Intel Corp (INTC)

[Ixse]

I just got an image of Icarus flying too close to the Sun with wings made of wax.

LOL. You made me visualize it during reading...

I'd say your image could be true, yet I'm not counting on it as a sure thing either. My take is NGA is somewhat significantly better than K8 until K8L. I think even more important than NGA being better in the mean time is the deadline for K8L, when it will finally become available in 2007.

(The fact that Intel is way faster to 65nm doesn't matter nearly as much because AMD has the increasing fab capacity to weather a dual core war brought onto it by Intel. That's doable imo.)

If K8L would ship around summer 2007 OEM's will know that by now and will keep their AMD server lines until that time on strength of current virtualization, basic performance that is still not bad at all, and upcoming K8L. Customers already owning Opteron gear will not all of a sudden start buying NGA again provided the price of the Opteron gear is right. Same goes for consumer lines but to a much lesser extent. Those lines will probably shrink but be maintained too. Generally speaking that is. AMD might well grow in mobile on strength and slightly nice timing of Turion X2, and it might even penetrate business accounts with their stable image program. If K8L is basically for start 2008 however the picture is much more dire for AMD imo.

Even provided K8L would be for summer 2007 AMD's share's would still be weak and decline until prove that AMD keeps growing a couple of quarters after NGA launch. Similarly Intel's shares in that case will strengthen until any prove of sustained further AMD growth. If K8L is for summer 2007 I don't think that is impossible. Don't read me wrong: For now I'd give that scenario only a 25% chance (because I think K8L could be very late 2007 / start 2008, and because Intel might well regain significant share in the mean time). So I'd very much like to be sure about K8L's time line.

Regards,

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