Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
mas,
Intel pricing is already in sub-Duron category. Intel sells boxed Celerons at $37.99, quantity of 1.
Joe
chipguy,
A second pool could be for the quarter when the coming
INTC/AMD share price cross over occurs.
Third pool could be when Intel stock will stop setting new, multi-year lows.
Joe
wbmw,
So if mobile and server parts do not decrease in ASP at all, we can expect a desktop ASP decline of 14-23%, or 13-21% overall. That brings AMD's blended ASP from $98 down to $77-85.
That is a static analysis, assuming that the mix of parts does not change, and that the demand does to clim to higher clock speeds.
joe
wbmw,
On the contrary, analysts have set the bar pretty low for Q3, so I can see Intel beating it.
I was responding to Snowrider, who said "Q3 and Q4 should be great." Beating very low estimates may be "ok" but it is not exactly "great".
BTW, I bought a bit of Jan 2008 $20 leaps. About 1/4 of a position I want to establish. I think I will buy the other 3/4 at lower prices. I am thinking that as the stock descends to $15 or so, it may be a good speculative buy.
Even at worst case scenario, Intel with 1/2 the current headcount and ASPs around AMD level of $90 to $100 should be profitable.
What I am wondering is how the market will react to upcoming write-offs and one time charges. It could be a wild card. I wonder what Fleck says now...
Joe
Snowrider,
I do expect the stock to drop possibly another $1 before Q2 earnings but Q3 and Q4 should be great.
Maybe Q4, but I doubt about Q3.
Joe
muzo,
IMO, the biggest advance is out of order loads. Micro-op fusing was already in Yonah. Macro-op (compare and jump) fusing is something new, but IMO, the biggest contributor is out of order loads, which reduces effective latency of loads.
Latency reduction that scales with clock speed of the chip is a great thing.
Joe
I lowered both of my entries - AMD and INTC. Motherboard reports from Taiwan seem to indicate sluggish Q2 unitwise, and Intel harakiri just makes things worse.
Joe
mmoy,
BTW, for those that just want to see how things are going,
Intel closed near the low-of-the day while AMD put in a
reversal candlestick.
What would that indicate for tomorrow?
Joe
My next laptop is a Mac for sure.
What color?
Tenchu,
While Intel said that they want to reduce inventory? We can keep going around in circles if you want.
It is only talk, like "Yeah, I want to reduce my debt, and I will start on it right after I come back from vacation that I am going to charge on a credit card."
The real story is what Bryant said. Bryant is a guy from who's mouth truth slips out here and there, whether he wants it or not. He said they are going to build an inventory bubble and then dump it in the third world. Here is a direct quote:
So there is some risk that in a transition, you build a bit of a bubble and you don’t need to ship that stuff. It’s a small risk. There are lots of places in this world you ship some product — essentially as good as most people’s in the world. So there’s, the task for us is to find places to put those.
Panic mode? That's a strategy?
To the outside world, it looks like a panic mode, when Intel dumps product at VIA like prices, but it is a strategy.
Joe
Alan,
I think this is true, and has been the plan for a while. I am not sure how much of it is selling celerons really cheap versus driving dual core down into the mainstream... but I think right now Intel is driving toward higher market share numbers for a long term gain versus any short term financial numbers. I was pretty sure INTC would be aggressive in the mid range, but I never expected this much pressure on the low end.
Yeah. Intel has the capacity, and pushing dual core makes sense in the mid range, and still selling them for roughly the existing ASP makes sense. The low end pricing is a puzzling to me as well. On one hand, it can help take some of the lowest end from AMD and VIA, but it can also canibalize Intel mid range sales.
This is why I think Short AMD is a better decision than long INTC or long AMD...
I pretty much agree. I didn't exactly sell AMD short, I just sold, and I don't feel like going long either one until the dust settles.
I also think that by depressing revenue now, the growth rate observed a year from now will be higher than reality, creating a bit of stock bubble on the high side at that time.
Great point.
I think the idea is to wait through the dog days of summer and buy (lower) at the end of August. After the bad Q2 is digested, low Q3 priced in, and anticipation starts to look to Q4 and beyond.
Joe
Tenchu,
Nothing you have conjectured makes more sense than what I see: a typical reduction of inventory.
While Andy Bryant said that addition to inventory will continue unabated?
Downbinned parts? Intentional flooding of the market? Intel "desperate" to show a few points of market share gains?
Desperate not to show loss of market share.
Come on, Intel is more mature than that.
Intel enters panic mode when its market share drops below 80%. It is not question of maturity, it is a strategy.
Joe
wbmw,
Repeat after me: "Intel is no longer manufacturing Celeron 310."
Intel *IS* manufacturing chips equivalent to the one packaged as Celeron 310 and sold boxed, quantity of 1 at $37.99.
The above from me was not a justification of the Celeron 310. It was a justification of the earlier price cuts that went across the dual core product line. It's a justification for bringing dual core to sub-$200 pricing, in order to ramp the technology to cover the performance segments by the end of the year. Intel has the capacity, and 80mm^2 Cedar Mill die are cheap and plentiful to make dual core Preslers out of. It's not a frantic move, but a very deliberate strategy to force AMD into trading capacity for greater dual core production. AMD's dual core parts are much larger die - between 180-230mm^2, and when these go to high volume, even the Fab36 ramp won't be enough for them.
That may have worked in Q1, but it should not be the case going forward. AMD's mainstream to high end (non-Sempron) probably represents less than 50% of sales, and converting this largely to X2 should not be a problem with Fab 36 online.
Joe
Tenchu,
So you think Intel is intentionally making more of these high inventory parts just to flood the market and grab a few more points of market share? Sounds like 'Droidian logic to me.
Very much so. Is Otellini student of Jerry Sanders? FWIW, they are both sales and marketing guys.
But I guess that doesn't make it wrong, huh?
You tell me...
Joe
wbmw,
Good point. In that case, it sounds like AMD already anticipated a bit of pricing pressure. That makes them somewhat "safe" in their Q2 results, but the reaper will catch up to them sooner or later. I'm guessing if they guide poorly for Q3, or guide well and then hit poorly in Q3, it will be the first of the huge chunks to be taken from their share price.
That may very well take place. Q3 will not be very different from Q2.
If you recognize that Intel is trying to unload inventory, then you should already accept why some CPUs are being sold at VIA sized prices.
The inventory level may be higher than needed, but you must stop producing identical chips if you want to claim invenory reduction is taking place. Otherwise it cutrate pricing is not a inventory management move.
The alternative is not to sell them at all and recoup $0 of the lost manufacturing costs. Personally, I think investors ought to be pleased that Intel can get $30 for something that is essentially worthless.
Not if you are producing identical replacement, which again will have to be sold for $30 just to recoup the manufacturing costs.
The alrnative is to not offer chips for $30, but at a more normal (at least for Intel) price of $50 to $60.
The result would be maybe a slight loss of the unit market share, but higher revenues, higher profits, and less pain and suffering for Intel shareholders.
It's unclear how much more pessimistic the street can turn as far as Intel goes. It is definitely the year of the bear for Intel, with expectations bordering on sheer absurdity. If someone were to bet that Intel would be taken lower, simply because they've fallen so far already, I think that would be more idiotic than holding until the results speak for themselves
Intel makes a lot of money, which does provide some safety net. But the problem is the string of dissappointing results and that the turnaround is not imminent. I think Intel will finally post good results for Q4 2006 quarter. Q2 will be bad, Q3 only seasonally higher (if that) than Q2. There is a long time between now and January 2007 Q4 CC.
That's not really fair, since the alternative is to lose even more market share as the industry continues to perceive AMD's industry leadership. Intel can't just shake the benchmark results in people's faces and expect immediate results; they need to offer a no-brainer value in both performance/watt, and also performance/$. Intel is cutting prices so that people who have turned to AMD over the past couple of years do not hesitate to turn back to Intel.
Therefore, the $37.99 Boxed Celeron is a planned, deliberate strategy to trade revenues, profits, falling stock price for unit market share.
Joe
wbmw,
Now don't go changing the topic, Joe. We were talking about speed bins that have already fallen below the threshold of what is sellable in the market place.
No they have not. Don't be ridiculous. Prescotts bin just fine near 3 GHz. The problem (for Prescott) was that going higher was increasingly difficult, as power consumption became a major concern.
When you go below 3 GHz, the power consumption is just not a problem.
However, there are plenty of "single core Netburst dies" that are sellable in the low end segments, and for these, Intel absolutely ought to keep on manufacturing them, at least until a Core 2 Solo has had time to ramp.
Ok, then, downbinning Celerons all the way to 2.13 GHz, selling them for VIA like price of 37.99 is a deliberate strategy.
I agree in terms of performance, but the other issue is cost, and 65nm will be smaller in die size and therefore less expensive to manufacture.
And your point is? The 90nm dies are already manufactured, or making their way out of the over. They are sunk costs. 65nm wafer start is a fresh money to be spent. If inventory is a problem, Intel should stop 65nm wafer starts of single core Netburst die.
Blaming inventory problems for $37.99, while churning out more of the chips just like the ones that are supposed to be a problem (than needs to be liquidated) makes no sense.
Therefore, $37.99 is no accident, not a correction of anything. It is a deliberate strategy of Intel management, to keep unit market share at any cost.
Something has to give, IMO, when you well chips at ASPs of 1/5 of your normal ASPs, and you don't necessarily sell a lot of $4K Xeon MPs to compensate for it. Core Duo, while a great chip, and becoming more visible, is still not bringing home the bacon than many (especially you) expected.
Do you think all of this is priced in, planned, guided and accounted for? I am not as sure as you are.
Joe
wbmw,
No, they guided flat to slightly down, in anticipation of a seasonal quarter.
Yeah, but that is on a 14 week quarter, so if flat to slightly down is -5% to 0% it is effectiely -12% to -7%.
AMD explained the low guidance by saying that Intel may do something crazy, so they anticipated Intel's current strategy.
You have been challenged on this statement by numerous people using numerous reasonable scenarios, and yet you still repeat the same FUD without being able to address any of the challenges.
I am not sure what you want me to do. I don't disagree with you that Intel is trying to unload inventory, trying to keep market share, and one way to do it is to sell Intel CPUs at VIA prices. I just don't think it is a wise strategy.
Re: I think Intel's pricing strategy is flawed.
Of course you do. Intel's pricing strategy hurts AMD. Case closed.
Case closed? Look which stock is trading at multiyear lows, that's the one that's hurt here the most. AMD is hurt as well, which is why I am out of the stock. But cheering on Intel madness, suffering pain of stock price deterioration seems like masochism to me.
AMD and Intel are competitors, but in a way, they are in it together. The combined market cap has been shrinking as a result of Intel price cutting.
Joe
wbmw,
>> Stop wafer starts of these, of course.
Joe, the wafers stopped months, if not quarters, ago. Quotes like these seem to indicate that you aren't paying attention to the notion that OEMs have excess inventory that needs to be burned off, or in some cases let go to the grey market. Intel is probably eating some of these costs, but like others have pointed out, at least this has been baked into their forecasts.
I strongly doubt that Intel has stopped wafer starts of single core Netburst dies. What makes you think so?
BTW, for purposes of a bin like this, 90nm vs. 65nm is irrelevant.
Joe
snowrider,
he only difference is that Intel baked this into their Q2 guidance and AMD didn't because AMD didn't plan or initiate the price war.
AMD did incorporate it into their guidance.
This is a perfect move for INTC because it allows them to clear their old inventory, avoid write offs, and make room for the new product. All of this while driving down AMD's ASPs. Don't kid yourself, AMD's products aren't good enough to stand firm with this type of pricing preassure.
AMD ASPs increased last Q, Intel ASPs decreased. Looking at Intel products selling at $37.99, boxed, quantity of one, it appears that it is Intel that is panicking, unable to stand firm.
Intel stock making multiyear lows every other day does not seem to be able to stand much more of it either.
I think Intel's pricing strategy is flawed. We will see how it turns out for Q2...
Joe
Tenchu,
What do you think Intel ought to do with the inventory? Sell them as fashionable keychains?
Stop wafer starts of these, of course.
Joe
wbmw,
Overall, it's probably less than 100,000 parts, but better that Intel got $30 for it, rather than having to scrap it with a disposal fee.
You know very well that these are downbinned parts. They could most likely run at 3 GHz and be priced at $100 (old Celeron top of the line price), or $70 (new Celeron top of the line price.
The downbinning is taking place in order to snatch the lowest end share from AMD or even VIA, at prices almost unheard of from Intel. (one reason I don't hold any CPU stock at this time)
Joe
wbmw,
Right, the famous Celeron 310 as found on Newegg.com, right? You do realize that this part is so old that Intel does not show it on its price list? That means these parts are most likely some of the inventory that Intel is offloading at low prices, even though the part has already been EOL'ed.
Froogle shows approximately 180 places selling them. Newegg shows 3 other parts selling for less than $50. Intel re-released an old el-cheapo chipset to be able to sell these in volume at the lowest possible cost. Chinese OEMs may be getting these, in lots of 1000 for less than $30.
Intel is frantically trying to hold onto share, sacrificing ASPs and revenues.
The may be a reversal will likely come in Q4, but there is going to be a lot more pain and suffering for investors. Intel is at its low again (RTQ).
First, Smithfield is not a 300mm^2 die. According to numerous sources on the web, it's closer to 206mm^2
I was wrong, you are right about this.
Second, the point of this product is to start generating demand for low cost dual core products in order for Intel to meet their ramp goals for the year.
I am not sure if this makes any sense. It's like saying we will sell spam in order to generate demand for pâté de foie gras.
Only if you ignore the fact that your objections are either gross exaggerations, or already built into Intel's original guidance.
They may be built into the guidance, or they may not. No way to tell for sure. But the overriding goal appears to be to hold unit market share, not to deliver on Q2 guidance. That makes me think that Q2 results will be sacrificed to meet goal #1.
Joe
mas,
At 16-17 it should be a very good buy with a possible 50-100% upswing next year.
In his last report on INTC, Tad LaFountain had target price of 15.50 on Intel. That was about a year and a half ago.
The stock still looks a little sickly. I may nibble a bit, but I will wait until it stabilizes. There may still be 10 or 20% to go on the downside. 5 year low is $12.95, but I don't expect to see that in absence of some major market breakdown.
Maybe something dramatic, like selloff or closure of a money losing division could stop the decline. But, my guess is that Otellini's style is "when is doubt, launch another platform"
Joe
wbmw,
It might be a good time to invest in INTC.
Remind me, when was, according to you, a good time to sell INTC?
Furthermore, the analysts are still expecting share loss throughout the year, and some have even said they expect Dell to open their doors to AMD in the PC and mobile markets. Truly, it is a kind of bearishness I've never seen before, and few or none of their fears are going to end up coming to fruition. If I weren't already so vested in INTC, I'd buy more.
I think Intel will keep unit market share (thanks to the deep price cuts) but will lose dollar market share again in Q2.
I know I had the same prediction for Q1, but Intel blew it on units too, losing the share there, in addition to losing dollar share.
But this time, Intel is selling CPUs in the $30s, boxed retail with fan, quantity of 1!
I have never seen Intel this desperate. Also, Intel is selling some 300mm^2 of silicon + complicated multichip packaging for $126, retail.
Sounds like a recipe for another dip in ASPs, gross margins, dollar revenue. The only positive going into Q2 earnings is that maybe those $37 Celerons will snatch some sales away from $72 Semprons and Intel will not lose unit market share...
Joe
mmoy,
You can always get something better if you wait long enough. But if you need something now, you have to buy what's available now.
Joe
excellent scores by Woodcrest.
mas,
Once AMD go DDR3 they will also have a big bandwidth advantage
What's DDR3's anticipated bandwidth (for PC main memory)?
Joe
Wouter,
Not supporting Xeon would take the C out of CSI ;)
So would a cancellation of Itanium...
Joe
chipguy,
No kidding? When do you expect IBM to ship a 16 socket
Opteron system?
Before they ship 16 socket Itanium systems again.
You might be surprised how much IPF gear SGI sells over the
next 6 months of reorganization.
Gee, one day SGI is important, the next day it is inconsequential, now it matters again. Will you make up your mind?
You mean other than NEC, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Unisys, and Bull.
NEC had 8% of the IPF market in the first three quarters of
2005, more than SGI.
You seem to be banking on the have beens and never will bes to keep Itanium afloat. It is more interesting to see which one will be the next to drop Itanium. What's your guess? I have to give you credit that you were right with your last guess of an Itanium dropout - Dell.
Joe
I Banker,
Intel desperation tactics are illustrated very well on this page:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?N=2000340343+4025&Submit=ENE&SubCategory=343
I don't know what Otellini is thinking, but the ones benefiting most from his "leadership" have been Intel shorts.
Joe
wbmw,
If they see a large ASP loss in their Sempron and Athlon 64 offerings, which is arguably between 60-90% of their business</i.
These do, and will for a while compete with Intel Netburst. The reason I am out of CPU stocks is because Intel has cut these prices too deeply, now AMD is responding, and both companies will suffer because of this near term (Q2, Q3).
$37 Celeron, a bunch more under $50 is lunacy. Intel is already suffering, being at multiyear low. AMD has not suffered as much, but can suffer as well.
if anyone is bold enough to take a SWAG, is to estimate what kind of ASP or share loss one can expect in the mainstream markets if Intel is successful at ramping Core 2 micro-architecture, compared to the additional revenues and profitability they can get from Dell and IBM taking on additional MP offers.
Depends on what happens with Intel monopoly premium. If it shrinks or disappears completely, the relative ASPs ratio may even shrink. If the monopoly premium remains, the ASP ratio can expand.
Joe
wbmw,
I am calling Intel's MP strategy weak, which is to take a mobile/client optimized core and try to scale it up to servers. This is a great strategy for reusing an architecture in the maximum possible sense, but it does not adequately address the AMD competitive issue where they create an MP scalable architecture first, and then find ways to scale it down to the client and mobile segments.
I think where you and I disagree is in what you call "core". In my opinion, core is what performs calculations, and it is not I/O. You seem to be mixing it with I/O.
The role of the core is to provide maximum performance at given power consumption levels. There is an evolution, as new stepping and new shrinks become available.
AMD did create MP scalable architecture (well scalable very well to 2S and 4S, it is open to discussion as far as 8S), but that was independent of the core. The core could have very well been Northwood or Yonah inside the chip, with IMC, crossbar and HT links. It happened to be K8 core.
As far as the K8 core is concerned, it did ok vs. northwood at its time, excellent vs. Prescott of that time, not so well against Banias at the same time frame, ok vs. Dothan, excellent vs. Smithfield / Paxville, well against current 65 nm Netburst shrink, so-so vs. Yonah and it looks that Rev F of K8 will not do that well vs. Merom/Conroe/Woodcrest.
But what I was trying to point out is that the core develops independently, and MP I/O/connectivity develops independently. The cores are not optimized for MP. They are optimized for computational performance and power consumption.
At the same time, Intel is very disadvantaged in the MP segment, because their cores do not have the features to scale upward.
Again, it is not cores, it is I/O, namely shared bus that does not scale upward. The cores are innocent. FSB is the guilty party.
Going forward, we have a short term period where both companies will be exposed in their weak points, IMO. AMD will be exposed in mobile, and to some extent, the client space as well. Intel will be exposed in MP servers, and to a lesser extent the DP space. The DP space will be interesting, since I believe Intel has most of the core architecture necessary to get very good performance here, and AMD will be hard pressed to beat them.
Intel will do well in DP space. Woodcrest looks great based on the latest rumors. I think Opteron will perform relatively better in 64 bit apps vs. 32 bit apps, because I think Woodcrest's memory disambiguation, which improves IPC greatly will help a little less in 64 bit code, since there are fewer load and stores in 64 bit code (thanks to 16 registers).
In the longer term, I believe Intel will need to adequately address the server segment with CSI and their version of the integrated memory controller (most likely FBD based). This could happen as soon as Nehalem, but we will see how strong of a server offering Intel will have in this time period. Likewise, it sounds like AMD is busy developing a mobile optimized core, which will increase their strength in this segment. So it will be interesting in the longer term how the competitive landscape shifts. But I believe in the short term that each company will have definite strengths and weaknesses.
Performance-wise that's probably generous of you to say, since it looks like Merom/Conroe/Woodcrest cores will have an overall lead over K8 core, including Rev F. We will need to wait a month or 2 to see where these competitors stand. AMD will have to wait for K8L to regain the lead. It appears to equal most of Conroe's strengths, and retains IMC, which should push it over the top, assuming respectable clock speed scaling and power consumption management. But there is a lot of potential for hiccups in clock speed, power consumption and time to market, so AMD ragaining the lead is not guaranteed. At the same time, Intel may still have some low hanging fruit on Conroe, so it will be a moving target.
I am quite certain IBM, Dell, Fujitsu, and HP will all support Tulsa with at least 1 sku. Intel is ponying up most of the work, so it would be stupid of them not to at least offer the choice. Charlie may be right that Tulsa is uninteresting to some of them, but that does not mean they will ignore Intel's still staggering amount of share and influence in this market. It might be, for example, that they won't implement Tulsa in their 4-way blade systems, as they have done with Xeon MP processors in the past, but I do believe it will be in the volume offerings for sure.
I am not sure how staggering Intel's share will be in this particular segment. By the time Tulsa ships, I think Intel's share will be less than 50%, may be as low as 30% (strictly speaking of 4-way).
There are many micro-segments of the market, some of them which demand RAS as their #1 concern. Others will demand performance as their #1 concern, while still others will demand power or price. I don't think there is any single "rule of thumb" in terms of the ordering. You have mission critical servers, large scale business and financial servers, broad based webservers a la Google, small application and print servers, etc. If you ask Google, they will tell you that they'll take whatever can offer the maximum compute density for the floor space and power delivery they can provide. If you ask Wall Street, they will demand whatever has the maximum uptime for a given year. I could go on, but you get the point.
But you do now realize that it is far less consequential than you believed, and you lead others to believe. Especially when it comes to exotic things such as hot plug of CPU etc. And there are software approaches being developed in parallel to improve the uptime.
I believe AMD has already announced that they will have both a server optimized and mobile optimized core at some point. I believe their to be both pros and cons to this approach, just as there are pros and cons to having a single shared core. On one hand, a single core micro-architecture can enable the best reuse, the best technology focus, and the best time to market. On the other hand, having diverse cores means you get to optimize for the different strengths of each segments without having to live with the tradeoffs of a jack-of-all-trades. Go ahead and give the server chip a large die size, or power hungry features. Go ahead and give the mobile chip more P-states and a very aggressive voltage level. Of course, then you'll have to deal with repeating a lot of work. You'll have a technology that integrates very well into the server core, but takes extra design work to shoe-horn into the mobile core. You'll want to be consistent in your feature set, so you'll have to live with some features being dischordant with your micro-architecture. Maybe your mobile core should be in-order to get <5W power envelopes, but that will really hurt your single threaded performance. Lots of things to consider, when you have two separate designs.
I think that the thinking in the server market has changed greatly. Power consumption is now as much of a concern as in mobile. Most servers spend most of the time being idle.
I did hear about AMD developing mobile optimized core as well as server optimized core. But that may be 2008 and beyond. Who knows if they make it to market. The near term plan is K8, K8L across the board. Something could possibly be chopped of for mobile version of K8L, but I would not bet on it. BTW, Intel seems to have the same approach near term. NGA across the board, except Itanium, which may or may not be put out of its misery.
I do not believe K8 makes a good mobile chip for one thing
K8 was better than Netburst, worse that Banias, about the same as Dothan, worse than Yonah. That does not mean it is completely incompetent. It just mean it fell a little short behind Intel, in the segment where Intel was most competitive.
I think K8L will be much better. The separately scalable voltage planes will help, but I think Intel will have the ultimate power to scale their voltages, right from the beginning.
I think the issue here is that the memory controller may have had troubles co-existing with rapidly changing voltages. The dual voltage will separate the 2. Intel did not face this issue, since the memory controller is on the chipset. I think someone alluded to a possibility of higher clock speed scaling on the other end, with the voltages separated.
Intel also has the best technology for P-states and low latency power management. I remember seeing one review showing that it takes AMD 100x longer to switch between sleep states than it does Intel. That's a hard thing to overcome.
Do you have a link? Is it something applicable to NGA or Yonah? The reason I am curious because I thought the opposite was the case, up to Dothan. I have not seen anyone explore the issue. I just went buy some benchmarks where Turion did better than Dothan on power consumption (which was surprising). Those benchmarks seemed, at the time to me a kind where a lot of rapid switching could have put Turion over the top.
Joe
Temp,
Do you expect Dell to come back into the Itanium boat?
Dell replaced Itanium with Opteron in the high end. IBM is in the process of replacing its former Itanium slot with Opteron. SGI is BK, so now it is just HP. Hard to pretend otherwise.
Joe
wbmw,
And it seems that as much as Intel has revamped their design methodology, they are still optimizing for the client and proliferating upward with a weaker solution. Perhaps this will change in the Nehalem time frame, but right now their MP segment is very weak.
I would by no means call Conroe, Merom weak. These are strong cores sitting on an obsolete bus, making it next to impossible for these cores to compete with Opteron. Intel's absence from 4 socket market will persist until the launch of CSI.
For one thing, Tulsa may be a leap over Paxville, but it's still a distant second to Opteron.
I think Charlie said there is very little activity now on Tulsa. With all Tier-1s on Opteron, Tulsa may see the light of day in only 1 or 2 of the 5 of the Tier 1s.
power, and lower cost than a Xeon MP system through 2007 and most of 2008. And if AMD catches up in RAS, it will put them in a clear leadership position for the next 2 years at least. No wonder Dell chose to finally bet on two horses.
Well, AMD is planning several RAS related advances in the near future, but it appears that all that RAS stuff (that was supposed to keep Opteron in low end according to Intel investors) amounted to nothing so far. Price, performance, power consumption rule. RAS is distant 4th.
The only problem with this strategy is the sheer volume of the client market, and the cost issues in scaling a powerful MP optimized part into low cost markets, while still maintaining a competitive feature set.
It appears that for now, the strategy of optimizing whole different cores for target market (notebook, desktop, server) is kaput, and the one core strategy is the rule of the game at both Intel and AMD (with exception of Itanium). Looking at the roadmaps, and I see the next 2 years when both Intel and AMD have just 1 core serving all these markets.
I think most of K8L's optimizations, for example, won't translate very well into client side performance, but they may come at a cost.
Do you have anything in particular in mind?
The only thing I see is AMD introducing and "MP" version of Opteron with Directory based coherency, all the other versions without it, with various versions of Hypertransport links. That's as far as interface with outside world. Internally, I continue to see general purpose cores across the baord.
It might explain why Dell opened the door for AMD, but only in the MP segment.
Looking at the near term roadmap, Dell will just be using what look like the best processors in all segments. When K8L arrives, all bets are off, IMO.
The question is, will a low volume and high margin segment become more sustainable than a much higher volume and much lower margin segment?
As I said, it's the same core. What do you see as a problem for K8L not being able to address low end segments, just as well as K8 is addressing them currently?
Joe
chipguy,
Looks like it might be a good buying opportunity tomorrow.
There has been no shortage of buying opportunities for Intel. Unfortunately, I think there is still more pain to be administered on the faithful before things get better.
Joe
wbmw,
30% MSS in MP servers for sure, if not a lot more.
Hasn't it already been surpassed? In the US - definitely, in the rest of the world - not sure.
I believe IBM is still Intel-only, and that's purely because they want to leverage their investment in their X3 architecture.
IBM bas already realized error of their ways, and the alleged acceptance of intel bribe to kill 4 way Opteron a couple of years ago has backfired. IBM will be coming out with 4 way Opteron shortly.
Joe
mmoy.
re: energy efficient processors
The big question is can you get it right now?
These are Socket AM2 processors that will be launched next week.
Joe
chipguy,
AMD could have some interesting product allocation problems
if relatively rare high speed, low leakage process corner parts
out of their fabs have to cover both the mobile and low power
desktop segments to match Merom and Conroe in TDP.
Maybe Rev F will make these parts less rare.
Joe
Wouter,
I agree. If Sempron really does account for 70% of volumes (like people here have estimated) then the "substantial conversion" by mid 2007 can be nothing to write home about.
But if the chips from 65nm, 300mm fab turn out to be high performance chips (as should be the case), there is a vast capacity of some 12 to 15M chips in Fab 30.
Joe
mmoy,
Is the X2 4400 worth more than $60 more?
I think at the time DC chips came out, X2 4200 was in the neighborhood of 840. 940 has extra cache (so does 4400), so they should be roughly on par (just a guess without checking any benchmarks).
Joe