Frank,
Intel. This was the week for one of their big showcases of the year, Intel Developers Forum (IDF), in Palm Springs. Among other things, CEO Craig Barrett said that Coppermine, Intel's next geometry shrink at 0.18 micron, will come out a month earlier (actually had been Sept., slipped to Nov. about 4 months ago, now back to Oct.). He said Coppermine (Pentium III-2?) would debut at minimum 700 MHz. They demoed one at 800. Also at IDF, Barrett demoed a server based on Merced, Intel's first 64 bit æP, running both Linux and Win 2000. It was actually doling out jobs to a couple of connected PCs. The Merced in the server was made from "first silicon", supposedly just run a couple weeks ago. This is unheard of, usually takes months. Merced has some 40 million transistors. Then there were the network chip announcements by both Intel and IBM. From what I've been reading, both companies' products can co-exist; not a zero sum game. All told, one of the long time Intel holders on the Intel thread said this has been the biggest week he can remember for announcements ever.
What else can you say? Practically every analyst is upgrading Intel right now, reports coming out about PC demand say it's the best in years, ASPs (average selling prices) are actually going UP. Probably as responsible as anything else is that the MoMo crowd looks to be jumping on board, big time.
For risk/reward ratio, Intel is still one of the best.
Tony |
