Three years ago: Intel's MMX extensions blunder
After already receiving plenty of stick from august UK organisations
like the BBC, mighty Intel faced the combined might of 200 more
journalists at the launch of its MMX Pentiums a few weeks back.
But this time, the audience included tabloid hacks and many of
them wanted answers.
Pity then that after a lacklustre presentation by Ian Wilson, a
European technology marketing manager, the assembled mass
were only given 10 minutes for a Q&A session. The question many
wanted to know was why Intel had waited until the Christmas
selling season was over before it introduced chips which obsoleted
the family that went before.
Although Wilson insisted that Pentium chips before the arrival of
MMX were not obsolete, his stance was more than a little
undermined by an earlier presentation by Gateway 2000 when the
company announced that it had obsoleted Pentium 150s and 166s
and replaced them with Pentium 150MMX and Pentium 166MMX
processors.
Nor was Intel highly convincing about the arrival of the Pentium Pro
as a home consumer platform later this year with the introduction of
Klamath processors.
Although our sources tell us that the plug-in card is now delayed,
Gateway said two hours earlier that it would, in fact, introduce a
Klamath (that is a Pentium Pro on a card) for Christmas 1997.
The lacklustre presentation was only mildly improved by a
demonstration of software by Intel. It showed us four titles, one or
two of which were pretty good-looking although the car-race one
which Wilson seemed to like looked more like a race around the
bowels of La Defence in Paris to us.
And as Microsoft sources tell The Register that it, at least, won't
ship its games titles until this Christmas, that leaves Intel in a bit of
a sorry mess.
Will the poor punters be able to upgrade their expensive Christmas
home PCs? Again, Intel was more than a little evasive. The answer
is, "yes they will" but there is no price for an Overdrive nor is there
a date for one either. If an OEM was clever enough to have
designed an Intel motherboard in what Wilson described as a
"flexible" way, then people could plug in an MMX chip.
All of this led to one distinguished journalist to break out in a bitter
diatribe against Intel for only giving 200 of the leading British hacks
a mere 10 minutes to answer the many questions begged by this
introduction.
Wilson's reply was that people could always talk to Intel staff
afterwards. Your staffers at The Register thought that was
possibly a fruitless endeavour. For us, not even a "happy new year"
greeting from spin doctor Gail Hall, an Intel staffer who still, on the
whole, feels very cheesed off that we know too much about
Klamath and Deschutes technology.
It was a frosty reception. Now The Register is not invited to
Thursday's party at Planet Hollywood south of Soho nor is The
Register allowed to hear Grove explain himself to 1000 IT
managers in London next week. Thank god for that.
Intel is likely to announce a name for Klamath later this month but
our sources at OEMs tell us that the technology is already delayed
because of heat problems.
The Dell Corporation appears to be getting the blame for being the
source of the leak which gave The Register its exclusive leak about
Deschutes et al last year. Poor Dell. Intel is said to be now
thoroughly revising its security techniques and changing the way it
delivers information to its OEMs.
No-one in the security wing at Santa Clara appears to have even
considered the possibility that rather than make things tighter for its
customers, it could try lightening up a little. ®
theregister.co.uk
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The Register posted that article on their website so I felt it was proper to also post it here. |
