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

To: Tiley who wrote (32359)	5/3/1998 4:38:00 PM
From: Maxwell	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 1571680

Manish: <<From my point of view, AMD has solved their yield problems, but are still relegated to the low end of the market. They are still not a significant player in the mobile and the server/workstation market. And they are undertaking a significantly risky endeavor by diverging from the Intel instruction set (in my opinion this will be doomed to failure).>> Your criterias for AMD to be successful and great investment are way too stringent. 1) To be significant player in the mobile AMD must make more than what they did last quarter of 1.5M. That 1.5M was scooped up in the desktop in a flash. There were none to go to mobile. 2) Forget on the server side. AMD needs to have a single focusing strategy of making inroad into the market rather than attacking on all fronts, a very bad strategy. 3) Diverging instruction sets is the only way to differentiate from Intel parts and eliminate the 25% price differential. Intel has been in the market for a long time. Why should anyone buy AMD parts when they are not even superior in performance than PII? Lower price! If AMD continues to follow Intel in Intel's instruction set then AMD can never be a leader, only a follower. This answer your next statement. "..AMD will be a really great investment (as distinct from a trade) when they can prove that they can match (if not exceed) Intel in most aspects of the business (including performance on the Intel instruction set)..." How can you improve on the same instruction set when Intel has defined the instruction set? The only way is to have a DIFFERENT and BETTER instruction set of achieving the same goal. If your criterias are really happening then AMD wouldn't been trade in the 20s. It would be trading in the 40s and 50s. The most important thing for AMD now is to 1) Generate volume of K6 and K6-3D(at least 3M-5M/quarter) and make money. This criteria is sufficient for the rest to follow. Once the volume is there many vendors such as chipset makers, box makers, software developers, etc. will confidently support AMD. As for performance, the K6-3D and K6-3D+ are very competitive and even better to the PII. The K7 which to be demonstrated this year will clearly differentiate the two companies products Maxwell

To: Tiley who wrote (32359)	5/3/1998 4:53:00 PM
From: Elmer	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571680

< The risks to AMD currently significantly outweigh the rewards. AMD will be a really great investment (as distinct from a trade) when they can prove that they can match (if not exceed) Intel in most aspects of the business (including performance on the Intel instruction set).> AMD has shown that between Flash Memory, networking and what used to be their microcomtroller product line , they could be a profitable company. Management has chosen to neglect their money makers and instead focus on an enormously bad policy of trying to compete with Intel. This pathological behaviour is what is causing AMD's red ink. It is a continuous disservice to AMD shareholders to persue this policy. In the years that the rest of the tech sector has shown enormous growth, AMD has pissed $$Millions if not $Billions away on the disasterous K5 and now K6. How much growth could AMD have enjoyed if they had put those resources into their other product lines? EP

To: Tiley who wrote (32359)	5/3/1998 9:24:00 PM
From: Brian Hutcheson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571680

Manish , re. AMD's chart was indicating a return to profitability in '97 . What really caused AMD to hit $48+ was just the release of K6 . They finally had a competitive product . This time the evidence is mounting from Pricewatch that there are increasing numbers of K6-266 and 300s , indicating that the .25 process is producing good numbers of k6 . Jerry Sanders announced at the shareholders meeting on April 30 that all K6 starts are now on .25 and are producing good yields , this a little earlier than forecast . The majority of those .25 K6s will be K6-2 by the last half according to Sanders . So we have increasing numbers and higher ASPs . At a 1000 wafers per week Fab25 will produce over 2M K6-2 at 50% yield . I believe their capacity is 4000 or more wafers per week on .25 . I will leave those calculations to you . Can they sell them ? I believe that IBM and Compaq's success with the K6 argues that they will sell anythjing they produce . PC companies are looking for a competitive edge particularly in lowering costs . Brian

To: Tiley who wrote (32359)	5/3/1998 10:03:00 PM
From: Time Traveler	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571680

Why do you think K6 yield problem is solved? Only 1.55M K6, 90% on 0.35um, are produced/shipped in Q1'98. In the previous quarter, a relatively impressive 1.5M K6 were produced, almost all on 0.35um. The tell-tale sign of a yield problem is that the more K6 produced the more loss AMD suffers from quarter to quarter, almost linearly. Very conveniently, 0.35um yield problem was announced solved just weeks before 0.35um is scrapped. That was just a morale-booster for the 0.25um process. In reality, the yield problem is the result of aggressive design rule and immature manufacturing technology. The guy responsible for the mess was `let go' months ago. Similarly, another guy who tried to move the numbers around to make AMD look not as bad as it did was also `let go' recently. Time Traveler