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

To: dybdahl who wrote (119254)	11/26/2000 12:49:45 PM
From: Mary Cluney	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 186894

dybdahl,<<<Weakness on Office applications is probably the same reasons why P4 handles C++ source code compilation so poorly: branch prediction.>>> This is where the confusion lies. Office as with other Msft software is COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) software. Most of the pundits, analysts, and school children are experts when it comes to the PC and COTS software. But now the PC world and the IT world are converging. Both use pretty much the same hardware and COTS software and therein is the confusion. The IT World is where Intel earns its high margins and is where it is targeting its resources and shaping the future of client server, peer to peer computing. That is also where the overwhelming dollars are spent. For each dollar that a Corporation spends on a computer, PC, workstation (these all used to have different meanings but now the distinctions have kind of been blurred) a dollar is also spent on COTS software - but six to ten dollars are spent on building proprietary software and its support and maintenance. This is about data warehousing, data mining, transaction processing, enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain execution (SCE), customer relationship management (CRM), warehouse management systems (WMS), and the myriad financial modeling, analysis, forecasting, and what if types of applications - not to mention the unigue requirements of federal, state, and foreign governments and their military establishments. These applications and economies dwarf the consumer PC market that most of us understand. Few of us really understand the implications of 600 Billion lines of Cobol computer code that is still in existence and in use. Most of the programmers in this (IT) world have developed ingenious computer programs to get around the limitations of previous generations of hardware - thus creating many of the branch unpredictability situations that many of the legacy computer programs exhibit. Computer programmers tell me that almost all these problems can largely be solved through programming using iteration technigues. Iteration within iteration within iteration ad nauseaum. More simplistically, it is simple loops within loops type of programming. This is, I believe, where the P4 designers, or more probably their visionary bosses boss had in mind the market to target - thus the pipeline and broadband emphasis. All this benchmark controversy IMHO is equivalent to the analogy, if you will, if Germany had not invented the autobahn, and automobile pundits would compare relative value between the Mercedes and the Yugo. They could create quite a bit of data suggesting that the Yugo performed much better under many very narrow European road conditions, allowing users to get from point A to point B in less time or more cost efficiently - but considering that the autobahn is coming and will transform auto travel - those judgements would have been very short sighted and misdirected - and a lot less fun and less luxurious. Mary