To: John Rieman who wrote (29495 ) 2/14/1998 2:07:00 PM From: Cameron Lang Read Replies (2) | Respond to
Thanks for reposting this, John. Kinda makes you think twice about investing in the box-makers. Something else bothered me...Nevertheless, few can dispute that control over intellectual property now resides at the chip level. Both sides recognize this new reality. In the case of the chip companies, it means walking a fine line between enabling OEMs with the latest technology and yet not competing with them directly. Cypress' Rodgers adds that "from a practical point of view, it would be really stupid for me to say to the market, 'Here's your switching system, better than Cisco's and smaller.' Not that I'm capable of it, but it wouldn't make sense for me to attack Cisco or AT&T, or annoy IBM." Even Intel, which controls the life-blood of the PC industry, eschews the mantel of power. "We can put more and more of today's functionality into one hunk of silicon, but the guys who are doing add-in cards and accelerator cards aren't going away," says Craig Barrett, executive vice president of Intel. "They're just taking the next step up and getting the next level of performance. It's this endless chase of innovate and integrate." "Systems companies used to compete on their engineering wherewithal, their system integration capability," notes C-Cube's Balkanski. "That's becoming less important. We're blowing up the OEM structure because we're enabling many more companies to participate." "We're blowing up the OEM structure," claims C-Cube Microsystems' Chief Executive Alexandre Balkanski
