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#51
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On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 21:25:57 -0500, Yousuf Khan wrote:
George Macdonald wrote: As for Intel/AMD, you have a good point about the symbiotic relationship: Intel is now in the strange, never before seen, situation that they actually, crucially need the cross-license agreement to survive in the new x86 world - absolutely no question of living without it. AMD has, of course, just as much need and I wonder if they would even think about taking civil legal action against Intel for their marketing sins. Why does Intel absolutely need the cross-licensing agreement? The only thing I can think of is that they'll need it for the access to the x86-64, but what else? Isn't that enough? I didn't think you'd be the one to need convincing about x86-64 as a necessary component of future PCs. Beyond that I'm not sure but I'm pretty sure that AMD has some other patents which might be of interest, e.g. large L1 cache efficiency. -- Rgds, George Macdonald |
#52
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On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 17:02:19 -0500, George Macdonald
wrote: absolutely convinced that Intel's enthusiasm for "platformization" based on the "Centrino success" is a total misread. People don't buy notebooks because of Centrino. Do you mean people buying notebooks in general or people specifically buying Centrino when they buy a notebook? -- L.Angel: I'm looking for web design work. If you need basic to med complexity webpages at affordable rates, email me Standard HTML, SHTML, MySQL + PHP or ASP, Javascript. If you really want, FrontPage & DreamWeaver too. But keep in mind you pay extra bandwidth for their bloated code |
#53
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On Wed, 16 Mar 2005 03:57:18 GMT,
(The little lost angel) wrote: On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 17:02:19 -0500, George Macdonald wrote: absolutely convinced that Intel's enthusiasm for "platformization" based on the "Centrino success" is a total misread. People don't buy notebooks because of Centrino. Do you mean people buying notebooks in general or people specifically buying Centrino when they buy a notebook? I mean the supposed "success" of Centrino as a marketing exercise. IMO people, and I'm including myself here of course, don't go out to buy and say: "I gotta have one of them Centrino jobs"... unless maybe they're too stupid to own a computer in the first place. Features are what sell a system; in the case of Centrino, one of the most important features, given that its performance is satisfactory, is the power management & battery life which is mainly down to the Pentium M and its chipset; the NIC is a throwaway which doesn't matter. In fact given the choice I'd avoid an Intel-based NIC for just about any alternative. -- Rgds, George Macdonald |
#54
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Robert Myers wrote:
There are no spoils of war to divide up. Opteron didn't open up any new vistas. The business is in a period of decline and consolidation. Huh? Since when? This is the biggest and most profitable end of the semiconductor industry, of course there's spoils of war to divide up here -- lots of it. Of course, it's all AMD's to gain and all Intel's to lose. Tell that to Wall Street. Don't waste your time with me. Don't worry, Wall Street knows it too. You're the only one that isn't aware of it. The high tech sector may take decades to get back to where it was pre-bust. These are _not_ good times. Even in a downturn, we're talking about tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in sales here. Most of it currently going to Intel, obviously. Is it a wonder why so many startup companies always try to get into the x86 market, despite having to compete with Intel? Some firms (eg. VIA) make steady income in this market with less than a 1% marketshare in it. It's related markets, like chipsets and peripherals are also huge money makers for companies. There's this thing called efficient market theory. You think you got the landscape scoped better than the market, go make yourself rich. Please do explain this "efficient market theory" of which you speak. I guess one of its theorems is "The x86 market is efficient only if Intel makes the majority of x86 processors"? Were I AMD, I would use this situation to reposition myself vis-a-vis Intel by way of some agreements cut on the sly in some out-of-the-way place, not by going to court. That's what I would do. What AMD does, of course, is completely independet of my guess as to what they should do. That's also illegal. It also falls into the same anti-trust laws, it's collusion. It's no different than if AMD and Intel decided to one day start pricing their processors exactly the same as each other at exactly the same time -- this would be price-fixing. The other thing would be marketshare-fixing. That's how your mind works, apparently. AMD can sue Intel (not smart, in my opinion), or it can come to some kind of agreement about the rules of engagement. Such a thing could be a consent decree supervised by a judge. It doesn't have to be public and it doesn't have to be illegal. AMD and Intel would be colluding to keep, say, Via out? I'd hope they wouldn't be so stupid. There is something seriously wrong with your grasp on reality -- that's how my mind works? Seriously, Robert that's how everybody's mind works. There is not a single person who wouldn't describe what you were suggesting as anything other than collusion. There is no such thing as coming to an agreement about rules of engagement between two companies -- those rules already exist, they are called the competition laws. You're supposed to compete with your competitors, freely, fairly, and to your fullest extent possible. Yousuf Khan |
#55
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George Macdonald wrote:
I thought it was the U.S. military that insisted on the 2nd source for x86s? No, I've always heard it was IBM that insisted on it. When IBM was first making the PC, there really wasn't much of a market for PC's in the military. The military would've been on mostly mainframes and terminals at the time. Though there were other personal computers at the time, they were mostly hobbyist or gaming machines (e.g. Commodore 64). Intel has always been the principal suppiler of chipsets into the notebook market almost without exception. How many non-Intel chipsets are in notebooks with an Intel CPU? Well, that's mainly because Intel has been driving most chipset manufacturers out of its market in general, not just in notebooks. There used to be a time prior to this when you'd see just as many variations in notebook chipsets as you see in the desktop market, even on Intel processors. Everything I read indicates that Intel's marketroids see it as a grand marketing coup of brand/name recognition... nothing of the sort IMO. Yeah, there was a study done by AMD to find out if it should also adopt platformization too. They found that most people really couldn't care less if the machine was Centrino or not, all they cared about was the laptop's own brandname. The only subsets that did care about Centrino were techies, and secondly airport travellers who are bombarded with Centrino ads in airports. Speaking of airports, I took my laptop to the airport once, and I couldn't find any access points most of the time. If I lived in Europe I'd have taken a serious look at the Fujitsu-Siemens AMD systems but they are not an option in the U.S.... possibly because of the Intel rules/incentives (choose one)?? Things *are* changing though: until recently, it was difficult to get a WinXP Pro system with an AMD notebook. Actually, as the Japanese authorities said, one Japanese company was forced to limit marketshare of non-Intel processors to these levels: 90% Intel in Japan, 70% Intel in Europe, and 80% in the rest of the world. So assuming similar agreements with other Japanese makers and given that Europe had the lowest marketshare requirements, it must have been much easier to find AMD notebooks over there. Yousuf Khan |
#56
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YKhan wrote:
Robert Myers wrote: There are no spoils of war to divide up. Opteron didn't open up any new vistas. The business is in a period of decline and consolidation. Huh? Since when? This is the biggest and most profitable end of the semiconductor industry, of course there's spoils of war to divide up here -- lots of it. Of course, it's all AMD's to gain and all Intel's to lose. Tell that to Wall Street. Don't waste your time with me. Don't worry, Wall Street knows it too. You're the only one that isn't aware of it. For the past year, INTC has tracked the sector, down about 10% over the past year. AMD has outperformed the sector, up about 10% over the past year. If there is reaction to recent news from Japan, I don't see it in the chart. AMD had quite a nice gain from September to December of last year, but most of that gain is gone. AMD _is_ selling at about twice the P/E of INTC, which means there's considerable optimism built into the current price. Whatever explains that price, I doubt it is the prospect of AMD suing Intel. I'm not much of a chart reader, but if it's obvious to Wall Street, it should be obvious in the chart. Build your own at www.bloomberg.com. The high tech sector may take decades to get back to where it was pre-bust. These are _not_ good times. Even in a downturn, we're talking about tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in sales here. Most of it currently going to Intel, obviously. Is it a wonder why so many startup companies always try to get into the x86 market, despite having to compete with Intel? Some firms (eg. VIA) make steady income in this market with less than a 1% marketshare in it. It's related markets, like chipsets and peripherals are also huge money makers for companies. google "etrade AND broker" and go crazy. There's this thing called efficient market theory. You think you got the landscape scoped better than the market, go make yourself rich. Please do explain this "efficient market theory" of which you speak. I guess one of its theorems is "The x86 market is efficient only if Intel makes the majority of x86 processors"? google "efficient market theory" (exact phrase). The first hit gives a concise and accurate explanation. Were I AMD, I would use this situation to reposition myself vis-a-vis Intel by way of some agreements cut on the sly in some out-of-the-way place, not by going to court. That's what I would do. What AMD does, of course, is completely independet of my guess as to what they should do. That's also illegal. It also falls into the same anti-trust laws, it's collusion. It's no different than if AMD and Intel decided to one day start pricing their processors exactly the same as each other at exactly the same time -- this would be price-fixing. The other thing would be marketshare-fixing. That's how your mind works, apparently. AMD can sue Intel (not smart, in my opinion), or it can come to some kind of agreement about the rules of engagement. Such a thing could be a consent decree supervised by a judge. It doesn't have to be public and it doesn't have to be illegal. AMD and Intel would be colluding to keep, say, Via out? I'd hope they wouldn't be so stupid. There is something seriously wrong with your grasp on reality -- that's how my mind works? Seriously, Robert that's how everybody's mind works. There is not a single person who wouldn't describe what you were suggesting as anything other than collusion. There is no such thing as coming to an agreement about rules of engagement between two companies -- those rules already exist, they are called the competition laws. You're supposed to compete with your competitors, freely, fairly, and to your fullest extent possible. I have been very slow to learn some things about life. One thing I have learned is not to challenge how others perceive reality. Another thing I have learned is that there is no such thing as how "everybody" thinks. When you say "there is not a single person..." you are either unaware of how unlikely it is that such a statement would ever be true or you are unaware of how unpersuasive bluster is in argumentation. The circumstances are this: Intel believes its business practices are legal. AMD believes otherwise. Both are presumably reading the same law. That means there is a difference in interpretation of the law. The two companies could agree as to specific interpretation of the law with respect to specific business practices. _Then_ if Intel continued with practices it has agreed are illegal, a lawsuit for AMD would be a cake walk. Why not just sue Intel now? No guarantee that AMD will prevail, even with a judgment from Japan. Relief, if any, would be far into the future. A carefully-drafted agreement, which need not be illegal, could give AMD the level playing it wants sooner rather than later. RM |
#57
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George Macdonald wrote:
On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 05:17:25 -0500, Robert Myers wrote: On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 17:02:19 -0500, George Macdonald snip I'm sure VIA has found a niche in the developing economies but as for China, I'd think their processors would lack the oomph required to do Chinese caharacter sets. I've seen this in action and even a "text" document drags the CPU down horribly... not sure how it all works out. Taiwan and Japan seem to cope somehow. Back to the cost of capital issue, building a microprocessor industry doesn't seem like a wise investment for China, except to satisfy their miliary ambitions, which they do have. I was talking about the relative power of current VIA CPUs and their ability to handle the job... which drags an Athlon XP 2500+ down pretty badly. IOW I don't see how VIA satisfies the reqts for even the basics of word processing, browsing etc. in Chinese chgaracters. You know how I hate to be tedious, but the going word is that (say) an 800Mhz P3 is all anybody would ever need. I suspect that VIA will come up to that standard soon. Are you saying China never will (without seizing Taiwan, of course) or that an 800Mhz P3 is inadequate to do Chinese text? If the latter...I have a hard time imagining how that could be so. I suspect poor programming, but I wouldn't mind being educated. I mean *are* there tasks (other than computer games and bad programming) that an 800 MHz PIII can't currently handle, and is this a real example? One possible answer is that even Via wouldn't get there without IBM's help, but I'm not sure I believe that. RM |
#58
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On 16 Mar 2005 10:50:05 -0800, "YKhan" wrote:
George Macdonald wrote: I thought it was the U.S. military that insisted on the 2nd source for x86s? No, I've always heard it was IBM that insisted on it. When IBM was first making the PC, there really wasn't much of a market for PC's in the military. The military would've been on mostly mainframes and terminals at the time. Though there were other personal computers at the time, they were mostly hobbyist or gaming machines (e.g. Commodore 64). It's my understanding that the military was *very* interested in using 808x CPUs, to the extent that some of the licensees, possibly Harris IIRC, also specialized in making "hardened" versions. Intel has always been the principal suppiler of chipsets into the notebook market almost without exception. How many non-Intel chipsets are in notebooks with an Intel CPU? Well, that's mainly because Intel has been driving most chipset manufacturers out of its market in general, not just in notebooks. There used to be a time prior to this when you'd see just as many variations in notebook chipsets as you see in the desktop market, even on Intel processors. You'd have to go a long ways back to find any substantial volumes of notebooks with non-Intel chipsets though... my point being that right now, Centrino is not making sales of chipsets that would not otherwise be made. Everything I read indicates that Intel's marketroids see it as a grand marketing coup of brand/name recognition... nothing of the sort IMO. Yeah, there was a study done by AMD to find out if it should also adopt platformization too. They found that most people really couldn't care less if the machine was Centrino or not, all they cared about was the laptop's own brandname. The only subsets that did care about Centrino were techies, and secondly airport travellers who are bombarded with Centrino ads in airports. AMD's "results" don't make sense to me: it's the techies who know that Centrino doesn't mean anything... maybe self-proclaimed wannabe techies don't know?:-) Speaking of airports, I took my laptop to the airport once, and I couldn't find any access points most of the time. I haven't tried it so can't say what the situation is... though I hear that many Euro airports introduced Wi-Fi as a "freeby"... until it caught on. There are also places where corrective action is/was needed to eliminate previously non-intrusive, and therefore undetected, abuse of the ISM band. Apparently if you live near a hospital, fahgeddabatit for Wi-Fi - they fill up the entire band for a distance up to about 2 city blocks... which violates the rules but their needs are err, "important". If I lived in Europe I'd have taken a serious look at the Fujitsu-Siemens AMD systems but they are not an option in the U.S.... possibly because of the Intel rules/incentives (choose one)?? Things *are* changing though: until recently, it was difficult to get a WinXP Pro system with an AMD notebook. Actually, as the Japanese authorities said, one Japanese company was forced to limit marketshare of non-Intel processors to these levels: 90% Intel in Japan, 70% Intel in Europe, and 80% in the rest of the world. So assuming similar agreements with other Japanese makers and given that Europe had the lowest marketshare requirements, it must have been much easier to find AMD notebooks over there. I wouldn't call it *much* easier in Europe - one extra supplier in Fujitsu-Siemens and even there they were playing the system down as a "home" job. -- Rgds, George Macdonald |
#59
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Robert Myers wrote:
Tell that to Wall Street. Don't waste your time with me. Don't worry, Wall Street knows it too. You're the only one that isn't aware of it. For the past year, INTC has tracked the sector, down about 10% over the past year. AMD has outperformed the sector, up about 10% over the past year. If there is reaction to recent news from Japan, I don't see it in the chart. AMD had quite a nice gain from September to December of last year, but most of that gain is gone. AMD _is_ selling at about twice the P/E of INTC, which means there's considerable optimism built into the current price. Whatever explains that price, I doubt it is the prospect of AMD suing Intel. Well, a large portion of AMD's stock market run up was probably due to Intel's poor execution all of last year. And then there was a rumour (started by Dell's management) that Dell might start using AMD. And later there was the announcement (also by Dell's management) that Dell wasn't going to use AMD afterall. But really, the stock market has little to do with the business of any company: the stock market operates more on human psychology than economics. I'm not much of a chart reader, but if it's obvious to Wall Street, it should be obvious in the chart. Build your own at www.bloomberg.com. snip google "etrade AND broker" and go crazy. snip google "efficient market theory" (exact phrase). The first hit gives a concise and accurate explanation. I'm starting to see a distinct stock market-centric view in your posts now. While I'm talking about the actual business of these companies. Probably explains our inability to figure each other out. As I said as far as I'm concerned, the stock market isn't any indicator of economics or business. BTW, that definition of Efficient Market Theory is down below. It sounds like a theory in the truest sense of the word, an academic construct. It's an idealization that stock markets exactly reflect economics, and economics are reflected in stock markets. Nothing can be further from the truth here. Stock markets are subject to manipulation by very rich players who are not interested in transmitting information efficiently. Quote:
The circumstances are this: Intel believes its business practices are legal. AMD believes otherwise. Both are presumably reading the same law. That means there is a difference in interpretation of the law. The two companies could agree as to specific interpretation of the law with respect to specific business practices. _Then_ if Intel continued with practices it has agreed are illegal, a lawsuit for AMD would be a cake walk. Well of course there's a difference in interpretation of the law. How often does an accused criminal ever admit that they are guilty? There's never any end of excuses. And equally, the accuser strongly believes that they are in the right. That's why the legal system has judges to sort these interpretations out. Why not just sue Intel now? No guarantee that AMD will prevail, even with a judgment from Japan. Relief, if any, would be far into the future. A carefully-drafted agreement, which need not be illegal, could give AMD the level playing it wants sooner rather than later. Why is there no guarantee that AMD will prevail after a judgement from Japan? A guilty finding in a criminal case can be used in a civil case as irrefutable evidence. In the meantime, Intel cannot make any further contracts within that jurisdiction that restrict AMD from doing business. Yousuf Khan |
#60
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Robert Myers wrote:
You know how I hate to be tedious, but the going word is that (say) an 800Mhz P3 is all anybody would ever need. I suspect that VIA will come up to that standard soon. Are you saying China never will (without seizing Taiwan, of course) or that an 800Mhz P3 is inadequate to do Chinese text? I know a family of Hong Kong escapees that last year came to Saskatchewan from Vancouver. They have 6 computers: a workstation for the father to work on, a good gaming rig for the kids, and four cheap "homework" boxes for the kids that the father built himself. Those four have a 512 MB PC133 DIMM and an 866 MHz C3 ( fanless !) plugged into used Socket 370 motherboards that I gave him. They find those C3 machines to be quite adequate with Linux for tasks like word processing, e-mailing, and web browsing - all in Chinese. For school work the kids also boot into W2K (English). |
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