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Technology Stocks : CYRIX / NSM -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale J. who wrote (27832)	7/3/1998 2:17:00 PM
From: Steve Porter	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 33344

Dale, That is a scaring proposition for any x86 semi stock investor. I didn't realize Cyrix could reach those speeds (400mhz) anytime soon. Are you sure about this? When is NSM expected to release a 400mhz? Well this is UNCOFIRMED but from a fairly reliable source. I have heard that MediaGX parts are yielding anywhere from 300 to topping out at 350Mhz. Now the thing you have to remember with the GX is that it's core was not designed to be run at those clock speeds in the first place. However, the coming MXi was designed to scale to (I believe) 600Mhz, will have the new Cayenne core (dual pipelined floating point (and MMX, and 3DNow) units). (actually I'm gonna take a second to explain what this means please bear with me). Currently Cyrix processor's floating point scores run at about 60% of the Intel equivalent FP unit at the same clock speed (MHZ, _not_ PR). If you double the number of execution units and pipeline the instruction pipe, it will generate a tremendous improvement (the current FPU is not pipelined and is only 1 execution unit). The total gains should add up to (I did the math on this a while ago on this thread) Cyrix FPU performance being about 1.25x Intel's at the same Mhz. This should be a very scarey proposition for Intel folks as the MXi is designed to sell at around $120 and contains all the features of the MediaGX and more. Add to the improved floating point unit the addition of 3D-Now instructions and you will have one hell of a Quake machine for $500. That is really starting to eat Intel's bread and butter. If they get the clockspeed upto 600Mhz then there is real trouble. Intel will still own the server market, but Cyrix will own the low-end. Intel will be in MUCH better shape than will AMD, who if NSM's plans work correctly will have nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. As for the MII, actually _Mhz_ has been reported as high as ~333Mhz off the new process. These are _easily_ PR400 parts for everything but the FP. I know what Intel will do, and it won't be a pretty sight for anyone. Some believe Intel will not cut prices, but I have no doubt they will. If Intel cuts their prices any further they will start to lose money. People will lose the incentive to buy xeon based systems as well. If the PII-400 is cut to the ground, people will just buy 4 2xPII-400 Boxes and run Microsoft's clustering version of Windows NT, providing the same or better performance than 4x500Mhz Xeon. The thing INTC doesn't realize is that if there is a huge price differnce between the PII and the Xeon, with advances in clustering technology people can now go for the PII and still get the same aggregate performance. Intel will be bleeding red ink, much the same as NSM and AMD. (although when I look at the numbers from NSM, I tend to believe that the Cyrix division made money, albeit a small amount last quarter). Steve