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

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (123931)	12/31/2000 3:48:22 PM
From: Joseph Pareti	Respond to of 186894

re. Just think what this means to MSFT. All they have to do is rewrite their compilers (something they should do in any case because they were written so poorly in the first place) is this the gospel according to mcnealy? what does ever-sucking-java buy me more than visual c++ (i concede, without gem optimizer on the back-end)

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (123931)	12/31/2000 8:43:27 PM
From: Ali Chen	Respond to of 186894

Mary, <All they have to do is rewrite their compilers ... and just by recompiling their existing software, they make every version of their software obselete in a matter of minutes.> In a matter of minutes? ???. As long as there are investors with such a level of understanding of s/w technology, Intel shares will climb up no matter what.

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (123931)	1/1/2001 1:30:24 PM
From: Dan3	Respond to of 186894

Re:That is a terrific post. Thanks for your kind words. you underestimate the power of incumbancy. 13 years ago, I spent months lobbying persons and committees to allow the use of PCs alongside our SUN workstations and the terminals to IBM and DEC mainframes and minis. About 10 years ago I had to do engage in similar activities to bring in Novell. I have quite a bit of experience with the power of incumbency when it comes to system platforms. Incumbency is the challenge that Intel faces as it moves against SUN, and the challenge Intel faces as it attempts to replace the X86 platform with one that relies heavily on extensions for performance (P4) and another that completely replaces X86 code (Itanium). For Intel to force (or to encourage) applications developers to rewrite their compilers and to recompile legacy applications is no problem whatsoever. Windows 2000 was supposed to replace both 98 and NT - but Microsoft couldn't get developers to rewrite for W2K and had to do a sort of emergency rollout of Windows ME. If Microsoft couldn't do it, I would guess that "no problem whatsoever" is not an accurate assessment. Developers had no real choice regarding Microsoft, but they were still able to force Microsoft to come out with ME. As far as P4/Itanium is concerned, it is simpler to just go with a chip that doesn't require all that extra effort (the Athlon/Hammer families). Why deal with three versions to support, to do regression testing on, and to prepare updates and service packs for, when it's just a few million P4s and Itaniums. What most developers are probably thinking is: TWO new instruction set architectures to complicate my life! Make up your damn mind, Intel! Until you do, I'll just write, debug, and test executables for 99.9% of what's out there, PII, PIII, Celeron, K6, Duron, Athlon. Just think what this means to MSFT. All they have to do is rewrite their compilers (something they should do in any case because they were written so poorly in the first place. Microsoft's "written so poorly" development tools dominate the market because they are easy to use relative to other compilers. This is despite the fact that the others often do generate faster running code. Microsoft hasn't gotten around to fully optimizing its development tools for the PII/PIII/Celeron/K6/Duron/Athlon chips yet because it just isn't that important, and software for those chips makes up almost their entire market. Why in the world would they drop ongoing efforts to optimize for 99% of the market just so they can optimize for 2 new processors that will represent a tiny percentage of the market for years? You have to understand - for IT staff and endusers, the hard part is the software. The chips are the easy part. If a company switches machines, they reinstall their standard applications on whatever desktops or portables are affected, and they are up and running in a few hours. If the company has to switch software, there are often horrible incompatibility issues unless every similar application on every desktop and portable is hunted down and upgraded (particularly file format and feature problems). And every time a new program or new version is introduced to an existing set of programs, especially with Windows apps, there is the risk that some existing program will be broken as a DLL is overwritten or a system default is reset. The hard part is the software. There is going to be a very long period in which almost all of the code in use by anybody will be targeting what is essentially the PII/PIII/K6 platform. AMD went to a lot of trouble to make sure that its Athlon would run that code well, while Intel couldn't be bothered to do so for either its P4 platform or its Itanium platform. In the absence of an alternative, Intel might have been able to convince the market that no alternative was possible. Intel also was planning to limit the performance of the PIII, likely never releasing any parts faster than 800MHZ (and would never have released any 133FSB parts nor planned to migrate to 200FSB parts for PIII). That was their plan, and it would have left P4/Itanium looking pretty good, and would have made rewriting code for P4/Itanium a necessary evil for developers. Now those plans are in ruins. I don't envy AMD in the least. They have a tough road to travel, just to survive. Could be, we'll see. Intel may be facing some survival issues its own. It all depends on how their 3 way ramp of .13, copper, and low-K goes. Even on a really good .13 Intel will be making pretty big P4s, especially if they put back in the pieces needed to let that chip perform as expected. A .13 P4 will be in the same size range as a .18 Athlon / Hammer - AMD is under less pressure to roll out its .13 process since it has a more competitive .18 line than Intel does. Intel absolutely has to be shipping substantial volume at .13 by the end of the year - not just a few million parts. And that may not be possible. AMD could run into problems with its 2 way ramp of .13 and SOI, but it has more time than Intel, and it's a simpler ramp. AMD also has the benefit of its non CPU divisions being able to carry the CPU group for a while if need be. Intel's X86 group has to drag along the money losing remainder of the company - which will become much more burdensome if CPU margins in general slip. Due to those losses, Intel's X86 group has to generate $2.5 Billion in profits next year for Intel to break even for the year. If Intel's .13 ramp is delayed even a little, or AMD gets lucky with its own ramp, Intel could face serious problems of its own. Regards, Dan