Intel Corp (INTC)

[jhalada]

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