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

To: Cirruslvr who wrote (46490)	7/6/2001 10:31:45 PM
From: fyodor_	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

Cirruslvr: IPC doesn't matter much, but only because the Athlon's IPC is already good compared to the competition. If the Athlon were merely equal to the P4 in all situations, then higher IPC would benefit AMD, but since it is already fine it doesn't matter anymore. So clock speed is what matters at this moment. I agree with what you are saying... but only in a certain, relatively narrow regime. When the IPCs are roughly equal, clock speed is the all-important factor. However, it's fairly clear (or, at least, it's my claim) that if the IPC of one were&#133 say&#133 10x the IPC of the other, the McMannis law of "MHz Sells" would break down. The question is if AMD can push the IPC high enough to accomplish this. To some (admittedly very limited) extent, I believe they already have. I hear people around me talking about buying an Athlon over a P4 for performance reasons in much the same way I heard people talking about buying a PII over a K6. I know you didn't argue against this, but high IPC alone hasn't made a desktop X86 processor successful, as Scumbria reminds us. I believe Scumbria has at least seriously entertained (if one can do such a thing) the idea of introducing "P-rating" for the Athlon - at least I seem to recall him arguing the point. Certainly, in the extreme case of IPC disparity, something other than "pure" frequency is needed. -fyo

To: Cirruslvr who wrote (46490)	7/6/2001 11:16:28 PM
From: niceguy767	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

Cirruslvr: "But this is a a microprocessor business. AMD is a publicly traded company and what matters in the end is the bottom line, how much profit the company makes. Some don't like this, but that's just the way it is. That's why Intel has become one of the most powerful companies in America, because they understand this." I'll agree with the foregoing only if INTC stays out of the red in q2 and comes in close to $0.11...If INTC posts red in q2, it would indicate to me that that's no longer "just the way it is"...We've been awfully hard on AMD and probably with good reason given the late warning, but at the moment, comparative q2 financial benchmarks are not in place...Need to see INTC's q2 before getting too far out on a limb about AMD's q2 performance...Everything is relative and wouldn't it be the pits if AMD's q2 performance, once again outperforms the industry norm, INTC included...

To: Cirruslvr who wrote (46490)	7/7/2001 9:40:04 AM
From: andreas_wonisch	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

Cirrus, Re: If AMD made a processor like the P4 and Intel made a processor like the Athlon AMD STILL wouldn't be at an advantage because they would have to price a 1.7GHz processor for what Intel is selling a 1.4GHz processor. AMD is the second string so it has to do stuff like that. Intel is the big dog who does what he feels like. Good point. When AMD had the MHz advantage over Intel with Athlon (and Intel the slightly better IPC), they still couldn't use it properly. There were many, many Athlons that had to be down-clocked to satisfy the market needs. AMD's problem is that their complete strategy and price structure is based on Intel's. Unless they have a big enough market-share (30%), that won't change. Andreas