David & Michael Cummings - Re:"PC upgrades & Pentium Pro Shortages"
Thank you both for the references. Taking these two together - continued Pentium Pro 200 MHz shortages PLUS larger corporations having yet to put their Windows NT/Pentium Pro upgrade programs into place leads to some intriguing speculation.
Obviously, Intel's business - as good as it has been - may get even better, especially if the growth is in the higher margin Pentium Pro devices. Assuming they are capacity constrained AND NOT experiencing severe yield problems, Q1/97 & Q2/97 may be a lot more robust than Intel has let on in their recent earnings report.
Now - going further out on a limb that I climbed earlier - Intel may be able to increase their Pentium Pro production, and the high speed end of the distribution, by accelerating their 0.25 micron process ramp on the old Pentium Pro as well as the Klamath.
Since this wafer fab process development is done in a new R & D facility in Oregon, AND Intel's past modus operandi has been to build an R $ D fab, develop a new process, then ramp the R & D fab into production - and, of course, generate a whole bunch of ungodly profits so they can build yet a new R & D fab to replace the "old" R & D fab that has been transmogrified into a production fab.
This scenario will address the capacity problem by allowing NEW WAFER FAB capacity to come on stream quickly, WITH the new 0.25 micron process for high speed devices - shrunken Pentium Pro, shrunken 512K SRAM cache chips , & shrunken Klamath (= Deschuttes).
Folks, that scenario is my prediction "and I'm sticking to it"!
Paul |
