Intel COO signals willingness to go with AMD64!!

On Thu, 29 Jan 2004 11:59:18 -0500, Robert Myers
wrote:

On Thu, 29 Jan 2004 05:02:48 -0500, George Macdonald
wrote:

snip

As for IBM's "willingness" an initial (reported) payment of $46million in
November '02 to fix Cu?/OI for the Opteron (but not for Barton) was surely
a nice incentive.:-)

pure speculation

Huh? Sorry you can't brush it off so easily. It was fairly widely
reported in the specialist press.

By the standards of a company like IBM or AMD, $46 million is cheap
for a major technology play, and one does wonder about how things are
being done at IBM these days.

It was a major technology fix - AMD backed the wrong horse for Cu/SOI and
couldn't make the bloody thing work. Whatever its value to IBM it was a
considerable *added* expense to AMD, who were drowning in red ink, for a
project which was 3months past due delivery with no viable route to
completion.

Possible real incentives for IBM:

Volume for its East Fishkill line.

Different item - this was an initial payment to put out a fire, before and
over and above the technology exchange agreement they struck later. BTW I
haven't seen where IBM is acting as a foundry for AMD???

Tactical/strategic move whose real target is Intel.

Hmmm - whatever... it seems to be working if so.shrug

Some manager needed $46 million to hit his revenue targets.

Windfalls are always nice. I doubt that the figure was arrived at by such
cynical means.

Even the possibility that the third might be the real reason should be
enough to make you think twice about owning IBM stock, unless you
think someone with more strategic vision can mount a hostile takeover
and stop IBM from becoming an overpriced job shopper.

"Hostile takeover" of whom? The fact that the collaboration has been so
successful for both AMD and IBM gives the lie to your third option IMO. As
for IBM being overpriced, when you have the kind of IP portfolio they own,
your in the catbird seat. The industry, Intel excepted as far as is known,
is beating a path to their door.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

On Thu, 29 Jan 2004 12:59:19 GMT, "Yousuf Khan"
wrote:

"George Macdonald" wrote in message
.. .
Yes the AMD servers must be quite a shock to the people at Intel who
thought that AMD would never get more than a nibble at the high ASP
sector.
Mind you I haven't seen any firm reports that corporations are biting on
Opteron - AMD *could* do a better job on "visibility".

Nothing specific except anecdotal evidence that customers are clamoring for
Opterons. Various articles have noted as much, without being too specific
either. For example this article:

http://www.techworld.com/news/index....ews&NewsID=943

It mentions:

"HP didn't have any choice," says James Governor, principal analyst at
research firm RedMonk. "Any market-driven organisation didn't have any
choice. If HP were making its decisions based on religious arguments, then
it wouldn't go anywhere near AMD. But if it's basing it on market reality,
it's doing the right thing."

So it seems pretty much the customer bases alone are telling these companies
to go with Opteron. That was also the case for the first major OEM Opteron
server from IBM last year -- they did it because their customers asked them
to.

Yeah but I need more proof.:-) I want to hear that it's fitting into the
Xeon sector... e.g. some corporation with a huge SAP commitment "needs it".
Some of the names mentioned as buyers have seemed to be specialist tech
apps.

It was also a bit disappointing to see that Newisys couldn't hack it on its
own, even with seed money from AMD and had to be taken over by Sanmina.

Rgds, George Macdonald

"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??

"Yousuf Khan" wrote in message
le.rogers.com...

That's because there's no 64-bit software market yet. That's Intel's
whole point.

If there's no 64-bit software market yet, then why did Intel make the
Itanium?


There are a huge number of reasons, but I assure you none of them
involve creating a processor on which the massive amount of existing 64-bit
software can execute.

DS

"George Macdonald" wrote in message
...
Yeah but I need more proof.:-) I want to hear that it's fitting into the
Xeon sector... e.g. some corporation with a huge SAP commitment "needs
it".
Some of the names mentioned as buyers have seemed to be specialist tech
apps.

Well, you gotta assume that with over 10,000 Opteron servers sold in one
quarter alone, some of them must be going to the average joe corporate user
and not just to specialist shops.

It was also a bit disappointing to see that Newisys couldn't hack it on
its
own, even with seed money from AMD and had to be taken over by Sanmina.

Sanmina probably wouldn't have invested in it, if it didn't think there was
quite a bit of money to be made back on it. Sanmina was acting as Newisys's
manufacturing partner before anyways. So Sanmina knew how much money could
be made from this business.

Yousuf Khan

On Thu, 29 Jan 2004 08:47:53 -0600, Spamme Now
wrote:
This is a very interesting thread. I guess intel miscalculated the
need for a low end 64 bit systems for home and small business users. I
wonder if the introduction of Apple's low end 64 bit systems is also
pushing intel?

I doubt it. Apple has approximately 2% of the worldwide PC market
share. There are more PCs with Intel chips in them sold in two weeks
than what Apple ships in a year.

Besides, Apple is a PC maker, Intel is a chip manufacturer. They
really aren't competing against one another.

I'm sure the main focus now is opteron but these
PowerPC systems by Apple really look nice also. The benchmarks on the
apple site look unreal, but you never know. The benchmarks really blow
the opteron away. Whatever.

The benchmarks ARE unreal, or at the very least they are very
carefully hand-picked. The PowerPC 970 (the 'G5' in Apple-speak) is a
perfectly good chip and it's pretty evenly matched to today's Opteron
and P4 processors. There are also a few areas where it really excels
as compared to the P4/Opteron because it's a very different design.
By the same notion, there are a few areas where the PPC 970 really
stinks it up as compared to the P4/Opteron. For the most part though,
performance is similar.

Of course, Apple focuses largely on those few applications where the
PPC 970 does very well. They also manage to get some EXTRODINARLY BAD
scores for PCs on tests where others score MUCH better using the same
software and hardware. Their results for SPEC tests are the most
obvious example, where Apple managed scores about 30-50% lower than
what other people have managed using the same hardware and same
compiler.

All just a part of the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field (tm).

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla underscore 20 at yahoo dot ca

On Thu, 29 Jan 2004 15:23:08 -0500, George Macdonald
wrote:

On Thu, 29 Jan 2004 11:59:18 -0500, Robert Myers
wrote:

On Thu, 29 Jan 2004 05:02:48 -0500, George Macdonald
wrote:

snip

As for IBM's "willingness" an initial (reported) payment of $46million in
November '02 to fix Cu?/OI for the Opteron (but not for Barton) was surely
a nice incentive.:-)

pure speculation

Huh? Sorry you can't brush it off so easily. It was fairly widely
reported in the specialist press.


Oh dear. You have to be _really_ careful when posting. I took the
$46 million as fact and was pondering what might be going on at IBM.
I wanted to acknowledge that what _I_ was engaged in was pure
speculation.

By the standards of a company like IBM or AMD, $46 million is cheap
for a major technology play, and one does wonder about how things are
being done at IBM these days.

It was a major technology fix - AMD backed the wrong horse for Cu/SOI and
couldn't make the bloody thing work. Whatever its value to IBM it was a
considerable *added* expense to AMD, who were drowning in red ink, for a
project which was 3months past due delivery with no viable route to
completion.

That it was a significant and painful expense to AMD is hereby fully
acknowledged.

Possible real incentives for IBM:

Volume for its East Fishkill line.

Different item - this was an initial payment to put out a fire, before and
over and above the technology exchange agreement they struck later. BTW I
haven't seen where IBM is acting as a foundry for AMD???

google

IBM AMD foundry "East Fishkill"

for a veritable cornucopia of speculation, including the possibility
that IBM has a stake in the Dresden facility. I can barely keep track
of it, and I don't know what the latest and most "authoritative"
speculation is.

Tactical/strategic move whose real target is Intel.

Hmmm - whatever... it seems to be working if so.shrug


For a version of my exact logic, plucked from the sea of speculation
produced by the search proposed above, see

http://www.internetnews.com/infra/article.php/1566591

begin quote

To compete with an 800-pound gorilla like Intel (Quote, Chart), you
have to be a 800-pound gorilla - or at least join forces with one.

That's the thinking at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) (Quote, Chart),
which Wednesday said it is teaming up with IBM (Quote, Chart) to
jointly develop chip-making technologies for use in future
high-performance products.

snip

IBM said it is more than happy to lend a hand in making chips with
AMD. Big Blue's microprocessor division has also had a bone to pick
with Intel with the advent of Xeon and 64-bit Itanium processors
making bigger and bigger waves in high-end systems.

snip.

All of the saber rattling is an attempt to get the attention of Intel,
which is focused on three major process transitions - 130nm
lithography, 300mm wafers and copper interconnects.

Deutsche Bank Securities analyst Ben Lynch says Intel's competition
will have to deal with the No. 1 chipmaker's improved performance as
its top-line has slowed.

"A key element of Intel's continued competitive advantage has been
ongoing leadership in semiconductor process technology," said Lynch.
"We expect the company's relative scale and aggressive investment
budget to allow Intel to retain its technology competitive advantage
over most, if not all, of its peers."

end quote

Intel can and will spend extravagantly on process, becuase it
understands that leadership in process technology is essential to
staying king of the hill. IBM has incredible depth of talent in
process, but insufficient volume on its own to stay there. AMD has to
go out of house for process, and if it really wants to compete with
Intel, there has to be some place for it to go to than can compete
with Intel. Cooperation in depth between AMD and IBM seems like a
natural for both of them.

Some manager needed $46 million to hit his revenue targets.

Windfalls are always nice. I doubt that the figure was arrived at by such
cynical means.

IBM microelectronics has been losing money. It just got "merged" with
the systems division, although the heads of both divisions are somehow
supposed to keep their jobs and their titles (?). The pressure on IBM
microelectronics to generate revenue has been intense. So intense, I
was speculating, that it is not inconceivable that it took mere money
in return for something of incredible value. The old IBM would have
laughed in your face had you proposed such a deal and told you not to
let the door hit you on the ass on your way out.

If IBM _didn't_ get more than just money out of such an opportunity,
it was a grotesque mistake on their part. As it is, I think IBM did
get more than just money out of the deal, but neither AMD nor IBM is
going to be forthcoming as to just what.

Even the possibility that the third might be the real reason should be
enough to make you think twice about owning IBM stock, unless you
think someone with more strategic vision can mount a hostile takeover
and stop IBM from becoming an overpriced job shopper.

"Hostile takeover" of whom? The fact that the collaboration has been so
successful for both AMD and IBM gives the lie to your third option IMO. As
for IBM being overpriced, when you have the kind of IP portfolio they own,
your in the catbird seat. The industry, Intel excepted as far as is known,
is beating a path to their door.


That being the case, what get get by building a one-year chart with
IBM, INTC, and AMD at www.bloomberg.com suggests that whoever is
running IBM is doing a lousy job of realizing value for stockholders.

I don't follow capital markets closely enough to know who does these
things how these days, but if IBM is sitting in the catbird seat and
the best it can do in the equity markets with its current management
is what it has been doing, then it sounds like leveraged buyout time
to me.

RM

In article ,
George Macdonald writes:
On Wed, 28 Jan 2004 23:09:19 -0800, "David Schwartz"
wrote:


"Yousuf Khan" wrote in message
le.rogers.com...


http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/040128/tech_intel_64bit_1.html


Nothing in the article or elsewhere even remotely suggests that Intel
will use AMD64 or anything that is similar to it in any way other than it
will run 64-bit software (source code compatability in high-level
languages).

The article most certainly does suggest that an analyst read things that
way. Whether Otellini meant that is another matter - Itanium for the
desktop does not "fit" either - an Iteleron??shrug

Maybe you've hit the nail on the head.

For the enlightened, the "Celeron" moniker is usually an insult, so
maybe Intel wants to "fit" their X86-64 into the Itanium line under
some sort of "Celeron-X" badge. Of course they wouldn't want to admit
it's an insult. If they really have to adopt X86-64, I wouldn't be at
all surprised to see some sort of spin applied that could power a
major city. (or preferably, a Space Elevator)

Dale Pontius

"David Schwartz" wrote in message
...
If there's no 64-bit software market yet, then why did Intel make the
Itanium?


There are a huge number of reasons, but I assure you none of them
involve creating a processor on which the massive amount of existing
64-bit
software can execute.

Here's some more information that seems to have come out as of today about
this:

http://news.com.com/2100-1006-5150336.html

Apparently CT is part of a new two-letter acronym system at Intel. HT is
Hyperthreading, VT is Vanderpool, and LT is LaGrande. The article somehow
manages to forget to define what the CT means exactly. Why not YT?

Apparently Intel will be showcasing this CT at its IDF in Feb.

I'm now convinced that the recent announcement by HP of wanting to adopt
"Opteron-like" chips in the future is somehow related to all of these other
rumours. HP never said it wanted Opteron itself, just Opteron-like. Either
HP went to Intel and said that they better come up with a 64-bit x86 fast,
because we can't keep ignoring our customers. Or Intel said to HP, we're
going to make an announcement about a 64-bit x86 soon, so you can go ahead
and announce something to your customers about your desire to implement it
now.

Yousuf Khan

"Yousuf Khan" wrote in message
le.rogers.com...


Here's some more information that seems to have come out as of today about
this:

http://news.com.com/2100-1006-5150336.html


Interesting. Intel knows these announcements will hurt the Itanium
platform. Perhaps Intel is giving up on Itanium, leaving just Xeon to
compete with the Opteron. In that case, this annoucement makes perfect
sense. Anyone on the fence between Xeon and Opteron is now more likely to
either wait or choose the Xeon now.

I think more than anything, these types of annoucements are calculated
to try to slow down the adoption of the Opteron. If there's going to be
something new "any day now", you don't want to take any radical steps today.

DS

"David Schwartz" wrote in message
...
Interesting. Intel knows these announcements will hurt the Itanium
platform. Perhaps Intel is giving up on Itanium, leaving just Xeon to
compete with the Opteron. In that case, this annoucement makes perfect
sense. Anyone on the fence between Xeon and Opteron is now more likely to
either wait or choose the Xeon now.

I think more than anything, these types of annoucements are calculated
to try to slow down the adoption of the Opteron. If there's going to be
something new "any day now", you don't want to take any radical steps
today.

Maybe, hard to say if that will work though. Opteron is already here now, CT
won't be around for a few more quarters yet.

Yousuf Khan