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

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (51335)	3/1/1999 11:34:00 AM
From: A. A. LaFountain III	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 1571245

A fix and an expansion: 1) In 7) of my earlier post, the comparison is obviously between Intel and AMD, not Intel and Intel (our language is self-referential, but our investment parameters shouldn't be). Blame it on a speed problem - the post should have been binned down or at least incorporated some built-in self test! 2) The third-party aspect of the server situation concerns another company's development of a switch-matrix chip set to enable the K-7 to realized its scalability. Now, this puts this non-EE in over his head (I'm an old history major and just a dumb stockpicker), but I understand that the K-7's point-to-point networking puts it as a distinct disadvantage to the Xeon when the latter is used with the Corollary technology that Intel acquired last year. But if I understand it correctly, the Intel approach remains bus-oriented. By using a networking approach, this chip set vendor (a privately-held company in San Jose that tapes out this month for sampling in 2Q and volume production in 3Q with IBM as the foundry) will be able to offer server OEMs an alternative to Intel. How appealing? Well, Xeons with 2mB of cache run about $4 grand, so an 8-way server gets a pretty big hit on the bill of materials just from the MPUs. It's probably safe to assume that the K-7 would be at least 75% cheaper, so there's about $25 grand difference right there. Would the server guys buy into this? It's my understanding that IBM, Compaq and H-P aren't too thrilled with Intel's Next Generation I/O, which would give Michael Dell a free entree into the high-end of the server market. They all use AMD chips in their desktops, so there might well be a proclivity to give AMD a try. Would the users buy AMD-based servers? After all, these are often used for mission-critical applications. But a) how many horror stories have you heard about AMD chips not working? and b) aren't these IT guys the same folks who have thrown out NT in favor of Linux (which I find remarkable). If they're willing to take a chance on Linux, the notion of saving $25K/box probably generates a warm and fuzzy feeling as well. - Tad LaFountain (Opinions expressed as the author's own and should not be construed in this forum as those of Needham and Company, Inc.)