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

To: A. A. LaFountain III who wrote (55173)	4/11/1999 10:11:00 PM
From: Process Boy	Respond to of 1572616

Tad - AMD vs. Investor relations Thanks you for your detailed response. <So I don't hold the difficulties of high technology against a management team. But the difficulties of investor relations should be considered easier to manage and executives should be held to an appropriately high standard. It's my intention to pass these thoughts on to AMD's management tomorrow when I return to the office.> This is one of the biggest problems I have with AMD. As time goes on, the apparent amount of risk in there business strategy is increasingly exposed, and AMD has seemed less than forthcoming in their public statements about their future prospects. Yes, they have an extremely aggressive battle plan, and they have decided to play for extremely high stakes. That's fine. Free country. But the manner in which AMD manages expectations is somewhat galling. The most recent pre-announcements and the Gateway non-event are obvious examples of this. Given their resources, AMD should be more forthcoming with what the implications are to the bottom line if a typical event common to IC manufacturing occurs, i.e., a speed path problem. This whole pattern in my mind underlies an overall perception that maybe AMD is biting off more than they can chew. By this I mean that the almost expected yield problem at critical product introductions may be exposing some fundamental flaw in their design to product strategy. You and others indicate that AMD is closing the product performance gap with Intel. I continually wonder at what cost, and how long will AMD be able to continue with their current approach if their financials do not stop bleeding. AMD's opponent is taking a decidedly different approach in their product, process, and design efforts in the near term. It will be interesting to see which approach is actually deemed successful at the end of the day. PB

To: A. A. LaFountain III who wrote (55173)	4/11/1999 10:27:00 PM
From: Mani1	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572616

<<AMD is suffering the fits and starts that accompany the beginning phases of a long-term process (because I don't consider the second-sourced 386/486 period AMD a true MPU vendor, which began only with the ill-fated K5). As I am a believer that AMD is closing the product performance gap with Intel and that the K-7 would accelerate the process>> YES!!! This is exactly what I have been trying to argue in response to the "AMD has been like this since 1986" statements. I am just not as articulate as you. Since AMD stopped being a clone CPU maker, they have been increasing market share and decreasing the performance gap. Can they continue this as far as it takes to become consistently profitable? I am betting yes and I got good betting odds (that risk to reward ratio again), the street seems to think no. We'll see Mani