Tech

AMD: A Dog Chasing Its Tail

have you met AMD before publishing this crap?
AMD is discussing with its customers everydays but it seems not enough with some blogs authors !

AMD Bears Continue To Emerge

Eric, I must admit that the stock exchange is able to do strange things, and you were right concerning the shares price predictions ;o(

but I can not admit that you consider me as an ignorant, all what I said was true story .

I'd rather like to see AMD technical excellence backed by strong financial help to really show what they could be up to .

AMD: Stock Slides On Reported Barcelona Delay

why proliferate rumors without "confirmed" information from the manufacturer?
is it a channel issue? i.e. Names (HP, IBM, SUN, .... versus " No names" ?

Advanced Micro Devices: Will Somebody Please Stage an Intervention?

agree on the fact that they gain less but many companies would like to be as profitable as they are!
(Last AMD numbers were one shot ATI acquisition costs)
but by the law they can NOT agree together on fixing higher prices for processors can they?
and some companies or industries are surviving with very low net margins but with high volume (HP, ...)
Intel for sure has a lot of cash in the bank but because of their size, their fixed cost (an the cost to invest on 45nm production plants) is a lot higher than AMD . It is why I say that Intel has a lot more to loose trying to keep their MS and I am not sure their shareholders agree on Intel cuting their profits like last quarter by a huge 1.5Billion! continuing at this rate would bring them in the red in a year!

Advanced Micro Devices: Will Somebody Please Stage an Intervention?

those biggests, may need to burn their inventory of older machines to then promote more vista power ready products ?
I understand your continuous theory on oversupply but it may need a closer look.
they are not producing more of the old chips like with Flash or DRAMS (or Pick-up cars!), but rather bring new solutions to the market
Why should AMD stop producing more of their new and latest products?
Why producing on 65nm on larger wafers and then allowing cost reduction should be stopped?
if not to keep or continue to enlarge their market share with the new products.
yes Intel does the same (and it helped them regrab some MS) and both may earn less, but with today's market share Intel has a lot more to loose than AMD, (more fixed costs, less sales) and the analysts do not seem to treat equally.

Advanced Micro Devices: Will Somebody Please Stage an Intervention?

Why don't you say also that AMD's Chief mentioned that Vista's impact was underestimated.
you do not say that if you don't see some benefits out of it, do you?
and also yesterday press release on new 65nm offering better solutions for 2 different markets.
power concious 45W Athlon64 (Fanless machines)
and performance with Athlon64X2 6000+ (with this one , you can get a similar performance of an Intel Quad core at Half the price!)
Power, price, performance. and more to come, AMD is not going to be short of customers soon ! to the contrary.

AMD Bears Continue To Emerge

Yeah exactly, real and updated facts:
Ist it seems that you give comments based on more than 3 month (or more) old information versus
this updated one:

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- December 28, 2006 --AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced a significant legal victory in its ongoing antitrust suit against Intel Corporation. In an order effective yesterday, the Federal District Court in Delaware overruled Intel’s objections and ordered it to produce documents and other evidence bearing upon Intel’s exclusionary conduct outside of U.S. borders.

II. this is just your opinion, and not Facts.
A. AMD ATI Synergies:
AMD announced an increase in its expectations of cost saving following the ATI merger, to $150 million in 2007 and $220 million in 2008. Originally, AMD has forecast savings of $75 million in 2007 and $125 million in 2008, according to Jefferies & Co. equity analyst John Lau, who attended the meeting

B/ another Award fesh from this week (Any Intel Award?)!

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- January 9, 2007 --The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences has awarded a Technical and Engineering Emmy® Award to AMD (NYSE: AMD) for its industry-leading ATI Radeon™ 9700 technology. This award for Pioneering Work in Near and Real-Time fully programmable Shading via Modern Graphics Processors will be formally announced during an award ceremony at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) on January 8, 2007, in Las Vegas.

III. Verify your source, it is worldwide known that Intel has used AMD 64 bit instructions and not the other way round ! Tto give you some information, When AMD disclosed their 64 bit instruction set, Intel added some specific microcode to their Pentium (but nobody could ude it , it was only for Intel Internal tests) just In case AMD would be successful ! since AMD solution became a standard, Inel then decided to make it useable on thei chips!

IV. What I said is that in some benchmarks the test were so marginally better that there is no need to mention it. The latest tests are even comparing products that you can hardly find in stores and done on Platforms who can use chips from both companies meaning mainly Intel oriented Platforms. AMD is working on an open initiative with major peripheral vendors :
"AMD 'Better by Design' Program Enables PC Manufacturers to Deliver Ultimate Solutions for Windows Vista(TM)" and everybody knows that Graphics from Nvidia and ATi are far superior to Intel Graphics and that Atheros or Broadcom Wireless are also Far superior to Intel Wireless.
customers will choose!
V. I agree, they have not left Intel, just given AMD a 20% MS, but Dell being with HP the world major player make your own deduction ;o)
VI. you add nothing to oppose on this one
VII. see award on point II. above and more to come!
VIII. no, AMD has mad Intel who they are. There were a lot of far better processors, when IBM decided to go with an Intel Based board and came to AMD to ask to second source them.
the 286 with the PC AT became a worldwide standard and was the inflexion point where Intel became monopolistic then with the 386. So yes, AMD made Intel what they are bringing credibility with a second source in front of a Mot 68K and then PPC which were recognized at the time a lot better architected.

XI. you may see APPLE look sooner to AMD than Dell did!

XII. I'll give you a "formula 1" example . you may have an excellent motor, but if you dont have good aerodynamics nor suspensions nor brakes, nor good pilot, then you loose the race !
It was also to show you that AMD was able to fight Intel products with One drawing technology difference.

XIII. read carefully what I write, I mention Core Duo and CORE 2 Duo
Yes hopefully you can run Vista64 on a Core2duo but all the customer who bought CoreDuo (notice the 2 is not written there) will not benefit of the 64 bit capabilities has they could with a turion64 and the turion64X2! Linux folks, were able to work on 64 bit standard machine from AMD a long long time ago.

All what I say is right and well informed, I wouldn't say the same for what you are assuming more driven by feelings, wishes or Intel PR.

AMD Bears Continue To Emerge

Nothing new makes me feel that it is not exagerated.
I. 13$ is unreasonable AND unlikely, No, AMD is not counting on Lawsuits and AMD is not desparate and No again Those lawsuits were not Frivolous .and have even be reinforced recently So many companies have been forced, everywhere in the world to stop buying AMD products if they wanted to get Intel processors and this will be proved as prohibited monopolistic practices. AMD has shown a very good "output" expansion in quantity and quality.
II. AMD is not resting, they have always something new in the pipe but it is true that Intel was so late for so many products that they came alltogether in 2006 . To the Contrary, ATI integration will prove to provide more synergies and sooner
III. the Athlon 64 was so advanced that it took 2 generations of cores and the 65nm process to Intel to only catch up !!!
and the core duo was (is) 32 bits! need the Core2 duo (with AMD established and recognized standard 64 bit instructions set !) to compete.
this involved so many different motherboards that integrators were (are) lost!
IV. Untrue, only some (not all) core2duo in 65nm have some better benchmark than AMD chips in 90nm !
none of Intel 90nm was better than AMD 90nm better chips!
AMD start shipping 65nm processors next week ;o) implies better performances to come pretty soon ;o)
V. AMD is selling now to the major players, ATI customer base will certainly serve to compensate some possible leaves. hopefully, May not be as big as the Dell leave from Intel!
VI. I did not said Intel was ONLY offering 32 bits, I just said that Intel was still selling a majority of "32 bits only" (opposed to 64 bits) (look to your next store and you'll still see old Celerons or even pentiums ! and core duos, not core2duos). ATI will benefit from AMD works on 45, 32 and 22nm for the future , I am not sure that Nvidia as such roadmaps already?
VII. Just see above
VIII. WE at least agree that competition is good for all of us (but fair competition) I could give you story of the 286 era where Intel gave deliberatly wrong masks sets to AMD to produce a second source. this was before they decided unilateraly not to provide 386 masks and when it took too many years (4-5!) to a retired judge to arbitrate and finally give rigths to AMD successively to the 386 and to the 486.
IX When I say one goal, it means processors (and graphics) and there are many to come not only one;o)
X. I am not comparing Itanium since I consider it as a dead end and a money distroyer for Intel. Even HP the co-inventor does not believe in it!
XI. AMD has worked with apple in the past, (e.g. combo SCSI Ethernet PCI chip) I am sure the links are not broken, It has taken a few years to Dell to understand what they could get from AMD it may take less to Apple to do the same ;o)

NEW:
XII. drawing size 90nm, 65nm, 45nm is not all.
Architecture is also important, AMD memory controller is a better solution than Intel Front side bus . Hypertransport 3 will bring even more bandwith for data exchanges
AMD is also using SOI which means lower power.and will use immersion lithography and ultra low K dielectric which are giving each 15% improvements in performance.
without talking about the fusion program to integrate "other types of coprocessors"
XIII. Microsoft software is finally released with 64 bit capabilities . A customer could take advantage of it on an AMD turion64 (X2) not on a celeron or core duo !

AMD Bears Continue To Emerge

This point of view of Hans Mosesman is overexagerated.
why:
I. at 13$ it does not even represent the "value" of the company
II. AMD is not resting on their Laurels and continuously improve their products, the last improvements came at the beginning of december with lower power and higher performance products. And more improvements are planned for 2007and onward.
III. the AMD Athlon64/Opteron is not "aging" and is a lot less older than the Intel "Pentium" and is also continuously improving (power, security, performance
IV. "unambiguous performance/price/powe... advantages in 95% of all PC applications"
I doubt it. Where are those informatios coming from? Intel is certainly a lot better than previous Intel. it may have some marginal temporary advantages on specific benchmarks against AMD processors.
V. AMD adds capacity according to their main customer plans, HP, SUN, IBM/LENOVO, 3 main chinese manufacturers, ... and DELL and a lot more! Those customers needs AMD to control their price and are not willing nor have interest to reduce AMD MS (to the contrary they would certainly like to bring it to the 25-30% instead of 20-25!)
VI. Vista will finally take full advantage of All 64 bit AMD processors (Intel still manufactures and sells a lot of 32bits only!)
and VISTA will require powerful Graphics that ATI can provide
VII. ATI does well in many markets, as an example, at this time of the year Xbox 360 is selling particularly well with an ATI chip in it!
VIII. Competition will be tougher, but AMD has what it takes to fight.
IX AMD is concentrated on one goal, improve processors and Gain market Share listening to their customers.
X. Intel Even if they have sold many activities, has still to support some dead end products like Itanium ;o)

Mixed (Mainly Bearish) Reactions To AMD's Analyst Day

One explanation of the regularly more bearish than bull is the number of Intel shares, Intel shares owners would (after years of no share increase) so much see the goliath take on David (AMD)!
some of the analysts may not want to see what happened.
perhaps some still believed that AMD was only with less than 10% Market share .Reading carefully the latest infomation they would have discovered that AMD has surpassed the 25% MS. (and a lot mor in servers!)
and one by one I would give the following comments for each analyst.
Michael McConnell.
Do you really believe that Merom even if a little better on power than Turion (at the same price?, and on which machine?) would make a difference when Laptop if even called so are most of their time plugged into docking stations (first to fill the battery up just in case needed and second because when they are plugged in they can run at full speed which is mostly what user wants!
too small argument to be valid then ;o)
Chris Caso
share gain in notebooks was mainly due to Dell. It has room to improve and I don't believe this is going to disappear soon . Vista will boosts Graphic chips need (room for AMD-ATI and NVIDIA (and Intel!) )
45nm drawing dimension is not all. architecture and other process enhancements are key too. AMD is competitive with 90nm against Intel 65nm.AMD will keep this advantage when they mass produce 65nm against Intel 45nm.
AMD and IBM have recently announced that they have invented specific transistor techniques to improve performance twice by 15% ! and they have partnership to work on 32 and 22nm in the most advanced fab in the world!
Mark Lipacis
with his comments:
"with ATI’s onto a single chip, then AMD could leapfrog Intel"
or "AMD is the cheapest stock in our universe"
should rather be in the bull section ;o)
John Lau
when it is said: "the capacity expansion by both Intel and AMD"
looking carefully , it is a completely different approach on one side Intel needs to build new plants goin g with new technology(45nm) and support ALL the old ones(and they are many!) to produce what? Old stuff not competitive to loose more market share to AMD? or products from DIvisions sold recently to other companies? untill when?
AMD is planning production against customer demand and uses also (succesfully) external foundries for extra demand. If demand would reduce it would impact a lot more Intel than AMD! On an extreme case ATI products would also be produced in AMD Fab to fill them up if needed and optimize cost.
Christopher Danely
I would agree that maintaining Gross margin above 50% is something tough!
but things are not still . AMD also is moving from 90nm to 65nm , reducing unit cost!
small other things may help like the stop of the loss making geode chip for the $150 PC.
* Rick Schafer
"execution history at both AMD and ATI"
Chartered does not think so: "Chartered is currently ramping up AMD’s 90-nm processor lines about six month ahead of schedule. Chartered is also slated to make AMD’s 65-nm processor lines"
some Intel manager would remind an Email from the boss telling them that with Intel products launch miss, enough was enough, No better no worse, not an argument then.
John Barton
"product development and process technology"
until now AMD has resisted to Intel pricing pressure; Intel may not want to press too much more, they could then press themselves;o)
who has shown the first Native quad core? (AMD)
and again number of cores is not the only parameter which counts,Security, Power, Memory control, High sped data exchange, Open (hundreds of engineers more from world community) interface to external "coprocessing", ...

With those remarks, I just wanted to counterbalance Intel brainwashed (by good Public Relation) people and present other arguments
Please do not take all Intel Press releases for Granted and yes AMD ambition is high but it's doable

Cordially
Miroll15

Even Without Competition From AMD, Intel Cuts Quad-Core Prices

Thanks William for your answer, what is different from AMD is that the SAME platform will accept dual or quad, Intel needs ANOTHER platform.
since this article AMD has even demonstrated their NATIVE quad core silicon, in line with perf/power expected and beating all existing Intel offering.

Even Without Competition From AMD, Intel Cuts Quad-Core Prices

Hi William,
When you say that AMD is no direct competitor to Intel,
this is partly true, and may explain why AMD proposal sounds better than Intel,
AMD is proposing today a platform with 2 dual core with the possibility to migrate to an 8 core system when AMD's quad core will be available.

I am not sure that Intel offers that today.
cordially
Michel