AMD should stay, go, stay, go, stay....

Mike,

Putting my engineer hat on, I honestly believe we need AMD to go, and Transmeta to stay. There is something very.. redundant, about the engineering that AMD is engaged in. The computer industry is stalling because of exactly the kind of "let's not change too much" attitude that AMD exhibits in all of its products - even flash. Not saying that AMD are the only ones to blame, or even near the head of the list (I'd say Microsoft win that one) but they really aren't helping the industry (or consumers) out at all. Indeed, their whole "let's keep x86 forever" push is doing everybody a great disservice. If you don't believe me, just use an Apple to see what a properly designed platform is like. Then go try an Itanium box and note how it makes the _Apple_ look badly designed!

Until you've had an Itanium box sitting on your desk, you just don't know what you're missing. AMD are trying their very best to stop you from finding out. And you want them to stay?

Soapboxing,
Duraid

AMD should stay
Hi Mike,

I couldn't agree with you more on the analysis you've done on AMD vs Intel story. Most of us like like to root for the underdog for the good reasons (like the ones you've explained in your story.) AMD had done a fanastic job with one tenth the capital of Intel. I've been a semiconductor engineer for over 20 years and understand how tough this business can be. Personally, I think AMD has done a great job considering the adversity they face.

From the bottom of my heart thank you for your GREAT JOURNALISM! The Inquirer is my number one source for technology news. Live healthy, we want you around for a long time!

Sincerely yours,
Gus Tombros

Intel should go
The claim that the chip war is over is pure FUD. Nothing could be further from the truth. I think the real reason this claim was propagated is a round-about attempt to derail sucess, seeing Chipzilla has no immediate answer to AMD64 and Opteron/Athlon64. If you think about it, this is a Modus-Operandi of such questioned business that dates back to Athlon. Just another FUD. There have been several such attempts to derail the latest offerings, this is not the first nor will it be the last. Sway the analysts with FUD claims.

Robert Bateman

Intel should go

AMD should stay, Intel should stay
Dear Mike,

First off, I'd like to say I enjoy reading The Inquirer on a daily basis. Your articles are unbiased, witty, and informative. Thanks for producing such a great read.

Hurray for consumers! You're completely right when you say the consumers need bothe Intel and AMD to push technology and to keep prices low. It would be a terrible event if one or the other were to stop producing processors.

My one gripe about this article is the article itself. The views (whether they're fact or prediction) from some technology analysts are bad enough for investor confidence in AMD. Do you really think publishing this article is going to help AMD with any problems they may or may not be having? If you really do want to keep AMD around I'd suggest not publishing more articles about how the company is failing.

Keep up the great work!

Sincerely
Chris from Canada

MBAs should go
Mike

I'm sick of these fancy suited idiots with MBAs predicting technology among other things. They base their analysis on superficial information and their misunderstanding of the market for these products.

1. For some odd reason MBAs at corporations around the world insist that computer users don't require high performance. Yet, these are the types that annoy IT departments with insane requests for faster laptops with features that they will use rarely, yet require IT to do a lot of set up; example; being able to share files on the web, when email will do just fine, or being able to down load their email on some palm job while riding the subway, in a tunnel.

2. These types espouse computers are just for business, for uses such as email, spreadsheets, and word processing. When engaged in casual conversation about uses for machines they become annoyed and show disdain when mentioned performance is needed for CAD, video processing, and games, or that faster machines will improve effiency and productivity, and lower employee stress.

3. The VCR market in the 1970's was just expensive equipent for TV stations. Today, everyone has one in their living room. Computers are the same. For every business machine deployed I imagine there are three computers going out into teenagers' bedrooms.

This elitist attitude is what made Intel miss the boat on 64-bit desktop computering. Intel executives listened far too much to these "talking heads".

[Rant about Olga Kharif edited out for family magazine reasons. Ed.]

I recall a television ad years ago. In it, a bunch of young junior execs were sitting around a board room discusing which computers to get. Some one brings up what a great idea it would be to buy computers with RISC processors, which he thought were the processors of the future and that more software in the future would be for RISC processors. He thinks to himself, in a narrated voice, that he is going to save his company millions of dollars. The same logic applies here. So AMD hasn't moved to the bigger wafers yet. Which means less chips made per batch, big deal!

AMD is in a position to dominate the market as they never had before, even more than in the K6 days, when the fastest Pentium was a 266, while AMD was making chips hitting 450 in a Super Socket 7.

These are the same people years ago that complained the K6s wouldn't run on Windows 3.11 properly, that some how they were less compatible than Pentiums.

Jeff Dranetz

AMD should go, sell the shares now
Mike:

What we need and what we get are two different things. I just sold 5000 shares of AMD several weeks ago because I came to the same conclusion as business week.

Now I'm going to take the money and short Dell and wait for all the bad things you (correctly) write about to come true. Dell made their bed now they can lie in it.

The only thing that's going to keep AMD in the processor business is if Intel starts giving them money, and that will never happen.

AMD just had the best quarter it's ever going to have in the next 3 years and it still lost money. No company can hold on to investors when its stock first drops from $30 to $10 and then drops from $10 to $3.

signed,
jaded AMD investor

AMD should stay
Interesting to me is when I went to their site to read the article the first thing to pop up was an add for Intel Centino activity. Isn't it ironic that the writer was able to paint the picture that AMD was about to die right after they had a wonderful quarter. The whole article reminded me of my english 115 class where they taught me how it didn't depend on the facts, but how they were presented.

May be Intel is more worried than we think. Maybe they helped open the eyes to a talented writer who is able to put a negative spin on every good thing that just happend to AMD.

I would invite everyone to go back and read the article again and notice that every thing the writer said was basically good but painted just in the correct light to change the paradigm.

When and why would business week be interested in AMD anyway. Who could have enough influence (money) to be able to persuade them to write and article about a company that suposedly has been dying for the last 30 years.

If it has been dying for so long why should it be intersting to the public. Maybe because of everything good that has happened. Maybe because the opteron is doing so well and and Intel is scared to death that with 64 bit support and continued excecution on the manufacturing side that they are going to lose their huge investment on with the itanic.

Somebody else please read through the article again and please see the anti rose colored glasses that the writer is trying to have you wear.

The whole article begs the question of what Business Week is getting out of this article because it really isn't that appealing to the everyday reader.

I'm out.

Invest in AMD today. Competition can only help us the lowley consumer which Intel doesn't care about.

Name supplied

Competition, competition, competition
what people have so quickly forgotten is what the world was like back when there was no real competition to intel, from amd or anyone. people have forgotten the early pentium2 days, when we were still on the 66mhz fsb, how intel charged a $100 to $200 per speed grade increase, usually 33 lousy megahertz. yeah, they'd take the same ol' 233mhz processor, increase the multiplier by .5, then sell it as a 266mhz, for a ridiculous premium.

does anyone remember when the 300mhz pentium2 first came out? the processor, by itself, retailed for over $1500! yeah, that's twice as much as you can now pay for a whole system that's over 10 times more powerful! when you say that intel has huge cash reserves, that's where they got it from! they were selling processors for at least 5 times the manufacturing costs.

even diehard intel fans should be drop-dead grateful for amd. were it not for chimpzilla, the fastest cpu you could buy today would probably be around 1.5 ghz (if we were even that lucky), and computers using it would cost $3000 or more. computers now are as fast and as inexpensive as they are because of stiff competition. no competition, no innovation. no competition, no price wars. if amd ever folds, i bet you even the intel fanboys will be buying the last remaining athlons like hotcakes, just so they'll have something affordable to build systems with once the selling price of cpus inexplicably triples.

Name supplied