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[mickt] 10/8/2000 10:39

I have been trying to get my hands on an Itanium system recently, there are apparently some developer systems around, but so far have been met with a deafening silence!

It looks like the switch to 64 bit is going to much slower than the switch from 16 to 32 bits was.

Mick

[dymaxion] 10/8/2000 10:05

For those that are interested, there is an article just out today on Anandtech about AMDs proposed ISA to rival Intels new IA-64

"Ambition can be a double edged sword; on the one hand, it can push you to accomplish that which you'd previously never thought possible, yet on the other, it can set you up for a much larger failure in the long run.
In our "little" microprocessor community, we've got two very ambitious manufacturers, the very same names you've been hearing and debating over for the past few years, none other than AMD and Intel. Prior to AMD's release of their Athlon processor, which, for the longest time bore the codename 'K7', placing AMD's name before Intel's in a sentence was pretty much unheard of. The company had been improving their stance in the desktop microprocessor industry, but they were still more than a few steps behind Intel.

Now, just under a year after AMD's Athlon release, the company is discussing its plans to compete not only in the desktop, workstation and server markets but also in the extremely high-end enterprise market segment. You can't say that AMD hasn't come a long way from the time when their flagship processor was the K6.

Intel has been keeping themselves busy as well; in addition to maintaining their usual product lines covering the mobile, value, performance and server market segments, they are juggling the launch of the new Pentium 4 all while preparing to introduce their first major step away from the IA-32 x86 instruction set architecture (ISA) to their first 64-bit architecture, IA-64. With IA-64, Intel is promising to be free of the shackles that the x86 ISA has placed on their CPUs for over 2 decades, but in doing that, they are also flushing the idea of high performing backwards compatibility with older IA-32 applications.

If you look around the microprocessor industry, especially at those companies that already have 64-bit parts available, Intel's strategy for IA-64 isn't all that extreme. Other companies rely on emulation or even separate processors in order to maintain backwards compatibility with 32-bit applications for those customers that are not ready to completely migrate entirely to a 64-bit OS with 64-bit applications. This puts a lot of weight on the consumer (in this case, large businesses, not your usual definition of the word) to decide when moving over to a 64-bit platform would be ideal, since using this approach, you're almost never allowed to have the best of both worlds, a high performing 32-bit solution and 64-bit compatibility.

AMD saw a major flaw with this approach and felt that there should be a way for them to become a supplier of a 64-bit processor without making the consumer sacrifice 32-bit performance for that support. We're already familiar with AMD's solution to this problem as they've already announced that they'd be extending the 32-bit x86 ISA to 64-bits with what they call x86-64, but now we're finally beginning to see exactly how x86-64 will work and what it will mean for AMD's future enterprise platform, the K8, also known as SledgeHammer. "

"...by building on the x86 ISA yet again AMD is still bringing along with them all the added baggage that comes with the x86 ISA. We asked AMD about this noticeable downside and their stance on the issue is simple, they believe that 'performance has less to do with instruction set and more to do with implementation,' which is what they're banking on with x86-64...."

[mad mac] 31/7/2000 20:52

Sorry about the delay in replying.

The answer to your question is "Yes" - see my first posting. AMD Fujitsu (joint venture between AMD and some Japanese co) is the world's largest manufacturer of flash memory (or at least in joint first place). Plenty of recent announcements about doubling capacity this year, next year and the year after, etc. If you search US financial news for AMD, you will see some analysts pointing out that AMD's entire market cap is lower than some of its pure Flash memory competitors.

Basically AMD is on a low P/E because it was near bankruptcy (I think) 18 months ago and people are finding it hard to believe that it can have come back so quickly. But it is certainly very profitable at the moment and the trend looks set to continue. Only downside risk is a general decline in the worldwide PC/chip market (which is cyclical) or a price war with Intel. Since AMD makes both processors and flash memory, it is well-positioned for either event - e.g. in a price war, Intel would come off just as badly.

[adamh] 31/7/2000 13:51

Flash Memory seems to be the 'hot chip' of the day, with Telewest, PACE
and others suffering due to an alledged lack of availability....
Do AMD make these ?

[mad mac] 31/7/2000 13:43

Noone interested?

AMD is, for me, the company that will do best out of the current trend towards having a PC in every home. Just a thought ...

[mad mac] 26/7/2000 20:29

Time to resurrect this thread, I think.

It looks as though this share is stuck in a trading range from $73 - $92 (and currently right at the bottom of that range).

Personally, I am surprised it didn't break out on its superb second quarter results.

[guest] 05/5/2000 20:07

onwards and upwards - $100 here we come

[guest] 04/5/2000 23:45

This is great! Come on you AMD fans!

[mad mac] 04/5/2000 23:30

AMD has had the most astounding bull run over the 6 months to May. It is virtually the only large cap US tech stock that went up during March-May 2000 - and fairly strongly too.

My impression is that AMD's fortunes have recovered to such an extent that going forward it is neck and neck with Intel. Although Intel still has more volume of processor sales, due to production problems AMD is catching up fast. And AMD (or AMD Fujitsu) probably has the edge over Intel in the flash memory market.

Here is a chart: