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AMD takes a big hit & IDT exits x86 clone biz
About one billion of you wrote with the news that AMD took a operating loss this past quarter, and the COO and heir apparent to the CEO quit. In related news, IDT has declared that they quitting the x86 clone business. Wow-despite lower then expected earnings, Intel has to be pleased by this turn of events.
I read somewhere that IDT is letting the x86 part of their company go off on its own. So it will no longer be an IDT winchip, but rather and Centaur Winchip XXX.
http://www.jc-news.com/pc
"...here's too much news today! IDT posted some really good quarterly numbers but spontaneously decided to give up on x86 and make Centaur (the x86 wing of IDT) total autonomy. It is now the Centaur WinChip 4..."
he later reports that IDT has a buyer for their x86 division.
I don't think that Intel is too happy about AMD's losses. For a couple of reasons:
.18 micron grade chips, is now online & AMD reports that they are on track to produce 1 GHz chips by first quarter of 2000.
1) Wall Street expected losses of 250 Million, AMD only lost 162 Million.
2) AMD's copper plant, a facility capable of producing
3) AMD's biggest problem has always been trying to get their average chip price above $100.00. With the new Athlon processor made to compete with the Pentium III, at same (or lower) prices with better performance, they will reach this goal, and also have the fastest processor on the market.
4) All of this doesn't even take into account that the Intel Merced has been delayed AGAIN, and is now not even slated to be a large production processor, its predecessor will be, but its not scheduled to come out until 2001.
--Remove chicken to e-mail
Umm ... no. Actually, AMD is working on the following (and says as much, unofficially):
.18, and then move to copper. They will be positioned at the embedded market and anywhere that low power is key. AMD already has portable and "embedded" K6-2s and K6-3s. The improvements to the K6-3 will include making the cache optional, cutting the speed way back to save power if needed, and then freezing the design so that Intel's little market for embedded 486s dies, as Socket 7 stuff is dirt cheap now. So, the K6-3 will stick around for a long time to come. Also, the K6-3/500 isn't a no-show, just not out in larger yeilds yet. It will be generally available in normal quantities for about $150 by Christmas, with 450s for $100 and 400s for $65-70. The only slower K6s will be the portable ones, and only the portable K6-3s will be in production by end of the year. There will continue to be a lot of slower K6s around (including the portables) because of overproduction -- AMD hasn't sold them as fast as they should have, but if they can dump these on the secondary market they will make Celerons less attractive, especially if Intel kills that market by locking down overclocking and preventing SMP. So the K6 is doing fine, really.
.18.
.18 and smaller and with copper (possibly SOI, but I am told that this is still in negotiation), when the tweaks to make it modular (no cache, 128k, 256k; 133MHz at 1-1.5 watt to 500MHz at 6 watts), when the design is frozen as is forever and the tooling is paid for, you will be able to get a K6 core for about $25. Intel still makes a lot on 486s. This will make AMD a lot of cash. I think that this will do fine long run.
1. The K6-2s will be dropped as the K6-3s get cheaper, go
2. The issue with the K6 inventory is that most of the chips are at lower speeds. AMD doesn't want to remark for all the obvious reasons (they are getting too close to problem speeds as it is as a lot of K6s are still failing within the first 90 days of use because they are leaving no margin for later minor failures), but the issue was not the potential of faster chips, but that they were actually out there (and the Celerons).
3. The K7 is very nice. Yes, I have friends with samples. Yes, it beats the PIII, and yes, by more than the unofficial benchmarks suggest and there is room to improve. I would suspect that it will do very well, especially with faster cache at
4. I am buying AMD stock. Everyone I know who works there is too. This is the first time in a long time for all of us, and we are a pretty cynical bunch.
When the problems with the K6 are ironed out (packaging, mostly, and this will be solved soon), when it goes
Anyway, relax about AMD. Yes, they can still pull defeat from the jaws of victory, but it would be hard.
The WinChip deal is a pity, though. I have rechipped a lot of old Pentiums with those and they were always an improvement and ran very cool.
--
AMD need to survive this. One by one, Intels
rivals are dropping out, first Cyrix, now IDT. If AMD can't survive the price war with Intel, then Intel will be under far less pressure to reduce prices (and may raise them), and chip development will no longer be pushed forward by competition. This will be very Bad Thing for all x86 users.
First post? Probably not. Who cares anyway?
Yellow tigers crouched in jungles in her dark eyes.
She's just dressing, goodbye windows, tired starlings.
Intel has tried to keep the Celeron's performance a secret -- except at the "low end" where it has been pitted against AMD chips. I was a little surprised at how far they were willing to go to prevent cannibalizing sales of the PII when I first read the benchmarks on their site and found that they measured performance of the Celerons and the PII's using different benchmarks! They have since added several other benchmarks including SPECint 95, allowing comparisons. I guess with all the articles about Celeron performance they just gave up. However, my C366 came in a box clearly labeled "For basic computing" with no bragging about performance whatsoever.
Meanwhile, in many niches the Celeron is eating away at the PII/III market share now. If AMD loses their competitiveness, I fear that the days of cheapo, high performance processors will be over.
AMD's only chance is quality of manufacturing and Yield, Yield, Yield!
Geeky modern art T-shirts
>IIRC, Osborne produced *the* "portable" computer,
>there really wasn't any serious competition to
>them
Try Kaypro. It stacke the drives on one side rather than one on each side of the screen, allowing a 9" (?) monitor that displayed a full 80 columns at a time rather than Osborne's 5" with 52(?) columns that scrolled with the cursor to cover 80 columns. ANd it's been a few years, but it seems to me that they had the same price.
rick
It would be really cool if Sony bought the rights to the WinChip. Incorporating Playstation II technologies into the next generation of x86 chips. And doing what the Japanese have done in
the past, mass produce and dump it below cost to gain market share, that would definitely benefit
the consumers and at the same time jab at Intel.
A Korean chipmaker buying the WinChip would be good too. I doubt the Taiwanese would step up to the plate again this time, as they already have
Rise and Via/Cyrix. What about to Mainland China?
Thousands of cheap (free) prison laborer.
Here on News.com
RB
You don't call differences as high as 45-50% blowing away PIII performance? Can I ask who your dealer is so I can buy some of what you're smoking?
.18u in 1 or 2Q of next year, so Intel really does have their work cut out for them. They're getting beat down by .25u processors, and even though they WILL see a ramp up with .18u, it may not be enough to overcome the statistical 75-150Mhz performance differences they're lagging behind right now with the Athlon, particularly with the addition of copper parts in all lines by early 1Q of 00 from AMD.
Seriously dude. Intel is the one lagging. AMD's Dresden fab is ALREADY producing copper K6-series processors (not on the market YET), and are looking at putting 1Ghz processors through by late 99, VERY early 00. Intel's roadmap has 1Ghz in 2/3Q IIRC. AMD is beating them to the punch, and Intel supporters can't stand it. Oh, and considering that the Athlon w/HALF speed cache is doing these kind of benchmarks against PIII's with full-speed, I consider _ANY_ win on AMD's part "blowing away" the PIIIs. THe full speed benchmarks could very well be embarrassing to Intel (read: 100% or more difference).
AMD is forcing innovation by all parties, they're the first to successfully bring the EV-6 bus to the consumer market, and they're pre-empting the whole RAMBUS/DDRRAM argument by supporting the latter, rather then the former because the latter is simply a BETTER RAM process. Intel needs to seriously reconsider the resources they're spending on Willamette and Merced (Merced especially) if they don't want to spend a year or more as No. 2 in the high performance x86 market.
Oh, and I see AMD at