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

To: niceguy767 who wrote (20786)	11/27/2000 9:57:12 PM
From: Maverick	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

SSB:VIA sampling AThlon DDR chipset,shipping KM133 Duron chipset in vol now 11/27/00 Excerpts VIA TECHNOLOGIES: LEADING INDEPENDENT CHIPSET LEADER NOW TARGETING THE VALUE PC SEGMENT. It is hard to argue with VIA's track record: its has grown revenues from $54.8 million in 1996 to about $983.0 million in 2000, a compounded annual growth rate of 106%. In a slower growth market, the company still hopes to grow revenues by at least 50% next year. It has largely achieved this kind of growth by capitalizing on mistakes made by Intel (INTC, 2M, $23.94) and other Taiwanese competitors in the chipset market, and now enjoys greater than 40% share of that market. VIA is reporting that Q4 demand for PCs remains weaker than anticipated, and lays blame for at least part of that weakness on Intel's doorstep. Processor shortages caused customer uncertainty, encouraging them to double order and then cancel when supply improved. The company expects PC growth of about 14% in Q4. VIA is not buying the "convergence theory" that Internet Applications (IA) will merge into handheld devices or cellular phones, extinguishing the low- end of the PC market. VIA hopes to regenerate demand in the sub-$500 range with its new family of processors, called Cyrix III. Priced at less than $50, the Cyrix III (code named Samuel) will be sampling at 650MHz and 677MHz in the next couple of weeks. By the end of Q1, the company expects to ship a 0.15-micron shrink version with added cache and running at 800MHz, and by mid-year at 1GHz. The company sold over 1 million M2s this year and hopes to sell at least 5 million C-III's in 2001. The plan is to initially target "white box" OEMs in secondary and price-sensitive markets, like China, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. By Q1, the company fully anticipates announcing Tier 1 and Tier 2 customers. The company also plans to retain its technology leadership in chipsets next year, leaning on its fast design cycles and low cost manufacturing at TSMC. VIA is currently sampling an Advanced Micro# (AMD, 2S, $20.81) Athlon-based DDR chipset, and will ramp volume of that product in Q1/Q2 as DDR prices come more in line with SDRAM. The company will also begin supplying a DDR-based P4 chipset by Q2 of next year, at least one quarter ahead of Intel itself. Finally, VIA sees further integration of graphics into the chipset or the processor as increasingly important next year. Integrated graphics chipsets should grow from about 20-30% of the company's total this year to about 50% by the end of next year. VIA is now shipping the KM133 Duron chipset, with greater volumes in December and January. In addition, the company will lean heavily on its technology agreement with S3 to integrate that graphics into the processor, called Samuel 2, which should launch at a $40-60 price point in Q2 of next year.

To: niceguy767 who wrote (20786)	11/28/2000 6:17:00 AM
From: Michael Ohlendorf	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 275872

Niceguy and all: xbitlabs.com Did you see the AMD processors production number table xbitlabs.com has published on their website ? I pasted the conclusions they draw from the numbers of the table below. If the numbers are true it is a major disappointment for me. Like I also suspected they were producing less Athlons than Durons in Q4 even as Q3 extrapolation would result in the contrary (only 1.4mio Athlons in Q3, I thought it was 2.2mio?) ! The worse is this will continue and they will focus on Durons ? I can't believe why they should be doing this, it will absolutely kill their ASP. Only explanation: Dresden is yielding very poorly and installation of 0.13m is almost stopping the linear ramp of 0.18m copper production. I also expected some production transition problems due to Palomino, Morgan core intruduction and 0.13m equipment installation but not in such an extend. By the way, Niceguy tried to calm me and said he expected no transition problems at all. Obviously he is dead wrong. The numbers would also in part support RS manufacturing problems warning of yesterday, IMO. All in all I am pretty disappointed. Xbitlabs is excited about the Duron numbers. Well, I am not. Are they going to fight the P4 ramp with Durons like in the old days they fought against the PIII with K6 ? I thought this would change ? Does it mean Dresden ramp up is stuck at 30-40% for a significant time ? Opinions ? ------------------------- "AMD to Increase Duron Volumes [3:42 pm] Rat Our reliable sources told us a few really intriguing things about AMD’s plans concerning Duron CPU manufacturing during the coming four months. Here is what we can expect: And now a few comments of ours to this table. Slot A Athlon processors manufacturing has been discontinued. AMD will not discontinue its Socket 7 K6 family in early 2001, though the manufacturing volumes may get somewhat smaller then. Socket A Athlon CPUs will be manufactured in the same quantities in Q1 2001. Duron manufacturing will grow very fast (which is a very pleasant sign :-) In Q1 2001 the amount of manufactured Duron CPUs will be twice the amount of the manufactured Athlons. The overall CPU manufacturing by AMD will not increase that fast any more. This is most likely to be connected with the fact that AMD assigned half of the Dresden plant to be re-equipped for 0.13 micron production lines." xbitlabs.com