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Technology Stocks : Advanced Micro Devices - Moderated (AMD) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cirruslvr who wrote (126)	7/6/2000 10:22:13 PM
From: Cirruslvr	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

Yesterday's interview with Ruiz This was posted to the other thread yesterday, but it I didn't get a chance to highlight what I thought was important. I think there are a few interesting things in this quoted part. My thoughts are after the >>>. "IBD: What's AMD's strategy in the consumer market? Ruiz: Our objective is to play a major role in the network appliance market. The appliance market has been fragmented and not well defined. There are so many platforms for it. We are beginning to crystallize the role we can play and we are articulating it. IBD: Does that mean you'll talk about a network appliance strategy later this year? Ruiz: Yes. >>> This was mentioned by Ruiz in some of the PC Expo interviews, but there was no focus on it. It seems as if AMD wants to make their own net acces "appliance" product, like Intel does because these things will become more prevailent in the upcoming years as wireless becomes bigger in homes and people access the net anywhere at home. Previously, I thought AMD just wanted to supply the processors for these, but I guess they have other plans. I find it very good that AMD is planning to expand from just processors and flash. Now if the SMP platform could just come out already.. IBD: Is AMD planning to build any new chip plants? Ruiz: We are building new capacity of flash with our partner, Fujitsu. We're putting large amounts of capacity in place. I believe we will continue to be one of the flash market leaders. In terms of microprocessors, the (focus) is on completing the production ramp-up in Dresden, Germany. We are at about 25% . to full capacity. We are also in the beginning stages of planning our next microprocessor factory and (determining) where it should be. We are hoping to have that nailed down by the end of the year. >>> AMDZone mentioned that in a employee party earlier this year, Jerry said AMD hoped to have finalized plans by early next year for a 12 inch fab in Austin. IBD: You mentioned the joint venture with Fujitsu. Is AMD planning to do more joint ventures? Ruiz: Because we chose to be on a partnership path, we will need to expand our partnerships going forward. All the elements will require hardware people such as motherboard suppliers. At some point in time we might consider a manufacturing alliance, either producing silicon or testing silicon." >>> I found this to be the most intersting thing. When SOI wafers were talked about on other thread I think it was Paul who mentioned these SOI wafers cost extra and the article everyone mentioned said SOI is hard to tame, but once you get it to work, it is efficient. Maybe Ruiz is talking about a future alliance on SOI wafer production?

To: Cirruslvr who wrote (126)	7/7/2000 12:02:41 PM
From: Charles R	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

Cirruslvr, <He has always been positive on the processor side, and in his report yesterday he continued to be positive on processors. > I share this view. Joseph was one of the early guys on AMD Athlon story and continues to be so. <I don't ever recall him spending a lot of time talking about flash in his reports. > I have seen a fair bit of stuff from Joseph on flash and suggesting that Flash prices need to be closely monitored. <As someone else mentioned, we should watch for an upgrade after Q2 earnings.> I think this line of thought holds little water. Looks to me that by design or by ineptitude the bond and research groups were not talking to each other. As I said on the other thread on Wednesday, I kind of share Joseph's concerns about the semiconductor sector but I think his company picks were bad. In this industry one should get out of commodities at the peak and AMD isn't selling commodities to any significant extent. AMD's Flash comes closest to being a commodity but even there AMD has significant differentiating features that will help retain ASPs and design wins much longer than the true commodity guys. MU, CY, IDTI, ALSC holders should be lot more concerned about the cycle peak than the other folks. Chuck