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

To: Elmer Phud who wrote (259490)	4/6/2009 2:24:34 PM
From: fastpathguru	Respond to of 275872

Taken together, I find it too absurd to entertain because the alternative explanation, that AMD is incompetent, is much simpler and better explains the facts without invoking any paranoid delusional world wide conspiracies. en.wikipedia.org fpg

To: Elmer Phud who wrote (259490)	4/6/2009 4:43:05 PM
From: wbmw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

Re: Taken together, I find it too absurd to entertain because the alternative explanation, that AMD is incompetent, is much simpler and better explains the facts without invoking any paranoid delusional world wide conspiracies. I kind of like the scenario where AMD is competent, but they made a fatal error in strategy by pushing for higher cost CPUs at a time when Intel was back to firing on all cylinders. With limited resources compared to Intel, AMD can either put all of them towards pushing the performance envelope, or they can hedge their bets with a modest performing, reasonably affordable high end part, followed by a cost-optimized low end part. What AMD ended up with was a highly expensive, moderately performing mainstream part that does well against Intel's mid-range products, but can't get the ASP of Intel's high end parts, but also doesn't have the cost structure to get good margins where it's currently priced. AMD shot high, and ended up in the middle, where they could have hedged, and at least had a cost-optimized part that they could sell into sub-$100 price points, instead of driving down a 284mm2 die with 2 cores disabled, to satisfy the same price point. I think AMD had a strategic failure, as opposed to a failure in competency. And they also had very bad timing, since these expensive die came at a time when they spent all their free cash on ATI (which still has contributed more losses to the bottom line than profits), and during a steep economic decline to boot. On the other hand, AMD has been very competent in finding new business partners, and have saved themselves from bankruptcy once again. So clearly, they have some very capable people on board. It doesn't make up for their strategic mistakes, but they could very well get it right the next time around.