IBM acquisition or investment in AMD...

On Sun, 28 Jan 2007 17:36:39 -0500, General Schvantzkoph wrote:

I agree with most or all of what you said in your reply, but . . .

That's a business with a
slightly higher degree of lock in, although it suffers from the need to
make constant huge investments to keep it competitive. IBM feels they need
leading edge chip technology in order for them to stay competitive in the
high margin server, mainframe and supercomputer businesses. They share
their costs with AMD to make it possible for them to retain competitive
FAB capability. If they ever decide that their system businesses don't
need captive FAB capabilities anymore they'll sell off the foundry
business just like the sold off the disk drive business.

AMD isn't in it solely to help IBM with their server, mainframe
and supercomputer business. They have their own business supplying
CPUs for laptops, desktops and lower end servers, so if IBM really
was getting out of the CPU business as you initially said, with AMD
"hemorrhaging money", that would probably be a fatal blow to AMD and
I doubt that IBM would want that to happen. AMD might even be worth
something to IBM even if it only keeps Intel distracted.

On Sun, 28 Jan 2007 21:27:40 -0500, ASAAR wrote:

On Sun, 28 Jan 2007 17:36:39 -0500, General Schvantzkoph wrote:

I agree with most or all of what you said in your reply, but . . .

That's a business with a
slightly higher degree of lock in, although it suffers from the need to
make constant huge investments to keep it competitive. IBM feels they need
leading edge chip technology in order for them to stay competitive in the
high margin server, mainframe and supercomputer businesses. They share
their costs with AMD to make it possible for them to retain competitive
FAB capability. If they ever decide that their system businesses don't
need captive FAB capabilities anymore they'll sell off the foundry
business just like the sold off the disk drive business.

AMD isn't in it solely to help IBM with their server, mainframe
and supercomputer business. They have their own business supplying
CPUs for laptops, desktops and lower end servers, so if IBM really
was getting out of the CPU business as you initially said, with AMD
"hemorrhaging money", that would probably be a fatal blow to AMD and
I doubt that IBM would want that to happen. AMD might even be worth
something to IBM even if it only keeps Intel distracted.

I doubt that an AMD acquisition is likely - but a substantial equity
investment might make a lot of sense. A healthy AMD is in IBM's
strategic interest as a customer, supplier and competitive
counterweight to Intel. I suspect that Intel wouldn't object too
strenuously either - a sick failing AMD would unleash a torrent of US
& Euro antitrust woes, they NEED AMD as a legal shield.

As a precedent, recall that IBM did exactly that in the early 80s for
Intel. They were fairly small and extremely hard pressed for capital
to meet the burgeoning PC market demand. IBM invested $300M to enable
them to build fabs to meet the demand. They also took out a license
to make x86 chips (thru the 486 I believe) that provided an additional
substantial revenue stream. When Intel became financially robust, IBM
returned the treasury stock - on good terms, but at a tidy profit :-)

$300M at that time could leverage the construction of 2 or 3 fabs.
Now it might take $2B to get a 45nm fab cranking. No sense building
it until the technical design and production engineering work is well
established - ergo (maybe) the current R&D cooperation. Seems like
the time is drawing nigh. Given AMD's current lack of favor on the
Street, another nice equity profit might be on their minds in Armonk.
--
Pete Gebel pfgebel(deletethis)@crisperiodcom
Have the best day possible - all things considered

On Tue, 30 Jan 2007 10:30:21 GMT, tanstafl wrote:

As a precedent, recall that IBM did exactly that in the early 80s for
Intel. They were fairly small and extremely hard pressed for capital
to meet the burgeoning PC market demand. IBM invested $300M to enable
them to build fabs to meet the demand. They also took out a license
to make x86 chips (thru the 486 I believe) that provided an additional
substantial revenue stream. When Intel became financially robust, IBM
returned the treasury stock - on good terms, but at a tidy profit :-)

That's probably what led to the production of what became some 486
chips in very small packages with a narrow 16-bit data path. Not
high performance but cost effective. I bought a couple of
replacement motherboards that used them, about the time Intel
introduced their hot running 60 and 66mhz Pentiums. I'm not sure of
the actual name that IBM used for their CPUs but if it wasn't Blue
Lightning it was something like that. The only thing I'm sure of is
that it included the word "Blue", and for obvious reasons.

On Wed, 31 Jan 2007 01:56:05 -0500, ASAAR wrote:

On Tue, 30 Jan 2007 10:30:21 GMT, tanstafl wrote:

As a precedent, recall that IBM did exactly that in the early 80s for
Intel. They were fairly small and extremely hard pressed for capital to
meet the burgeoning PC market demand. IBM invested $300M to enable them
to build fabs to meet the demand. They also took out a license to make
x86 chips (thru the 486 I believe) that provided an additional
substantial revenue stream. When Intel became financially robust, IBM
returned the treasury stock - on good terms, but at a tidy profit :-)

That's probably what led to the production of what became some 486
chips in very small packages with a narrow 16-bit data path. Not high
performance but cost effective. I bought a couple of replacement
motherboards that used them, about the time Intel introduced their hot
running 60 and 66mhz Pentiums. I'm not sure of the actual name that IBM
used for their CPUs but if it wasn't Blue Lightning it was something like
that. The only thing I'm sure of is that it included the word "Blue", and
for obvious reasons.

IBM 486SLC and 486SLC2 (not to be confused with the Cyrix 486SLC which was
totally different with a 32bit data bus and ran in a 386 socket). Blue
Lightning was the name of the IBM BL-75 MB. Either way you looked at it
the IBM CPU sucked. It had a larger 16K cache which gave benchmark
appearances of being as fast as a regular 486, but once you had to go
outside the cache, well basically it was a 386SX in a 486 package.

--
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On Wed, 31 Jan 2007 16:57:24 +0000, Wes Newell wrote:

On Wed, 31 Jan 2007 01:56:05 -0500, ASAAR wrote:

On Tue, 30 Jan 2007 10:30:21 GMT, tanstafl wrote:

As a precedent, recall that IBM did exactly that in the early 80s for
Intel. They were fairly small and extremely hard pressed for capital
to meet the burgeoning PC market demand. IBM invested $300M to enable
them to build fabs to meet the demand. They also took out a license to
make x86 chips (thru the 486 I believe) that provided an additional
substantial revenue stream. When Intel became financially robust, IBM
returned the treasury stock - on good terms, but at a tidy profit :-)

That's probably what led to the production of what became some 486
chips in very small packages with a narrow 16-bit data path. Not high
performance but cost effective. I bought a couple of replacement
motherboards that used them, about the time Intel introduced their hot
running 60 and 66mhz Pentiums. I'm not sure of the actual name that IBM
used for their CPUs but if it wasn't Blue Lightning it was something
like that. The only thing I'm sure of is that it included the word
"Blue", and for obvious reasons.

IBM 486SLC and 486SLC2 (not to be confused with the Cyrix 486SLC which was
totally different with a 32bit data bus and ran in a 386 socket). Blue
Lightning was the name of the IBM BL-75 MB. Either way you looked at it
the IBM CPU sucked. It had a larger 16K cache which gave benchmark
appearances of being as fast as a regular 486, but once you had to go
outside the cache, well basically it was a 386SX in a 486 package.

Disregard the Cyrix SLC comment, I was thinking of the 486DLC.

--
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On Wed, 31 Jan 2007 16:57:24 GMT, Wes Newell wrote:

That's probably what led to the production of what became some 486
chips in very small packages with a narrow 16-bit data path. Not high
performance but cost effective. I bought a couple of replacement . . .

IBM 486SLC and 486SLC2 (not to be confused with the Cyrix 486SLC which was
totally different with a 32bit data bus and ran in a 386 socket). Blue
Lightning was the name of the IBM BL-75 MB. Either way you looked at it
the IBM CPU sucked. It had a larger 16K cache which gave benchmark
appearances of being as fast as a regular 486, but once you had to go
outside the cache, well basically it was a 386SX in a 486 package.

As I said, not high performance. If that's what was wanted I
suppose they did suck, but they had several advantages for the
business users whose machines were upgraded. Performance that
couldn't be used would be wasted potential. These users were not
running monstrous memory hog apps. Most of their work was with
spreadsheets and documents. Mostly Symphony spreadsheets (a DOS
app., as you probably know), the remainder small Excel spreadsheets.
For the word processing, again, a DOS app, WordPerfect. Some of
them used underpowered IBM laptops (Thinkpad 701 "Butterfly" with
486DX2/50 cpus) and had no desire to run anything faster. For them,
small size and light weight were far more important than high
performance. I realize that most of the people in this newsgroup
prefer high performace computers. Had the upgraded desktop machines
been replaced instead with new Pentium boxes (with a very hot
running P60 or P66) they wouldn't have been able to work any
quicker, and their computer's CPU would have had Intel's infamous
Floating Point Bug. And yes, I did test most of the machines with
several small benchmark programs and on those the Blue Lightnings
did perform very well. But I knew, as you did, that these
benchmarks could be quite deceptive. g

On Jan 27, 7:41 pm, General Schvantzkoph
wrote:
On Sat, 27 Jan 2007 17:28:26 -0800, wrote:
Actually it advantageous to IBM in a number of ways:
CPU's are still a high value market. The other advantage is that AMD
is in a fairly strong position in the X86 market. One thing to
remember is that AMD still holds a considerable advantage in 64 bit
computing. With the exception of Intel's Itanium chip all others use a
32 bit core with 64 bit extensions. suspect that IBM would probably
invest, but not acquire AMD. This would be help throw Intel off
balance.

No the Core 2 Duo is a 32 bit core with 64 bit extensions EM64T.

Where have you been the last 6 months?. The Core2 Duo (which is a 64 bit
chip) is crushing the A64. AMD is hemorrhaging money because they don't
have a competitive chip so they are forced to slash their margins. The
situation was reversed a year ago when AMD was wiping the floor with
Intel. That's the nature of the CPU market, the guy with the newest chip
makes money while the other guy loses money. IBM is getting out of
businesses like that and concentrating on businesses that higher margins
and better customer lockin.

On Jan 27, 7:41 pm, General Schvantzkoph
wrote:
On Sat, 27 Jan 2007 17:28:26 -0800, wrote:
Actually it advantageous to IBM in a number of ways:
CPU's are still a high value market. The other advantage is that AMD
is in a fairly strong position in the X86 market. One thing to
remember is that AMD still holds a considerable advantage in 64 bit
computing. With the exception of Intel's Itanium chip all others use a
32 bit core with 64 bit extensions. suspect that IBM would probably
invest, but not acquire AMD. This would be help throw Intel off
balance.

No the Core 2 Duo is a 32 bit core with 64 bit extensions EM64T.

Where have you been the last 6 months?. The Core2 Duo (which is a 64 bit
chip) is crushing the A64. AMD is hemorrhaging money because they don't
have a competitive chip so they are forced to slash their margins. The
situation was reversed a year ago when AMD was wiping the floor with
Intel. That's the nature of the CPU market, the guy with the newest chip
makes money while the other guy loses money. IBM is getting out of
businesses like that and concentrating on businesses that higher margins
and better customer lockin.

On Jan 27, 7:41 pm, General Schvantzkoph
wrote:
On Sat, 27 Jan 2007 17:28:26 -0800, wrote:
Actually it advantageous to IBM in a number of ways:
CPU's are still a high value market. The other advantage is that AMD
is in a fairly strong position in the X86 market. One thing to
remember is that AMD still holds a considerable advantage in 64 bit
computing. With the exception of Intel's Itanium chip all others use a
32 bit core with 64 bit extensions. suspect that IBM would probably
invest, but not acquire AMD. This would be help throw Intel off
balance.

No the Core 2 Duo is a 32 bit core with 64 bit extensions EM64T.

Where have you been the last 6 months?. The Core2 Duo (which is a 64 bit
chip) is crushing the A64. AMD is hemorrhaging money because they don't
have a competitive chip so they are forced to slash their margins. The
situation was reversed a year ago when AMD was wiping the floor with
Intel. That's the nature of the CPU market, the guy with the newest chip
makes money while the other guy loses money. IBM is getting out of
businesses like that and concentrating on businesses that higher margins
and better customer lockin.

On Sat, 03 Feb 2007 22:24:39 -0800, wrote:

No the Core 2 Duo is a 32 bit core with 64 bit extensions EM64T.

Based on what? Data path? Register size? Instruction set? The cpu bit
widths definition has changed so many times over the last 20 years it's
meaning is worthless without explanation.

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