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To: peter_luc who wrote (35648)	4/13/2001 9:17:26 AM
From: Scumbria	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 275872

Peter, I'm very gratified to see this article. It backs up my belief that P4 has serious speedpath problems in the pipeline. They simply turn the clock speed down when they sense impending trouble. P4 is a marketing sham. Scumbria

To: peter_luc who wrote (35648)	4/13/2001 10:18:10 AM
From: niceguy767	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

peter: "An ABSOLUTE must read!!!" Thank you...An comprehensive overview of hurdles in front of the P4...Seems it might be a while, if ever, before the P4 can free itself from the "tar pit" in which it currently finds itself...Some startling quotes from the "must read" follow: "PC100 was introduced on performance PCs when the fastest CPUs were running at 400MHz. It was replaced by PC133 by the time CPUs hit about 800MHz. Now Intel expects the market to get excited about PC100 performance on a 2GHz platform. We think Intel is going to experience yet another horrific market backlash on this one. .................................................................................................................................................................. "After all of this, our intent is still the same - to evaluate the road ahead for P4. It seems that the jury is still out. At some point the P4 will entirely replace the P3 in Intel’s product mix, so Intel will be free to declare it a success at any time, on its own terms. But will Intel continue to lose market share along the way due to its frustrating and confusing platform strategy and performance profile? With application throughput confounded by its core processor architecture, external bus irregularities, and thermal regulation compromises, the Pentium 4 presents an unfamiliar and seemingly unbalanced performance spectrum. Worse still, the P4 is weakest on the core applications that have thus far driven mainstream PC usage and sales demand. With an oversized die, production capacity per wafer is reduced by about 60% relative to the P3. Intel’s near term P4 ramp is constrained by its ability to bear these elevated costs. Now, the P4 must undergo horrific premature price slashing in order to sustain any hope of popularity in the market. Intel’s dependence on Rambus for the Pentium 4, serves as a major barrier for widespread acceptance in business domains. Pricing, availability problems and a recall fiasco have branded RDRAM as an unattractive path in the minds of many corporate buyers. Few IT managers want to spend their budget, or risk their reputations on technology that burned them only a few months ago. In light of these issues, the P4 motherboard sales shortfall begins to make sense. Although the move to Northwood and third party chip sets will help alleviate several of these problems, other issues arise. Not only is Intel moving to a new 0.13 micron process with Northwood, but this process utilizes copper technology that is foreign to Intel. We cannot help but wonder if Intel’s pronounced aggressive ramp of this process is a bit over-ambitious. We can’t help but wonder if 0.13 micron copper wafers and chips will be in short supply until 2002. Finally, as the industry creeps toward a cautious economic recovery, circumspect consumers will first seek refuge in the low risk value segments. We expect an upswing of demand in the low-end segments in the latter half of the year. Unfortunately, high dollar P4s will be left on the shelf. At the opposite end of the spectrum, the dot-com collapse has taken the wind out of the sails of the server market – but not to the same extent as the rest of the market. P3 platforms are in desperate need of upgrade and the P4 provides an excellent solution, aided by ServerWorks. The ramp to production is expected to begin late in the year though, and volumes cannot compare to the mainstream markets. So, can the P4 recover? This year looks bleak. Expect continued margin erosion and declining ASPs. The erosion of market share to rival AMD will endure relatively unabated, and expect upstarts VIA and Transmeta to also make more gains at Intel’s expense."

To: peter_luc who wrote (35648)	4/13/2001 10:30:02 AM
From: niceguy767	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

peter: "An ABSOLUTE must read!!!" The question posed at the conclusion should alert any INTC shareholder to the storm clouds on the horizon: "So, can the P4 recover? This year looks bleak. Expect continued margin erosion and declining ASPs. The erosion of market share to rival AMD will endure relatively unabated, and expect upstarts VIA and Transmeta to also make more gains at Intel’s expense." Seems by inference that INTC Q1 results may indeed mark the high water point for INTC in Y2001 (and even optimistically at $0.20 that would represent a greater than 50% sequential decline in eps to complement a possible 20% decline in sequential revenues)...As AMD moves ahead with its palomino family of processors, the likelihood is that the P4 will sink further into the "tar pit" in which it seems to be currently mired with the daunting prospect of a negative eps looming in some or all of the remaining Y2001 quarters (unless the capital investment arm can rediscover the magic of last year)!!!

To: peter_luc who wrote (35648)	4/13/2001 11:22:16 AM
From: 5dave22	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 275872

Thread, Scumbria has been inexplicably banned from SI. In an email he asked me to post the following ... "I have been suspended from posting on SI without explanation. Apparently my disagreement with the policies of George W Bush has led to a violation of my rights to free speech." Scumbria

To: peter_luc who wrote (35648)	4/13/2001 12:48:11 PM
From: Pravin Kamdar	Respond to of 275872

Perter, I forwarded the InQuest article to a friend of mine that works at a company that has a Dell-only purchasing policy, and I asked him to forward it to the person in charge of maintaining this policy. I suggest that others do the same. Let's use this new power of information dispersal that we all now have! Pravin.

To: peter_luc who wrote (35648)	4/14/2001 7:56:55 AM
From: ted burton	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 275872

Peter_luc says "See this great article...". Hmmm... The writer makes a huge issue out of the apparent disparity between the 54.7W thermal design power (TDP), and the 73.9W max power. Asserting that many, if not all, power hungry apps will blow away the TDP, & suffer a 50% performance loss! Doesn't anyone wonder why he doesn't offer any concrete examples of this truly nasty behavior? Answer... There are no nasty examples. A huge amount of work went into finding a TDP for which the highest power part, running the worst known real app, in the most borderline thermal environment, would suffer an imperceptible performance loss. When the thermal management kicks in, the author tells you the clock is cut to a horrendous 50% clock rate, and asserts that power hungry apps are going to run 750MHz on a 1.5GHz machine. This is pure hogwash. If, by some miracle, you find an app that runs at 60W, and due to another stroke of extreme bad luck you happen to have a part at the extreme high power end of the power distribution, and by yet another amazing stroke of bad luck all the manufacturing guardbands AND all the testing guardbands were eaten up by the corresponding theoretical errors they were meant to cover, and by yet another phenomenally bad stroke of luck you really ARE that one person out of a hundred dumb enough to bring his brand new enthusiast machine into the sauna with him, you may actually see the performance drop by between 10 & 20%. The clock would be stopped just often enough to drop the power back to 55W the thermal solution was designed for. The 50% duty cycle the author/alarmist hyped so heavily is only going to happen on the microsecond scale, & only when the die temperature drifts close to the safe operating limit. I can't comment on the rest of the article except to state the obvious - this guy's got an axe to grind. -Ted Burton P.S. I am an Intel employee, but the views expressed above are my own, and are not necessarily shared by my employer (an official spokesman would not be allowed to resort to name-calling or sarcasm even when it was so well deserved).