Geeks declare war on Intel
Chip-heads say flaws in the Pentium 4 prove the high-tech giant is sacrificing engineering principles for marketing goals.
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By Kieran McCarthy
March 2, 2001 | On Feb. 19, Intel launched a $300 million advertising campaign to push the new Pentium 4 processor. Amid the now-standard TV ads featuring blue-pigmented men in skintight body suits and the drumbeat of hype pushing the chip's supposedly super-fast 1.5 gigahertz speed, chip aficionados are also being bludgeoned by a stream of new Intel trademarks. The Pentium 4, we are being told, features Intel's "NetBurst" micro-architecture, which in turn includes neat and dandy stuff like "hyper-pipelining" technology.
And it's all in the service of helping your computer scream along as you immerse yourself in 3D gaming and MP3s and streaming video. What could be better? One would imagine that hardcore chip-heads would be ecstatic. But guess what -- the geeks are not impressed.
What's more, they haven't been impressed for quite some time with Intel. When Intel debuted the Pentium 4 on Nov. 20, 2000, the computer site tüplay.com commemorated the occasion by posting a list of Intel's top 10 sneakiest moves and greatest screw-ups of the Pentium era. And in the intervening months, a small cabal of geek-oriented Web sites have kept their sights focused on Intel, documenting every slip-up and deconstructing every piece of marketing jargon the company disgorges.
The gist of their attack on the Pentium 4 is straightforward: Intel is no longer a company where engineers make the decisions, say the geeks. The marketing department calls the shots, and in its effort to market a chip that will supposedly make your computer an Internet superstar, it is telling Intel engineers to do things that don't make much sense. Ultimately, that could lead to the undermining of Intel's current stranglehold on the all-important microprocessor market.
Some of the sites are relatively well known -- the infamous Slashdot needs little introduction. But other watering holes where the most knowledgeable computer geeks on the planet meet to distribute and discuss cutting-edge technology information include TomsHardware.com, Sharkey Extreme and Emulators.com -- a site that is both the corporate front for an emulation software company and a node for Intel-watching.
All these sites confront the quandaries of the computer age from a most original perspective: one that is informed. And while their conversations don't obsess on the financial bottom line that fills most news sites, followers of the computer-based economy could do worse than to heed their advice. It's a case study in how the Internet works -- on one side, you have Intel, one of the most successful high tech companies in the world, fully able and willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to brainwash consumers into believing whatever it wants them to believe. And on the other, you have a motley group of Web sites populated by itinerant geeks, armed only with knowledge and a burning desire to spread it.
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