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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (181306)	5/22/2005 10:08:20 AM
From: The Duke of URL©	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

"By the way, have you seen the specs of the new PlayStation 3? I have, and it has drastically changed my opinion WRT multi-core." How so?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (181306)	5/22/2005 2:21:04 PM
From: Dan3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Re: Gigahertz just doesn't sell like it used it. It's still an important criteria, though (and still a big help for Intel). But overall performance is becoming more and more important, with performance being a combination of Speed, reliability, noise, and power consumption. Almost all PC problems are software problems (both Intel and AMD produce products that are literally orders of magnitude more reliable than the software they are asked to run) so a big part of reliability is platform support. A big part of platform support is platform stability - new drivers are often buggy drivers, resulting in chips and chipsets being blamed for software (usually driver) problems. AMD's platform, including 64-bit and dual core support, has been stable and available for driver development for 3 years and in production and proven in the field for more than 2 years (and during those 2 years, a lot of driver issues have been discovered and fixed). Development copies of Intel's 64-bit/dual core platform have been available (to a limited number of OEMS) for about 6 months but only became available as production systems for general development and testing a few weeks ago. Intel is still nearly a year away from version 1.0 of its 64-bit&dual core supporting server platform. AMD's chips use so much less power that it makes a significant difference at the wall socket. This cuts way down on server room costs and allows for quieter, less expensive, and more reliable PCs. If AMD can get volume out of FAB36 or FAB7 in time for this year's holiday season, it's going to be a really big positive for AMD and a really big negative for Intel. FAB36 volume looks like 2006 rather than 2005 but FAB7 could come in time. The teams from Chartered and IBM are also working together to qualify the equipment set at Fab 7, and align Fab 7's equipment configuration and process flow with those at IBM's facility to enable the industry's first dual-source 90-nm platform. Following the launch of 90-nm engineering wafers, Fab 7 remains on schedule to manufacture 90-nm silicon-on-insulator (SOI) products for IBM in mid-2005, with Chartered becoming the only dedicated foundry to have advanced SOI capabilities. charteredsemi.com Intel will have new products in late 2005 early 2006 that will use a lot less power, but they will be new chips on a new process requiring a new platform, so ramping up volume will likley take several quarters. They will also (at some point during the year) face unprecedented availability of AMD chips as AMD has 3 leading edge FABs on line. Far an away the biggest reason Intel products have been chosen over others, in the past, has been that there simply weren't any other products available in similar volume. That will be different when Intel goes to launch it's new CPU/platform/process next year. There hasn't been a horse race between the two companies with stakes this high since AMD tried to ramp their new FAB30 at a new location with a new process and took almost a year too long to do it. While Intel has far more resources than AMD did, AMD didn't have to ramp eithr a new design or a new platform, just a new process at a new location. And it was too much for them. Like I said, it's a horse race, and it's one either company could win, but one company is presently valued at $160 billion while the other is valued at $6 billion. By the end of next year, that could be $40 billion and $30 billion.