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To: Elmer who wrote (71423)1/14/1999 11:11:00 AM
From: Tony Viola  Respond to of 186894
 
Elmer and Intel investors, here's the local rag's report on AMD's quarter:

But remaining profitable in 1999 promises to be a
bigger challenge for AMD, as Santa Clara-based
Intel is promising to be even more aggressive this
year in establishing its Celeron chips in the low-end
of the PC marketplace.

''This next quarter is going to be a difficult one for
AMD,'' said financial analyst Ashok Kumar of Piper
Jaffray. ''Intel intends to go after the low end of the
market, and that's going to eat into AMD's market.''

mercurycenter.com

======================================================================

AMD TURNS IN ANOTHER PROFIT
By Tom Quinlan
Mercury News Staff Writer Advanced Micro
Devices Inc. on Wednesday turned in its second
quarterly profit in a row, but a new set of
manufacturing problems kept the chipmaker from
meeting Wall Street's expectations.

On the strength of its popular K6 and K6-2
processors, AMD, Intel Corp.'s largest competitor,
posted a profit of $22.3 million on sales of $788.8
million. That compared to a loss of $12.3 million on
sales of $613.2 million for the year-earlier fourth
quarter.

But AMD's 15 cents per share earnings fell short of
consensus estimates of 18 cents per share that
analysts were expecting, largely because the
company ran into problems when it manufactured
K6-2 processors running at 400 MHz.

Although the problem has been fixed, ''it had at least
a $20 million impact on our bottom line this quarter,''
chairman and CEO Jerry Sanders said.

Production problems have been a longtime thorn in
AMD's side. The Sunnyvale-based company has had
difficulty manufacturing enough of its well-regarded
K6 and K6-2 chips to make a consistent profit.

Even the fact that this was the first time since 1997
that AMD was able to post two consecutive
profitable quarters wasn't enough to mollify some
analysts.

''Investors' patience is going to be tried again,'' said
Tad LaFountain, a Needham & Co. analyst who has a
''hold'' rating on AMD shares. ''It was a keen
disappointment.''


AMD shares fell $3.75 to $27.75.

For the year, AMD lost $103.9 million on record
1998 revenue of $2.5 billion. In 1997, the company
posted a $21 million loss on sales of $2.3 billion.

Even though AMD's earnings fell short of analysts
expectations, the company did point to some
significant successes during the quarter. AMD
shipped more than 5.5 million processors during the
quarter, and its market share for sales of retail PCs
increased to 36 percent in December, despite heavy
pressure from Intel, the world's largest chipmaker.

''I think what that shows is that right now the K6-2
line with 3DNow is a better brand than Intel's
Celeron,'' Sanders said.

But remaining profitable in 1999 promises to be a
bigger challenge for AMD, as Santa Clara-based
Intel is promising to be even more aggressive this
year in establishing its Celeron chips in the low-end
of the PC marketplace.

''This next quarter is going to be a difficult one for
AMD,'' said financial analyst Ashok Kumar of Piper
Jaffray. ''Intel intends to go after the low end of the
market, and that's going to eat into AMD's market.''


Intel moved up the introduction


Article terminated here in the online version. Paper talked abut Intel moving up the intro of Celeron 400 and intentions to keep the heat on.

Tony




To: Elmer who wrote (71423)1/14/1999 12:33:00 PM
From: Paul Engel  Respond to of 186894
 
Elmer - Re: ""They have moved up from CRAPPY to SCRAPPY !"There is still some debate on that!"

I know just where to go for such a debate !

Paul



To: Elmer who wrote (71423)1/14/1999 1:02:00 PM
From: Paul Engel  Respond to of 186894
 
Elmer & Intel Investors - IBM's 450 MHz Xeon 32 Node 4-way Server Cluster Sets Performance Records !

Move over Sun Microsystems !

If you check out the specs on this machine - at the IBM web site quoted below - you will note that the machine has 32 nodes, with EACH NODE made up of 4 each 450 MHz Xeon CPUs with 2 MegaBytes Cache.

That comes to 128 Xeons with a "list price" of about $3692.

That one machine "could" have netted Intel $472,576 in CPU Revenues.

Even if Intel gave IBM a 30% discount for the 128 piece "volume order", that would still come to $330,800 worth of XEON Revenue - PER MACHINE !

IBM needs to get busy and sell a few hundred of these every month !

Paul

{============================================}

January 13, 1999 12:06

IBM Sets Price, Performance Records for 32-Node Netfinity Server
Cluster on Windows NT

SOMERS, NY--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 13, 1999--

Teraplex Center will Help ISVs Optimize Software for Large, Commercially Available, Multi-Node Clusters of Netfinity Servers IBM today shattered the Windows NT scalability barrier with the industry's first-ever one terabyte TPC-D(b) benchmark on Windows NT. Using a 32-node cluster of IBM's Intel-based Netfinity(a) servers running IBM
DB2(a) Universal Database, IBM set new records for price performance and power for one terabyte of user data(1), out performing a 64-way Sun Ultra-SPARC and all other server systems in the industry.


The benchmark effectively demonstrates that IBM is the only vendor that can offer true scalability -- the ability to incrementally grow the server/database solution as customer needs change -- on Windows NT.

"We're taking the same technologies developed for mainframe systems and applying them to IBM's Netfinity servers," said Phil Hester, chief technology officer, IBM PSG. "Our experience in clustering, I/O
and other system-critical areas has allowed us to deliver performance and scalability from standard Netfinity servers rivaling that of mainframes."

"The race for ownership of the high-end NT data warehouse marketplace is on and IBM has taken a clear leadership position," said Stephen Brobst, Strategic Technologies Systems. "The astounding benchmark
results delivered by DB2 Universal Database and clustered Netfinity servers clearly raise the stakes by demonstrating record-setting performance on NT with very high scalability."

Clustering Help for ISVs

The 32-node Netfinity cluster will become a cornerstone of the Netfinity Partners in Development program. Through the program, IBM offers ISVs and operating systems vendors technical resources and expertise to help them optimize their products for the Netfinity platform. Housing the cluster, a Teraplex Center will provide a "real-world" testing ground for vendors to research, measure and tune their applications for large, clustered enterprise environments.

The capabilities of the Teraplex Center are unmatched by other hardware vendors:

IBM is the first and only vendor to demonstrate the ability to handle a terabyte of data on NT, a capability once only the province of mainframes. Additionally, IBM is the only vendor to test systems with multiple users, running the TPC-D benchmark with eight parallel query streams, more accurately representing a real user environment and a new record for concurrency.

Real Performance, Real Hardware: Right Now

Not only does this benchmark establish new records for database capability, but the records were broken with hardware that is readily available today: IBM Netfinity servers and IBM Serial Storage Architecture Disk technology.

"IBM's Serial Storage Architecture disk subsystem was a critical component of this record-breaking TPC-D result," said Frank Elliot, vice president, marketing and strategy, IBM Storage Systems Division.
"The subsystem's full duplexed connection combined with the ease of management capabilities enable both the high scalability, reliability and performance needed to complement the total system configuration
used in achieving this world record."

The performance breakthroughs, which were verified by Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC(b)) auditors on January 11, 1999, ranked the 32-node Netfinity cluster and DB2 Universal Database
as the performance and price/performance leader among all hardware and database vendors for 1000GB TPC-D results. The planned availability of the DB2 Universal Database software used to achieve these
results is June 30, 1999. An executive summary of the TPC-D report can be obtained on the Internet from IBM Netfinity at pc.ibm.com.

The Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) Benchmark D simulates data modeling and trend analysis of information contained within a large database such as a data mart or data warehouse.
Customers can use TPC-D results to better understand the relative performance of business intelligence systems from different vendors. More information on the TPC-D benchmark can be found at the
Transaction Processing Performance Council web site at tpc.org.

(1) In TPC-D benchmark testing. 36,872 QppD@1000GB, 8,166.9 QthD@1000GB, $352/QphD@1000GB.
Availability Date June 30, 1999. Additional details are available at
pc.ibm.com. Results referenced in this document are current as of
January 11, 1999.

(a) Trademark or registered trademark of International Business Machines Corp.

(b) TPC Benchmark, TPC-D, QppD, QthD and QphD are trademarks of the Transaction Processing
Performance Council.

All other company/product names and service marks may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their
respective companies.

Editors' Note: All IBM news releases are available on the Internet at ibm.com. Specific
information about IBM Netfinity products, services and support can be located at
ibm.com. Information about IBM DB2 Universal Database can be found at
software.ibm.com.

CONTACT: Michael Corrado
IBM
914-766-3052
corrado@us.ibm.com