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

To: Petz who wrote (109331)	5/4/2000 2:30:00 PM
From: kapkan4u	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1579131

<Maybe they re-thought the 66 MHz bus and will now release it with 100 MHz bus?> This is the most likely scenario. Kap

To: Petz who wrote (109331)	5/4/2000 3:44:00 PM
From: Scot	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1579131

Petz, Is it possible that Intel is delaying the Celeron II at higher clock speeds to make core improvements? Right after benchmarks came out showing that the 600 MHz Celeron was a real loser, Intel said it would be a couple months (June?) before they were available. Chuck is best at guessing on these issues, but I would suggest there are two possibilities for the delay: 1. Core Improvements 2. Demand Constraints (as stated) We know/believe that core problems have resulted in poorer yields. Among many sources, this has been confirmed in the celeron via discussion on overclocker boards where poor overclocking results may suggest tolerances are tight. We saw the same thing with K6-2. As you mentioned celeron is on the "slow bus" without a lot of "cache". They've used these features, however, to distinguish the Celeron from the Pii or iii. So if they change this, they are risking the segmentation strategy. But what about this as a hypo...realizing that even a new core or more cache won't fix the yield problem they've thrown in the towel. Instead, Intel will attempt to keep the value market focused as possible on lower mhz...working toward Willie when the Piii will essentially become the Celeron? They may also be getting good enough asps at the low end for it not to matter...especially with AMD also capacity constrained. One argument against this scenario is that Duron is going to kick a$$ on the Piii. This may be a scramble to try and deal with this issue. But there is still a capacity/infrastructure issue for AMD. So why not just wait for Willie instead of reinventing the wheel? Could they be adding more cache so that AMD's "more total cache than Celeron" claim for the Duron becomes false? I have no idea. Does anyone really pay attention to the "more cache" argument? We know no cache (Celery 1) was a mistake, but does cache sell (tm ?)? -Scot

To: Petz who wrote (109331)	5/4/2000 3:51:00 PM
From: Cirruslvr	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1579131

Petz - RE: "Is it possible that Intel is delaying the Celeron II at higher clock speeds to make core improvements? ... Maybe they re-thought the 66 MHz bus and will now release it with 100 MHz bus?" That makes a lot of sense. But Spitfire may still be faster and marketing advantages like 200MHz bus and more on-chip cache.

To: Petz who wrote (109331)	5/5/2000 9:08:00 AM
From: Charles R	Respond to of 1579131

Petz, <Is it possible that Intel is delaying the Celeron II at higher clock speeds to make core improvements? Right after benchmarks came out showing that the 600 MHz Celeron was a real loser, Intel said it would be a couple months (June?) before they were available. Could they be adding more cache so that AMD's "more total cache than Celeron" claim for the Duron becomes false? Could they be tweaking the L2 cache interface to reduce the latency? Maybe they re-thought the 66 MHz bus and will now release it with 100 MHz bus? comments? Is it possible that Intel is delaying the Celeron II at higher clock speeds to make core improvements? Right after benchmarks came out showing that the 600 MHz Celeron was a real loser, Intel said it would be a couple months (June?) before they were available. Could they be adding more cache so that AMD's "more total cache than Celeron" claim for the Duron becomes false? Could they be tweaking the L2 cache interface to reduce the latency? Maybe they re-thought the 66 MHz bus and will now release it with 100 MHz bus? comments?> Any of these are possible but probably none of these are the driving factors. Intel's ASPs are right now under attack. Intel can do several things to step the drop. In Q1 Intel did: - Supply as few Celerons as they could without pissing off the OEMs - Ensure there is plenty of supply of Xeons to make sure there is no shortage of high-end SKUs - Push the laptop side as hard as possible Intel has very little control over the last two things. The first can be controlled easily. That's what they seem to be doing. Given the speed mix problems, it makes a lot of sense for Intel to not convert the higher speed grades to Celerons. Every part Intel ships as PIII instead of Celeron gives Intel anywhere between $20-$40. Drop the relative Celeron mix by a few million pieces and this will have big impact on the profit line. Any improvements in Celeron performance may be opportunisitic than strategic. Chuck