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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Paul Engel who wrote (52754)	4/11/1998 10:03:00 PM
From: Elmer	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 186894

<However - AMD and Intel signed an agreement in 1995 that terminated all legal proceedings between the two up to that time. It has also been reported that as part of that agreement, AMD agreed NOT to use the upcoming P6 pin-outs/socket/interfaces on Intel's (at that time) pending new products - the Pentium Pro and Pentium II's.> Paul, this is my recollection of the agreement as well. AMD could not use the P6 bus. In any event, a conversion by AMD would not be easy. It is not simply a matter of changing a few pins around. The split transaction bus architecture is a basic part of the P6 design. The K6 was never designed to defer bus cycles and execute them out of order. The K6 would also need a built in L2 cache controller. It's current design doesn't have one. Nor was it designed for Intel's multi processing environment. Intel's chipset division must have had very detailed knowledge of it's inner workings so as to squeek out maximum performance. If AMD goes to another vendor for a chipset, it won't come easy. Chipset vendors are only now coming up with Socket7 chipsets. As you have pointed out, others may possibly offer AMD a way of laundering patents, but they don't have Intel's trade secrets. AMD has made many hundreds of millions of dollars using what many would call stolen Intel designs, what has Intel ever gotten in return? Has Intel ever gotten a single successful product of AMD's design (has AMD ever had a single successful product of their own design), even in the days when they were acting as each others second source? EP

To: Paul Engel who wrote (52754)	4/12/1998 12:09:00 AM
From: Jules B. Garfunkel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Thanks Paul for your really great and informative post. You saved us all a heck of a lot time researching this. I believe your hypothesis, that AMD may be sending out early trial balloons, in order to get an early indication of whether they can anticipate success, or failure, if they try to STEAL Slot 1, also has great merit. In addition, I think your conjecture, that AMD may be observing the dying of "Socket 7", is right on. Certainly, with AMD desperately needing to raise capital in the very near future, many potential investors and interested parties, would like to have definitive answers to those questions. Regards, Jules