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

To: Road Walker who wrote (103288)	5/10/2000 10:32:00 PM
From: Joe NYC	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

John, My further assumption would be that the folks that designed the motherboard to also work with SDRAM were the ones that are to blame, again. My take on this that you have to blame the people who bet on Rambus to become a mainstream technology, without doing their homework. If they opened the can, they would have seen that it is full of worms. As a result of the decision to rely on Rambus, Intel designed the 820 chipset to be the mainstream chipset, to be used with majority of the processors Intel sells. In order to force the move to Rambus, Intel purposely withheld resources to continue developping SDRAM chipsets. Therefore, there was no follow up work done on BX (a great chipset). There were rumors that Intel would outright stop selling BX. The only presence Intel has in the SDRAM market is the low end 810 chipset. What ended up happening was that Rambus was far from ready for prime time. The cost is high, the yields are low. The memory producers don't want to transform their business to be just subcontractors to Intel and Rambus, so they don't cooperate. On top of this, 820 design team dropped the ball. The chipset was late, it didn't perform up to spec. Faced with these bad decisions, Intel looked for the way out, and the famous MTH chips came out of it. Am I again missing something, or is the problem NOT with Rambus. The problem is not with Rambus itself, but with Intel's decision to use it. Another brilliant decision by Intel was to try to corner the market for chipsets, and drive everyone out of this business. Intel keeps suing Via with the sole purpose to drive them out of this business. Just imagine if Intel succeeded: Right now, the number of motherboards that to be recalled is only about a million. It is only a million because 820 + SDRAM is such a dog, that nobody wants it, so the motherboard makers turned to Via. If Via was not there, Intel would be facing a problem 20 times the size of this one, because given no choice, the customers would have to buy 820 + MTH + SDRAM. RDRAM is not an option because it is sold out and way too expensive. Anyway, the same danger signs (except more ominous) are there with Willy. Intel wants to corner this market as well by not licensing the bus to anyone (except Serverworks). Intel is going to design only RDRAM chipsets. "My roadmap does not include any DDR" said Louis Burns, vice president and general manager of the company's chip set group. So imagine there is not enough RDRAM or the only RDRAM chipset Intel is designing does not work or is delayed. Willy may be all dressed up, but with no place to go. The Coppermine CPU will be obsolete by Q4, with only place to go is to become a Celeron. Timna? It has RDRAM interface built into the chip. The only way to sell them is to design another MTH an use SDRAM with it. Nobody is going to spend additional $250 on top of a $400 system to get RDRAM. Still don't the problem is not with Rambus? Intel bet the company on it (for no reason) and is losing badly. Joe