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

To: kash johal who wrote (44602)	1/2/1999 9:21:00 PM
From: Bill Jackson	Respond to of 1572345

Kash, Thanks for the input. True enough they do accelerated life tests at higher temps and then plot the time frame back to real time on a log plot, as you say semis are never wearing never ending when running conservatively, so to get plottable early deaths you need stress by heat and current and voltage. I expect this type of testing is quite mature. I would expect the server maker to have a handle on power supplies, drives, etc and be required to make and prove only the board/CPU K7 combination since there will be no boards ready to run the K7 for a while, depending on how well AMD works with server makers and motherboard makers. There will be some screwdriver shops(SD) able to make servers with standard size motherboards that will appear for the K7 for the workstation market. Often the dedicated servers have unique shaped motherboards made by the server makers and you need to go through a lot of convinving to make them cut a board for you through the several iterations etc before it is ready for prime time. For this reason the SD shops will be first and they will nybble(or byte) away at the bottom end and as they do this the K7 will make gains. The SD market is very large and well distributed and AMD now has the sales force to address this huge distributed market and get them using quickly. The major server makers I am sure will look at it and make a decision after seeing a demonstration. Some will stay with Intel and some will run a dual pathway. Do not forget if they all stayed with Intel there would be no price pressure on Intel to drop the price. They are smart enough to look at AMD, make boards, or use standard boards at first because they know this attention will force Intel to take note and ease prices the way Compaq did with the K6 series. Compaq was critical to AMD's success and when CPQ adopted it, others followed, and when the shortage of Pentium MMX appeared to force people to P-II, AMD activated a small SD sales force and sold millions of the K6 series. The SD shops will drive this market and I am sure CPQ will make K7 servers. Bill