TG Daily: It is no secret that your server business has contributed a significant portion to AMD's climbing revenue and profit in Q4. What portion of that success can be attributed to the server division?
Allen: We do not break those figures out. What I can say is that servers did exceptionally well. We do not have the final numbers until we work with Gartner an IDC, but we are certainly very pleased with the market share gains we have seen in the fourth quarter.

TG Daily: The financial world apparently does not view your Q4 result as an accident, but possibly as a trend. How would you explain the improvements of AMD's server results over the course of the past year?
Allen: We believe that we have had a superior product for several years now. But it took a while for the OEM's to broaden their product offering. 2005 was a phenomenal year when you look at all the OEM's, including HP and IBM, and how they have widened their portfolios. The reason why they committed is because we have several advantages over our competition. We offer the highest performance, the best price/performance processor, the best value and - what has come on really strong in the second half of 2005 and into 2006 - a performance-per-watt advantage. Plus, our dual-core products have continued to fuel our market gains.

TG Daily: Intel conceded that it may continue to lose market share to AMD until the launch of their 65 nm Dempsey processor, which may arrive in customer hands in the second quarter of this year. Which disciplines will be critical for AMD to keep its current lead?
Allen: Our key advantage has been performance-per-watt all along. There are those folks who focus on the most performance and others that focus on performance-per-watt. The fact that we lead in both are the two factors that drive continued gains in market share. Looking at our roadmap, we will see significant improvements in both dimensions, performance-per-watt as well as performance. Our OEM partners seem to be very pleased not just with our current, but also with our future products. In fact, compared to 2005, the number of our platform solutions will significantly increase in 2006. Said in another way: I believe we actually will be gaining momentum as we are going into 2006.

TG Daily: AMD recently has been very tight-lipped on its plans for 2006. What exactly will ensure that you can keep your current pace, given the fact that your competition appears to be getting up to speed?
Allen: First, we have the transition to DDR2 in 2006, which presents new opportunities for OEMs and large Opteron platforms. In addition, the blade market continues to grow and this segment has selected Opteron because of its performance-per-watt advantage. Those are two factors that are driving the deepening commitment to Opteron in 2006.

TG Daily: Admitted, we haven't seen Intel's new processors and platforms yet, but will that be enough? What improvements do you have in store for the Opteron processor?
Allen: You will see an increase in frequencies, which will mean an increase in performance. You are going to see us add features that will become an important part of the platform. For example, we have worked with Microsoft, VMware and XenSource to launch a superior virtualization product in 2006. Of course, we are always making improvements to the core to deliver increasing performance. Summing up, you are going to see virtualization, higher performance and higher performance-per-watt in 2006. And if you look at the transition to DDR2, this technology proves a higher level of performance in itself.

TG Daily: 2006 appears to become one of the most interesting years in the history of the microprocessor and the competition between AMD and Intel. Still, AMD expects continued market share gains. Why do you think the market wouldn't wait for Intel's Merom processor core?
Allen: Good question. I believe Intel is simply too late. Sure, they are not standing still and do everything they can against the market share gains we are experiencing. But we are not standing still either. OEMs are looking at the roadmap Intel is presenting to them and they are looking at our roadmap. I am sure that they see that we can continue to extend our lead through 2006.

TG Daily: How far is Intel behind then in AMD's view?
Allen: Look at IDF, where they probably make their most significant statements about upcoming technology. There they made no mention of coming up with a system architecture that is really competitive with direct connect architecture at least until 2008. If we look at their roadmap and everything we see they announced, they are not addressing the fundamental problem they got - which is their legacy front side bus architecture. I believe they are fundamentally disadvantaged until they address this bottleneck.

TG Daily: It has been a few months since AMD has filed an antitrust complaint against Intel. Given the media exposure of this move, do you already see an impact on your sales?
Allen: Absolutely. This really put a spotlight on the fact that AMD is very important for the market and provides people an opportunity to choose the best technology that is available. Yes, people looked into the lawsuit and our claims of their bad behavior. What is more significant, however, is the more people look at us the more they love us. People began to bring in Opteron system and benchmark them against a competitive system from Intel. We definitely have seen growing acceptance [for our systems]. Until today, 90 out of the top 100 companies have deployed Opteron systems.