qquig, Dont ignore the super high volume, low
margin, low end market, where PCs power
everything from your refrigerator to your cell
phone. As Grove said "...billions of
interconnected PCs..."
Intel made a major move into that territory
today.
quicken.excite.com
ry/?story=/news/stories/bw/19980223/a0227.htm
I believe that market comes with lower risk,
and equally high profits (as Merced) for
Intel. While I'm as hopeful as you are that
Intel will capture the workstation market with
Merced, the question is whether existing
software will run on Merced without at least a
recompilation. As you may remember, Intel had
another super chip a few years ago (I believe
it was a 8XXXX) that went absolutely nowhere.
On the positive side, this time around, I
believe Merced has more management focus, and
the market is also more ready for it.
The market "volume" for low cost, low power
chips to power every sort of appliance is 2
orders of magnitude bigger than desktop PC's.
For that market, it is not even an issue
whether software is already running on it.
There isn't any. The most important thing to
be successful in that market is the ability to
produce quality chips at the lower cost. The
economies of scale, and the huge investments
needed to achieve those economies favor Intel.
The second and third most important things to
succeed in the appliance chip market is
technology and marketing channel. IMO,
whatever Intel does not already have there,
they can buy. Same as Cisco.
Happy investing. |
