Intel Corp (INTC)

[wbmw]

Re: No, I included value to mainstream 915P and 915G parts as well. The prices were $37 and $41.

Here's the list I've seen:

848P - $21
865GV - $24
865PE - $24
865G - $36

910GL - $26
915PL - $28
915GL - $28
915P - $29
915GV - $31
915G - $37
925XE - $50

945PL - $35
945P - $35
945G - $40
955X - $50
975X - $50

The low end parts are in the range of $21-28, the mainstream are $29-40, the high end are $50. Given a volume mix of 30/60/10, that's an ASP just north of $32. At this point, you have to figure in an extra 10-15% standard discount due to volume or bundle purchases, which brings the ASP south of $30.

Re: First, I calculated $30 and slightly higher on the costs of mainstream parts (that is the cost based on your formula), and you also claimed CPU cost is also $30. Your claim that the cost of a chipset and a CPU are roughly the same is, frankly, laughable.

What are you talking about?? I put the cost of chipsets at <$25, including both the northbridge and southbridge, and the data above combined with my 15-20% margin estimate strongly agrees with that. Chipset and CPU costs are not the same, but the cost of two chipset components being within $5-10 of the cost of the CPU should not be too surprising to you.

Re: My claim is that Intel CPU costs are roughly $38 and chipsets are no higher than low $20s. Others can judge for themselves which set of numbers is believable.

Well sure they can. They have the ASPs of CPUs in front of them, and a good, educated guess as to the ASPs of chipsets (MCH+ICH combos) that I provided above. They can also judge for themselves if chipsets have a high GM of 35% like you suggest, or if they are more familiar with this business they can use the value of 15-20%, which I believe is more standard, and does not constitute "losing money" or "predatory pricing", like you shamelessly suggested in a previous post.

Put all together, I think I have a much more convincing data set. It shows about $40 avg cost for AMD CPUs and $30 avg cost for Intel CPUs, and that's with the die size benefit in the fourth quarter on AMD's side. This year, I expect Intel's costs to be lower, and AMD's costs to be somewhat higher prior to the Fab36 ramp, and possibly lower by the end of the year.

I guess it's a matter of dollars and cents, but across hundreds of millions of units throughout the year, it all adds up.