Henri Richard, AMD?s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Marketing, says P4EE is "not a great product"

[Jeff7181]

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That's one thing I do like about Intel... they never outright insult AMD or any of their other competitors that I've ever seen.

 

[Megatomic]

Back in the 90s, where do you think the "AMD chips aren't 100% compatible" rumors started? It wasn't an AMD employee...

 

[Jeff7181]

True... but lately, even between the heated battle of the Athlon XP vs. the P4, even when Intel came out ahead they didn't pound their chest or call the Athlon XP an inferior product... at least not in so many words.

 

[Megatomic]

But I'll agree, it's not the best tact to make disparaging comments about the competition in a public format, by name especially. They did that quite a bit at the Tech Tour 2003 event I attended this summer, too.

 

[Jeff7181]

Yes, I'd much rather him say something like "it was obviously a knee jerk release in response to the Athlon FX, however, we're not worried about what the competition is doing, we have a lot of confidence in our own products."

 

[Shimmishim]

well... it's a vicious market... dog eat dog world...

the public will believe whatever the media tells them... you know that! why do you think i switched from amd to intel?

 

[acx]

It is in the opinion of my Electrical Engineering professor that Intel does not comment on it's competitors directly because they are afraid of antitrust action. So Intel just leaves them alone since they believe they will win the war anyway. He said trying to get an Intel employee to talk about what they think of AMD or Transmeta is an exercise in futility.

 

[KF]

>that Intel does not comment on it's competitors directly because they are afraid of antitrust action.

I don't see the connection. There is no antitrust law I ever heard of that would make it illegal to slam your competition as much as you please. (There are people that claim that Intel keeps AMD around to avoid getting classified as a monopoly and therefore subject to legal restrictions. I think they are wrong.)

Name recognition. You never want to help out your competition by mentioning their name. That's advertising for them. If somebody brings up the competition's name, change the subject to something about your own company. Never let the other name cross your lips.

Respect. If Intel were to mention AMD, it would elevate AMD to being worthy of mention. They don't want to do that. To compare themselves to AMD, would be to lower themselves.

The only time you mention your competiition is if you are in second place or worse. Then you only mention your competition to say how much better than them you are. If somebody asks you a question pointing out the big guy's strength, disregard it and immediately change the subject to something great about yourself. Pepsi used to have a commercial where they claimed 8 out of 10 people preferred Pepsi over Coke in blind taste tests. They showed blindfolded people that always picked Pepsi over Coke. On the label of Kroger yogurt they told you that you got 33% more yogurt than from Dannon. (until Kroger subsequently went to 6 oz cups too.) On generic vitamins they say "Compare to Centrum." Comparing yourself favorably to the leader puts you in the same league.

There was kind of a flap (from AMD partisans) not long ago when an Intel rep responded to a reporter who brought up the Athlon 64, saying it was nothing really new, just the same old same old. That was a mistake, a slip. He should have just ignored the Athlon and switched to something great about the Itannic. The Intel marketing department was probably ballistic over that.

 

[Sid59]

i guess you can construe "not that great" as an insult.

 

[rgreen83]

Originally posted by: acx
It is in the opinion of my Electrical Engineering professor that Intel does not comment on it's competitors directly because they are afraid of antitrust action. So Intel just leaves them alone since they believe they will win the war anyway. He said trying to get an Intel employee to talk about what they think of AMD or Transmeta is an exercise in futility.

Hmm this kinda makes since and it kinda doesnt, I guess microsoft doesnt mind anti-trust lawsuits (wouldnt be their first) because they are everyday slamming linux versions into the ground, and amd is much more a wannabe clone of intel than even lindows is of windows. Microsoft really fears linux though because if everyone decided to use linux they could. Intel on the other hand has no fear of AMD because even if everyone wanted AMD product, they couldnt supply them, Intel is the only company that can and thats it. You cant just copy an iso of a processor like you can a bootable linux distro.

The main level I see Henri Richard of being in the wrong here is that he of all people knows that Intel now owns AMD64 technology as much as AMD does due to their cross liscensing agreements. He is merely expressing his anger of the fact that if intel wanted a AMD64 cpu tommorrow, they would have it, while AMD cant just magically make the facilities and means to produce cpus with die size of the EE. So he is jealous? It is a normal human reaction, but one that I also feel should be abstained in the public eye when representing your company.

 

[squirrel dog]

AMD is bringing out Winchester and some other western named 90nm cpu in 04 . They should be in good shape to counter Intel's Tojas or Tojes cpu also 90nm in 04 . Both will fly speed wise all the more better for us consumers .