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: gvatty who wrote (252253)	5/21/2008 8:11:03 PM
From: Elmer Phud	Respond to of 275872

The topic was the server market. Athlon was not a significant player in that arena.

To: gvatty who wrote (252253)	5/21/2008 8:35:17 PM
From: wbmw	Respond to of 275872

Re: Please, basically from the time Athlon was introduced until the Opteron, Intel was missing their roadmap dates, and had inferior design Intel had their hands full with AMD from the time AMD first hit 1Ghz until Core Duo came out. This is false. AMD's leadership started with the 1GHz "Thunderbird" Athlon that came with the on-die cache. Previously, Intel had Pentium III, which offered better performance and much lower power. Intel also ramped in clock frequency to meet the Athlon until the famous 1GHz speed. This leadership lasted through the first iteration of Pentium 4, which suffered due to the Rambus interface. It scored nearly the same performance as the Athlon XP, especially when it started to ramp 2GHz speeds. But Intel really didn't steal back the leadership crown until they ramped Northwood. The original Northwood at 1.8GHz and 2.0GHz gave AMD a run for the money. With 2x the on-die cache of Willamette or Palomino, it had a performance edge, and Intel's 130nm process was very power efficient as well. Pentium 4 continued to ramp through this time, while AMD had a tough time meeting schedule on their Thoroughbred core, which eventually turned out to be more or less a dud. Northwood ramped to 3.0GHz, and at 2.4GHz added Hyperthreading, as well as an 800MHz FSB. These performance enhancements gave Intel a towering leadership position late in 2002, and in the same year, AMD posted some of their biggest losses. When Opteron launched in 2003, AMD once again pulled ahead, but it wasn't until later in 2004 that the architecture ramped to the point where motherboard supply was pretty decent. I recall that the Venice core, launched late in 2004, was the first to ramp quickly to high volume, while being extremely power efficient. Intel's Prescott was terrible in terms of power efficiency, and AMD's strength allowed them to come back strong in 2005. 2005 was a very good year for AMD. Opteron was in good volume, dual core was starting to ramp, and they had a clear leadership position as far as the industry was concerned. In fact, although Intel stole back the performance crown in 2006, it wasn't until 2007 that perception started to switch back. AMD's best quarters to date were H2 2005 through H1 2006. This lines up with their towering leadership position against Intel. But what really killed them was their Dell partnership at the end of 2006. Rather than supplying the channel with Athlon X2 parts, which were lower in price and in high demand, they put all their production towards satisfying Dell. But because Dell dropped the ball in terms of delivery on certain systems, AMD had the worst operational quarter of their business. This was Q1 2007, where they ceded a lot of share to Intel, and posted record breaking operational losses. Although they came back a bit in Q2 and Q3, they had already lost much with respect to the previous year, and Intel was ramping quad cores, which gave Intel the perceived leadership position. Now, in 2008, Intel is pulling farther ahead, and the part that AMD promised in 2007 actually ended up not being relevant until the B3 stepping this past quarter. And by now, Barcelona and Phenom have become second class designs to Intel's 45nm Penryn chips. Looking forward, I can't see anything on AMD's roadmap that will change this - at least not until 2010 or later, whenever they have a chance to launch their next micro-architecture, codenamed Bulldozer. It's a long time between now and then.