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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Time Traveler who wrote (32230)	4/29/1998 1:09:00 AM
From: FJB	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1572507

John Y. Wang, RE:Do you notice that despite a slight dip in earnings in Q1'98, the gross margin for Intel is still over 55%? No, it is not. ** Gross margin percentage in the second quarter of 1998 is expected to be down a few points from 54 percent in the first quarter, primarily the result of purchased components used on the SEC cartridge for the Pentium II processor. The company expects the quarterly gross margin percentage to reach its lowest level for the year in the second quarter. Intel's gross margin expectation for 1998 is 52 percent, plus or minus a few points. In the short-term, Intel's gross margin percentage varies primarily with revenue levels and product mix. intel.com

To: Time Traveler who wrote (32230)	4/29/1998 7:24:00 AM
From: Adrian Wu	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1572507

<Do you see a trend that more advanced CPU interface is replacing the older one?> Only if there is a distinct advantage to the newer interface. Socket 5 was an open standard, and so is socket 7 which replaced it. However, Slot 1 is proprietary and is only supported by Intel. Also, there is no real reason to go for the latest and greatest hardware, since sub-$1000 PCs can run most current software efficiently, unless you want to do things like video editing. Hence, this becomes the fastest growing segment in the PC industry. Socket 7 has the advantage of lower cost. Aside from the backside bus architecture, which increases cost significantly, can you name some advantages that slot 1 has over socket 7? If Slot 1 is superior to socket 7, why does the Celeron, at 266 MHz, fail to outperform a Pentium 233MMX? <Please share it with us. What are your sources?> I know people who work in Intel as well as AMD and National semiconductors. I'm afraid I cannot reveal their identity. All I can say is, my friend at Intel used to work for Chips, and hates working at Intel (He will probably quit soon). <Where did you get this? AMD vowed to price K6 at 25% discount to Intel's products.> "K6 3D Will Attempt Pricing Parity With Intel -- New AMD Chip Takes On the PII By Aaron Ricadela" techweb.com This is old news. <just like the socket for 486. Where is 486 nowadays? > The 486 died because it was significantly inferior to the Pentium. It's architecture is inferior, and it can only run on a 33MHz bus. The K6 and Pentium II both have 6th generation superscalar architecture, and both run on 66MHz and 100MHz bus. The PII has no performance advantage, unless you go for the highest speed grade. As we all know, the bulk of the volume is in mid to low-end systems. <That Apple stunt is getting old> The space-suited bunnys is an Intel Stunt, not an Apple stunt. <Yahoo is trading at more than 10x its revenue. Could this trend be possibly broken?> So were Snapple, Boston Chicken, Netscape, Iomega. where are they today? You can't defy gravity for long. <Power PC just came out. K5 was hyped up just like K6 today. DEC was bragging about their Alpha chip> The Power PC and the DEC Alpha were not x86 compatible, which explains their lack of popularity. In terms of efficiency and floating point performance, they run rings around ANY current x86 processor. Power PC cannot run Windows and the ALPHA needs a binary translator to run x86 compatible software. These chips therefore did not compete with the Pentium in the same arena. The K5 was a mistake, and even AMD admitted that. That's why they bought Nexgen. I certainly did not hear any hype on the K5, and even the analysts did not like it. <Even with 50% gross margin, the stock value has to fairly absorb this money making might. If the stock price stagnates for a few years, Intel's cash reserve would rise to a point where this company can easily buy back all the shares.> Robert answered the first part of the question in a previous post. Gross margin will probably be around 52% in Q2. Trading at 25x earnings, even if Intel does not spend any money on capital expenditure, it will take them 25 years to make enough money to buy back all the shares. I suggest you do some homework before exposing yourself to further ridicule.