"But in the meantime it becomes very hard to see processor company
commentaries as any kind of leading indicator on the market.  When supply
is this tight, it is hard to know if customer orders are indicative of
demand or simply scrambling to increase supply; there also has to be some
modest inventory buildup at customers, as they have to build a bit of
buffer inventory to compensate for the sporadic and unpredictable nature of
their incoming shipments.   None of this is to say that Intel is wrong,
simply that it is inconclusive as a leading indicator.  Our own belief
continues to be that we are seeing fairly normal seasonal and YOY trends in
the end markets, with perhaps some early-year benefit to processor vendors
from the above factors.  Which is probably a bit more cautious than Intel
but a bit more optimistic than Microsoft's recent commentary."