Dan, Re: "Intel all but disappeared from Europe during the notched-gate fiasco, and the reference designs for a number of their recent platforms didn't work - 820 3RIMM, 840 with MTH, etc. resulting in manufacturers having to scrap hundred of thousands of motherboards."
You have quite a few things wrong, here. If you would like to prove that Intel is not dependable to OEMs, then you can at least get your facts straight. Notched gate transistors, if I am indeed thinking of the same thing, are what Intel had first introduced in their Coppermine processor to get it to reach 1GHz from the previous 800MHz is was clocked at the time. To my knowledge, all of Intel's processors, and now AMD's, use this technique. The i820 suffered from having 4 RIMMs enabled, and the work-around was to only enable 3. This was an electrical issue, and the work-around did not end up impacting customer memory requirements. Lastly, the i840 did not use MTH. It was the i820, and the motherboard design was called Cape Cod. Intel quickly replaced all the motherboards, and shipped customers the RDRAM-based Vancouver motherboard, with a free 128MB RDRAM RIMM. All and all, Intel screwed up a number of releases in 2000. OEMs became upset, and Intel fixed the situation in the quickest and easiest way possible for the OEMs. Given the situation, that was the best they could hope for. But years from now, you will continue to use the same, old examples to try and prove your point. Can you give me a good reason why this makes Intel a poor choice for OEMs to depend on?
wanna_bmw |
