Hi richard surckla; Re: "Why would Michael Dell, the CEO of such a large and successful company be the leader in promoting products (RDRAM and P4) that you claim are so inferior to other products that are currently available?"
Michael Dell likely doesn't have a clue as to the details of the machines DELL sells. Management never does. Intel management didn't know better when they promoted the i820 or Timna, now both clearly failed products.
When a person becomes a CEO with such a powerful position as Michael Dell, there is a strong tendency for his underlings to avoid telling him news that he doesn't like. When things can be expressed in a more positive way, the underlings express it that way. This tendency is very hard to fight against. But the trend is clear. Three months ago, Dell's computer lines were 6/11 = 55% RDRAM based. Now, even though the P4 is being sold, they are only 7/13 = 54% RDRAM based. Dell is reducing its percentage of lines devoted to RDRAM.
But getting out of RDRAM is something that will take Dell a long time to do. They have put themselves into a position where they are totally dependent on Intel, having no AMD chips available at all. AMD, on the other hand, has sold out of CPU chips for most of the past year and doesn't have enough volume available to save Dell's ass. Consequently, Dell has to make like The Nazi Officer's Wife, and make the best out of a bad situation. [A great book and a good read, by the way.]
Re: "Why would Michael Dell want to embarrass himself and his company by selling products that don't stand up to their claims?"
Michael Dell wouldn't want to embarrass himself. But given that AMD won't sell him any chips, he doesn't have any choice. He's tied to the Intel ship, and Intel is stuck with RDRAM (an "unfortunate decision") until VIA and pals come up with replacements for the i850. Michael Dell care a lot more about how his stockholders think of him (and he has a lot of shares) than how his customers think of him.
Re: "Why would the Dell engineers have a different opinion of RDRAM than you do. If they saw the same deficiencies that you see, how can they allow Michael Dell to continue to move forward without warning him of the potential risk?"
Corporations frequently are forced into providing solutions that are less than optimal from an engineering standpoint. Engineers do (and did) complain, but important corporate decisions are made by management, who are aware of the other than engineering requirements, not by the engineers.
Re: "Something doesn't fit in this puzzle."
The real puzzle is why you still think RDRAM is selling well and is going to take over the market when the final results for 2000 turned out to be much closer to the Semico figures than to either the Instat or Dataquest figures.
The basic fact is that Intel and Dell are the only companies married to RDRAM, and Intel admits that it is working on a DDR chipset which Dell will be likely to sell. The various memory makers that are producing RDRAM are all, every one, with no exceptions, producing DDR as well. They are not married to RDRAM. On the other hand, there are plenty of companies supporting DDR, with no (current) RDRAM products at all: AMD, VIA, Micron, Hyundai, Infineon, SiS, ALi, Transmeta, Xilinx, Altera, etc., etc...
The companies most closely associated with RDRAM production are all converting to SDRAM and DDR as quickly as possible. In Intel's case, that means mid 2001 for SDRAM conversion, and early 2002 for DDR conversion. That Intel would convert the P4 over to DDR and SDRAM after devoting so much effort to designing it for RDRAM is about as strong an indication that RDRAM is dead, dead, dead as you are going to find today.
If RDRAM were thought to be the memory technology of the future, Intel wouldn't be working on DDR chipsets, and AMD would be showing off RDRAM based prototypes. It's as simple as that. You're deluded.
-- Carl |
