is...a Libertarian
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Tenchu, just so we understand, when Vista is released you will still be buying XP machines. Further you think there are a whole lot of like minded people out there.
Consumers don't care about segmented ...., they care about value for their money. Now who is going to want to buy an PC with last year's model OS when Microsoft is playing Rolling Stones songs and telling you this great new OS, with all these wonderful new features, is available for the same price.
After Windows 95 was released, how many new computers were sold with Windows 3.1? How about after XP, how many Windows ME computers were sold?
You remember when Windows 95 hit the scene? How about Windows XP? It is not about which app is available today, it is about what the ecosystem will offer after Vista's release. Microsoft wants to drive revenues, so they are going to market the hell out of the new Vista and they are going to make sure the software companies (including themselves) are offering Vista native apps.
You need to apply some critical thought to what you say before you "think out loud". Do you know what the total size of the market is for RISC servers in a quarter? The (growth rate) for RISC servers? The size of HP's share of the the RISC business? The number of units of IPF servers being sold now, a year ago, two years ago?
You starting to get a clue?
From your comments, obviously you have never been involved in purchasing decisions. I thought we decided before that you would stay in your cubicle and avoid commenting on subjects where you haven't a clue.
On your prediction that IPF systems will sell over $2 billion a quarter in 2 to 3 years -- you got to get a grip on reality.
http://investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=8697921
Mostly that consumers will want to run Windows Vista without having to buy another laptop. I know the ability to run XP factored into many buying decisions when that transition was taking place.
It is natural for consumers to want the latest and greatest OS without having to plunk down dollars for new hardware.
Since you forgot - here you go.
AMD is priced to perfect execution plus a healthy helping
of castle in the sky. The probability of sustained perfect
execution diminishes to zero as time goes on at which
point the castle factor disappears like a breath on a cold
winter day.
The main difference is the next cycle around AMD will have
sold off all the family silverware and will have nothing left
but a sputtering x86 business. Well that and a significant
stream of process technology licensing royalties to IBM.
I think you owe pops an apology.
I thought the latest implementation of EM64T was designed to be identical to AMD64, including the two previously missing instructions. Maybe this is too simplistic, but wouldn't they just clone it again for P-M?
AMD's server market share gains are a remarkable achievement. The growth rates are phenomenal in a short period of time. AMD will continue to have a window of opportunity as Intel walks the tight rope of converting from Netburst to 64-bit P-M derivative technology -- which, despite protestations to the contrary, will not be as quick or easy as Intel would have everyone believe.
Secondly any HP discount on IPF chips
probably ended when Intel took over HP's MPU design team
HP management probably has better business sense. HP funded half the development costs for IPF, which would mean there into IPF for over a billion dollars. Sure they would walk away -- no discounts, no IP revenue sharing, just a nice little gift to their good friends at Intel.
Let's not forget HP's share of IPF sales or discounts on the 80% of IPF chips they purchase. Does Intel still break even on $250 million in revs?
Petz, I wouldn't short any techs into the year-end rally that has already been running for a couple of weeks. The time to short would be in January, particularly if Intel would rally to around $30.
Right now would be a good time to be long your favorite tech stocks.
AT this stage in AMD's ramp, margin is not the primary driving force. With new production coming on line, AMD needs to grab as much marketshare as they can. Put simplistically, making a 10 cent profit on a million units is a whole lot better than making a 10 dollar profit on a thousand units -- particularly if you have invested in the infrastructure to manufacture a million units.
Both stocks are bad investments.
wbmw, you got a dog in this fight? Why are you trying to egg this on?
AMD FX-60 to arrive in January
THE AMD FX-60 is due out in the second week of January.
Preliminary reports are that it will be a decent overclocker, early samples went to almost 3GHz on air, with little or no tweaking. If you couple it with the new NVidia 7800/512 cards, you will be easily able to break the 15K barrier in 3DMark05.
It won't be a cheap rig, but it is something a lightly trained monkey can shatter records with.
You have to love progress. µ
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27718
Sun goes storage mad with upcoming Opteron kit
Exclusive Sun Microsystems next year will expand its Opteron-based hardware line with a unique system that packs moderate processing power with high-performing I/O and tons of storage, The Register has learned.
A system code-named Thumper should ship in the first half of 2006. The 4U high system will hold two dual-core Opterons and support up to 16GB of memory. A more unique part of the server will be Sun's use of 48 SATA drives. In addition, Thumper will have room for four Gigabit Ethernet ports and make use of all four Hypertransport I/O links that are unique to Opteron, according to information obtained by The Register.
Click Here
Thumper has been in the works for a long time. We first brought word of it in October of 2004. In actual fact, however, the system's design originally took place well before that at Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim's start-up Kealia. Sun had samples of the system available throughout 2005.
Sun will likely pitch the system as a type of media server that could be used to stream content or to hold large amounts of data such as video files, medical images or document archives. Thumper will also work as part of Sun's Streamstar video server offering. Based on the applications, you can tell that Sun is enamored with Thumper's I/O performance. We've heard throughput figures of close to 2.3GB/s.
Key to Thumper is the ZFS software found in Solaris 10. The file system was delayed, which affected the hardware's rollout. ZFS, however, has now been released to the Solaris Express program and will be in a Solaris update next year. Once it's ready to go, Thumper should follow.
Along with Thumper, Sun is also expected to roll out a new line of four-socket and eight-socket blade servers. Yep, you read that right. Eight-sockets. We'll have more on Sun's upcoming blade line soon.
Overall, we're starting to get a sense of how serious Sun is about Opteron. It already sells four lower-end systems and will add an eight-socket box early next year. In addition, it has a pure storage system code-named Honeycomb that runs on Opteron as well. ®
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/16/sun_thumper/
Cray celebrates Opteron joy
SC05 Cray has earned the right to gloat. The supercomputer maker picked AMD's Opteron chip as its horse early on and can now revel in the market adoration for the product. But while interest in Cray's systems has shot up as a result of its new Opteron gear, huge questions remain as to whether or not Cray can turn around its business in a meaningful way.
"Last year at Supercomputing, we had just launched the XD1 and were talking about the XT3 and basically talking about our architecture," said Amar Shan, a product manager with Cray, in an interview at this year's Supercomputing conference. "This year we have the products going well and all the success stories to point to. Product managers get to sit back with a smile on their face."
Click Here
Cray attributes much of its good fortune to taking the Opteron risk and betting on the chip when it was unproven in the wider server market. Backing up its commitment to Opteron, Cray this week said it will continue to use the chip through 2010. In addition, it will present AMD-based systems as the core of its proposal for DARPA's lucrative High Productivity Computing Systems contract, which will be awarded next year to either Cray, Sun Microsystems or IBM.
"At the moment, it is not any secret that Intel's Xeon has to play catch up," Shan said. "Intel does have a lot of resources, and we know that they will catch up, but we also know that AMD has a very compelling roadmap and a product well-suited to high-performance computing."
Cray's XT3 Opteron-based Red Storm cluster currently claims the number six spot on the Top500 supercomputer list. It boasts more than 10,880 processors and is the leading Opteron-based system in the supercomputer world. The company has also claimed recent wins with PING, the Korea Meteorological Administration and Rice University. Such wins outside of Cray's core US government business prove crucial to its overall viability.
In its most recent quarter (Q3), Cray posted revenue of $44.7m, which was flat year-over-year. Its net loss, however, shrank dramatically to $10.3 from $111m the previous year. In its second quarter, Cray reported revenue of $53.4m – a large surge over the $21.7m in the year earlier second quarter.
Still, Cray depends on US government contracts for the majority of its sales. The business model is restrictive, especially for a public company under huge pressure to grow.
Cray maintains that government organizations now need its class of supercomputers more than ever for jobs outside of the defense and intelligence domains. It points to weather modeling, bio-medical research and more general environmental modeling as key tasks.
"I do think the government funding will be there, and there are plenty of other opportunities as well," Shan said. "There are lots of friendly nations to sell to."
As for what's next at Cray, the company has moved from a spider-themed code-naming scheme for its systems to one centered around mountains. Adams, Baker and Hood are all future product names, although Shan declined to provide any details on the systems.
Overall, Cray has done a better job of late of keeping costs in line with its business, and it has a solid product lineup that makes use of commodity parts where possible and proprietary bits to boost total performance. Cray may even be profitable once again in the fourth quarter, a spokesman said. Still, one has the feeling at times that Cray, like SGI, will be stuck in a declining market, while Tier 1 server vendors and a fleet of upstarts try to eat away at parts of its business. It's tough times for the venerable computing crowd. ®
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/16/cray_sc_05/
Don't forget Chartered production.
It's something they could probably get away with before Intel had a dual core MP part ...
Really, where can I buy one for immediate delivery?
This company chose consolidation rather than growth, and as a result they reduced power and heat output by 84%.
Here is how they would have compared versus consolidating with "new" Intel servers.
Sun x64 servers are up to 56 percent power and cooling savings compared to Xeon servers2
[2] One Rack of Sun Fire X4100 Servers populated with AMD Dual-Core Processors can take as much as 56% less power on average than the Intel Xeon MP processor based solution required to provide a similar amount of CPU cores.
From the horses mouth here:
http://www.sun.com/x64/
High drama for a weekend. Mas just put Kate on ignore. Kate just put Mas on ignore. End of problem.
It has worked wonders for me since I put Duke on ignore.
Kate, I think you should stop STALKING mas. As I recall you started the name calling in a post to Chris, because you didn't like his thinking.
I thought you just got through making a point that you have a BS in business management. I suppose they may not have taught you strategic or critical thinking, but unlikely.
Reactive thinking does not get you ahead in the investment world. At least Chris had a reasoned and logical argument which he pulled together by observing the market place. Right or wrong, can be at issue, but to attack because you don't like the conclusion?
Are you expecting more bad news to flow from this point going forward?
I am. It is the nature of companies with broken management -- they lurch from one, recurring, non-recurring item to another. In Intel's case it has been product delays, cancellations, respins, etc.
I don't know what the next announcement will be, but I am quite confident there will be further announcements.
wbmw, fundamentally speaking, Intel is dead money, at best, over the next twelve months. Intel's marketshare will continue to erode as their products are pushed back. Something is broken at Intel and has been for the last two years. Despite a proclamation by senior management earlier this year that all was well, it was not and is not.
Hopefully someone will fix the management problems at the company, but there is no guarantee of this. Even if someone embarked on a fix it would take a year to implement and flow through a compnay of Intel's size.
Intel is not going to lose money or go bankrupt. It is however a poor investment that will deliver sub par returns for the next 12 months.
Do you really judge your investments this naively? Perhaps a bit more sophistication and you could change your moniker to hbmw.
Clever lawyers will write good documents and cleverer lawyers will figure out ways to circumvent them. FYI - Geode was bought from National Semi. IIRC, National sold their x86 business to Via, except for the embedded division - Geode.
Unfortunately all the important terms are redacted. Fortunately there doesn't appear to be a restriction on outsourcing production anymore.
Thanks for the link.
Math is not subjective. The cash faerie doesn't stop buy to give hand outs if stocks cost more. So as Mike clearly showed here,
http://investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=7982360
what you said
"But in reality the profit you take home after buying in at $3 and selling at $30 is less than twice what it would be if you bought at $15"
http://investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=7987879
is just plain wrong.
Admit it and move on.
I don't know about you, but I would be more like to invest 10K in AMD at $3 a share than the current $25 per share. In my view it is much riskier now.
Alan, can AMD produce IPF? Can Intel make mirrorbit? Geode? There are broad cross licensing agreements, but they do not allow Intel to use any technology it wants. Also, they would have no access to IBM or Motorola licensed tech that may be implemented by AMD.
In general the big guys don't turn over rocks looking for violations, because as you pointed out it comes back to bite them in the ass. If someone feels they are particularly injured, they might sue and eventually settle (Intel and AMD did this). Not enforcing is not the same as licensed.
Smallpops, you are correct in that it is limited to x86. Intel has no rights to mirrorbit or any other non-x86 technology, which includes process technologies.
wbmw, you should check your math. Perhaps a retraction?
Given nothing competitive until next year, it ounds like it is a little too early to buy Sun.
Given the less than expected clock rates of both IPF and Power, and given the higher clocks on SPARC and derivatives, is SPARC becoming more competitive vis-a-vis its RISC competitors?
I don't know, I just saw the reference in the article to a fallback plan and I was curious as to what it was. I don't follow SGI, so it is all news to me.
Thanks for the info on the bk contingency planning.
More IPF delays - anyone care to speculate on what the "alternative" plan SGI is hatching is all about? Also, given the news on Power 5+, it seems that the speculation by some of IPF's future dominance was overdone.
IBM's Power 5+ to launch at 2.1GHz
WITH YESTERDAY'S HOLING of Intel's good ship Itanic, the IBM people were popping the champagne corks, right? Well not quite, because things may not be as rosy as they seem in Big Blue land. The Power 5+ was basically handed a free ride ticket until about 2008, give or take a quarter, so they should have little problems putting the boot in.
Popular wisdom has P5+ pegged at 2.4GHz, a number that would put the final nail in the IPF coffin while filling up the IBM coffers. The problem is IBM won't get there at first, not even close. In initial contract bidding, the firm won't put forth anything more than a 2.1GHz model no matter how nicely you ask. When asked, sources said heat was the culprit here, which is odd considering that IBM stated that power management was a key goal of P5+.
Either way, it looks like the 10% or so speed bump will be more than enough to keep them ahead of IPF for the next year or so. If the problems are real, that should be enough time to make the necessary tweaks. If they are sandbagging, well, IPF can't be any deader.
Now, this whole situation is bad for the business side of the IPF market - they are far less bandwidth bound than HPC, and way behind on TPC-C already. In the HPC markets, the fight is closer, so it will be less of a problem, but still a headache.
To make matters more confusing, we hear that the silicon for P5+ is in amazingly good shape, while others say that it's screwed up in a serious way. Nothing definite other than there could be just about any reason for the 2.1GHz launch. µ
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=26552
Alan, I think you underestimate the labor costs. In the US, you can add 50% to the gross wage for benefits/taxes etc. Therefore, your all in employee cost of 40K per person would mean that each employee were earning $26,666 -- a tad low even for a new hire.
Keep in mind compensation exenses in Europe are higher, particularly given the Euro/$ exchange rate.
Tecate, here is an interesting data point based on IDC numbers.
Do you think Itanium is going to catch on widely?
Bechtolsheim: They shipped about 5,500 systems last quarter. If you look at the IDC numbers, if you get beyond the Intel hype and look at the actual number of systems shipped, they're so small that we can't figure out why anybody is bothering with this. It's just amazing how few of the systems are shipping. What's happening is they're losing the software support. A few years ago, this was projected to be the next $20 billion market, and all the software vendors said, "If that's the case, then we will support it," but now nobody is making any money, so the software vendors are investing where they can make money. The industry is consolidating on (64-bit x86 servers).
http://news.com.com/Bechtolsheims+machine+dreams+-+page+2/2008-1010_3-5857470-2.html?tag=st.num