Carl, I wonder about Via being first. From what I read about Intel's quarterly, they seem to have shaken off the Rambus induced slump in their chipset & mobo business. I assume the 815 must be doing very well in the market, unless Intel is selling incredible volumes of VC820's to the liquidators. I somewhat doubt Via could come up with a decent non-Rambus P4 solution before Intel, unless Intel gave it to them.
Barrett referred to contractual obligations, but I wonder about that too. The wording I recall is that Rambus has the right to terminate Intel's contract if Intel supports an alternative high speed interface. There presumably is more to it than that, but if that was it, I don't know what's to prevent Intel from telling Rambus, "Go ahead, make my day."
Then there's the issue of the short, happy life projected for the original issue P4, with a whole new socket interface after 6 months. Plus the 217mm2 die size, and associated heat problems indicated by the monster heatsinks being floated around. "Fast ramp" may be a very relative thing here. There's also an underling's statement from last week: news.cnet.com
Although Intel will release the Pentium 4 next month, the chip won't become
the breadwinner of the company's microprocessor family until at least 2002.
Because of a number of marketing and technical issues, the more technologically advanced Pentium 4 will
continue to be overshadowed by the Pentium III, at least in terms of revenue and units produced, for some time,
say analysts and Intel executives.
"When does it become the economic center of gravity and when does it become the
unit volume center of gravity?" asked Bill Siu, vice president of Intel's Architecture
Group. "It won't be in 2001."
In 2002, the Pentium 4 will start to overtake the Pentium III in terms of revenue, he
said, but "in terms of units, it will be longer than that."
It could all be this tremendous sandbagging operation from Intel, but once again I wonder. Massive production of a giant chip that's going to be phased out quickly, too many pieces don't fit there.
Cheers, Dan. |
