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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 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!
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