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To: Gary Ng who wrote (99919)2/25/2000 9:53:00 PM
From: Tony Viola  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 186894
 
Gary, >Is this Chen out of his
mind ?


Either he or the Register is. Like to hear from PB, Paul, etc. on this one.

Tony



To: Gary Ng who wrote (99919)2/25/2000 10:43:00 PM
From: deibutfeif  Respond to of 186894
 
RE: Is this Chen out of his mind ? In a word - yes.

Fabless only makes sense if you can't fill your fab and your differentiation is not in process technology. Neither applies to Intel - maybe to AMD, but not Intel.

~dbf



To: Gary Ng who wrote (99919)2/26/2000 1:09:00 AM
From: Saturn V  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 186894
 
Ref- <I thought one of the strongest advantage of Intel
is its process technology. Is this Chen out of his
mind ? >


Chen is not out of his mind. There is no way Via can afford a separate fab competitive with Intel.As the Fox in Aeshop's fable said " the Grapes are sour ".

Most likely Via's business model will be to use older fab technology, for very cheap wafers to compete with Intel at the very low end. I do not think it can succeed, because despite the fact that the newer technology wafers are more expensive, the chips are a lot smaller, and the yield is a lot higher, and the chip cost is typically a lot lower.In addition the newer technology improves the speed giving higher ASPs.

Cyrix and Nextgen failed miserably in the x86 market despite having good design capability. The fabless business model killed them. The in house leading edge fabs allowed Intel to fine tune the design and process to squeeze the most out of the process and design. So Via's chances are slim. Via has the advantage of lower cost of engineering manpower needed to tweak the design. But it remains to be seen if it can make a success of being a fabless x86 vendor.