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

To: Bill Jackson who wrote (113814)	6/1/2000 10:13:00 PM
From: Elmer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573730

Re: "It is quite possible that AMD does indeed mark fast parts as slower parts and fill that sales niche. What would you have them do? refuse the sale? Deliberately make slow parts by tweaking the process? This has been going on for years in assorted chip businesses and simply reflects the fact that a process might produce a good yield of faster parts than the market needs" Well Bill, I knew if I waited long enough you'd finally make a technically sound post. My faith has been restored. Don't forget to add though that the customer has no way of knowing which of the slower parts are really slow parts and which ones are down binned. If AMD had zero binsplit to the lower speed they'd simply dump that speedgrade. EP

To: Bill Jackson who wrote (113814)	6/1/2000 10:43:00 PM
From: Joe NYC	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 1573730

Bill, It is quite possible that AMD does indeed mark fast parts as slower parts and fill that sales niche. What would you have them do? refuse the sale? Deliberately make slow parts by tweaking the process? In my post I was starting from Chuck's assumption that AMD down-bins Athlons 2 to 4 speedgrades: Message 13813904 The result is that AMD ends up pricing out ot the market the very chips that AMD makes in highest quantity. Let's not forget that Athlon is still only a little more than an asterisk in the overall scheme of things. 1.2 million Athlons in a market of 40 million CPUs per quarter barely registers. So if indeed the sweet spot is 900 MHz, and overall Athlon ASP is $240, overcharging for 900 MHz (current price is about $500) indeed lowers the demand. Offer the 900 MHz for $240, and see how fast they disappear. All of them. I think if AMD is in fact downbinning parts as much as Chuck says, to me it is a complete breakdown in the decision-making. Gee, we could just fall for Dell's offer. Let's downbin 3/4 of the Athlon's to 500 MHz, sell them for $50, and let's have the remaining 1/4 make up for for it by charging $1,000 for each. Guess what: The 900 MHz parts won's sell. Since Athlon is such an asterisk in the marketplace, I don't see any problem in AMD offering only 800, 900 and 1 GHz parts. Why bother with 700 MHz etc. Let Intel supply those. Joe