Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: BUGGI-WO who wrote (237337)	7/27/2007 11:29:50 AM
From: rzborusa	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

Buggi, WBMW said something ~ "Market for Qcore is still small." You said, "When we further speak about Intel, we have to take into account, that they could use 2 relatively small die for the Quad Core. What has AMD to do? They have to build a near 300 mm^2 monolithic DIE." Actually AMD will build wafers. ;-) Does anyone know weather or not a Qcore can be separated into two dual cores? I rather doubt it. If it were so, there would be almost no penalty for Qcore production. However, a QC can be certainly be salvaged as one DC. I can envision a wafer with the sweet area populated with a few Qcore, the rest with standard fare. The ratio of QC that make the cut would be the critical factor. AMD is not likely to abandon the low end, so QC ratio needn't be high, consistent with guidance. If demand for QC Barcalounger is large, the price will be higher, to balance demand.

To: BUGGI-WO who wrote (237337)	7/27/2007 10:47:44 PM
From: wbmw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

Buggi, AMD's Barcelona die will be low volume for a while. AMD will make a few hundred thousand units, primarily for servers, but I doubt they'll hit the 1M unit number until mid-08. Of course, they don't really need volumes to be that high, either. AMD's tactic with the original K8, and also with dual core Toledo, was the same thing. They introduced a bunch of skus, but priced them high enough that they only needed desktop parts in the high tens of thousands of units to satisfy demand. Of course, tens of thousands of units at >$300 ASP gave AMD a lot of incremental revenue with K8 and K8DC. Then again, Agena does not have the same beneficial environment that its predecessors had. AMD can only compete in the high end if they have better performance. It's hard to predict how AMD will address this. Pricing it below $250 to beat Intel's quad core pricing will mean continued low margins. Costs will go up, but ASPs will remain flat. Also, as you said, the real volume battle will be fought in the dual core market, and Intel will have much higher frequencies with Penryn. Instead of 3.0GHz at $266, they'll have 3.33GHz at $266 and 3.0GHz at $189. You can't compare AMD's future products to Intel's current products.