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

To: Maxwell who wrote (36786)	9/7/1998 12:55:00 PM
From: JBoyd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1570981

The reason Intel is so profitable Maxwell: Good independent source for the "variable" costs of manufacturing the units. The other big, maybe even larger, problem for AMD is fixed costs. Intel has such large market share that they can earn less on each chip and still be profitable while AMD struggles. I consider R&D to be a fixed cost for the chip industry given the short life cycles of products. I've always wondered how much Intel spends on R&D relative to AMD for what they get in products. Obviously Intel spend much much more than AMD, but they are spending it on a much wider array of products. Who knows, maybe AMD/NexGen has a better design team. I know I used to think that, but given the performance over the last year, I doubt it. Regards, Jeff

To: Maxwell who wrote (36786)	9/7/1998 1:03:00 PM
From: Yousef	Respond to of 1570981

Maxwell, Re: " the cost of producing the PII is like $68, CeleronA $63, and the K6-2 is around $38. The reason Intel is so profitable is that they get better ASP (around $206 vs $100 for AMD) and sells 20M+ of these things." Does the $38 for the K6-2 reflect yield, equipment utilization, etc ... How does this explain the FACT that as AMD has ramped the volume on the K6 that they are losing more and more money ?? Maxwell, are you "clowning around" again like with your mythical process flow ?? Make It So, Yousef

To: Maxwell who wrote (36786)	9/7/1998 1:28:00 PM
From: Tenchusatsu	Respond to of 1570981

I don't know why is everyone argues so much about the cost of AMD K6-2 versus the Intel PII/CeleronA. According to Microprocessor Report (their staffs know a lot more than anyone on this thread) the cost of producing the PII is like $68, CeleronA $63, and the K6-2 is around $38. Yeah, I was wondering at what price Microprocessor Report estimated the K6-2 to cost at production. Actually, in the latest MPR, the Deschutes Pentium II was estimated to cost around $70 a pop and the Mendocino Celeron at $66 a pop. This includes die, testing, package, and Slot 1 module. For die and packaging costs alone (i.e. excluding the testing and the Slot 1 module), Deschutes rings up at $44 and Mendocino at $50 because of the larger die size. I wonder whether that $38 figure of K6-2 includes the cost of testing as well. Furthermore, I'll bet the MPR cost estimation model doesn't consider yields at all. I think the dumb thing about all this ranting over profits vs. die size is that no one really knows the entire complicated picture (myself included). But everyone feels like they can simplify the whole situation down to a less complicated model based on per-chip costs and ASP alone. Tenchusatsu

To: Maxwell who wrote (36786)	9/7/1998 7:50:00 PM
From: Joey Smith	Respond to of 1570981

Maxwell, re:Can't wait till Compaq is announcing the K6-2-400MHz at $1500 level. This will put a big damper on the sales of PII-400. You should check Compaq's home PC product line once in a while. 12 of 16 models are Celeron/PII. The highest grade AMD system is a K6-300. Oh well, so much for the Back to School season sales <ggg>. Whatever heppened to Gateway announcing a K6-2 system??? Or is that more BS from you??? oh, and you don't want to know what Celeron-A is doing to K6 sales from people i've talked to. Not a pretty picture. joey