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NAS -
The proof of such a decision would take time to show. Obviously you were correct in stating that AMD didn't have a finished product in the past but how do we know that is still true?
I don't know if they have a production product. What I know is they haven't demonstrated one. All evidence is anecdotal but not what one would expect from a robust design/process.
EP
Spokeshave -
I have been using a strategy of income generation with AMD stock. My goal is to generate $0.25 a month per share from options writing, so I am now short Calls at $5 for various months and also short $5 Puts for various months. My expectations are that AMD will continue to return to these levels until they can demonstrate the ability to make a profit.
Good luck.
YB -
This Friday is a quadruple witching day and a war will be raging. I wouldn't try to infer any trend here under these conditions. Good luck.
EP
Edgar -
What is interesting this time is that AMD DOES have a competing product that can give Intel a long term
headache
I would like to point out the same thing I have been pointing out for about a year and a half. AMD has a competing foil set. They have not demonstrated a competing product. Yes there have been demonstrations of samples and prototype systems that can't be benchmarked, but not production systems. You may not see the difference but the oems do.
wbmw -
It was a joke.
wbmw -
Dan, Re: We all know what threat keeps Dell toeing the Intel line.........I thought Dell was the one that threatened Intel periodically to get deals on processors. Wasn't that your theory?
I think he's right. If Dell doesn't toe the line then Intel might make them buy AMD processors. Dell knows that would be fatal.
Sgolds,
Thanks but still my question remains unanswered. If INTC, for example, has a book value of $6.50 per share and someone exercises options to buy at $10, that $10 gets added to Intel's cash position and increases every other individual share's book value (of course by only a tiny amount but you get the picture). The difference between book value and share price is pure blue sky so adding cash value above the book value is a real asset infused, no? So what's more important to the investor, the EPS or the book value?
Dew -
Elmer: an increase in the share count due to option exercises does not affect absolute shareholders’ equity (a.k.a. net worth, a.k.a. book value), but share expansion obviously does affect shareholders’ equity per share (a.k.a. book value per share).
I am no expert here so don't think I'm pretending to be, but it seems to me that equity per share suffers only to the extent that the per share equity exceeds the exercise price of the option. If per share equity is $10 and a company has options exercised at $10 a share then it is a push.
So how do we calculate per share equity? Is it book value? If it is then Yahoo says Intel's book value is $5.39 so any option exercised above that price actually raises the equity per share. Intel's website says the total shareholders equity is about $35 billion with about 6.5 billion shares outstanding, again pretty much agreeing with book value.
Again I am no expert here but how would selling shares at $10 apiece lower shareholder equity unless you point out that they could have sold them for more on the open market?
Dew -
Please discuss how the exercise of options affects shareholder equity. This point has not been discussed.
EP
Yourbankruptcy -
So, there is a very good chance that 4P Opteron server will be the fastest 4P server in the world. Will you try to prove that incorrect?
How can I? There aren't any Opteron systems and there aren't any Opteron benchmarks, only rumors. You want to compare tomorrow's rumors against today's shipping systems. Maybe you should compare tomorrow's AMD rumors with tomorrow's Intel rumors? Not an easy task because Intel isn't going broke. They don't need to spread hype with no data to back it up.
When you can present some benchmarks, not just rumors, then we can talk.
Yourbankruptcy -
If I copy-paste some people, I get 93 W, if I copy-paste different people I get 100 W. Cool down ))
If I tell you Hammer is 200Watts does that make it true and would you quote me?
Why not quote the datasheet?
Vcc max = 1.425V
Icc Max = 65.4A
I know you can do the math from here...
Paul -
I found the link in a subsequent post.
What was interesting was the claim that Opteron will launce at 1.4 & 1.6GHz. That's a real pullback from the 2.0GHz they claimed and a look at the ~1200 SPECint score they claimed shows that even if the 1.6G version gets 90% on the score of the 2.0G (unlikely) it will trail the existing 3.06GHz P4 that's been available in volume for months. An even faster P4 might be available by then as well, further distancing the gap. We'll have to wait and see of course but if this is the way it turns out it is a far cry from the "fastest processor in the world" as AMD promised. I predicted from the start that P4 would beat Hammer when everybody else was buying the hype and it looks like I'm right again. We'll find out in about a month, unless AMD delays it again.
Yourbankruptcy -
Still, it's a lot less than Itanium's 130 W, and also less than P4's 100+ W."""
The max power consumption of a P4 is currently 93.195W
Yourbankruptcy -
That's a bad link.
Neye -
What will be interesting is the juxtaposition of AMDs earnings announcements on the 15th or 16th with the hammer release a week later.
Release, announcement or availability? The sentiment here seems to be that announcements mean availability months later.
Late april should be fun (3.2 Ghz P4 will be out then, correct?).
Could be???
NAS -
This has reached the level of absurdity and can serve no further purpose. I will not be responding to this thread any longer. You are not on ignore and you are welcome to converse with me on any other issue.
EP
Economaniac -
They need the real ramp to start in October. I think that is consistent with most of the comments on both sides of this "argument" so I'm not sure what all the fuss is about.
Which ever one it is doesn't really matter to me but what is important is to consider the implications of a later volume ramp. It means they don't have a production design or process today and after a year and a half of slips that should be very disturbing. The other implication is that if they still have a process problem today then what does that say about the Opteron launch?
NAS -
"Athlon64 delayed until Christmas?"
Please clean your glasses. You obviously missed the "?". That makes it a question, not a statement. Additionally my post clearly shows I have the expectation that there will be Sept volume at retail. Therefore I was entitled to question the statement by Tom. Here's what Tom said:
"This means that the 64-bit Athlon (Claw Hammer) definitely won't be available until Christmas at the earliest."
I think that clearly implies a delay for those like me who expect September retail availability. I also showed that AMD could easily deliver 100K units by September with only 1 or 2% of their capacity if they have a working process. I seem to have more faith in AMD's manufacturing ability than you do. Get over it.
You are being anal and making a mountain out of a molehill.
borusa
If there were to be a change in accounting rules that would result in lowering profits it would also result in lower taxes collected. I don't expect to see that happen.
Yourbankruptcy -
{To wbmw] so what you claim is that it is possible to achieve the same scalability with Xeons as with RISC, but for this you need to use the very expensive hardware, not awailable for 4- and 8-way systems. The secret of success of low-cost Xeon systems with very bad scalability is the fact that Sun can't offer similar performance with their low-cost servers.
You're doing it again. You are comparing tomorrow's Vaperon with today's Xeon. You wouldn't like it if he compared tomorrow's Xeon with today's nonexistent Vaperon now would you? As wbmw said, Intel has gotten back into the server chipset business. Maybe there's a cheaper solution in the works?
Yourbankruptcy -
No, Dell removed all Itanium-based systems from the website, both Itanium I and II. There is only PIII and P4 Xeon left on the server page.
Dell didn't have an Itanium II offering.
Sgolds -
About Brinker: I listened a bit this weekend but not to all. One thing I'd like to know is how time affects his timing model. I mean, do his indicators simply need to touch the bull conditions to trigger a buy signal or is there a time period that they must remain bullish before a condition is triggered? It seemed awfully odd to suggest out of the blue to go 100% into equities when the world could blowup tomorrow. Has this buy condition been in effect for some time and only waiting for the passage of time to confirm the buy indicator? I just can't see this call at this time with such uncertainty.
sgolds -
Now, a reminder: Tom's Christmas assertion was based on his interpretation of the (well known) September release. I think he was trying to simply make a quotable statement and ignored the fact that it was based on nothing.
No need to remind me, I've been arguing the hardest that he's wrong.
sgolds
I've been listening to Brinker for years. He made his call Tuesday of last week.
As for me, I'm waiting for this Iraq thing to play out.
"All we are saaaayyyyinnnngggg is give War a chaaaaanccccce...."
NAS
" Athlon64 delayed until Christmas?" is not at the top of the linked page. I can only assume these are your words. Why shouldn't we assume you intended to spread FUD?
You're going to believe whatever you want to believe. I was and still am under the clear impression that Athlon64 would appear in retail volume at the Sept release. The article suggested Athlon64 wouldn't appear in retail until much later. You may not consider that a slip if you didn't expect it to appear in Sept in the first place. I did and still do. To not expect it in volume in Sept leaves us with the inescapable conclusion that it is not in production today, which means the problems haven't yet been solved and the Sept intro is just a prayer. Looks like I'm the only optimistic one here and the rest of you don't think it's fixed yet.
Yourbankruptcy -
Well, using the SAP benchmark, 4-way 1.6 Ghz Opteron is approximately equal to 4-way Itanium II or 8-way Xeon 2 Ghz. In June, 4-way 2 Ghz Opteron will be approximately equal (or 5%-10% slower) to 4-way Madison 1.5 Ghz or 8-way Xeon 2.6 Ghz.
You're doing an "AMD". You're comparing tomorrow's Vaperon with today's Xeon. You don't know what Xeon will do in the future and you don't know what Madison will do.
Dew -
Consider a simple example of a company which has a net worth of $1B, 100M diluted shares outstanding, annual earnings of $50M, and an annual expansion of 5% in the diluted share count from option exercises. The book value of this company at our starting time is the net worth divided by the diluted share count: $1B/100M = $10/sh. Under GAAP, this company would appear to be profitable during the year in question because its EPS would be $50M/1.05B = $0.048. But in reality, the sample company is adding no economic value for its shareholders and is merely treading water. Here’s why: [etc etc]
The company in question didn't give those option shares away, they sold them. What about the cash raised by the exercise of the options?
Yourbankruptcy -
#4 - binsplits are bad. I guess AMD may produce as many as want of 1.6 Ghz Athlons 64, but they are slower than Bartons, so makes no sense to sell them.
Yes, we could add that one too, and more.
The bottom line is that if AMD had a working Athlon64 they could easily meet a September introduction with volume from the getgo with only 1% of their fab capacity. The claims made here that Athlon64 production would hurt Barton availability are patently absurd. Fab30 has the capacity to produce almost 15 million Bartons per quarter, with world class yields, which is far more than they can sell. They could still produce almost 13 million Bartons with the poor defect density I used in my previous example. Still far more than they can sell. 1% allocated to Athlon64 would be lost in the noise.
Anyone can run the numbers and see for themselves and anyone should be able to realize that if AMD can't produce a Athlon64 then how can Opteron be any better?
EP
Paul -
In any case, I intended my main point to be that it was Tom talking, so I don't lend it a lot of credence.
I don't give it a lot of credence either. I was under the clear impression that September meant retail. Others here disagree and they may be right.
What are the implications of no September retail rollout? Someone here suggested that AMD didn't want to hurt Barton availability by using fab space for Athlon64 but if AMD has a production stepping available today, and used only 1% of their capacity to produce Athlon64, they would be producing about 55 wafers per week. At even a poor yield of 175GDPW** that's ~10K Athlon64s per week. With 6 months until rollout they could easily produce 250K Athlon64s with only 1% of their fab capacity. While some would still be in the pipeline, some would be coming out now as well, so it is easy to show that AMD could deliver 150K Athlon64s to customers for retail distribution in September. More than enough for retail availability. That's with less than 1% of their fab capacity going to Athlon64 if they had a working version today in production.
So it appears to me that, because 1% of their fab capacity is negligible, if AMD cannot deliver enough Athlon64s to assure retail rollout in September then we are left with several possibilities:
#1 They don't have a working, production version today.
#2 Yields are so terrible that the existing device would require a much larger percentage of capacity to produce. (I already assumed poor yields in my above estimates.)
#3 The die size estimates are no longer valid. This could be the case due to poor performance which requires a much larger cache to compete with Intel's offerings in Q3. The 1Meg Athlon64 has an estimated die size of 180mm2*** which would give a yield of about 80 GDPW with the same poor defect density I assumed above. This would mean AMD would need about 2% fab capacity to meet the same delivery numbers already discussed.
I don't believe AMD is doing this badly and I still expect to see Athlon64s on store shelves in Q3.
* die size estimate of 104mm2 for 256K L2
http://www.geek.com/procspec/amd/k8.htm
** defect density estimate of .35/cm2 (world class = <0.25/cm2)
http://www.icknowledge.com/misc_technology/die_calculator.xls
*** http://endian.net/details.asp?ItemNo=2490
Spokeshave -
I have honestly been under the impression that September would bring retail availability of Athlon64. If December is the true availability date then I will adjust my expectations accordingly.
Satisfied?
EP
Spokeshave -
There are plenty of things that you can criticize AMD for. No need to make things up.
I only posted the article. Don't shoot the messenger, no matter how much you dislike the message. The word "delayed" is appropriate when comparing Christmas availability to September availability. Do you not see a 3 month slip as a delay? Shame on you.
Sgolds -
What I'm asking you to do is work the timeline backwards and see what makes sense. With a September volume retail intro, 3 months time makes sense to build inventory. So they start getting their first material in June/July. So the first production lots went into fab about 3 months before that. Total 6 months. A Sept retail release means the production silicon is starting just about now, give or take a couple of weeks. One way to speed things up is to hold some material from a previous stepping at one of the metal layers. A logic fix in metal is common. That would save a month or more if they had lots of material stacked up but it would also be very expensive if the fix can't be done in metal and the material has to be scrapped. It is unlikely the problem is a logic bug but more likely a process problem which would probably require a full mask set. Back to square one with not only starting the wafers from scratch but qualifying and validation.
If Sept is the start of delivery to oems then, working backwards, the material isn't in fab yet, which means they haven't completed their new stepping/process fix or whatever combination of problems have delayed it for so long. If that is the case then how can we assume it's fixed and they can meet their schedule? The risk would remain very high.
If you are correct and September release is just another AMD vapor launch with production material only just beginning to trickle out to oems, then AMD is in a whole lot more trouble then I thought and I haven't been kind in my thinking.
Paul -
Don't be absurd, Elmer; you know very well the difference between availability of a CPU and availability of an OEM system based on said CPU. Besides, this is Tom's talking - not exactly the most accurate source when it comes to this sort of prediction.
I am very aware that it is Tom talking, I'm the one who posted the article. As for being absurd let me tell you this. If they were planning on July shipments for Sept retail intros then they are operating on a prayer. They are still 4 months from production which means they don't have a manufacturable stepping today. That's horrible.
If AMD is still 6 months away from the beginning of shipments to oems then they haven't even taped out their production silicon, which means they don't have a clue if they can meet this latest pushed out schedule. You better hope they plan Sept retail availability because otherwise you are the one being absurd.
sgolds -
Elmer, try again -
Don't get mad at me, I just posted the article, I didn't write it. Argue with Tom.
Ship in September means end user product for the holiday season, Thanksgiving onwards. Always meant that. Always will. In order to have end user product in September, they have to be shipping in July. <yawn>
Woooow there big guy. Are you trying to tell us that AMD never meant to have Sept availability? That they always meant that they would start a tiny trickle of product to OEMs in Sept, only for Christmas retail? No way no how. You are the only person I have ever heard try and sell this notion. AMD has given the clear impression that Athlon64 would be on the shelf in Sept. I thought pushing out availability to Sept was a major blow but your theory is a total disaster.
Athlon64 delayed until Christmas?
http://www.tomshardware.com/business/20030314/cebit2003_2-03.html
AMD: Athlon XP 3200+ With 166 MHz FSB
Our meeting with AMD took place quite close to the world champion Ferrari from Michael Schuhmacher. The stand was very similar to the one from last year, except that the manufacturer's Ferrari sponsorship was put in the limelight. One of the highlights was the announcement of the Athlon 64 for September 2003 in conjunction with the desktop platform. This means that the 64-bit Athlon (Claw Hammer) definitely won't be available until Christmas at the earliest. In addition, there were reference boards with Ali, NVIDIA, AMD, SiS and VIA chipsets for the up-coming K8 platform. The 200 MHz FSB topic has also been set aside for now for the old generation of Athlons. This means that the fastest Athlon XP with the Barton core in the XP 3200+ variant will continue to be equipped wth 166 MHz. The core clock will probably be around 2250 MHz (13.5 x 166 MHz) - depending on how fast the Intel Pentium 4 with 3.2 GHz (16 x 200 MHz), 200 MHz quad-pumped FSB and Dual DDR400 will be. In the somewhat isolated show room, there were some servers based on the Opteron, as well as notebooks with the Mobile Athlon XP. A desktop system was also available, althought it wasn't possible to catch a glimpse of the inside, due to technical reasons.
wbmw -
Big Blue will begin selling the Itanium product within one or two months, said Susan Whitney, general manager of IBM's Intel server group, in an interview. "We'll have IA-64 (Itanium) capability in the next 30 to 60 days," she said.
This is going to break a few hearts over on the AMD board<G>
EP
Yourbankruptcy -
If you claim that new 50% faster Itanium will come soon, then don't forget that Opteron scales better and is smaller and cheaper
While we're busy reminding each other, let me remind you that you have no data to support your claim about Opteron. You have only promises from a company that has yet to deliver anything. For Intel to claim Madison will increase performance by 50% by essentially moving to a proven .13u process and adding more cache is a much more believable promise from a company who has already demonstrated the capability.
Yourbankruptcy -
What will you say?
I will say that not 100% of the rumors are bad, only most.
EP
Keith -
I remember how many were saying last year, uh, AMD is sandbagging, they can produce much higher clocked Hammers if they want to. It turned out they couldn´t.
In other words, unmanufacturable. Exactly what I've been predicting on this and several other boards for a long long time.
Yourbankruptcy -
Because I'm convinced that Athlon 64 and Opteron are very good performers.
I can understand that you would hope that, or expect that but how can you possibly be convinced at this point? There is no real data and the bit's that come trickling in are not supportive of that claim. While true performance remains to be seen, what few unofficial benchmarks we've seen are disappointing.