Hmmm.
Well, as far as brokerage firms are concerned, everything about a company can be seen in its statistics (ie PE ratio, debt... things you can find in a quarterly earnings report). This is what they use to determine their status. It may well take more than a few quarters of good revenue for AMD to excel in the stock market, but only because not everyone knows what many of us know.
AMD has a 1 year technology lead over Intel:
- Copper interconnect technology in volume shippments
- .15um processing without any major changes to the tooling
- .13um processing by using phase shift techniques with existing tooling
- Proven K7 core with room for tweaks
- Growing 3rd party industry support from expanding partnerships
- Smaller, more efficient die size than P4
- On chip multiprocessing technology with Sledgehammer
- The first 64bit x86 processor with Sledgehammer
Adding Transmetta's super low power capabilities to this impressive list of technological advancements would be just another feather in AMD's hat.
AMD will continue to double its revenue every quarter for at least the next year. Intel will not be able to keep up with their existing technology. New process technology will need to be put into their plants (in process now for .13um copper) but this will take quite a bit of time. In addition to taking time out of much needed production for Intel, the process upgrade will also reduce yields until they get it ironed out. This will further starve the market in the high end desktop market forcing more companies to use a higher percentage of AMD processors in their desktop offerings.
The P4 in .18um weighs in at 217mm2 and draws enough power to light up your house (not really, but it does require the use of non-widely availible parts to work). This size of a die will prohibit volume productions and will not be a threat to AMD until Intel makes the die shrink to .13um. That isn't scheduled until Q2 next year. At that time Intel will have the
First of the .13um plants converted and on-line. This will allow only partial production of the part and availibility will be as low as it was (or lower) when Intel made the shift over to .18um with Coppermine.
If history is any indicator, Intel will not be able to supply reliable volume shipments of high speed P4 parts for 4-6months beyond the time the first plant is moved to the new process. This puts them near the end of 2001.
In 2001, P4 will no longer be competing against K7, it will be up against K8. etc, etc.
Intel is moving fast, but so is their competition. Intel will have to move faster, be more creative, and regain a technological lead in order to fend off AMD. They may well do this, but not this year and not next year.
Ok, off of my soap box.
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