Robert, Re: difference in market caps" - There's a lot of assumptions in your statment. Firstly, M2 has not even taped out, K6 is sampling and Klamath has supposedly been sampling. We have no idea as to what the bin-splits on these parts will be, no solid independent benchmark comparisons, no idea of any compatibility issues. One point in Intel's favor here is that the P-Pro has been shipping for quite a while now and Intel has had enough time to clean up any major issues. That is just the beginning of any meaningful comparison - add to that other factors like technical support, BIOS support, ISV/OSV support, OEMs signed up, cost, yields, bin-splits, frequency headroom, product roadmap and the picture becomes much more complicated. Not to say that AMD or Cyrix cannot be successful but I'd say that the barriers to be successful in this business are much greater than earlier and Intel has managed to assure itself a leading and dominant position at least for the next 4-5 years (probably much longer but I would say that it is difficult for me to see anyone else displace them in the next 4-5 years at least).
Based on the above factors, I'd say even with good engineering, Cyrix has practically no chance on its own (it can successfully maintain its niche for a while though), AMD has a better shot at being a viable alternative to Intel but a lot hinges on how the K6 program pans out and how it stacks up against the P-Pro program (and I just don't mean the engineering aspect though that is obviously important).
- MJ |
