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chipbus
LOL!
gb
I think the government and financial community around Dresden will ensure that AMD stays afloat somehow regardless of how competitive their offerings are.
gb
Anyone heard anything more on what is supposedly going on with Intel graphics in Oregon?
I'm surprised that there hasn't been more info on this given the AMD/ATI linkup.
gb
the si folk seem completely without explantion for amd's latest offering. the best they can currently do is congratulate each other on dissing the non-believers.
telling...
gb
Perhaps Intel is lowering prices on C2D to expand consumption of them as they are ramping the factory.
I'm really looking forward to hear what NGMA volumes have been in Q4. My guess is blowout across server, desktop and mobile.
and that is why Amd's brown bananas are being repriced.
gb
deleted
interesting that chartered won't be doing soi. that means that until they do they can't really add to amd's fab capacity at that node.
gb
i think the "quiet period" is subject to the following. if anything "material" (negative or positive significantly outside guidance bounds) to the quarter has become apparent beyond the cadre of managers who are already legally bound by trading windows then it becomes a regfd disclosure issue. in that case an announcement would be made.
otherwise product intros, new marketing activities and random management disclosures are unlikely.
gb
i think the issue here might be that gpus are built as high performance pipelined engines for "normal outcomes."
no one much cares if a pixel gets flipped the wrong way for an "abnormal outcome."
ensuring proper behavior under such conditions might cost performance and many more transistors as well.
gb
this may be explained by economic factors. those who build these computers have to get them financed somehow and that has to include pricing for available rather than future computing elements.
by the time these get funded, built and tested the results must always lag the theoretical performance possible. since the "best" way to build a cluster was previously on opterons for a few quarters it seems logical that their momentum would continue for a quarter or two.
i'd look to see woody or clovertown machines overwhelming the list by end of next year.
gb
i think this is pure and simple a meet comp price move.
it doesn't mean they have anything meaningful to intro...although i'm sure they'd like to.
maybe they'll intro a cherry pick sku for appearances...
gb
all of amd's cpu production, assembly and test is offshore now. the only thing left in the us is design and part of that is arguably now in canada.
you could argue that the german government and german bank consortuma have more say in this than anyone in the us (morgan stanley notwithstanding...i'm sure they'd welcome any buyout.)
given that this is only likely if amd loses it's current market share position it becomes even less relevant who buys them since intel is still based in the us.
gb
smooth
why do you think that?
if not chinese why not samsung?
gb
the rate was confusing but i read it as 8.25% plus 1.25% of margin at current interest rates.
to that needs to be added $6.25M in principle per q.
i wasn't aware that interest is tax deductable for corps...
i'm a retired engineer not an accountant, hence my questions.
gb
sarmad
thanks for the reply. so where does amd get $262M/yr or $66M/q of loose change to pay for this activity?
gb
sarmad:
you seem to have a good handle on the atyt financial history. the latest 8k from amd on the morgan stanley note has been posted. it appears like a 9.5% note plus 6.25M/q principle payments for 25 quarters followed by a balloon payment in the last year of the remaining $2.3B+.
on an annual basis with the current interest rate it is about $262M/year p+i.
do the atyt historical financials pay for this kind of vig?
gb
Morgan Stanley terms:
http://biz.yahoo.com/e/061030/amd8-k.html
interesting that MS went for the interest rather than a convertable bond.
$6.25M/q for the first 25 quarters (effectively interest only)then balloon style payment for the principal of the loan in the last four quarters.
note the terms as well including certain limits.
gb
tigerton demo is great news. but proper validation requires the chipset. i hope it is in similar shape to permit a complete platform validation. from what i gathered for this demo tigerton was plugged into an existing mp platform.
isn't there usually a q4 analysts meeting? we could hope for a full platform demo at that time.
gb
1.5x a small number is still a small number. i didn't see amd talking about actual mobile mss.
gb
once c2d ramp gets higher in q4 dell will have to price their c2d offerings more competitively.
i think once that happens dell will be wondering why they have so much amd stuff on order with their suppliers.
remember the real customer is the end customer and they really don't give a crap about amd vs intel duopoly/monopoly nonsense. they just want a good box at a good price that's going to last. if the intel based stuff has the buzz and is priced right it will be the winner.
gb
smooth
no way to definitely know about the inventory mix but i strongly suspect that the inventory will show up as c2d/i965 sales out in q4 much to the chagrin of amd partisans.
i also expect that the 65nm p4 product will replace the celerons worldwide sooner than later. the pentium brand was always much stronger in the emerging markets and should do quite well there.
i doubt if there are many more brown bananas in intel's inventory. can't say the same for amd...
gb
i still maintain the real way to win vs amd is to bring the current roadmap to higher volumes and lower price points as soon as integrated graphic chipset and cpu manufacturing volumes will allow.
the current and proposed speedbins on the roadmap are plenty good enough to hold until amd can try to react. note that i'm not suggesting lowering current pricing. just ramp volume and perhaps release a lower speedbin sku. once all the mncs have good availability the system prices will start to drop as they compete among themselves and volumes will ramp nicely.
i don't think there's any unusual forces at play.
look at the damage 5mu or so c2d did to amd competitive posture. imagine what 25mu in q4 would do.
gb
sorry, i meant the ihub amd thread.
gb
you could hear a pin drop on the amd thread...
where'd they all go?
gb
also late in the cc the inventory was characterized as a lot of wip of the new stuff: cpus and chipsets.
that may mean a increasingly aggressive ramp in desktop and perhaps some new price points from intel and oems, particularly mncs who were waiting for integrated gfx.
that's going to continue to feel like a "price war" to amd but not to intel. add to that amd's apparently capacity constrained condition and it is a setup for some unhappy times at amd.
gb
pso: integrated graphics (g965) delays had limited c2d. past that now as all majors now shipping integrated graphics to meet c2d system price points.
gb
and claimed gained share against sparc and power.
gb
i think at this point with the performance lead not in jeapordy intel will continue focusing on ramping volume and bringing the core2 duo to lower price points for the rest of the year.
that will drive mss vs amd better than another high speed bin.
perhaps in january they'll do something with duo when they bring out the standard quad.
gb
i went to the intel website driver's section and read the documentation on the driver. they've fixed a ton of stuff and found a few more things. the date of the update is august, 06, so some of the "reviews" of the performance may not have had the benefit of the new drivers. of course the expectations of such reviews may have been set by 150w graphics cards...
some of the things claimed to be now fixed relate to 3d performance.
note that they are not claiming dx10 capability, only dx9. that's been typical of their integrated strategy.
however they claim full capability for vista.
gb
g965: has anyone seen a more recent review of this chipset? the early reviews were very negative for 3D. i wonder if there has been any updates to the chip or drivers? there were often such things with past integrated chipsets.
also the reviews of the platform for video purposes appear to be quite favorable. don't have any links but perhaps intel put more work into video rather than 3d?
this could be another limitation on conroe ramp rate if some oems needed to change skus or delay them for a chipset/driver update.
gb
my guess is the ramp is limited by the sockets available to plug them into. iirc, there was a bios tweak required to put them into older boards and maybe a vrm tweak as well.
also many large oems chose to make other platform changes at major cpu upgrade times and these may not have fully happened yet.
gb
A prediction
Not that I expect an outcome anytime soon but I'm guessing that whatever the outcome of the AMD suit, the AMD partisans on the various threads will claim AMD got shafted by the courts.
Futher they will go to great lengths to explain why the shafting occurred and how the appeals will reverse the shafting and/or the inevitability of an AMD favorable decision in the EU or some other jurisdiction.
gb
disclaimers: IANAL. My stake in either AMD or Intel a is minimal percentage of my net worth (which was mostly obtained through 18 years of hard work at Intel.) Now retired, hence: golfbum
up until 2000 i was at intel and much of the time in the sales force. like clockwork i, along with the rest of my peers in the sales and marketing world, were trained annually or more often on what we could and could not do legally. missing the legal training event was unlikely but if it happened you had to travel to the closest location where it was next being held. it was never optional. there's always the possibility that some bozo did something out of line but that doesn't make a pattern of conduct for the company which is liable.
there were occasionally people in my accounts who were upset that their "better" design was passed over by their manager who chose one which had more intel content. those designers were sometimes vocal in their opinions why their design was rejected. that didn't make them right, just vocal. telling them to ask their manager why their design was rejected wasn't my place but i often felt like it. i suspect situations like that is where some of today's inuendos come from.
the "intel inside" program was pretty simple and was separate from any volume pricing discounts. for each dollar the oem spent on qualifying intel cpus (not chipsets or other...) a few cents was put into a fund. this fund could only be used by the customer to supplement their qualifying ads for intel cpu based products. qualification depended on media (print, tv, radio, etc) and lack of competing products *in the ad.* note that the oem could spend as much as they wanted on ads for competing products and buy as much competing product that they wanted. but they only received reimbursements from their intel inside fund if the ad conformed to the "intel only" qualification. not really complicated at all.
gb
ClearVideo
The foils from some of the IDF sessions have some info on ClearVideo. Obviously this was an area that Intel spent some time and transistors on.
Has anyone seen any 3D games on the G965 at IDF?
I wonder if Intel prioritized video over 3D for this implementation?
gb
duke
could you take a stab at clarifying what remains of the amd "case?"
is it now just the claims of amd of "strongarming" in the us? if so it will be interesting if amd continues to press the case in light of no willingness of those "strongarmed" to come forward.
i somehow doubt that their external legal counsel is taking the case on a percentage basis and this has to be costing amd a ton of money they can ill afford with the ati acquisition and the c2d ramp staring them in the face.
gb
it always pays to be careful when claiming victory on a legal matter. amd is still going to sling mud in hopes of some sort of ruling in the eu no matter what happens in the us.
i think living well is the best revenge...
gb
smooth
we've both been around long enough to remember the 386/weitek fiasco.
imo, there may well be an opportunity for a few niche market products to fill the socket assuming that motherboards appear that support it. i doubt that any mass market software providers (games) will give it a second look.
i think most software developers will focus on threading first to take advantage of multiple cores which are becoming ubiquitous in the volume mainstream from both amd and intel. that's enough to choke most software developers' budgets.
likewise i doubt most motherboard manufacturers will spend a lot of time putting out dual socket motherboards and have to support random silicon providers' *almost* compatible implementations. support nightmare with no payback.
this is most likely to get used by sun or perhaps ibm to do something more vertical.
i think this is mostly a ploy by amd to take the pr focus off the fact that their cpu is lacking the performance and power advantage it used to have.
i expect them to beat the drum loudly on this until they have a cpu that is competitive then it will fade into the obscurity it deserves.
gb
smaller geometries would help i suppost but 250 watts? get real! of course the inq could have totally screwed up...
gb
I retired from Intel in 2000 so I don't have any latest stuff.
There wasn't a lot of love in FM5 for Nvidia when I was there.
gb
Some graphics bits:
on the careerbuilder website i've noticed two more graphics reqs have appeared since pso's internal webcast. seems like whatever is going on there is important enough to hire for in the face of downsizing.
also there was a blurb today about nvidia scooping up some significant number of stexar folk who are out of work due to amd unfunding their efforts after picking up ati. since they were a mile or so away from intel facilities that are actively hiring for graphics that seems a little strange.
ati announced they were licensing a mips core for their soc work. interesting since their acquiring company just dumped their mips efforts for embedded.
lastly the rumor (inq) is that the r600 from ati might draw 250watts! seems like they've got their thermal wall in spades.
gb