the Others Foot". Pete