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

To: EricRR who wrote (113962)	6/2/2000 4:32:00 PM
From: Jim McMannis	Respond to of 1574091

More writer embellishment. Friday June 2, 3:35 pm Eastern Time Forbes.com AMD To Unveil Thunderbird By David Einstein In 1893, Andy Bowen and Jack Burke fought 110 rounds in New Orleans in the longest prizefight in history. It lasted more than seven hours. But that's nothing compared to the battle between Intel and Advanced Micro Devices for the heavyweight chip title of the world. Intel (Nasdaq: INTC - news), the perennial champ, and AMD (NYSE: AMD - news), the top-contender for the crown, are engaged in a bloody slugfest in which the weapons are fast, powerful chips that run most of the world's personal computers. In the early rounds--basically the 1980s and '90s--it was almost all Intel, which, like Muhammad Ali, combined strength and agility to keep AMD on the ropes. But AMD has staged a comeback in the past year with its powerful Athlon chip, which proved to be a match for Intel's best punch, the Pentium III. Athlon was the principal reason AMD reported revenue of $1.1 billion in its first quarter and why its stock has soared by 353% in the past year, from less than $20 per share to nearly $90 (it was up $4.69 to $88.69 in midday trading today). AMD will come out swinging June 5 with its latest uppercut, a beefed-up Athlon called Thunderbird with which it hopes to stagger the champ. Initial versions of Thunderbird are expected to run at speeds up to 1 gigahertz--the barrier that both Intel and AMD broke in March. What's so special about Thunderbird? It puts cache memory right on the chip instead of alongside it, boosting performance. What's more, AMD will produce the new processor with copper circuitry, which is significantly faster than the aluminum wiring used in previous chips. AMD is expected to officially open its new fabrication plant on June 5 in Dresden, Germany, where the copper technology is being implemented. Intel plans to shift to copper sometime next year. The advantage of the onboard cache could be negligible, since Intel has been turning out high-speed Pentium IIIs with that feature since March. ``This is a step forward for AMD because it addresses a performance bottleneck in the Athlon,'' says analyst Linley Gwennap of the Linley Group. ``But it doesn't really seem like anything that will escalate the arms race.'' Thunderbird is likely to outperform its Pentium counterpart, giving AMD ammunition in its bid to get PC makers to use its chips. But the performance edge could be short-lived. Intel will raise the bar again later this year with Willamette, a new chip that will take the speedometer to 1.5 GHz and beyond. The biggest advantage AMD may have is the new Dresden facility, which will let it increase the number of chips it can throw into the market. (Until now it has had to depend entirely on its big fab in Austin, Tex.) Intel, despite its vast manufacturing clout, has been unable to meet demand for its chips--and has paid a price for it. Early this year, Gateway (NYSE: GTW - news) cut a deal to use Athlons after a shortage of Pentiums hurt its sales. However, Intel isn't about to get knocked to the mat. Last month, it announced a $2 billion expansion of its plant in New Mexico, a move that will increase its output and help it make the change to copper. Indeed, it seems that the ability to produce chips may become more important than how many billions of calculations they can do. ``These chips are so fast and so powerful now it almost doesn't matter,'' says Gwennap. Any way you look at it, this title bout is turning into a battle of endurance. Like the fight between Bowen and Burke. Which, by the way, ended in a draw."