Ali; As I see it there will be no new dawn for the alpha. It's only hope is to run as a risc with a pentium emulation set, as long as it is fast enough it can work around the architecture problems, however that approach is inherently slower than architecturally compatible chips(which Intel will make ever faster) and so they will run a losing stern chase and fall further behind. He bet the company, and the company is toast.(DEC) But like all large dinosaurs the head does not know the legs have been cut off yet. They may survive on legacy business as it declines, it is still all theirs, but they must make a quantum leap to survive in the CPU business. their errors were made some time ago, and they have no time to think or work out a solution before they are done.(it is a 5 year done, like Apple, they will be there as a shadow in 5 years of what they are now, which is a shadow of what they were five years ago)
AMD cannot crank the sand fast enough to allow their technically capable K6 chip fill enough shoes to count(it will make a big boost to AMDs sales) compared to Intel. They may farm out some sand patterns, if they can. Don't forget there may be some restrictive cross licenses which forbid other foundries from this business(for disconnected reasons) and also many big sand small line foundries are booked up for a while. So even if AMD doubles a few times it will still be small.
How good is the K6 yield?? anyone.
I have never posted to Intel before so pardon my ignorance if I make an error, 25000 posts, takes hours to read(hundreds)
The small error in the MMX has chilled it's sales a bit, but it will be fixed. The MMX hype has chilled all lower pentiums greatly. They are being sold very cheaply all over. An error, in my opinion, in marketing. However Intel has better men than me in marketing, so it may have been a calculated move to spike the K6, which had very good press and was fast as stink. To make sure that Intel the Gorilla, stays bigger than all the others together. To be sure their package will drive up costs, and allow AMD to grow, and a few years of doubling twice a year and they will become a challenge. The market sees all this, and estimates that AMD will gain this year. Even though small in absolute terms, the headline "AMD doubles/triples" will shake confidence in Intel, and some will sell, Intels price will weaken, but Intel will not weaken very much, and if they can leap ahead again it is AMD that will fall behind again(as they have done before)
Bill Jackson |
