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

To: andreas_wonisch who wrote (54353)	9/10/2001 2:10:02 PM
From: wanna_bmw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

Andreas, I know what you are saying, but consider AMD's business model. CPUs are the most important thing (with the exception of flash). Everything else must make room for CPUs. They ignore the chipset market, the embedded market, and others, just to proliferate their CPU designs. They do this because they have to, because any resources not going into CPUs, or technologies that further their CPU business, are wasted, as far as they are concerned. Intel used to be this way. All their efforts went in some way towards improving the acceptance of their CPUs. Eventually, it became Intel's decisions to make their supporting divisions all stand-alone entities, capable of making money on their own. It's all part of Intel's desire to diversify into other markets. Their chipset business right now, while not as important as their flagship CPU, still must maintain itself with profitability, and they can't do that by giving away the technology that they work hard for. No business can succeed by giving away technology that took capital to research, and Intel's chipset division is like it's own business. It's a difference in business model, and just because VIA's chipset could benefit Intel's largest money making business, it would collapse the rest of their business model, which could easily cause irreparable damage for the future. Just MHO. wanna_bmw

To: andreas_wonisch who wrote (54353)	9/10/2001 2:12:40 PM
From: Elmer	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 275872

So far the biggest problem for P4's acceptance has been poor chipset support (read: Rambus only). If Intel had given licenses out, say e.g. one year prior to the introduction, we might already see lots of different chipsets, including those that support DDR SDRAM. I'd understand if Intel wanted to have both the CPU and chipset market. But instead they made a half-hearted attempt to only allow certain companies they "like" (read: not Nvidia and VIA) building P4 chipsets. I almost can imagine the continuous struggle between the Intel CPU and chipset groups to give out licenses or not and the result is a bad compromise IMO. If low cost chipset support had been there from the beginning Intel would not have been able to meet P4 demand. The relatively high cost of the RamBus solution kept demand at managable levels. Now that Intel P4 demand is about to crossover P3 and .13u P4 is already in the fab pipeline Intel is ready to ship high volume. No need to keep the throttle on. 845/Sdram will meet the demand through year's end and then 845/DDR will fit the same pinout. No redesigns needed. Intel wants the chipset market to fill up their excess .18u capacity. BTW, AMD doesn't charge anything for chipset licenses. And I don't think that's a mistake. AMD has to give it away to get anyone interested. EP

To: andreas_wonisch who wrote (54353)	9/10/2001 2:16:57 PM
From: Milan Shah	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

I'd understand if Intel wanted to have both the CPU and chipset market. But instead they made a half-hearted attempt to only allow certain companies they "like" (read: not Nvidia and VIA) building P4 chipsets One point of view I wanted to share with the thread is that I believe the reason Intel doesn't want to help VIA is that any money that VIA makes stands a good chance of being invested in processor development, like their new C4, which in turn will simply turn around and hurt Intel. Indeed, I am a bit concerned about AMD being loose with its innovations - it might be just shooting itself in the foot. VIA is clearly headed in the direction of competing with Intel and AMD, why in the world should Intel help them at all? In my more pessimistic moments, I think the processor industry is headed the way of the television and CRTs - there is not a single manufacturer of TVs in the US (frightening thought in case of war). As the value of innovation gets marginalized, and as the technology becomes more common, these industries will migrate to developing countries with extremely cheap labor. Milan