OK Carl, Scumbria, Ali, et al:
eet.com
Part of HyperTransport's charm is its ability to remain transparent to
the PCI bus, virtually guaranteeing compatibility with PCI-based
products and preserving the huge OEM investment in that aging
technology. "HyperTransport is done in such a way that it's been able
to package PCI commands over a HyperTransport link so that drivers
written to interface with devices over PCI can operate without
modification," said Nathan Brookwood, president of market research
firm Insight 64 (Saratoga, Calif.). "It [makes] the transition to a new
standard a lot easier. It takes out all of the software issues because
you've provided compatibility between the two environments."
Bert McComas of InQuest market research (Higley, Ariz.) likened
Intel's 3GIO approach to its backing of Rambus technology over
double-data-rate (DDR) DRAM. In both cases, McComas claimed, Intel
has sought to run interference against a competing, cost-effective
spec to promote its own approach.
"3GIO was a reaction," McComas said. "The industry was really
dominantly moving toward HyperTransport, and Intel had to do
something to run interference. But AMD's in the lead with this one.
"Intel sees HyperTransport run out of the gate, and every horse out
of the gate is going in that direction. So Intel wants to jump into the
lead and throw itself against the traffic. Intel did the same thing with
Rambus, throwing itself in front of DDR and saying, 'If you're big
enough, c'mon and take me'."
Intel's Gregory discounted that scenario, saying, "We have no interest
in a bus war."
But McComas argued that, "in a sense, every CPU war is a bus war."
My questions for you EE wizards are:
1) Just how much of this well deserved ridicule is INTC going to put up with before it sends Gelsinger and all the other Bus Drivers packing?
2) When is AMD's 64 bit CPU coming and what's it called?
3) How much of INTC's market share in CPU's can AMD compete for, i.e., how much can they boost capacity while fighting INTC's giveaway of P4 ASP's?
And most importantly of all, how can a company which is so "brand" and advertising conscious allow itself to be bound, for 7 more months, to a highly visible "partner" which is hated by so many elements in this industry and is in danger of being convicted of Fraud within the next week?
I don't think the RMBS/INTC restrictive memory use Agreement will last the rest of the year whether INTC gets its DDR chip set out before year end or not. So what say you all?
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