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

To: milo_morai who wrote (67500)	1/10/2002 1:59:34 AM
From: peter_luc	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 275872

Milo, thanks, a very interesting read indeed! I am not as optimistic as this BlackMagicGuy, though. When he writes that "NW is a big disappointment. It is the P4 'done right', and it still sucks" I believe he underestimates the big progress Intel made with Northwood. Johan from Aces's Hardware showed some spectacular gains of NW in scientific applications. Many others claimed an advanced lead in good old Quake 3. Some well-done, very in-depth reviews showed that the AXP 2000+ still keeps a tiny advantage over the Northwood 2200 but this is hardly the big picture which the general public gets. In the eyes of the general public Intel has regained the performance crown. Thereby, AMD lost a bit of its "cool" factor. Besides, Northwood is highly overclockable, making it attractive to many enthusiasts (the biggest AMD supporters so far). And last but not least, Northwood runs a lot cooler, that means less noisy systems. Besides, that BlackMagicGuy is probably not right when he implies that this was Intel's last shot. He may underestimate the relevance of four points: - Northwood may scale a lot better than TBred as Paul DeMone keeps predicting, - Northwood will soon get a 533 MHz bus, giving it a clear performance boost, - new, advanced fabs are coming online - and there is still the "wildcard" of SMT for the desktop processor family. OTOH, AMD is lucky that Intel's production problems seem to persist throughout Q1. As long as NW is not available in the screwdriver shops and the DIY market AMD's home market is not in danger. If really (and I mean really if <g>) NW is indeed not widely available now INSPITE OF ITS DELAYED INTRODUCTION (which should have given enough time to Intel to stockpile the product) then something definitely does not go right at Intel. In contrast, the Athlon XP 2000+ seems to be a typical (!) high-volume launch for AMD. At least here in Germany it is widely available right now, be it in big computer chains (for example Vobis) and even in small scewdriver shops (see litec-computer.de - my favorite shop in Munich). Continuing low availability of NW may even let some of the big OEMs turn back to AMD again. That may have been the reason for the recent e-machines design win. We may also see an increased presence of AMD based PCs in the US retail market. To me, it seems that there is a good chance that Q1 is more or less in the bag for AMD, mainly because of Intel's production problems. For Q2 and beyond, the big questions are, IMHO: - How well does AMD's transition to 0.13 micron go? Will AMD have less difficulties than Intel? - When and in which quantities will the mobile TBred appear on the market? - How well will TBred scale? Will AMD have an answer to the forthcoming 533 MHz NW? - When will SOI mass production start? How much performance improvement will it give to TBred? - Is there any chance of ever getting a better share in the corporate market? - And of course the "Mother of all Questions": When will Hammer be launched? - Finally: Will Microsoft support X86-64? - Oh, and I almost forgot: When will flash finally recover? If we get another "AMD will be roadkill soon" prediction by some analysts the stock may tank again. I do hope, however, that due to a positive Q4 earnings surprise and a very strong outlook at least for Q1 the stock should do quite well in the near future. (Let's hope that there won't be many "black days' like yesterday again...) Any comments? EDIT: I should mention that in my opinion the best move for AMD would be to release a TBred MP with 512 KB L2 cache (while leaving the ordinary TBred with 256 KB L2 cache) and launch it in rather high volume. By this, AMD would not only make big inroads into the multiprocessor market because (as Johan has shown) an increased cache helps a lot in scientific applications. AMD would also be able to claim a clear performance superiority over any competing chip (the "cool" factor, which is quite important for public mindshare). Such a chip would attract all the enthusiasts (I would buy it in a heartbeat...). It should therefore sell really well and by that substantially increase ASP. The OEMs and the cost conscious buyers, OTOH, will be happy with the cheaper "ordinary" TBred. Peter

To: milo_morai who wrote (67500)	1/10/2002 7:38:43 AM
From: niceguy767	Respond to of 275872

milo: The following snippets from the posts caught my attention...The portrayal of the "big picture" (i.e p4 is a "dud" and INTC is losing market share each year, a trend that will continue into the future) would appear reasonable given currently available information... 1. ", NW is a big dissapointment. It is the P4 'done right', and it still sucks. I have to congratulate Eachus where months and months ago he had a number of comments where he came to the conclusion that there isn't any way to really improve P4, you need to start from ground zero, and that takes 5-8 years for intel. Intel doesn't have any more real at-the-plate at-bats, and AMD has the next 3 at-bats already lined up. And the problem for intel is that for the past few years that effort has going into making more Itaniums for a wider range of markets, and it doesn't take much to show how that's going to become a complete disaster, it will be a repeat of the PowerPC effort by IBM and spell the downfall of intel as the CPU leader. This year is going to be no different than the past two for intel, it'll only be a question of when, which, & how bad for the following: recalls, shortages, delays, 'talked up', compromises (in design)..." 2. "I was explaining some of this to my wife last night, she doesn't do/care about any of this stuff. I explained it in the simpliest way. A few years ago, AMD was behind intel. However, AMD has been catching up at about 10-20%/year for the past couple of years. Now, if you assume things evened up in '01 (factor in speed, chipsets, reliable platforms,...), then with Palomino, AMD jumped ahead 10% to start '02 (that leaves AMD with some major advantages in '02), and finally you consider Hammer taking a huge leap forward for '03, then where do you think things will be going forward from there? AMD's only problem will be having enough capacity." 3. "It may take Hammer for Intel's shareholders to be howling for blood. But the point is that the disaster (from Intel's point of view) will happen no matter what Intel does in the short term. And whether the Hammer hits this summer or next winter is about timing, not about mangnitude. The tree has started to topple, and the timing of the crash may be in doubt, but it will still make the same amount of noise. (Or to put it differently, if AMD will have chips next year--2003--that can outperform a 5 GHz Pentium 4, does it matter when Intel gets to 3 GHz?) I've looked at the Hammer architecture carefully, and it has the potential for a 50% or greater IPC improvement. That is almost scary."