On Intel:
I think the problem is obvious. Intel has reached that critical point in the life of large, once "invincable," company, where the CEO wakes up one day and realizes that he is surrounded by remoras. Somewhere, someplace, there was an engineer who went to sleep knowing there was a problem. The question is why he wasn't able to influence the decision making process.
Itanium and the Rambus chipset fiascos are the most obvious examples. Now of course the question is whether the same disease had infected Oregon. I'm betting it has.
Intel completely underestimated Athlon before summer 1999. I doubt that X years ago, when willy was on the drawing board, some Intel managers said that they wanted to design a new chip that would be released at 40% higher MHz than the fastest chip from the previous generation, P6. That decision must have been made later, once the competitive threat was realized. So halfway, or more, through its development, the Willy design team received new requirements. And now we have the release a year, perhaps 9 months, after first silicon.
Maybe Intel's Oregon team pulled the gold ring anyway. But its a hard thing to do when the body has three heads, only one of which can see. |
