Steve; I have been making that point for some time now. We are into a 'gatescode' era, and Intel is doing a firebreak defence of price dropping to forestall AMD to such a degree that they(Intel) lose $20 for every $1 they deny AMD. Amd will make 2 million K6 chips in the fourth quarter(flat out, sell them all) up from 1 million in the third quarter.
Also Intel is far from assured of success with the slot one, combined DRAM and chip carrier. It is a naked attempt to make a specialized chip/DRAM combo that AMD etc cannot follow. Look what happened to IBM and microchannel. The Intel slot one game is the same crap. It will be end run very soon. They are trying to line up a group of OEMs, make a chip set to go with it(Rambus ready) and try tp hit the ground running and keep the others from catching up for 6 months.
Good luck, if AMD makes a deal with Rambus(as all memory OEMs have already done) they will engineer around the slot one scheme. (It lacks technical merit, just a proprietary scheme, like microchannel) Do not believe what Intel says, best thing since sliced bread, etc ,etc.
If Intel fails to get a critical mass with the slot one scheme, their stock will fall by 50%. All the motherboard makers want it to fail, and they will make workarounds within a few weeks of it's introduction. All AMD/CYRIX/ETC have to do is make a fast gatescode chip. Win98 does not know or care whose chip is running it. AMD has shown that it makes better chips than Intel when it chased Intel from the lower chips. Intel has reached a ceiling in it's chip design, and there are few easy gains left, allowing AMD to run a parallel course.
AMD could well make a chip faster than Intel on the next go around.
Bill |
