Paul and all,
My boss just came back from CeBit and immediately thereafter a technical conference sponsored by a well known research firm one of whose divisions specializes in the microcomputer industry.
AMD K-6 3D was all over CeBit, I am told, and was very impressive. The analysts at the conference (these are NOT stock market people or analysts) were saying that AMD is on the verge of huge success, the yield problems are solved, the K-6 3D is real and very well designed, and Celeron is a turkey. As a significant Fortune 500 company that is an OEM, we have a Celeron, I had my hands on it today, although I haven't seen it running in a system yet. From what I'm hearing, and from what I saw, I am tending towards the thought that this is one idea that would have been better left in the think tank; perhaps they would have been better off just bargain-basementing 233 MMX's until they had the 2nd generation Celeron chip with cache.
I think that Intel's going to have a rough time of it until Merced comes out, I don't think that the current problems are short term, or that Intel has seen the worst of what is happening. I do still think, in the long run, that Intel will rule, but this is going to be one tough year, and it may continue through much of 1999. |
