Newsgroup: it.comp.hardware.cpu
Titolo: AMD Sub-$1,000 CPU February Market Share Spikes

AMD Sub-$1,000 CPU February Market Share Spikes
 ****AMD Sub-$1,000 CPU February Market Share Spikes 03/31/98
SUNNYVALE, CALIFORNIA, U.S.A., 1998 MAR 31 
 It has not been a walk in the park for Advanced Micro Devices
[NYSE:AMD] over the past year, but it is said good times follow bad.
Market watcher PC Data brought smiles to AMD's Sunnyvale headquarters
Tuesday morning when reports surfaced that AMD's share of processors
for the booming sub-$1,000 PC market soared from 18.8 percent in
January to 49 percent in February. 
PC Data's figures show Intel's share in the same market space dropped
from 65.5 percent in January to 44.8 percent in February. And as icing
on AMD's cake, some early technical reviews of Intel's new sub-$1,000
Cerelon processor have panned its performance. 
Also during February, the sub-$1,000 market share to National
Semiconductor's Cyrix unit fell from 15.7 to 6.2 percent. 
AMD spokesperson Dwayne Cox said Compaq's decision to use AMD-K6 chips
in its new low-end Presario line, announced in January, was a skew.
However, he added, overall growth in K6 demand mostly reflects AMD's
price-to-performance market position. 
"If you think back to this time last year, we had less than one
percent of the US consumers market in the PC space -- that's when we
launched the K6," Cox told Newsbytes. "We were in 10 store fronts this
time last year and now we're in more than 10,000 retail store fronts.
Basically, systems based on our processor deliver better performance
for the money. We think we enabled the sub-$1,000 trend in PCs." 
He added that AMD would not want to put too much reliance on a
one-month baseline, a view with which PC Data analyst Stephen Baker
agreed. 
"We haven't even put out a release," Baker said of the figures. "It
just seems to have gotten out there and now everyone is writing about
it. One month does not give you a good picture. It's very skew
dependent and goes up and down every time a vendor comes out with a
new product with good features at some groundbreaking price. We're
accustomed to seeing spikes like this from month to month." 
He added: "I don't think AMD is necessarily beating up Intel. People
are buying these products from Compaq and IBM, and in some respects
that's a negative toward Intel because it means people don't care
about that. But if these skews were coming from other manufacturers
like Toshiba desktops, or CTX, or someone like that, they wouldn't be
generating the same kind of numbers." 
Still, they do indicate that AMD's deals with firms the public
perceives as "quality brands" is paying off. 
Some of AMD's less happy recent moments have included announcements of
missed K6 production goals, inclusion in Standard & Poor's Credit
Watch list, and warnings to investors that first-quarter earnings will
disappoint them. 
The missed production schedules in 1997, which many industry watchers
have blamed for the bulk of AMD's problems, may be nearing a solution
for the Intel competitor. AMD has combined three huge workload
clusters into what may be the world's largest chip design operation. 
One cluster combines nearly 1,200 processors in over 1,000 machines in
Austin, Texas, a cluster AMD claims is the largest in the world.
Another in Austin, ties together 100 PCs running Redhat Linux, while a
third, in Milpitas, California, combines 800 processors. 
The announcement Tuesday from Platform Computing, of Toronto, Canada,
said AMD is using its LSF Suite to conduct millions of regression
tests needed to develop and debug new processors in the design stage.
AMD says combining the three huge workload clusters has resulted in
productivity levels as high as 1.7 billion compute seconds in a single
day. 
Newsbytes notes more than one science fiction novel has been published
around the theme of huge computing clusters that turn into friendly or
menacing self-aware artificial intelligences. 
AMD's Cox joked that the huge computer clusters have "not refused to
open any AMD pod bay doors" so far as he knows. 
At this point AMD's most pressing project is its conversion to
0.25-micron chip designs at its Austin fab. AMD has told Newsbytes it
expects 0.25-micron designs to largely solve production problems that,
combined with the increased demand for AMD-K6 chips, has created
delivery problems and a bearish outlook toward the firm by some
analysts. 

[NYSE:AMD] over the past year, but it is said good times follow bad.
[...]
Ne sono veramente lieto per voi, anche se la cosa era gia' ampiamente,
ma non ufficialmente, risaputa. Speriamo appunto che presto i bilanci
tornino in nero con tutto cio' che ne consegue.
Ti chiedo un commento sul fatto che Andrew Grove ha lasciato
la carica di amministratore delegato della Intel e che
la nuova linea strategica sara' (l'ho letto sul Sole 24 ore,
quotidiano economico italiano)  
orientata verso il mercato high-end e workstation, perche'   'piu'
remunerativo'.
Forse hanno calato le braghe cosi' presto? E' mai
possibile?
Gigi
'Il celeron fa schifo'

 
Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

possibile?
Andy Grove ha lasciato e ci sono molte chiavi di lettura in questo.
Ufficialmente continuera` ad essere a tempo pieno coinvolto e terra`
la carica di chairman che equivale al presidente del consiglio di
amministrazione. Tale carica e` spesso simbolica in Italia, dove molti
consigli di amministrazione sottoscrivono decisioni precucinate, ma ha
tutt'altro valore qui in USA ed e` corredata di vero potere.
Andy Grove e` anche ammalato di cancro alla prostata, tempo fa disse
che se era ancora vivo lo doveva ad internet dove e riuscito a trovare
piu` informazioni di quelle che in dieci anni gli hanno dato i
dottori. Questa sua affermazione me lo rese persino simpatico, anche
se non mi piace quel suo modo forzosamente low profile di vestirsi con
quelle maglie a dolcevita che sembrano messe da una settimana.
La mia interpretazione personale e perfettamente criticabile e` che
abbia voluto lasciare come un pugile inbattuto, con la corona da
campione del mondo.
Quando ha preso in mano Intel come CEO, ha cambiato la societa`. Il
suo carattere, la sua perseveranza e la sua paranoia, 3
caratteristiche che ha a livello non umano, hanno permesso ad Intel di
divenire quello che e`.
Non lo amo e non amo i suoi metodi ma ho molto rispetto per Andy
Grove, senza di lui Intel non sarebbe quello che e`.
Con questa affermazione non intendo dire che ora con noi e senza di
lui Intel andra` a ramengo. Intel ha fortune immense sia finanziarie
che intellettuali e sapra` renderci la vita difficile. Oggi pero` piu`
che non in passato Intel ha bisogno di lui e la sua assenza anche se
parziale si fara` sentire.
Per noi la strada rimane in salita. i 10.000 dipendenti AMD nel mondo
esultano alle azioni passate da 20$ a 30# in poche settimane. Certi
tassi di crescita sono pero` difficili da tenere. La resa e` buona, il
clock delle ns cpu fa piacere a vedersi, vediamo ora se siamo in grado
di affrontare un mercato che possiamo fornire in quantita` oppure no.
Si accettano scommesse...
Gabriele

> Si accettano scommesse...
Io ci scommetto, eccome !
byez 
Ivan