Replies to post #69750 on Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[bobs10]

you...

While it is possible that more capacity could open new opportunities for AMD (that were closed before), the only time in recent history (5 years), the only time when AMD was sold out was Q4 2005.

me...

I don't know about that. For a couple of quarters before AMD was claiming that they were producing flat out and the inventory wasn't increasing.

Yeah, as I've been posting for the last couple of years I expected more visible evidence of shortages in q305. To me, what put off the recognition of the shortage situation was the surprising way AMD was able to increase production through a near perfect move to 90nm, and then the later "E" rev and DSL changes. The latter things seemed to have helped yields as well as bins.

It's worth remembering that shortages come in at least a couple of flavors. Granted, in q405 we saw lots of indications that AMD could have sold more chips had they been available. However, the more insidious type of shortage is the "what might have been” kind of shortage where projects didn't get done because AMD couldn't guarantee supply.

I suspect more that just a little of the additional capacity coming online will be used to resurrect projects that were put on hold. To me this is a most exciting area, as AMD now has the room to play around with new products and further differentiate itself from INTC. In particular I'm thinking about low capacity, low power X86 based chips. I expect AMD to be thinking more and more outside the PC box.