Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Mani1 who wrote (55829)	4/18/1999 11:12:00 PM
From: Process Boy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1578930

Mani - <Pfeiffer's resentment toward Intel will be missed by AMD.> This is essentially my gut reaction to this. I can't say I'll miss him, given my inherent bias. The blatant Q4 channel stuffing activities of the last two years were really appalling. Hopefully that will be a thing of the past. PB

To: Mani1 who wrote (55829)	4/19/1999 9:09:00 AM
From: A. A. LaFountain III	Respond to of 1578930

Re: CPQ mgmt shifts Ben Rosen was the semiconductor analyst at Morgan Stanley in 1978 that introduced me to the semi industry when I picked up coverage of the group (I remember him as being really old [he was 45]; how one's perspective can change). Now, I'm certainly not privy to the decision-making process at CPQ. But it's no secret that Ben has had long-standing personal relationships with the senior executives at both MPU vendors. If the previous CEO's decisions were based on anything other than appropriate business considerations, I would assume that Ben would have had some input. I believe that a more important consideration than personal enmity in this situation would have been an ongoing concern at CPQ about the inherent conflicts in a relationship with Intel where the supplier is not only a competitor of sorts, but also a facilitator of additional competition. As the largest PC vendor, CPQ would benefit from R&D costs shouldered by the PC manufacturers, not by the MPU supplier. Intel's aggressive (and, from its perspective, entirely justifiable) stance in propagating PC industry standards would, by definition, run counter to CPQ's own interests. It is interesting to see how Intel's initiatives in the high end take this conflict to a segment where CPQ (and IBM and HWP, for that matter) have an even greater exposure to profit diminution. But as I stated recently in regard to Dell and IBM, the supplier/competitor duality that exists in this business does make for some very strange bedfellows. One other point - if the CPQ problem were, in fact, a result of internal execution considerations and not reflective of an industry-wide malaise, and if a new CEO is able to address these problems (which don't appear to have any grounding in the decision to run with the AMD processors), then a resolution should be good for AMD (and possibly INTC, as well). At this point, the investment equation arising from CPQ/AMD/INTC probably has too many variables and too many unknowns for solution. - Tad LaFountain