Re: My confusion is over the barrons article which my reading of it is that amd can lose money and market share as long as they do well in the server market. Seems to me the real money is in a volume product, especially with massive fabs to feed.
You are absolutely correct. In AMD's current situation, they can lose share but end up doing well on the basis of higher server margins. Next year, however, they also have the obligation of filling their new Fab36, so gains in market share are going to become paramount. I think they are hoping that gains in server market share will eventually translate to gains in the client space. Intel is still dominate in the business client segment, which is a huge portion of the desktop market. You can already see that AMD has copied Intel's "Corporate Stable Image Program", and I think that's a precursor to a huge client push, which is why it's important for Intel to halt AMD's advance in servers right away. For AMD, I think they still have several months before Intel has a truly competitive server response (Dempsey and Blackford), so those knowledgeable in this market may be banking on some gains in this area.