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

To: milo_morai who wrote (66809)	1/1/2002 9:49:43 PM
From: Dan3	Respond to of 275872

Re: I've yet to see 2.0Ghz P4 in a local retail store. Why shouldn't they be there? Since P4 uses covert clock throttling, Intel can mark any chip they want to at just about any speed. Sure, the thing won't run at speed if it's doing any real work, but how many users ever do anything except surf the net and maybe write some word documents. Video games stress the video card, not the CPU, so that's not a problem for a psuedo 2GHZ P4, either. And I'm expecting a very substantial launch of Northwood. In the past 24 months, Intel has spent $15 Billion expanding their chipmaking capacity - that's enough to build and equip 7 Dresden sized FABs. Northwood isn't much bigger than Athlon, so Intel had damn well better be able to crank out boatloads of the things at this point. But I don't think Northwood will do very much for Intel. The problem for Intel is now more a marketing one than a production or performance one. They can't price the 1.8GHZ and 2GHZ P4s too high, or they lose sales to Athlon XP, and they can't price them too low, or people will refuse to pay the price Intel has to charge for the top of the line 2.2GHZ chips. Intel has to get high prices for the 2.2GHZ chips, or they'll never come close to getting back the money they just spent on all those FABS. And Intel can no longer afford to trash desktop ASPs - AMD's Athlon based mobile chip is a better notebook solution than Intel's P4 based solution can be. AMD's volume (one and two processor) workstation/server solution is also better, but that's a small market and a conservative one, so it's less susceptible to AMD encroachment. This marketing squeeze, and Intel's need for high ASPs to cover the costs of its FABs means that Intel needs to be close to 2.5GHZ very soon, or they're going to have severe problems even if faced only with Athlon 2000+ CPUs. There is also AMD's upcoming move to .13. AMD has been quite coy about making any performance predictions about "plain" (not SOI) .13 Athlon. Remember that AMD tricked Intel into thinking that Athlon on .18 wouldn't get past 800mhz. When Intel started shipping .18 coppermines and knew they could get to 1GHZ, they were sure they would be able to easily finish off AMD and its 800mhz Athlons. It didn't work out as Intel expected, to say the least. Later in the year, AMD will be introducing its SOI process that will put even more pressure on Intel - particularly in mobile, multi-processor, and corporate-style small footprint PCs. The SOI Athlons may or may not run a lot faster than Northwoods, they will certainly run cooler. If AMD has any significant success with SOI, then Intel will find itself sitting on a bunch of obsolete FABs that it just paid $15 Billion to equip - and Intel will have to do a rush rebuild, at an unexpected cost of $5 Billion or so on top of the $6 Billion or so it was expecting to spend or see its revenues collapse. So, I do expect a very large volume of Northwoods next month, but I don't see it as more than a minor problem for AMD. Won't help the short term stock price, though. :-(

To: milo_morai who wrote (66809)	1/2/2002 7:49:38 AM
From: niceguy767	Respond to of 275872

milo: "I've yet to see 2.0Ghz P4 in a local retail store. So I don't think they are that plentiful anywhere." Yeah...but the flood is looming...should arrive about the same time as does the XP 2200+...INTCy is a very different company now that they are running scared...Since Athy hit 700 MHz, INTCy has had no end of production bungling!!! Some companies just don't react to competition very well!!! The phoney US barriers are INTCy's last defence unless INTCy has a little more to offer in the way of competition than the p4 "dud" that has been offered to date...