Sorry for the delay in responding, Jim. I was at Comdex until yesterday.
BTW, though I appreciate the thought, I'm not a programmer at Intel. I'm a writer/online help developer in one of Intel's software divisions.
I was surprised at how huge a display Be had at the show. They seem to be positioning themselves as a niche multimedia/video provider a la the old Amiga. I didn't see any prominent references to Intel, but I wasn't looking that hard.
Based on what I saw, and with the continued interest Intel has shown in Be, I'd be very surprised if Be wasn't one of the first to implement KNI in their product line.
From Intel's point of view, I think they are just trying to diversify themselves as much as possible. This means distancing the company from dependence on Microsoft and their operating systems. Linux, Sun, now Be...maybe doesn't mean a whole lot now, but if any one of these turns out to be the seeds of Microsoft's destruction, Intel is covered.
Something about only the paranoid surviving. ;)
Regarding Katmai, I think Intel a) is tired of waiting for MSFT to write software that keeps pace with the hardware and has decided to push the issue a bit, and b) needs to continue to be aggressive in cutting prices and raising CPU performance to keep AMD at bay on the low end.
Faster Celerons at the high end and price cuts for the whole line really hits AMD and the other chip companies where it hurts. Q1 and Q2 of 1999 will be very telling for INTC and AMD et al, I think.
Regards,
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