Dear Patrick,
Micronics never has had any relation to Micron Electronics. Yes, the names sound similar, but there was never any business ties. Diamond bought Micronics about a year and half ago to get into the motherboard business as slipping graphics onto the motherboard has often been considered as a logical step.
Diamond has long been the graphics supplier at Micron Electronics before and after purchasing Micronics, weather it was an SIII part, a Rendition part, a 3Dfx part, an Intel part, or an Nvidia part... Diamond is their board vendor of choice. It would be a major upset if Micron went with someone other than Diamond, but not due to any cross-ownership.
STB Systems provided many boards for Dell (various SIII and NVDA parts) and has had good ties at DELL, so missing being even being "optional" business at DELL with a V3 should be a concern. Of course, the key is to winning business on new machine launches as DELL, GTW, CPQ, IBM, etc. rarely ever change the graphics until new machines come out. Getting OEMs for the next launch of Intel CPUs will be the key for TDFX... be that with Rampage or V4 or whatever they call the next chip.
-John |
