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Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Development will increase its investment in AMD from 8.1% to 19.3% “through the purchase of shares and warrants worth $314 million” (Zawya)

Abu Dhabi has already invested $8.4 billion [sic!] in AMD. About $6 billion of this is an investment in AMD’s fabs.

This $8.4 billion was already in addition to an investment of several hundred million.

Abu Dhabi wants AMD’s fabs. It looks like they are going to get AMD, too.

This could be good for technology. Intel will have a competitor with pockets even deeper than its own.

NVIDIA also will have to stay on its toes.

A financial analyst recently asked Intel’s CEO what certain aspects of the quarter would have been like had the world economy not cratered. Paul Otellini, with pain in his voice, shot back: “That’s just like asking Mrs. Lincoln what the play was like“.

The quarter was bad. How bad? It was “only the second time in 20 years that our fourth quarter revenues were below the third quarter”. However, in the year 2000, revenue came in less than one percent below Q3. This time it was 19% below! Q4 is supposed to be Intel’s strongest quarter.

Guidance last quarter was meaningless. So this time they didn’t even bother. The CFO did however say that they were internally modeling for revenue of $7 billion. That will give analysts something to chew on. However, it could be way off. There’s a thick blanket of fog before them.

The problem, or one of the problems, is that inventory in the supply chain is still contracting. Customers are still burning through what they had before the world turned upside down. When the inventory burns off and orders re-emerge is unclear. They hope Q1, but it could be later.

In the meantime, Intel plods on.

Netbooks and Atom

One of the few bright spots in the deepening recession has been netbooks, those little mini-notebooks. They are selling well, and Intel makes CPUs and chipsets for them. Atom sales were up 50% from the previous quarter and brought in $300 million.

Despite the strong sales of Atom, many analysts still don’t think Atom was a good idea, because they fear it will take away sales from Core 2 CPUs. To this, Intel replied that they think Atom is cannibalizing less than 20% of notebook CPUs. Management adduced surveys of buyers and said that they would go into detail at the analyst meeting.

Nehalem

The dual-processor server version of Nehalem, Intel’s latest CPU architecture, “began shipping for revenue in December”.

DP-server Nehalem is not to be confused with desktop Nehalem, which launched in November under the Core i7 moniker. The multi-processor server version of Nehalem ships in the second half. Of the DP-server version, the CEO quite truthfully said: “The performance of this product is stunning”.

While reviews of DP-server Nehalem have not appeared yet, below is a graph of a synthetic memory test that shows the kind of performance Nehalem is capable of. The illustratioin comes from TechReport. Please keep in mind, the Core i7 entries are desktop Nehalems, not server Nehalems, and this gives only a rough estimation of a single subsystem. It’s insightful nonetheless.

One analyst, a few days before the earnings call, surmised that certain announced price cuts to Intel server CPUs may have been the result of share gains by AMD with HP systems. “He contends the timing of the cuts is unique“.

Intel responded that the price cuts were driven by the impending launch of the new server parts and were not reactive. As new products are launched, prices are cut to help clear inventory. It’s “really the continuing process of us bringing in new technology from the top of the stack”.

Mainstream Nehalem parts for clients are also due out in the second half, including at least one SKU with graphics integrated on the CPU. The CFO was point-blank asked if such a part was still on for the “second half for this year”, and he said, yes.

Solid State Drives

One of the most exciting developments in computing these days is solid state drives. SSDs have the potential, among other things, to vastly increase system performance. While sales are not big enough to constitute a separate line item, management did say that Intel was “getting some good early market acceptance of our SSDs”.

32-nanometer Process Technology

Products like Nehalem and solid state drives tend to grab headlines. Intel, however, at heart is a manufacturing company. Their process technology is the foundation of their business. Intel primarily uses a 45-nanometer process technology but is working on 32nm and 22nm. The first products manufactured on 32nm will appear this year. However, the ramp will not occur until next year. Said the CFO: “We’ll have products in production this year, but in 2010 it’s really when that ramps”.

The Marianas Trench

One of the things management did on the earnings call was look out across the Marianas Trench to the other side and leave investors with a sense of what it might be like when things recover. No quick snapback is expected. Rather a process of growth from a bottom is envisioned. When that happens, Intel will be prepared.

Disclosure: long Intel

It’s a good thing NVIDIA does more than just desktop GPU discrete graphics these days. If NVIDIA had never expanded beyond the desktop, the company would really be in a world of hurt. NVIDIA’s revenue share, for example, in high-end GPUs went from 80% to 30% from the second to third quarter (NVIDIA Corporation at Credit Suisse Group Technology Conference Presentation, December 2, 2008)!

High-end desktop graphics has traditionally been a high-margin business, with cards commanding $400-600 in prices. Not anymore. AMD recently released chips intended for the $200 and $300 markets, the Radeon HD 4870 and 4850. However, the $300 chip was good enough to take on NVIDIA’s $400 offering, and ATI’s $200 GPU NVIDIA’s $300 GPU. “ATI now had a $300 card that was competitive with NVIDIA’s brand new $400 GTX 260“.

A price war ensued. There went the margins.

The pricing of the card above the $200-400 cards in the GPU hierarchy was even affected.

Today cards that originally cost around $300 and $400 can be had for little more than $200. Amazing.

While price wars are good for consumers, they can be bad for margins. Make no mistake. The smaller AMD chip costs less to produce than the larger NVIDIA chip. Nevertheless, the fact that AMD’s ATI graphics division has yet to return a net profit argues that ATI’s GPUs are not making that much money.

Likewise, NVIDIA’s desktop margins are under pressure. High-end GPUs have traditionally been a high-margin business for NVIDIA and chipsets a lower-margin business. Yet the CEO was recently asked if “chipset gross margins right now are greater than your desktop gross margins”, and the CEO replied, “Yes, they are close“.

AMD’s current company-wide strategy is simply to return to profitability. The company’s gross margins are such that all they have to do, to achieve a net profit, is get their sales up. It should happen eventually, though it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen this quarter. Consequently AMD is presently trying not so much to push the envelope of technology, or to expand the overall CPU or GPU markets, as it is trying to take market share from what’s already out there.

One area where AMD would love to take market share is the incredibly lucrative area of professional workstation graphics. This space is practically owned by NVIDIA, which in the third quarter had “90% of overall units” and enjoys gross margins of around 70% (Credit Suisse Conference, 12/2/08).

I don’t see how a chip designed for the $300 price point, such as ATI’s, is going to scale far into the high end of professional workstation graphics. It seems that it would be more difficult to scale up a GPU than to scale down: to add to the complexity, than to simplify a design.

That being said, the reviews I have seen of ATI’s professional workstation cards have been good. We’ll have to see how this plays out. I always like a good fight.

Disclosure: long NVIDIA