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

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (49227)	3/3/1998 9:13:00 AM
From: greenspirit	Respond to of 186894

Jim, and all, article...Intel adds two new instructions to Deschutes chip.. March 3, 1998 Electronic Engineering Times via NewsEdge Corporation : Santa Clara, Calif. - Intel Corp. has quietly added two new instructions to its Pentium II to boost the processor's performance in complex applications, including multimedia software. The instructions came to light in a Web posting by Clive Turvey, an independent software expert, who said he uncovered them while reading a recently released application note from Intel. "With the introduction of the Deschutes processor, Intel [has] added two new instructions: the FXSAVE and FXRSTOR instructions for a fast save and restore of the floating-point coprocessor's context," the Turvey posting said. Deschutes is the 333-MHz, 0.25-micron implementation of Pentium II unveiled in January. When word of the discovery hit the Web, it touched off immediate speculation- though not by Turvey himself-that details of Intel's second-generation " MMX2" multimedia extensions had been cracked. MMX2 are 70 new floating-point instructions intended to accelerate 3-D processing. They will appear in Intel's Katmai, an advanced 32-bit processor due next year. No MMX connection However, Intel officials said the two new instructions have nothing to do with MMX. "FXSAVE and FXRSTOR are a fast save and a fast restore used for context switching in an operating system," said Jon Khazam, director of graphics at Intel (Santa Clara, Calif.). "They're intended to speed up the ability of the processor to switch threads." Specifically, the instructions cut the time required for context switching. "These instructions are most definitely aimed at operating-system vendors and we anticipate that they'll be used in new OSes," Khazam said. The instructions are expected to be exploited by Windows 98 and Windows NT 5.0, two upcoming offerings from Microsoft Corp. But while Intel is moving to the second generation of MMX in Katmai, it plans to use a different name for the 70 new instructions. "We're calling them 'Katmai new instructions,' or 'Katmai NI,' " Khazam said. Intel will maintain the existing MMX name for its 57 original instruction-set extensions. ______________________________________________________________________ Regards, Michael

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (49227)	3/3/1998 10:46:00 AM
From: Kealoha	Respond to of 186894

Jim: Every Q and it is weeks before the Q comes in. This will be all forgotten when INTC beats estimates again. Computers ARE being sold and they all have to have chips inside. It IS Intel inside those PCs.

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (49227)	3/3/1998 11:15:00 AM
From: mp	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

I hope somebody starts tracking Kurlack's actual performance, and if one does, I bet he is no better than Joe Granville's. He has been trying to hurt a lot of Intel investors (and quite a few others) ever since January when he predicted Intel would go down from 70! He is still trying to make his prediction come true. Isn't it time, market took Intel up 5 points when he issued a bad report on semiconductors?

To: Jim McMannis who wrote (49227)	3/3/1998 11:16:00 AM
From: Mary Cluney	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 186894

Jim, >>>Here we go again...<<< >>>"It just seemed like every time the stock would creep up a few points, Kurlak would say something to beat it back down."<<< >>>But something odd is going on here. As analysts have become real players on Wall Street, they no longer seem content to predict the movements of stocks they cover on the basis of a company's fundamental strengths and weaknesses<<< >>>the result is very often short-term stock fluctuations that have little if anything to do with a company's actual performance. A forme r Wall Street research director puts it succinctly: "If you were from Mars and you saw this system, you'd say it was wacko." <<< >>>Yet the constant refrain from the buy side is that Kurlak is perhaps the single best example today of an analyst who actively seeks to maximize the impact he has on the stocks he follows. <<< >>>When Kurlak likes a company, his estimates tend to be much higher than everyone else's; when he is down on a company, they're much lower. "He likes to use his estimates to make a statement," says one buy-sider. But those wide swings in his estimates also exaggerate his impact on the stock when he revises his numbers.<<< >>>"The thing you've got to understand about Kurlak," says a hedge fund manager, "is that he's an entertainer. He's never been about fundamental research. He's about showmanship." <<< >>>Kurlak is every bit as controversial today, but he has accumulated so much clout that the buy side has to listen to him whether it wants to or not. Nor do Kurlak's competitors have the luxury of ignoring him. <<< >>> It is easy to see Kurlak, with his big, market-moving calls, as being at least partly responsible for that volatility and the chronically depressed(intel's) P/E ratio. <<<< >>>"It only takes one or two analysts with a contrary view to push a stock down," sighs Gordon Moore. With the analysts so divided over everything the company did, no wonder the stock was so volatile, the P/E so depressed. <<< >>>For all the press Kurlak gets, he's an endangered species. His outsized reputation gives him job security, but his style alienates much of his constituency. For instance, Kurlak's disdain for investment banking means that Merrill has very little banking presence in a sector awash in deals. Back in 1984, Kurlak even helped prevent Merrill from being the underwriter of Micron Technology's IPO--for which he makes no apologies: "I thought the stock was too risky for our retail clients." <<< >>>Having long since accepted the soundness of Intel's strategy, most analysts today try to time their calls around the basic element of that strategy--Intel's inexorable transitions to its latest, most powerful class of microprocessors. During times when Intel is phasing out one generation of chips and phasing in the next, the stock is likely to be a little rocky. But once that latest microprocessor is ramped up, and all systems are go, the stock is likely to fly. Typically, though, Intel doesn't tell the analysts when it is entering a transition phase. They have to figure it out themselves, partly by mining sources among Intel's customers and partly by paying close attention to Intel's gross margins, which offer clues about the product cycle. (Lower margins can sometimes mean the company is in the midst of a transition.).<<< The above comments were selected from a Fortune Magazine article "Who Really Moves Markets" October 27, 1997: pathfinder.com