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

To: Elmer who wrote (66315)	12/26/2001 7:16:10 PM
From: pgerassi	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 275872

Dear EP: The problem with AXP is that AMD does not want to downbin. The output that is sold out is for the slowest two bins of AXP, 1500+ and 1600+. Higher speed bins have plenty at last report. Thus your conclusions are completely wrong! The reason for P4 shortages is due to the speed curve peaks too soon and by the time it reaches 2G, only 1% or so of good packaged die passes the tests for this bin. 1.9GHz has another 3% that pass. 4% of 9 million is not enough for demand, thus, a shortage develops for these P4 speeds. Plenty of 1.3GHz P4s are available but, no one thinks they are worth the price asked for. The problem for Intel is that AXPs are bought first, then high bin P4s and 0.13u P3s, then Durons and Celerons with low bin P4s bringing up the rear. Thus, AMD sells out all of its production and Intel gets the rest. Not a good situation for Intel. Pete

To: Elmer who wrote (66315)	12/27/2001 9:25:40 PM
From: Bill Jackson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

Elmer, What about a supplier who makes all his parts so well they are all 1800 Mhz, none go faster than 1803 and none slower than 1800 and so he sells a max speed of 1800, to be a round number and sells none at 1700,1600,1500,1400, etc. So he ends up with a lot of unsold parts since he does not want to drop the prices to the point where they compete with other peoples 1400 Mhz parts. What does he do? Well, he takes whatever he can sell at 1800 and sells it and marks as many as he can sell at 1700 and then marks some at 1600 and so forth until they are sold. This is what is actually happening with AMD. Their process sems to have a good yield at high speeds with little falloff to low speeds. That is not to say that AMD has a 3 meg peak at 1800 mhz within which all parts fall. However I suspect that this gaussian curve we have hear all these people speak about is a lot narrower than we realize and no-one throws off parts that range from 1400 to 1800 from the same process. Now they may be able to change the speed of that peak from 1800 to 1400 to 1600 to make a bunch for that speed, but why? Unless the yield fell off dramatically as you fine tuned to 1800 you would be better of making them all 1800 and marking them at lesser speeds for lesser markets. As you try for faster and faster does the yield of good dice drop off dramatically? is there and end point that makes zero good dice when you go too far? This probably happens and we see a long hard to manage feedback loop emerging between marketing and production where it is hard to get just what the manufacturing dept has made to be exactly what marketing has sold. So we may find that the time lag for a bunch of wafers to make their way to finished CPUs is so long that if errors in market prediction are made when they first started those wafers to make them 1700 or 1500 Mhz, that by the time they came off the line they would be either less wanted or in short supply. I am not sure to what degree AMD suffers from this type of problem, but Intel suffers more as they are more diverse. Bill