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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joan Osland Graffius who wrote (64333)	7/10/1999 6:37:00 PM
From: Knighty Tin	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 132070

Joan, I think the simple fact is even more gruesome: Intel has had one great idea, the X86 chip, which is getting long in the tooth. Not to knock the X86 architecture, but it is ripe for a competitor to pick off. Meanwhile, it is so ubiquitous that other firms have no problem copying it, or, in the case of the K7, improving on it, and bringing down prices. They do have good flash memory, which can almost cover the dividend. <g>

To: Joan Osland Graffius who wrote (64333)	7/10/1999 10:38:00 PM
From: Paul Engel	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 132070

Joan - Re: " I have an electrical engineering advisor that believes Intel has not developed a crack manufacturing process technology group. " What is this advisor's name and what department is he associated with ? Paul

To: Joan Osland Graffius who wrote (64333)	7/10/1999 11:59:00 PM
From: gbh	Respond to of 132070

On the serious side of the equation, I have an electrical engineering advisor that believes Intel has not developed a crack manufacturing process technology group. Joan, where has this guy been all decade? This makes some sense because if a company is a monopoly in their business area this process is not required to be the "best that they can be". Wrongo. Its precisely their manufacturing prowess/process/etc that has allowed them to attained near-monopoly status. This is not just my opinion, but is basically common knowledge by all who work in this industry. I saw evidence of this in the last few years with product push-outs, delayed deliveries and quality problems. No one was even close to pushing process technology quicker this decade than Intel. They have been virtually even or ahead of the DRAM guys just about all decade. Typically, DRAM process has always led Logic process due too its relative simplicity. Intel turned this paradigm upside down by ramping yields more quickly than the DRAM guys from .5 on down to .25. I can't even remember the last yield situation they had. The quality problem you might be referring to (FDIV perhaps) was a design issue, and had nothing to do with process. It is my opinion that their margins should be expanding instead of contracting if they were real experts in this area. On the contrary, its largely been their constant yield improvements in the face of declining prices that have enabled them to crank out faster and faster Celeron and P2/P3 to keep ASPs at acceptable levels. With 300Mhz Celeron basically falling off the chart, the ability to keep an ever higher performance low end CPU at the $100 to $125 price point (Celeron 433 to 500), has enabled them to be competitive at the low end. A yield problem here would be disastrous. Have we seen one? I don't think so. I'm afraid yield has only been an issue with their main competitor for the last few years. If this conjecture is correct Intel will have to pay attention to this area or the world is going to get more difficult very fast. Well, the world is getting more difficult for INTC, but not for any of the reasons you have stated. I suggest you get a little better "advise" in this area. Gary