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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC)
INTC 48.72+3.0%3:59 PM EST
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To: wanna_bmw who wrote (154805)1/11/2002 1:54:33 PM
From: Saturn V  Read Replies (1) of 186894
 
Ref <Intel can make miracles out of disasters, in other words. That seems to be a common these throughout Intel's history. I hope it continues to hold true >

I think you are misunderstanding what Tim meant. Historically Intel had several major products which were gold mines, and crushed the competitors. These product designs were marginal compared to the competition, but Intel's ability to out manufacture the competition made up for not having the most elegant design.

An examples of the above statement was the 1103 the first 1kDRAM. It was a pain to use, and competitors responded with more more elegant designs, which they could not manufacture. This product launched Intel as a semiconductor juggernaut.

The Motorola 6800 was a more elegant microprocessor than the 8080, but the Intel manufacturing capability was again the winner. The exact same pattern was repeated with the highly kludgy 16 bit Intel 8086 . Software compatibility with 8080 created the messy segment architecture, and the limited number of registers. Motorola 68000 series was an elegant fresh clean design built for the 32 bit future. But it was relegated into small niche markets, since at the time IBM made the CPU selection for the PC, the 68000 was not manufacturable.

So semiconductor manufacturing prowess has made up for the lack of an elegant design, by allowing the advantage of early market entry to erect major entry barriers, since the users cost of redesigning the system hardware and software is substantial. But manufacturing prowess cannot make up for design DOGs. The combination of early market entry and outstanding manufacturing always wins over a later elegant design.
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