Intel's greatest strength is thought by most people to be its pace of new processor design. While impressive enough, that's not it. Others think its intel's quasi-monopoly position w/Msft. While helpful, that is greatly exaggerated in intl's case, as Cyrix's and Amd's latest chips makes clear once again.
Intels greatest stength is its incredible ability to bring on multibillions of dollars in fabs producing not only diversified new generations of processors, but most of the immediately associated support chips necessary to actually attain the processor's promise w/out bottlenecks, almost seemlessly, and largely on time, with no major missteps or unwanted new product.
Incredible management performance, again and again.
For which the credit belongs with the largely unsung true hero of Intel, now President Craig Barrett. Gordon Moore's though importnant is overplayed, Barrett's way under. (Back when intel was transitioning to the 386 its future dominance was by no means assured, and the market didn't think so either. It was Barrett who then did what has now become what is almost routine at Intel, cause of him.
Regards, Doug |
