Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Rambus (RMBS) - Eagle or Penguin -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: gnuman who wrote (50803)	8/22/2000 5:48:47 PM
From: Don Green	Respond to of 93625

Intel CEO: Committed To Rambus Mainly For High-End Pdts By RICK JURGENS August 22, 2000 SAN JOSE -- Intel Corp. (INTC) remains committed to making chipsets that tie its high-end microprocessors to memory chip architecture owned by Rambus Corp. (RMBS) but will support "whatever works" for less-expensive products, Chief Executive Craig Barrett said Tuesday. "Whatever happens in the rest of the market will depend on pricing and performance," he told a news conference at the Intel Developers Conference here. Rambus-based memory is too expensive to use with Timna, a new low-cost Intel processor with a highly integrated design, said Albert Yu, general manager of Intel's architecture group. Intel ran into design problems with a translator that will enable the Timna to connect with less-expensive memory chips but plans to have a redesigned translator ready for launch in the first quarter of 2001, he said. Barrett said that Intel is on target to begin mid-2001 volume chip production on lines that turn out processors which include transistors with a width of 0.13 micron. Current lines, based on 0.18 micron width production, began volume production in mid-1999, and the company remains on a two-year production process cycle, he said. Barrett said that execution problems in the launch of Intel's 64-bit Itanium processor for server computers reflected "management issues" in such areas as detail planning, critical path analysis, staffing and being overly ambitious. "We've going back to basics and the methodology we know works," he said. "I'm confident future projects will come in on target." In the course of making more than 20 acquisitions over the past two years, Intel learned that it had "smothered (some acquired companies) with Intel kindness" by imposing companywide practices in such areas as human resources management and information technology, Barrett said. Intel learned to become "more selective in how we embrace companies" and "more efficient at it," he said. Computer processors are expected to account for a majority of Intel's business for at least five to 10 years, Barrett said. "I don't think the (personal computer) is dead yet." Communication and network component design and production will eventually migrate to the "standard building block" model typical of the computer industry, but that will take several years, he said. In his keynote speech, Barrett said that he expects the peer-to-peer computing model popularized among consumers by Napster Inc., a music file sharing directory, to have "huge ramifications in the business arena." In peer-to-peer computing, individual users in a network can tap processing power or data on other users' computers. Barrett said he expects Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) X-Box game device to pose more of a threat to Sony Corp.'s (SNE) PlayStation 2 in the game market than PlayStation 2 will pose in the personal computer market. Asked about Intel's main competitors, Barrett characterized the relationship with Via Technologies (Q.VIA) as "coop-tetion," the dynamic with Sun Microsystems Inc. (SUNW) as pure competition and the interaction with Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), which makes processors based on Intel X-86 architecture, as somewhere in between. Sun would like Intel to serve as a foundry making Sun's Sparc processors but Intel has no intention of doing so, Barrett said. - Rick Jurgens, Dow Jones Newswires; 650-496-1367; richard.jurgens@dowjones.com