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To: Barry A. Watzman who wrote (50759)	3/18/1998 1:56:00 PM
From: gnuman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Barry, re: "IBM buying AMD" I still think my original "wild shot" that AMD's shelf registration is a prelude to IBM's investment in AMD seem's more plausible. As I've been saying for months, it's in the best interest of companies like IBM and Compaq to maintain AMD as a viable supplier. Look what AMD has already done to the price of PC's and Intel chips! Both IBM and Compaq have extensive working relationships with AMD, from including their products to making their chips. I also think they want to keep socket 7 alive. An AMD K6-3D, (or plain old K6), with a 100mHz bus would be a real challenge to Celeron. Considering that the Medocino version of Celeron, (66mHz bus), won't be available till Q4 I think the window is still open for AMD. From a marketing standpoint, I think AMD and the makers will position K6 products in competition with PII. But Intel is competing with itself with the introduction of Celeron. PII must perform significantly better than Celeron for it to justify a sufficient price premium. That must be one of the reasons Celeron is constrained to a 66mHz bus. But if AMD is targeting PII with a socket 7 device with 100 MHZ bus Intel may have a problem. The market and box makers will have a lot to say about Celerons' success.

To: Barry A. Watzman who wrote (50759)	3/19/1998 4:50:00 PM
From: BelowTheCrowd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Barry, > if I were IBM, I would realize that my CPU choices amounted to > controlling my own destiny or having them controlled, largely, by > Intel, and, in this hypothetical scenario, I would be inclined > towards controlling my own destiny. The thing is, IBM doesn't see it that way. Their current strategy is to make the hardware platform relatively unimportant, and to focus on providing SYSTEMS which can run across hardware platforms, leveraging the net and Java. This, I think is very prudent for them, and a more realistic risk for Intel. It leverages IBMs strengths in the systems business, decreases the dependence on an ANY single architecture, increases the usefulness of their own high-powered machines, and avoids trying to compete with Intel or Microsoft on their own terms. The simple fact is that nobody has ever beat Intel by competing on Intel's terms. IBM might be more capable of doing this than anybody else, but it's very risky and it involves betting on an architecture which Intel is going to make obsolete with Merced. So IBM is looking for a completely new paradigm in which to compete. Interestingly, both companies could turn out to be winners. mg