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

To: Elmer who wrote (48814)	2/6/1999 12:02:00 PM
From: RDM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571446

Why did Intel move the price change up from Feb 28? Possibly: 1. Further aggravate AMD? or 2. Response to Intel stock price drop of 14 points over fear of negatives from PRICE WAR!? Possibly some upward revisions to the original planned Celeron cuts of Feb 28? Perhaps with AMD bleeding it is not necessary to give away parts quite as cheaply. Announcing early that the cuts will not be so severe may help support recovery in Intel stop price. Intel To Cut Prices On Celeron Chips Monday PALO ALTO, Calif. (Reuters) - Intel Corp. (Nasdaq:INTC - news), the world's largest chip maker, is widely expected to cut prices Monday, primarily in its Celeron chip family, in an aggressive move to win back market share in the low-end of the PC market. In the past two days, Intel's shares have fallen, along with rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (NYSE:AMD - news) , over Wall Street's concerns of a price war brewing between the two. Friday, Intel's shares fell $2.5625 to $127.5625 and AMD dropped another $2.1250 to $16.8125, both in very active trading. Thursday, AMD of Sunnyvale, Calif., said it would likely report a first quarter operating loss, mostly due to the accelerated price cuts by Intel in its Celeron family. Intel was previously expected to cut prices on its Celeron family for low-cost PCs and other chips on February 28. But Intel has stepped up its price cuts and will announce them Monday, analysts said. A spokesman for Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel declined to comment. ''Primarily they are doing it to cause AMD problems,'' said Dean McCarron, an analyst at Mercury Research in Scottsdale, Ariz. McCarron estimates that the price cuts will range anywhere from $80 a chip to as low as $10 per chip. Wall Street analysts are worried that Intel will cut its fastest Celeron chip, the 400 megahertz version, to below $100 a chip, which partly fueled the drop in Intel's shares. But McCarron and some others do not see the 400 megahertz version of the Celeron dropping to below $100 - yet. ''While we believe that Intel is getting more aggressive with its Celeron line of processors in the sub-$1,000 personal computer market, we do not believe that the 400 megahertz versions are selling for less than $100 and we do not expect this to be the case when the company announces price cuts Monday,'' said Erika Klauer, an analyst at BT Alex. Brown. Ashok Kumar, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, said that he expects prices for the 366 megahertz version of the Celeron chip to come down to $111, from $131 previously, in units of 1,000 and possibly below $100 in big quantities to PC makers. Kumar estimates that the 400 megahertz Celeron will drop to $133 each, in quantities of 1,000, from $158 previously. Other price cuts will occur in Intel's older Pentium II products, he said. Intel was a late-comer to the low-end PC market but it has recently come on strong with its latest versions of the Celeron processor designed for PCs costing $1,200 and below, after its first version of the Celeron chip was not a success. Advanced Micro Devices was able to capitalize on Intel's sluggish start in the low-cost PC sector and gained share in that market.

To: Elmer who wrote (48814)	2/6/1999 12:56:00 PM
From: Yousef	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1571446

Elmer, Re: "Where is that 700Mhz screaming core and the 200Mhz memory? Any thoughts?" Obviously, the K7 is being "forced" into AMD's .25um process or their slightly upgraded "aluminum .18um" process. Neither of these processes will be able to support a 700mhz "screaming core" or 200mhz memory. What AMD needs is a true .18um process like what Intel is going to release by about mid-year. Please see my earlier post for technical details --> Message 6766898 Without FET's with high drive currents (940ua/um N, 420ua/um P), Low K dielectrics, ... AMD doesn't stand a chance at keeping up in the "Mhz race" (tm Yousef). Make It So, Yousef

To: Elmer who wrote (48814)	2/6/1999 8:23:00 PM
From: Ali Chen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571446

<Where is that 200mhz bus everyone keeps talking about? Why just 83mhz?> Where? You are right, nowhere near 200. You need to scratch your head harder. Memory is 4-way interleaved, each way at 83. Memory bus != EV6 bus. 83x4=333MHz. 8x333=2.6GB/sec. Remember your whinning about pin count? Got it now?

To: Elmer who wrote (48814)	2/7/1999 4:44:00 AM
From: Tenchusatsu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571446

Elmer, that article is kind of confusing. I wish they threw in a "foil" or two. What exactly is running at 83 MHz? Each processor-to-chipset port? Chipset-to-SDRAM port? The article did say that the chipset will be using a four-way interleaved scheme with memory modules, meaning that the memory card will have groups of four DIMM sockets which must be populated identically. All four DIMM sockets will work in parallel, thus looking like a single 256-bit wide SDRAM unit. Therefore, I think that each DIMM will be running at 83 MHz. That makes sense if each 64-bit processor bus is running at 333 MHz. PC100 SDRAM will be required because of the 83 MHz speed. (Then why run the SDRAM at 83 MHz instead of 100 MHz? Because 83 MHz is an integral multiple of 333 MHz, which simplifies clocking issues.) So I guess the EV6 processor bus can currently be pushed to 333 MHz. Very high performance, but like you said, Elmer, it's not going to be cheap. Also, notice that the chipset will compose of up to 11 components just to support dual processors! That's OK as long as your volumes are low and your prices and margins are high. A server with dual-21264 CPU's will start at $19,000, but that price is for a configuration with no more memory (128 MB) and hard drive space (4 GB) than my own desktop system. Fully decked out systems can go for much more. Though $19,000 is a nice price for the fastest two-way server out there, I imagine that you can get yourself a similarly-configured four-way Xeon system at a similar price. And the four-way Xeon system is bound to beat the two-way Alpha thanks to brute-force parallel processing. Tenchusatsu