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

To: TechieGuy-alt who wrote (197212)	5/17/2006 12:03:11 AM
From: rzborusa	Respond to of 275872

TGP, Edit, TGA, sorry, just a couple of beers so far. ;) Intel let AMD gain too much of a hold and make too much of a mind share as a tech leader and Intel as a tech laggard that the boost that you're expecting from this ~20% on average may not materialize. I seem to remember one of Intel's Products (centrino?) that launched at a good clock speed then after a while a lower clocked part was released. The high original was very hard to find for a good while. AM2 boards will hold quad core down the time line. I don't see Cray or Sun getting lathered up over NGA. Intel may or may not have what they elude to in their peep show. I think there is room for a duopoly and by damn, looks to me like AMD is the goods.

To: TechieGuy-alt who wrote (197212)	5/17/2006 12:45:42 AM
From: dougSF30	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

It all depends on the flatness or steepness of the pricing curve. The curve is steep.

To: TechieGuy-alt who wrote (197212)	5/17/2006 12:22:05 PM
From: bobs10	Respond to of 275872

you... This game has changed forver Doug. Intel let AMD gain too much of a hold and make too much of a mind share as a tech leader and Intel as a tech laggard that the boost that you're expecting from this ~20% on average may not materialize. me... That's my thinking too. Let's do a not so quick run through the product line-up bob's way. To gamers what's more important, the AMD processor or the NVDA platform (chipset/GPU). To my way of thinking AMD gets drug along because of its' relationship with NVDA, something INTC doesn't have. What about the growing HTPC market. Well here again things other than the CPU are much more important. Special chips that perform things like codex functions etc. and things like tuner cards are much more important to the experience than the CPU. Not to mention the whole DRM thing with INTC including whatever the studios wanted in hardware while AMD has chosen the less restrictive/more adaptive, software route. In servers Woodcrest/Conroe will provide more competition in the 1 and 2 processor markets than before. Realistically though AMD has never been much of a force in those markets, whatever that kind of server might be (P4 gussied up?). Anyway AMD's turf is the 4 way and up area where it will still reign supreme. As far as I know this is still the fastest growing server market and will remain so with server farms looking to use less space and power. Also, the new IBM commitments along with the expanding line-ups from HPQ and Sun, let alone Cray and GOOG will ensure that AMD continues to grow in the higher priced server area. INTC should do well in the work-station markets, whatever those might be. As to Laptops, that's less settled. Considering where AMD is coming from, market-wise, and the pricing advantage AMD should continue to have, I suspect that MEROM will have to be a lot more than the X2's to just retain market share. Pricing should be much more of a factor here if, as I expect, the processors are close in performance. Still, kind of a gray area. What about the consumer area? Well, welcome to the value market. In this market price is everything and performance is much less important. These things are bought to access the WEB and create an occasional E-mail. The only reason people need new ones is that they don't know how to keep them clean from viruses etc. People that do programming or anything at all remotely taxing don't buy these machines. Under those circumstances, AMD's much lower costs should mean AMD can continue to use those markets as load leveling devices after producing higher-end product and as vehicles to economies of scale. Finally, we get to the business market. Here I expect AMD to continue to expand not only through its' access to companies because of Opteron sales, but also because of the increasing numbers of SKUs being created by HPQ and SUNW. Other lesser players like Lenovo and Fujitsu will also continue to expand their business offerings. Once AMD has its' Opteron foot in the door at a business I'm sure they can submit very cost effective bids on other equipment. Then there are whole sectors such as government opening up to AMD. These areas where previously off bounds to AMD as contracts were very often written for INTC machines only. Business in general doesn't need the latest and greatest stuff. In fact I could see Geodes used in thin-client applications filling much more of a role in businesses of all kinds. This is very much a chicken and egg area where the skus are needed to generate business, but business won’t buy without the skus. Speaking more generally, AMD has been spending considerable sums to expand its' presence into areas outside of its' traditional markets. Only recently did AMD start paying attention to a market as large as the Middle East. There's lots of room for AMD to expand into markets that have long only had INTC to supply them. Overall, I suspect the effects of NGA will be at worst to slow down the acceptance of AMD, but until INTC gets its’ costs more in line with AMD’s we should continue to see AMD, on net, taking market share from INTC.