Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: kash johal who wrote (99656)	2/22/2000 7:12:00 PM
From: Paul Engel	Respond to of 186894

Kash - re: "These use the latest 0.18 micron front end. So it really is a 0.18 micron part but with 0.25 micron back end. This show how crappy the k6 is on Mhz ramp. I suspect the full 0.18 k6-2+'s will not be much faster but will make good laptop machines." I suspected as much. Somehow, I keep getting the feeling that AMD is having trouble with putting an L2 cache on a CPU. The K6-2+ and ThumperTurd and Shtfrt are overdue - since they were promised for Q499 as I recall. Something may be rotten in Denmark - and Dresden, for that matter. Paul

To: kash johal who wrote (99656)	2/25/2000 8:11:00 AM
From: steve harris	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 186894

Kash, Intel actually admitting we're screwing up. Who's in charge? zdnet.com Intel exec: 'No excuse' for recent missteps By Lisa DiCarlo, PC Week Online February 24, 2000 12:40 PM ET HANNOVER, Germany -- As Intel Corp. spreads the gospel here about its role in creating a global Internet economy, it's clear the company has been somewhat humbled by its many missteps over the past year. But with huge projects like Itanium and Willamette on tap for 2000, Intel doesn't have much, if any, margin for error. The Enterprise Server Group is the latest to suffer from problems -- a bug in the 840 chip set that forced the company to discontinue the sale of three supporting motherboards. The problem will be fixed in the next stepping, or production cycle, of the chip set, the company said. The 840 snafu follows other problems with the 810 and 820 chip sets last year, along with what appear to be chronic shortages of Intel's highest-performing processors. "There's no excuse for it," said Mike Fister, vice president of ESG, during an interview at the CeBIT trade show here. "We want to be the best supplier to our customers, and we're not. We feel like we've lost some credibility [among ourselves]." Fister, who said he doesn't believe Intel has lost credibility with customers, could not offer any concrete explanation for the problems. Diversification to blame? But the timing of Intel's execution problems in its core chip business coincides with the broad diversification of the company. Fister, however, said there was no connection between the two. Still, former key executives that oversaw quality manufacturing and execution -- such as Gerry Parker -- have taken other jobs at the company in new areas like services and Internet initiatives. At the same time, Intel is also dealing with lackluster support in some areas of software development. For example, it is scaling back development efforts for Solaris on IA-64 due to "no ISV recruitment [and] no momentum," according to Fister. That could hurt Intel's chances to penetrate the torrid Web server market, where Sun Microsystems Inc. and its Solaris operating system lead by a wide margin. Also, last year Compaq Computer Corp. said it would not port Tru64Unix to the Itanium processor but instead focus on development for its own Alpha platform. Although that doesn't leave Intel with much more Unix support than it currently has for the Pentium architecture, Fister is bullish on the prospects for Monterey on Itanium. Monterey is the Unix OS being developed by SCO Inc., IBM and others. He said the next few months will be "critical" for drumming up more software support for Itanium. "It's tough. We're there, but it's challenging. We're not trying to get thousands of applications out there" for Itanium, Fister said, explaining that there will be a windfall of applications by mid- to late 2001, when the second generation of Itanium, code-named McKinley, debuts.

To: kash johal who wrote (99656)	2/28/2000 6:45:00 PM
From: steve harris	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

kash, I see intel still chasing a losing postion. dailynews.yahoo.com Otelinni doing a fine job. Give him a raise and more stock options. steve Monday February 28 06:00 PM EST Outlook for Rambus not rosy By Ken Popovich, PC Week Memory technology, costly and in short supply, keeps OEMs in SDRAM camp Despite Intel Corp.'s lobbying efforts and the more than $1 billion it has invested in memory chip makers to spur adoption of Rambus technology, the memory architecture remains a minor player in the PC marketplace. Analysts predict that over the next two years, RDRAM (Rambus dynamic RAM) will continue to be overshadowed by SDRAM (synchronous DRAM), a less expensive and battle-tested memory technology (see chart, right). That's a far cry from Intel's prediction two years ago that Rambus-based memory would dominate the desktop market by the end of this year, said Mario Morales, an analyst at International Data Corp., in Mountain View, Calif. RDRAM will find its way onto only about 10 percent of the desktops shipped this year, Morales said, with that figure rising to 18 percent to 20 percent next year. The reason: Rambus technology has proved difficult and costly for DRAM manufacturers to adopt, which, in turn, resulted in short supplies of RDRAM and kept its costs significantly higher than SDRAM's. "We really feel Rambus just isn't there yet," said Barlow Blake, executive director of visual computing at workstation maker Intergraph Corp., in Huntsville, Ala. "There are too many problems with latency, too many problems trying to populate memory-you can only get about 1 to 2 gigabytes, tops." Compounding the issue has been Intel's problems with its RDRAM-native 820 and 840 chip sets. This month, Intel admitted that memory errors can arise when the chip sets are configured with SDRAM and error-correction code. The problem spurred Intel to scrap plans for three server mother boards. Last year, Intel had to delay the introduction of its 820 chip set more than three months due to a slot configuration problem involving RDRAM. "Rambus is very different than conventional memory and has proved very difficult to design with," said Mike Feibus, an analyst at Mercury Research Inc., in Scottsdale, Ariz. "There are also the added costs." DRAM makers must pay Rambus Inc. a licensing fee and retool their manufacturing operations to produce Rambus-based memory chips and motherboards. In today's market, RDRAM costs about 50 percent more than PC 133 SDRAM, and the product remains in short supply. Not surprisingly, Rambus officials said PC makers would be wise to adopt the technology now, despite the price disadvantage. "Competitive advantage carries a cost," said Avo Kanadjian, vice president of worldwide marketing for Rambus, in Mountain View, Calif. "Those companies going through the transformation now [such as Dell Computer Corp., Compaq Computer Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co.] are going to reap the profits in terms of market share down the road." While Intel, of Santa Clara, Calif., is committed to Rambus, it's moving to address the market's continuing demand for SDRAM. "RDRAM plays the primary role in our road map, but we have SDRAM flexibility," said Intel spokesman Dan Francisco. "You'll have PC 133 with the 815 [chip set] that will come out in the first half, so we are offering the same options" as Intel's competitors, Francisco said. See this story in context on ZDNN's Page One Section.