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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: the dodger who wrote (29609)	8/8/2000 9:38:53 AM
From: DownSouth	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

And the lawsuits about IPR seemed to play a big role. I got a PM that will refresh our memories about x86 IPR: INTC was given manufacturing rights for the 80386 as many system developers did not want to commit product lines to single source vendors at the time. That changed by the time the 486 was introduced as so many parts were becoming proprietary. AMD copied the 80486 (blatantly) and INTC took them to court. INTC was a heavy favorite to win the suit but they lost as the judge ruled that the original 386 agreement gave them rights to the architecture going forward. The news of the lawsuit was released at 3:45 on a friday of option expiration week - of all times. This led to the development of the Pentium instead of the x586. AMD's subsequent product lines were not direct copies but spec engineered alternatives. This involves hiring someone to write a spec of the chip. Not what it is but what it does. That guy is now "dirty" and can have no future contact with the design team. This "cloning" process is far more difficult than a direct copy - which is relatively trivial. This somewhat explains the difficulties with the K5 and the K6. INTC wants to make inroads against UltraSparc's in the high end server market. MSFT is not thrilled to see INTC wooing SUNW software. This junction between back compatable Athlon and Sledgehammer CPU's and non back compatable I64's is crucial to the future of INTC's dominance. What will MSFT do about supporting CPU's with future software products? I think that is the question. The CPU history is from memory - foggy at times. A personal note: this is the first time ever that AMD has the CPU with the most horsepower. Gamers now want Athlon systems. I'm not sure what effect this niche market has (if any) in the over all scheme, but it is a first for AMD. So, you see, the court cases did NOT go in INTC's favor completely and, in fact, gave license for AMD and others to move forward beyond the x386 design, though with no help from INTC.