It's ironic that some of the most complex and hard-to-furnish attributes of Pentium class microprocessors are being dictated by the games industry. The drivers for the entire human race over centuries of recorded history have been war and conquest, often in the name of religion, so I suppose aggression and bloodshed are in our species' genes. Among many others, I wish IDTI had been able to generate one more penny for last quarter's earnings, as well as ramp up C6 production more rapidly. But the total preoccupation with future earnings being derived from C6 and eventually C6+ sales is counterproductive. In my opinion, touting the WinChip 2's introduction isn't clever marketing, either, since that tends to make people ignore the C6 and wait for the newer chip. It's called shooting your sales in the foot. I wish people would spend more time emphasizing the increased revenue that will come from telecommunications circuits, Clear Logic, and if my memory is correct, the newer, zero bus time wait FIFOs. The low power aspect of the WinChip might be emphasized more than it is, because that's a real advantage in notebook computers.
There will be only one Intel in the microprocessor business. They pioneered it and, with IBM's help, dominated the market. Forget AMD, Cyrix, or IDTI doing that kind of thing. They won't.
As far as the slogan "Intel Inside," affecting purchasing managers' decisions to buy, it unfortunately will. IBM did precisely that kind of thing selling main frame computers when Honeywell, Burroughs, Univac, NCR, and CDC had hardware that was equally good and less expensive. The PM would never be faulted if his expensive IBM hardware didn't quite work out, but he could be canned if his Univac computer didn't do the job to perfection. Real games were then, and still are, played in all types of managerial positions. Though I hate to dignify the role of games in selling PCs, let's hope IDTI's C6 benchmarks well in the Long Beach Games Conference. |
