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

To: Monica Detwiler who wrote (85757)	7/24/2002 9:56:13 PM
From: wanna_bmw	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 275872

Monica, no. Actually, AMD has a bit of a different problem. It isn't that they are backpeddling on performance. I believe the original figure that an AMD representative once gave (and may continue to give to the press), is that Hammer will get a 20-25% performance improvement over a similarly clocked Athlon (but this is probably in applications like SPECint). Given the micro-architectural improvements, AMD may be able to reach that figure; after all, the Athlon is mostly memory starved, and the higher bandwidth, lower latency memory controller could improve performance tremendously, just by itself. I don't doubt that Hammer will be a good improvement over the K7. AMD's problem, however, is that their hype engine is out of control, and the press can't get anything right. And, rather than fixing this, they are letting the press raise expectations to an unnatural level, where people will start believing that 64-bits means 2x performance over 32-bit computers. And then, when reality sets in after Hammer launch.... those expectations get normalized, and the wind dies down from the sails. What AMD needs is a focused message for the press that manages expectations, and gives clear information. Without that, you get hype, and hype never ends up being satisfied in the end. I've seen many projects in the past get ruined by marketing hype. There needs to be a clear message, or else the industry gets confused, and AMD spokespeople end up having to apologize for setbacks such as 800MHz demonstrations. If Intel's 3.06GHz Pentium 4 ends up outperforming the Hammer at launch, and there is a good chance it might, then AMD will have to do a lot more apologizing. wbmw