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

To: Tony Viola who wrote (104706)	6/21/2000 2:44:00 PM
From: EricRR	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

IA-64 has the best overall score. Assigning 1 to A, 2 to B, and not paying heed to + or - (B- = B), for the sake of time, Your absolutely right, Intel comes out on top. But this is only because of potential marketing and industry momentum. From a technical point of view, it gets fat "SPARC+" ,minus ten years of software development. I find it very interesting the direction that Intel is going. A few years ago they jumped into the chipset and mother board business because the market wasn't supporting the Pentium fast enough (I believe it was PCI specifically). Now Intel is going into the software business for the same reasons-- vis a vi Linux investments (pushing linux 64) and their (very good) compilers fo all their new chips. This could pay off, but it might also (rightly) scare important partners. After all, why should "I" port my very expensive and well regarded operating system to this new platform only to compete "on the ground floor" with a free operating system? I think that Sun asked this same question. The fear that IBM, SGI, SUN, and HP always was that they wouldn't be able to keep up with, first, the performance, and second the manufacturing economies of scale, of Intel's new EPIC platform. But now everyone sees that Intel blew the design with Merced, and that HP will try to fix the problem with McKinely. As for manufacturing, IBM has stepped up to the plate, offering FAB the Alpha, and HP's new RISC chips, as well as their own. Now that the other big server companies don't fear EPIC, why should they abandon their own profitable chips? They aren't! But they keep their porting to EPIC option open. In summary then: -The EPIC partners are scared of linux 64 competing with their operating systems. (although here is an opportunity for Intel to become a software company) -The EPIC partners are not scared of Merced's performance. -IBM has stepped in and now provides the future FABing ability for the other 64 bit chips. Intel has made its fortune on the backward compatibility of its chips with well accepted software. The success of Sun's lousy SPARC chip only confirms this business model. We will have to wait and see if other companies deliver on there commitment to EPIC.