[geeks] Interesting ATI/AMD news

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Sat, Jul 29, 2006 at 05:06:30PM -0400, Patrick Giagnocavo wrote:

> I was never able to actually buy a TM chip + motherboard, for less than
> the cost of a complete system that used a P4 or Athlon.  Huge mistake.

They never were able to reach "critical mass" to sell their chips.

When I tried to get information on their chips, I was never able to.
In fact the only information I was able to get at all was a quantity
1200 price, which was useless. Design specs, software information,
evaluation boards, etc where nonexistant.

It took a long line of phone tag to get to someone who could give us
the quantity 1200 quote and no one bothered to call us back. In fact,
I'm not even sure they took the person who called's name and number.

Contrast that to AMD, whose local reps came to Jerusalem to meet with
us, provided use with all the information we needed on current and
future products, was serious about finding out what we needed and
making sure that was forwarded to their design staff and loaned us
new products to test.

TM's other problem was that they did not build an X86 compatible chip. Their
chip was a RISC chip that had built in X86 emulation. While this strategy
works for Intel and their Pentium 4, it's not a widely known fact.

When we were designing the infamous handheld device, we had at one time
thought of making three models, a blue one with a National Semiconductor
Geode (product line sold to AMD) which was a 266mHz PI, a green one with
a VIA chip (667 mHz (really 666, but due to the religeous nature of the
owner, rounded up) and a red one with a TM chip.

Things changed. AMD superceeded the Geode with a much better chip.
VIA turned out to "back the wrong horse", lied about the power 
consumption and capability of their chip, and TM never could deliver
enough information and eventually folded.

Geoff.
  
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Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
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