>INTC now has enough capacity to meet Q4 and Q1 demand....so
>time will tell if demand is really there. The spot prices for P200 is >because people have not bought into the
>PII hype even with those cool colored outfits and that slick van. >This is the first time they have had enough
>capacity.....do you think that their cap spending next year may be >flat??
the reason why INTC built more capacity this time is because of the MAJOR screwup they had with the MMX product transition.. people wanted MMX and there weren't enough to go around... the same was true with the PPro at the beginning, they were on allocation.... some people waited, others purchased less powerful machines then they really wanted to... This time, INTC has done it right and made sure that they can satisfy demand... No, I don't see next year being flat, as still, the bulk of INTC's production is at .35 (all by the Tillamook)... their roadmap clearly labels Deschutes as .25, and Merced, which is to appear in 1999 as .18....
As far as memory goes... the big memory cruch of 95 was caused by Win95... before that, most PC's ran on 1 or 4 megs of ram... I remember when I first installed win95 with 4 megs of ram... then I had to go and find 4 1 meg simms (which I paid a total of $120 for) and then from 8 to 16, then 16 to 32 and finally now at 64... From 1994--96 we saw the average PC go from about 2 megs or ram to 20 megs or ram, so worldwide demand for megabytes may have increased by say 10 fold over a short period... now, the average computer probably shipts with aroudn 24-32 megs (still lots of laptops shipping with 16)... Clearly, what the memory makers need is host of software that will require in an average computer to have 5 to 10 times this.... Right now its hard to make that arguement.. however, in 1994 most of us were also happy with 4 megs...
Darin |
