Hi guys,

I found this on Yahoo's finance site:
http://biz.yahoo.com/zacks/080527/12903.html?.v=1

The red highlight is my own, not the author's. Does anybody have any idea what he's talking about?
Thanks!

perhaps the author feels they have the technological lead (that took so much brain power it was astonishing)

regardless of if the author is right or wrong i believe you are confusing performance lead with technological lead. there is a difference.

Could be referring to the fact that the phenoms and barcelona are true quad core compared to the core 2 quads.

Nothing like contradicting yourself in the same sentence.

High debt level and questions about execution, and the author is bullish on the stock? Glad he's not managing my portfolio.

I don't think even he knows what he's talking about.

...this translating into what real-world benefit?

Look this topic has been discussed to death about a hundred times on these forums. When are you guys going to give it a rest? AMD doesn't suck and they don't own either, get that into your thick skulls. (Preemptive posting)

Their product may sucketh not, but their execution sucketh mightily.

^Agreed!

I believe this is due to AMD being first to release quad cores using 65 watts, this will make a big difference to data centers where power efficiency and heat are of great concern. Remember also that server CPU's generate much more profit for Intel and AMD than desktop processors and this would be of interest to investors.

Getting back to Aevm's original question, having been in stocks for over 40 years, I think I can venture an explanation, not withstanding that the writer of the article should have been a bit more clear in what he tried to say, and I may be getting his intention wrong regardless.

Yes, the writer may be bullish on the stock, but he's thinking long term and not short term when he says he wants to take a "wait and see approach". In other words, he thinks AMD will go up in price eventually, but don't buy quite yet. Part of the reason is that AMD does not pay a dividend, so any money invested right now is sitting there wasting time and not doing anything profitable. For an investor, this is a chancy thing. The time to buy is always at or about its lowest. The good side of chance exists that AMD might come out with something good and the stock will take off. This is especially true when considering that AMD produces more than CPUs, but also video cards (ATI) and chipsets. The bad side of chance is that either the current recession will hold back AMD not matter how good a product it produces, or that it will be a long time before AMD turns out another really good moneymaking product.

As for the technology lead, that might be referring to the fact that AMD has managed to produce a quad core chip that (finally) works, whereas Intel is still using two glued together chips in its quads. On a bright side, all AMD needs to do is to figure out how to raise the performance of the chip, not design one from scratch. As Strangestranger pointed out, this is a difference between technology and performance. AND needs to improve its performance of its quad core, while at the moment, Intel needs to design and sell a monolithic quad core chip, as well as making it perform. On the cloudy side, the average customer at Best Buy doesn't know the differences between monolithic quad core and glued quad core. He only knows that Intel's quad runs faster. As enthusiasts, we know the differences, but our purchases are a drop in the bucket compared to total sales.

Hopes this helps, Aevm.

That may not be much of a technological leap: http://www.formortals.com/Home/tab [...] fault.aspx

Thanks Sailer. Yes, I think that's it.

Spongebob, I love your signature

And why should they care even if they knew? WHat real-world benefit does a monolithic quad buy the end user? For AMD's part, it seems to have been more of a liability up to this point.

Any news article that ends with "OMG AMD4LIFE!!1!" is obviously garbage.

Technological lead, lawl. Just because something is more complicated doesn't mean it is better technology.

Results matter, how you get there does not.

Well said!

Yup. When I read that the 65W Quad Cores came to mind. I think that is exactly what he is talking about.

The answer was part of what I was writing. At this point, AMD's monolithic quad doesn't matter, as it doesn't have the performance. But, if the performance (speed) can be raised, it will matter. The monolithic quad in and of itself has not been a liability. A defect in the original chips occurred, but that has been solved. Now the next step is to raise the speed. Real world benefits may involve less power usage, better integration of the chip components, and eventually a faster chip. If and when that occurs, the Best Buy customer will then see two machines with similar speeds and will turn his attention back to that of which machine is cheapest.

By the way, I'm talking about technological theory and not meaning to say that AMD's present chips are better than Intel's chips, nor am I an AMD fanboy. My present gaming computer uses an Intel chip and I'm happy with it.

Edit: I just saw an article which further helps the point of AMD and its technology.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/P [...] ,5513.html

The research group Vision Lab at the University of Antwerp came up with a different solution and constructed a PC that integrates four GeForce 9800 GX2 graphic cards (with a total of eight GPU cores) that runs CUDA-optimized tomography applications. The specifications include a MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard, an AMD Phenom 9850 CPU, 4 x 2 GB Corsair TWINX DDR2 PC6400 memory, a Samsung Spinpoint F1 750 GB hard drive, a Thermaltake Toughpower 1500W Modular power supply unit as well as four MSI 9800GX2 cards. The researchers said that the cost of the system was less than 4000 Euro or about $5300.

Note the use of an AMD 9850 quad core chip. Not implying that an Intel chip couldn't have been used or might have preformed better. As it stands, people, especially those in business, will see the use of an AMD quad core and think that if its good enough to do that type of work, it will be good enough for their use. You might object and say that business usage and not enthusiast, but the vast bulk of AMD' income is from business purchases, as it is with Intel's income. Still, this shows that AMD's chips are technologically capable of doing very complicated work.

the author could also have been meaning the whole system that AMD can present that includes chipsets and gpu's and the fact that they use hyper-transport which in the big business world of servers is better and somehow i doubt an investor really looks at the enthusiast market sales when looking at what shares to buy.