AMD stock downgraded to 'sell'

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Almost correct....

Intel's dominance in the CPU market was a matter of being in the right place at the right time. There was a time where your computer could have had an Intel CPU and AMD CPU and they were identical. They were called 486's and 386's. Back then no one knew the difference. Today it is all about brand recognition.

First off, AMD was originally contracted by Intel in the EARLY days (80286 era) to make chips. Intel, back in the day, didn't quite have the ability to make enough volume to meet the demand at the time.

Secondly, though the internal design of the AMD clones were mostly identical - there WAS a means to tell them apart with their Intel cousins. AMD's chips were made to run FASTER. Where Intel had an 8 MHz 286 chip, AMD made theirs run at 12 MHz.

Third, somewhere along the line, AMD's contract was up. Intel finally figured it had enough "help" from AMD. AMD, on the other hand, kept on producing Intel cloned chips. This was during the 386 and 486 era.

Once again, the differnce between Intel and AMD chips was obvious - the AMD chips were faster. Where Intel had a 486DX-33, AMD had a 486DX-40. Intel had the DX2-66, AMD had a DX2-80. Etc...

Now, about this time (early 90's), Intel had filed suit, trademarked the word "Pentium" and renamed the 80586 family using their new trademark. With the trademark protection in place, AMD was no longer able to reverse engineer or clone Intel chips. And thus, the two makers products diverged into different architectures.

Posted by: Wolfie2K3   Posted on: 03/13/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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