Replies to post #27605 on Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[sgolds]

pennypincher, that was a fun article! This quote leads the imagination to places where Intel marketing fears to tread:

The Itanium itself isn't dead but appears destined to be a niche product for extremely high-end scientific tasks like simulating global weather patterns and designing drugs.

Question: Why is Itanium like heroin?
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Answer: The first one is free!

;-)

[KeithDust2000]

pp, from the article you posted:

Last April, it launched the Opteron, a low-cost chip that could do some of what Itanium promised. The performance was good enough for most customers, and the Opteron chips cost an average of just $600. According to market research firm IDC, 35,000 servers were sold in 2003 with Opteron chips, compared with 19,000 servers with Itanium chips. But IDC notes that the Itanium servers typically had four processors, and were higher priced.

IIRC, about 5000 Opteron servers were sold in Q2, about 10000 in Q3, which would make it 20000 in Q4, up another 100% sequentially.

Interestingly, the number of Opteron servers sold in Q4 alone was higher than Itanium´s for the full year. My hats are off to AMD for pulling this off. Great job! Let´s see what they will be able to do in Q1.

[chipguy]

Those 35k Opteron servers probably represent around
50k units of processors or about half the 110k units of
I2 processors Intel disclosed at IDF that it sold in 2003.
And the revenue difference is probably closer to an
order of magnitude.

It is amazing the bad press spin that Intel faces when
selling twice as many chips for nearly ten times more
money is seen as a failure.