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To: Scumbria who wrote (66931)	10/17/1998 2:04:00 PM
From: Barry Grossman	Respond to of 186894

Don't know if this was posted: eetimes.com Intel tips plans for two additional IA-64 CPUs By Alexander Wolfe SAN JOSE, Calif. — Intel Corp. revealed long-term plans on Wednesday (Oct. 14) for two successors to its upcoming 64-bit Merced microprocessor. Merced, which is due in mid-2000, will be followed in late 2001 by a previously announced processor code-named McKinley. In a presentation at the Microprocessor Forum, Stephen Smith, vice president of Intel's microprocessor products group, said that two additional IA-64 architecture devices will follow. "We will move forward to 0.13-micron technology with a product code-named Madison," he said. The device is due around 2002. Madison, which will be aimed at high-end workstation and server applications, will be followed by an IA-64 processor code-named Deerfield. According to Smith, Deerfield will be "billed as a price/performance processor." Smith also provided a progress report and offered a peek at some additional technical details of Merced. He reported that Merced's engineering team is proceeding towards the company's goal of shipping the chip in mid-2000. "Merced is well underway right now," he said. "We've completed the full RTL logic design. We're in the final stages of validating that. We've worked for the last six months on timing. We're now ramping our final circuit layout, with extracted parasitics." On the technical front, Smith presented the first block diagram of Merced to be shown by Intel in public. The high-level view contained functional blocks for instruction fetch and decode; cache; bus control; translation look-aside buffer; floating-point unit; integer unit; IA-64 control; and IA-32 control. Merced will have three levels of cache, Smith revealed. An L0 cache will be closely tied to the execution unit. It will be backed by on-chip L1 cache. The multi-megabyte L2 cache will be housed on a separate die. Smith also revealed that the processor will be housed in a new cartridge which will contain both the CPU and Merced's caches. On the marketing front, Smith reemphasized Intel's intention to use Merced and its companion IA-64 architecture to plow new market territory. "With IA-64, we'll be able to go into high-end technical computing areas such as EDA verification and synthesis," he said. While Merced garnered lots of interest at the Forum, industry analysts warned that Intel will face some challenges. Linley Gwennap, vice president of Microdesign Resources, the Forum's host, wondered whether Merced's compilers will be able to extract enough parallelism from applications software to take full advantage of the processor's architecture. According to Intel's Smith, "We'll be able to utilize the good work in compilers that have been developed over the past 15 years. We'll hook up the compilers with the hardware."

To: Scumbria who wrote (66931)	10/17/1998 3:55:00 PM
From: Fred Fahmy	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 186894

Sumbria, <they have to sell parts at 25% below Intel to keep their customers.> Why did they have to insist on staying 25% below Intel's pricing??? Why not 10%? They should have nibbled on the edge instead of taking a giant head-on. You're right, though, now it would be very hard to go back and offer less of a discount. AMD has shown repeatedly that they simply do not understand how to run a profitable business. The tech company I work for is in the same position as AMD vs. Intel. We have been able to gain market share by offering better value not by pricing 25% below the giant in our industry. Had we used AMD's strategy we probably would have gotten similar results. Instead, growth has been outstanding, earnings have exceeded expectations consistently, and our stock has more than tripled since we IPO'd 3 years ago. Like AMD we had 0 brand recognition when we started a few years ago and like AMD we have much much less resources compared to the nearly unlimited resources of our industry leader (who has a great majority of the market share in our industry). There are very effective ways to compete against an industry giant and prosper. Unfortunately, AMD hasn't got a clue as to how to do this. <Intel has forced AMD into their current pricing levels> Explain exactly and specifically how Intel forced AMD to maintain a policy of pricing 25% below Intel. FF

To: Scumbria who wrote (66931)	10/18/1998 12:15:00 AM
From: nihil	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 186894

RE: Duopoly is wrong model for Intel-AMD Economists have analyzed the dynamics and stability of all known oligopoly models. Consult any graduate level-microeconomics text. No duopoly model is stable if either firm does not make price invariant or rule driven. With invariant prices, the firms must compete on something other than price. On one famous occasion the north Atlantic air trade depended on the quality of the sandwiches served (the airline cartel had ruled that "only sandwiches" could be served, and Scandinavian Air Lines naturally won [lobster sandwiches -- mm-uh]. The best model is "dominant firm with competitive fringe", where the gorilla lets the monkeys sell as much as they wish at the price established by the gorilla. When AMD signed up for its Saxon fab and when it announced that K-6 would undercut Intel prices by 25% it it announced that it would not compete on quality, and would not accept the share that boxmakers would grant it if prices were invariant (I'm trying not to say "fixed"). At this point, Intel was forced into price war, although it did not respond early. AMD had in effect announced that it was war to the knife, and it obviously had to be crushed. Cyrix never challenged because it never had a fab (until NSM bought it). IDTI had a fab, but it was careful to insist that it was only interested in serving trash markets that they hoped Intel was too noble to bother with. No one can say what AMD could have accomplished if it tried to be a competitor to the gorilla. Intel hadn't helped relations by suing them on the 386 microcode and announcing that the free lunch was closed. Jerry hadn't even done well by skulking around the kill and eating the scraps. K-5 was a failure, and the costly gamble of acquiring NexGen resulted in a good chip, but a marketing nightmare. With a good chip, couldn't AMD have negotiated sales with Compaq, IBM and HP at prices similar to Intel's. Would not they have been satisfied to have a second source that would give them a choice. But Intel countered (to no one's surprise) with PII, and forced the boxmakers to choose between slot 1 and socket 7. It would this decision, and AMD's willingness to be squeezed, that led to the development of segment zero, with AMD and Cyrix in the joint roles of hero, victim, and dupe. Neither were financially strong enough to fight it out forever. Compaq may claim that the sub $1,000 segment gives them the highest margin of any model, but I haven't heard AMD make that claim. Compaq squeezed AMD like an orange -- instead of buying it and knocking Intel out, they bought DEC. Don't know if AMD will survive. It could, but it is about borrowed out. Completing and equipping the Dresden fab is bound to be a problem. AMD needs an injection of equity or a sudden and immense success with K-7 very soon.