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

To: Elmer Phud who wrote (255521)	8/13/2008 1:13:14 AM
From: pgerassi	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 275872

Ephud: Considering that XO uses the 250nm bulk silicon Geode, they could simply run as many as needed through TSMC, UMC or Chartered at dirt cheap prices. Of course given enough volume, they could just shrink it to use 55nm bulk like their GPUs making it a very small die. It wouldn't cost a lot but, they would gain lots of unit share. Sell 10 million of them a quarter ($2 billion worth of XOs) and watch Intel gnash their teeth as AMD gets over 30% unit share. And since there are 160 million people born every year, 25% of that would equal 10 million per quarter. But it will likely be higher as it will take quite a while to get XOs to every child in the many nations that will use it. And the PR would be great for AMD. If your first laptop was powered by AMD, you would likely buy another as you upgrade. Pete

To: Elmer Phud who wrote (255521)	8/13/2008 5:17:12 PM
From: mas_	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

So the price of laptops was standing between this world and a better one. By 2004, Negroponte was ready to do something about it. He asked Intel to provide a low-cost, low-power chip. “As long as you don’t call it a laptop,” said Intel, with the tactlessness that seems to be a corporate policy. It meant they didn’t like the sound of this new machine. Many in the industry says the Classmate was intended to be an XO killer and that’s how Intel behaved. Their formidable global sales operation charged into any market in which OLPC might get a foothold, trashing the XO and pushing the Classmate. Nigeria, where Negroponte had one of his handshake deals with President Obasanjo, was a typical example. In August 2006, Craig Barrett, Intel chairman, wrote a hard-sell letter to Obasanjo asking for a meeting in which he could explain their World Ahead programme, “which is chartered to extend PC access to the world’s next billion users”. This programme had been launched in May 2006, 15 months after the OLPC announcement at Davos – bit of a dead giveaway there, Craig. Barrett’s letter was backed up by documents listing “the shortcoming of the OLPC approach”. These documents having been leaked, they became a significant embarrassment to Intel. Here was a mighty company trying to crush a philanthropic project. In May last year they seemed ready for a truce and a deal was done. Intel would join the OLPC board, invest $6m in the company, there would be moves to put an Intel chip in the XO, and there would be no more slagging off of the XO in the marketplace. The deal failed with almost Middle Eastern speed and finality. Intel attended only one board meeting and Intel salesmen – “it’s in their DNA” – carried on slagging off the XO. Intel also tried to parcel up the world into easy markets for Intel and hard ones for OLPC. “You mean,” says Negroponte of this phase, “Ethiopia is mine and Mongolia isn’t?”