Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[economaniac]

PAul, re back to school. I think A64 will be a lot more mainstream than that. Remember that putting the northbridge on die means that boards will be simple and cheap. The 256k chips themselves are no larger than Barton. In order to support the infrastructure ramp and software development they need to have a lot of volume (for AMD) fast. Intel can get away with taking years to really hit their stride with a platform, cause they can support the development costs, cause every one has to develope for Intel products anyway, and because even a small portion of their 80% of the market is a big chunk. AMD needs to get A64 mainstream (under $200) pretty quick if they are to have enough share to warrant Windows Xp-64 and games being ported over. I think we will have A64 systems well under $1000 by Christmas (unless they are completely screwed). I think they would have liked to have them ready for back to school but weren't/aren't sure manufacturing was up to it. Lately there have been a couple rumours about a June launch. If they got the manufacturing straightened out last November/December that would be possible, and they are now facing the question of whether they can support a launch for back to school (including Windows support) or not.

That brings us back to the "waiting on Win XP" claim. If MSFT has an x86-64 XP nearly ready, I expect that initial A64 systems would either ship with it or include a coupon for the upgrade when available. I expect the support costs associated with shipping with XP32 and supporting user upgrades are pretty steep relative to having XP64 from the get go, so I think AMD might not be able to get major OEM support for a product launch ahead of the Windows release. If that is the case then we might well have the situation where they have the silicon ready for a June launch, but don't have the infrastructure in place and have to worry about Osborning their Q3 sales of AXP. Those sorts of considerations are gonna make it hard to read the tea leaves on A64. AMD has every reason in the world to talk up Opteron, cause they don't really have a horse in that race at the moment, but they have just as many reasons to sandbag A64. Unfortunately sandbagging is essentially indistinguishable from being screwed by an unmanufacturable design.

E