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

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (47521)	7/13/2001 2:41:47 PM
From: dale_laroy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

>Competing on price alone is a sure-fire way to get the competitor starting a price war.< Where AMD made their mistake was in abandoning the K6-2. I warned them about this as soon as I heard about their plans for a value segment K7 processor. I warned that a value segment K7 processor would cannibalize sales of the standard K7 processor, thus forcing AMD into a price war of standard K7 versus value segment K7. This would be triggered by customers becoming ever more satisfied with value segment speed grades as the standard K7 pushed beyond the speed grade perceived as necessary. In my opinion, AMD's best shot would have been to maintain the K6-2 in the value segment by increasing the number of metal layers from 5-6 and producing it at Fab30, while producing K7 at Fab25. With the introduction of Palomino, having already established market share with very low cost K6-2 desktop processors produced at Fab30, phased out K6-2, switched Fab25 to the production of value segment K7 processors, and switched Fab30 to production of high end K7 processors. Had AMD followed my suggestion, Fab30 would currently be producing only K6-2 processors, both desktop and mobile, as well as mobile Athlon4 processors, while Fab25 would be producing only TBird and K6-2 processors. What was code named the Spitfire processor would have been delayed until the introduction of the desktop Palomino processor. Then, AMD would be replacing the desktop K6-2 produced at Fab30 with the Spitfire produced at Fab25 while replacing the TBird produced at Fab25 with the Palomino produced at Fab30. I believe that a desktop K6-2 processor using six copper layers at 0.18-micron could have competed very well against Celeron in the non-gaming market, while not eroding the market for Athlon the way that Duron has. Of course, the K6-2 that I was suggesting that AMD produce would have had a double pumped 100(200) MHz FSB and be using new mobos with PC1600 DDR SDRAM.