Replies to post #25549 on Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[Dan3]

Re: Remember when Jerry called the original Pentium 4 a "dud" back in late 2000?

That turned out to be the last year that AMD made a profit - didn't it?


Willamette, the P4 core that Sanders called a dud, was hugely hyped and sufficiently crappy that it let AMD make a lot of money until it was replaced.

In the time frame in which it was replaced by the Nortwood core, AMD was all but absent from the field while it developed a new SOI process (and was late with it) and a radical new 64-bit core (and was late with that, too).

The original P4 was a dud, it was later replaced by a somewhat better chip, and that somewhat better chip had little competition (until recently).

But the original P4 was a dud. Will Intel produce a follow on to Prescott that is substantially better?

Of course.

Will AMD be basically stalled for 2 of the next 3 years as they were for the follow on to Willamette?

We'll see. But I'm hoping (and expecting) that AMD's new management combined with IBM's development muscle will let AMD have a reasonably good next couple of years - in which case Intel will not be able to win the game with a couple of singles, as they did with their follow to that last dud, Willamette.

But I don't think there is any question that the original P4 was a dud, and it's pretty clear that this first incarnation of Prescott is, at best, a damp squib.