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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC)
INTC 54.26+11.6%Jan 21 3:59 PM EST

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To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (104197)6/8/2000 1:05:00 PM
From: chic_hearne  Read Replies (1) of 186894
 
Re: Fortunately for Intel, by the time POWER4 is out, McKinley/870 should be right around the corner.

Tench,

Both chips *should* be out in late 2001. That's if a miracle can happen and both of these companies are actually capable of staying on target with a delivery date. This would be amazing considering the Itanium will almost be half a decade late by delivery and the most recent POWER3 was over 18 months old before it finally made it into the S80.

Let's assume both companies can actually get the chips in systems in late 2001. McKinley will probably win single-thread benchmarks, but because it lacks CMP and has far less system bandwidth it will be destroyed in a host of more important benchmarks (for servers). Remember, POWER4 will have 10 times the chip to chip bandwidth of Itanium. Itanium will also be crippled with a small L2. McKinley will be a big improvement over Itanium, twice the perfomance and triple the bandwidth. Even at 3 times the bandwidth of Itanium, McKinley will only have roughly 1/4 of the bandwidth of POWER4. To me, it seems that since both companies have chosen such opposite designs it looks like IBM is focusing on the high end while Intel is looking at the low end. Of course, this makes no sense as to where HP fits in since they are targeting the same market as IBM. Somebody has to be wrong here.

There are a few wildcards in this though. If one of the 2 is on time or early with a solid processor intro, that will spell bad news for the other (on the high end). IBM has taken a conservative roadmap allowing extra time from first silicon to production, so I can't see much of a slip up from them. Who knows what to expect from Intel. The other issue is that IBM's chip manufacturing technology is probably a full 2 years ahead of Intel (from what's publicly available from both companies). Copper and SOI are already proven and in IBM systems. Intel has far greater risks as it starts to use these technologies.

Is there anything wrong with Itanium/McKinley being stuck in the low end? It will still make Intel a ton of cash.

chic
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