Steve; It has become apparent that Intel is no longer needed for the Wintel platform. It is the Win....., platform, with AMD, IBM, CYRIX, and a few others replacing the .....
Do you remember when the IBM clones came along, and IBM tried marketing(Intel Inside), and then tried proprietary stuff(Microchannel= funny chip carrier), and they both failed??
We have a repeat of this situation, with the barbarian hordes clamoring at the gates of Rome, and out comes this silly chip carrier which Intel is trying to use to wrest the Win.... platform in its own direction, where only they sell chips.
Obviously we will now have two standards, the Intel chip carrier, and the standard socket. AMD,CYRIX, IBM,etc will use the standard socket, and Intel and his friend(s) will go with the carrier. As with IBM performance and price will rule the day, and Intel must yield both price and share.
Intel is using a "firebreak" tactic now. They are 'burning' some of their profits by cutting prices(even though it costs them $20 for every $ they deny AMD) to try and forestall a huge rush to AMD and a coterie of foundries for rent.
This is advance marketing, with the payoff a year or two away. I suspect we are getting close to the design limits of the assorted chips, and so Intel must do something. They are constrained by the need to keep the design Windows compatible, and so do not have a lot of maneuvering room, and that is why they must try the funny chip carrier,(which has no technical basis, just a patentable object so AMD etc cannot emulate). The big problem is that the chip carrier is useless technically as there are other methods of doing what it purports to do, and so the motherboards makers need to make 2 mother board designs-NOT. They need one design with a dual CPU footprint so the customer again has choice.It will add about $5 to the cost, so some makers might make two motherboards, one for each market(which is what is happening now, but the Intel board costs more) So I suspect there will be some kind of shakeout where Intel will yield a lot of share and margin(% of total chips sold, and profit per chip), and that is why the market price for Intel has fallen.
Bill |
