I like the Red Herring a lot - they usually have good, reliable articles.
I'm not sure why they dropped the ball on this article. Let me help clear up some of the inaccuracies in this article.
Mistatement #1
The writer (Dean Takahashi of RH) claims Itanium was a no-show at the ecommerce show.
Fact: On this Thread, you can find a post that listed the number of applications running on Itanium at this show. Off the top of my head, I seem to recall the article stating there were 40 (or was it 150?) applications that were using Itanium at this show.
Mistatement #2
The article implied Itanium had an unusual slip.
FACT: Sun's latest chip (Sparc III) was delayed more.
FACT: If you take probably any industry chip release, and divide slippage by expected time, you'll probably get exactly the same percentage, or a number that's pretty close. i.e. Chips in the industry have about the same % in slippage. Tenchusatsu had an excellent post on this about server schedule slips at DEC, Sun, IBM, etc. Intel is just more of a visible company than the others. Maybe it increases readership to bash Intel, just like the x486 and Pentium were bashed when they were first released.
RE: "allowing rivals like Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) and IBM (NYSE: IBM) to hold on to the highest end of the computing market."
Possibly he didn't hear about Sun's announcement regarding their support for Intel in the Server market (i.e. Cobalt).
RE: "Instead of focusing more tightly, Intel is like a jack-of-all-chips, diversifying into Web hosting, communications hardware and software, and information appliances. In these new markets, Intel lacks the architectural stranglehold"
Interesting that he didn't mention "networking" e.g. wireless nw chips, etc. an area where Intel is doing well. I would now give Intel a higher grade of A- due to the design wins.
Regards,
Amy J |
