5.27.2007

An Outlook on Scientia's AMD Outlook

If you haven't done so, please go read Scientia's blog:
http://scientiasblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/amd-q1-2007-outlook.html

Scientia said: “It doesn't seem reasonable though to assume that general demand has fallen off as sharply as AMD's numbers so there must be another reason... The only other possibility I can think of is that AMD's cpu sales fell off because of delays in delivering chipsets…”

I find this bizarre. When did AMD ever have problems with chipsets? AMD announced the reasons why CPU sales were low, why invent another one? The only reason why AMD’s Q1 sales is horrible is because they stuffed the channel in Q4 which resulted to an artificially inflated demand. Naturally, since demand didn’t pick up the next quarter, AMD’s customers stopped ordering from AMD while they clear their inventory. Anyone who wished to understand how much AMD’s demand declined, all you need to do is average out the volume sales for the Q4’06 & Q1’07 to cancel out the effect of channel stuffing. Other factors also contributd like logistics and poor product mix. But never chipsets.

Scientia said: “I've seen comment after comment about AMD's R600 delay yet no mention of Intel's 965 chipset being two months late”.

That’s because AMD’s R600 isn’t only 2 months delayed and isn’t as insignificant as Intel’s chipset. The survival of AMD’s graphics business hinges on the delivery and performance of R600. I’m sure the same thing cannot be said about Intel’s P965. And of course nobody comments about Intel’s chipset delays because nobody is really interested about chipsets.

Scientia said: “I've now seen people proclaiming that R600 is a total failure when it has already been suggested in the trades that AMD's R600 orders will max out the capacity at foundry giant TSMC.”

Normally we declare a product to be a failure when its has seen excessive delays, broken drivers, poor performance and missing features. But never mind all that. Instead let's look at how the orders have maxed out TSMC's capacity which just so happens is the ideal state of a foundry.

Scientia: Without doubt though, the good news for AMD is mini-DTX”.

AMD is creating more market segmentation in the desktop space where margins and market share have been declining year over year against mobile. How is this good news again? It looks like the only reason why AMD is pursuing this strategy is to create a niche for its uncompetitive desktop offerings. Intel isn’t interested and it appears like a lot of mobo makers are either.

Scientia said: “So, AMD is just going to have to bite the bullet until Q3 when things should improve. “

This statement is highly speculative without any real performance benchmark from Barcelona. Not to mention its very low volume shipment for the rest of 2007. AMD themselves said K10 won’t contribute to AMD’s bottom line in 2007. Anyone who suggest otherwise is fooling themselves.

Scientia said: “The chipset and graphic sales should be up by then and AMD should be fully anchored on the desktop with mini-DTX and DTX. “

This is a classic example why Scientia get’s everything wrong (see his previous predictions). He appears to have the tendency to heighten the impact of some of AMD’s insignificant business strategies and at the same time downplaying everything else that truly matters. Like Intel’s quad-core offering now becoming mainstream for example. At the moment all I see is a pending disaster with the R600 who’s fast becoming the media laughing stock and unsupported desktop form factor.

Scientia said: AMD's position does seem fairly good going into 2008 since it still insists that 45nm is on track and will be ready six months after Intel's."

Intel is ahead by a year as it will start loading 45nm next quarter to be able to ship products by Q4. AMD proclaims 45nm readiness 2H'08 (Q3-Q4'08). Now isn't that a year?

Scientia said: “So, AMD could potentially improve its volume and revenue position substantially by end of 2008."

I have seen nothing from the lengthy blog that suggest any concrete plans to turn things around. Barcelona is once again over emphasized. The same prediction that has led Scientia to incorrectly estimate AMD’s last two quarters is only repeated. No need to guess the out come of his new prediction.

15 comments:

Roborat, Ph.D said...

Other interesting news suggests that AMD has misled the press with the Radeon HD UVD support - or lack of.

It appears all divisions inside AMD are having problems. First the CPU division, then the Graphics division. And now the PowerPoint products division as well. AMD needs to do a recall on all the Powerpoint slides it shipped with the UVD error. Cost for the recall must be massive considering the amount shipped in the last few months.

Heat said...

AMD should get the POWER POINT COMPANY of the year award. If microsoft ever had to point to a company that has used that software AMD is where they will point to first.

Anonymous said...

Delusional AMD fanboy.

Anonymous said...

read your blog a few times and must say it is one of the best. I laugh when i read sci's blog and he refuses to admit he is a fan of amd and mister phd's blog is just for fun i think, i can see him laughing his head off at how wound up people get, he cant be for real, can he?

Anonymous said...

Good article overall but I think it too early to call R600 a TOTAL failure. The launch has been a complete disaster and the delays, driver readiness are terrible, but in time this has potential to be an adequate product, of course adequate is probably not the original target for this product, :) So it is late, has had a terrible start, but AMD will price it competitively (which will reduce margins on this product line probably more than AMD had planned). Give it some time... there is more to the market than enthusiast upgrades.

As for DTX - is this cheaper than ATX designs to the point where sale will shift to this market? (I have no idea). Also is it an AMD proprietary standard or is it just something that AMD has pushed - can mobo suppliers make a DTX board to support Intel chips?

What is rapidly becoming the case, is the two major difference between Scientia and Sharikou are:
1) Sharikou makes up articles to the point of absurdity to support his fandom (explosion, capacity, etc...). Scientia tries to stay a boot more grounded.
2) Sharikou doesn't deny his blatant bias - Scientia is still in denial of this.

Scientia from AMDZone said...

Naturally, I read headlines like "Barcelona Will Be DOA" and then take your comments with a large dose of salt.

Can you point out where AMD admitted to stuffing the channel? If you can then I would be happy to make a correction in my article.

Then can you explain how you came up with the figure that it costs AMD more than 3X as much as Intel to make a quad core? You said that it only costs Intel $53 while it costs AMD $175. Where did you get these rather unbelievable numbers from?

Heat said...

You have to admit scientia that his "barcelona DOA" post has atleast more material fact than what you use for your blog which are usually reports from the inquirer, AMD and their slide shows and AMD's word for it. He took reports from an AMD approved demo and an Intel approved demo and made his remark so they are both skeewed but both are using best case scenarios for their processors to show them in a good light and AMD got beat.

Granted that AMD did not display the clockspeed and its up in the air to what it could be but AMD's 16 cores got beat by Intel's 8 cores in a benchmark which is multithreaded and not effected by system memory......

In my eyes its AMD's fault for being soo secretive about their clockspeed and benchmarking details when their processor release is supposedly around the corner not Intel's in showing them up in their own lil PR game.

Ho Ho said...

"The launch has been a complete disaster and the delays, driver readiness are terrible, but in time this has potential to be an adequate product"

In time it will also be obsolete. Nvidia will have up to three times better performing G92 out before christmas. I have serious doubts AMD can match that in the near future.

Even now x2900 has more transistors and 80nm against 8800 less transistors at 90nm performing much better, at higher clocks and taking less power. Just imagine what can happen when NV gets down to 65nm.

It is somewhat similar to AMD vs Intel CPUs. At the moment AMD greatly benefits from IMC but Intel can still fight against it pretty good. What happens when Intel finally gets IMC that will give it much better memory performance and frees up huge die areas. It is impossible for AMD to get such a huge boost as it already had it years ago.

Anonymous said...

Where did you get these rather unbelievable numbers from?

The same place that gives you hope that minuscule shipments of Barcelona in 2007 will be a return to profitability (up your ass).

Scientia from AMDZone said...

heat

The only "material facts" in the Barcelona DOA article are a misinterpretation of the Pov-Ray demo. The demo does not show K10's SSE performance.

Anonymous said...

"Can you point out where AMD admitted to stuffing the channel? If you can then I would be happy to make a correction in my article."

It's in the similar place where you state Barcelona has been DEMO'd at 2.97GHz.

Perhaps YOU could provide the link where AMD DEMO'd it?

I think Robo is referring to an INQ article awhile back where they claimed AMD stuffed the channel in Q4 to gain unit volume share.

Anonymous said...

Scientia - perhaps you can explain the AMD situation has improved from your fab calculations from ~6:1 ratio to ~4:1...

Yo COMPLETELY disregard the concept of wafer starts and assume all fabs are the same size (other than linewidth), you also count F30 as a complete 65nm 300mm fab and yet only include 2 of Intel's 45nm fabs and ignore the other 2 that will be ramping shortly?

You seem to do well criticizing others until a light is shown on your articles...

Roborat, Ph.D said...

Scientia said: "Can you point out where AMD admitted to stuffing the channel?"

ok, nevermind the fact that its common industry knowledge that a cliff edge drop in sales is a consequence of channel stuffing. never mind the numerous claims by analysts, the media and pissed vendors of AMD flooding the channel, but can you point out where AMD admitted that chipset was the cause of the disastrous drop in sales?

Roborat, Ph.D said...

Scientia from AMDZone said...
"The demo does not show K10's SSE performance.

I think you missed the point. AMD has been trying very hard to hide Barcelona's capability and when they finally tried to show a tiny peak at what Barcelona can do, they even messed that one up. It's not about Barcelona's true performance. It's about the PR disaster AMD created themselves. It's actually hilarious if you think about it and i though i made that obvious in the post.

Anonymous said...

Come on, guys! I'm not getting enough dick.