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

To: Dan3 who wrote (150701)	12/1/2001 4:21:56 PM
From: wanna_bmw	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 186894

Dan, Re: "Compaq reported that all of their configurations, as well as all configurations shipped for months by Dell and others, had the same, Itanium processor, related error. Compaq tested systems from other vendors to verify the defects in the Itanium processor systems being shipped by other vendors." You're really going to have to include a link for this. I remember Compaq mentioning that this failure may be involved in platforms other than Compaq's, but the nature of the error has yet to be disclosed. There are plenty of limitations in any CPU design out there, though many manufacturers will live with these limitations, or work around them. Sometimes a limitation is so rare, that the amount of downtime is smaller than the rating they would already place on a given system. In other words, if a systems is rated at 99.999% uptime, and one errata can possible cause a problem such that .0000001% more is added to the downtime, they may ignore the problem. It all depends on how you are marketing your systems. And here's a little secret for you that manufacturers don't tell the public. Every system that exists has such errors, and many of them are ignored. If you ever took a course in validation, you'd know that in order to cover the full spectrum of validation, it would take more time than there is in the Universe. Typically, vendors want to get their products to market quicker than this. It's simply due to the vast complexity of these chips. That's why when validating a platform, you have to cut corners, and try to find places that are likely to have bugs. There is a science to validation, and it's one of the most important parts of designing for today's world of computers. Compaq may have different standards than Dell or HP, so they fought to have their issue fixed. Others may have felt that Compaq's issue was of minimal importance. The reason why it is blown to be a huge issue is because of the press, who like a good story. Mike Magee was one of the first to sensationalize the Compaq issue. Surely, he must have thought that any bug is of utmost importance to solve. However, that is not that case, in reality. Feel free to disagree, but you won't be changing the way any manufacturer in the world operates. They all have different standards, but none of them do all encompassing validation. It has simply become impossible to do at this point in technology. wbmw