IT managers respond with caution to MMX systems
By Carolyn A. April
InfoWorld Electric
Posted at 2:43 PM PT, Jan 15, 1997
As PC vendors begin flooding the market with desktops and notebooks based on Intel's Pentium
processor with MMX, corporate IT managers face the perennial technology decision: To buy or
not to buy?
Many users, for now, are opting for the wait-and-see approach.
"We're not sure how [MMX processors] really apply to our business at this point," said Frank
Petersmark, assistant vice president of IS at Amerisure & Co., an insurance company in
Southfield, Mich. "It's early on with this, and we've been burned on new technologies before.
Two years ago, we thought the world would be going to PDAs [personal digital assistants]."
IT managers cite many reasons for their reluctance to jump on MMX-enabled systems. Principle
among them is the dearth of business applications written to take advantage of MMX extensions.
"As I see it, there are no applications out there right now that are crying for this processor," an IS
manager overseeing hardware at a nationwide transportation company said. "We're trying to get
away from fatter clients and their huge support costs."
Nevertheless, many systems vendors, including IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Compaq, Dell, Toshiba,
and Gateway 2000, are banking on corporate adoption of MMX-based PCs. They cite the
inherent performance boost of the processor, due in part to a doubling of the Level 1 cache.
Intel said users can expect to see a 60 percent performance increase in applications written for
MMX, and experience a 10 percent to 20 percent boost running non-MMX programs.
"The way we see it, there's only about a 5 percent difference in pricing between the MMX
systems and regular Pentium PCs, but you get a 15 [percent] to 20 percent performance
improvement," said Jim McGann, program director of worldwide marketing and communication
at IBM, in Armonk, N.Y. "It's a no-brainer technology jump."
Some IS managers said they see promise for MMX in enhancing videoconferencing on the
desktop.
"Maybe down the line that's something we might be interested in," said Todd Hicks, hardware
specialist at Erie Insurance Co. in Erie, Penn. "But it would have to provide a significant
improvement to desktop videoconferencing and be cost efficient." |
