Mark - Re:" what is Intel doing to ensure that it will be in that type of PC..."
One thing they (Intel) are doing is building the advanced technology wafer fabs capable of producing the volume of CPUs required to increase market penetration.
We can argue ad infinitum what the future platform(s) will be but Intel is betting the Farm (They actually have a section in Hillsboro, Or. called Jones Farm) that Their wafer FABS with deep submicron capability will be there to crank out the chips. Today, that means Pentium, Pentium Pro, i960, 80x51, 8019x CPUs, embedded versions of 386 and 486 devices, chip sets, and other support devices.
Their profits are being plowed into new R & D, and newer fabs. Currently, Intel is producing 0.35 micron Pentium & Pentium Pro devices in THREE large wafer FABS, while newer fabs are being fabricated and will be financed by profits from today's chip sales.
Let's assume that next year Intel will introduce 0.25 micron Pentium Pro variants and that two to three years beyond that, 0.18 micron devices will be fabricated on still newer fabs (paid for by the 0.25 micron products). By that time, the die size of Pentium Pro devices will be very small (I won't speculate exactly at this point), wafer sizes may hit 12 inches diameter, and Intel will be able to sell these Pentium Pro chips into any market they so choose. These will be of incredible speed and functionality, not dummied down NC chips, and should be cost competitive with the generic dummied-down NC chips.
TI, Moto, NEC, Fujitsu, Toshiba, Samsung, AMD, etc have no cash cows that permit them to support such a heavy investment in R & D and bricks & mortar such as Intel is now doing. Which semi manufacturer will be able to produce 50 - 100 million CPU chips per year to fill the "90%" market penetration?
Since you, I and Intel all lack crystal balls, my bet will be that Intel's massive investment in advanced wafer fab technology and new wafer fabs will allow them to be very successful (i.e., dominant) in a very fluid future marketplace.
Regarding Sony's playstation - this is a good success story but Sony has saddled itself with so many distractions - witness their movie business - today they just canned their Columbia (?) president for paying Jim Carry $21,000,000 for the shlockbuster "Cable Guy". Not to mention thier mini-disc fiasco, etc.
By the way, Sony contracted with Intel to help develop their current new PCs introduced a month or two ago. This is years after Sony invested HEAVILY in their NEWSTATION - a MIPS based RISC workstation that was used quite widely in Japan - at SONY installations only!
In summary - Sony has no guarantee on sucess - quite the opposite (and I won't go into their BetaMAX writeoffs!).
Paul |
