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

To: Paul Engel who wrote (55543)	5/15/1998 11:14:00 AM
From: Jay Lowe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

>> You also want then reaching for their check books I've been thinking about how much more processor speed the market wants ... the intertwingled dance of supply and demand. At this moment, I have all the processor I need in the range 200-300Mhz and I think that generalized to the majority of the market. 400, 500, 700 Mhz ... ho, hum. History has shown us, however, that new demand will be created by as yet "unforunderstood" applications: video, DSL, cable, etc, etc. Back in the 60's there was a fellow, Herb Grolsch, writing for ComputerWorld ... then the premier trade rag. He coined "Grolsch's Law" - "Computer power proceeds as the square of the price." "Lowe's Observation", however, notes that "Computer performance delivered to the end user is a constant" ... that is to say, that I can do today pretty much what I could do 20 years ago, prettier maybe, but substantially the same and with the same types of delays in pretty much the same places. This leads to "Lowe's Lemma" which reads "However much computer performance the hardware guys create, the software guys can figure out how to piss it away". Apropos of Lowe's Lemma, Note that there will be no Windows 99 or Windows 2000 ... NT is the future ... and NT is a FAT PIG. A cute FAT PIG, perhaps, but a FAT PIG none the less. Late 98 and 99 will mark a major discontinuous software and web transition ... followed by hugely increased demand for "renewed" performance. People are also going to want LOTS of BIG disks ...

To: Paul Engel who wrote (55543)	5/15/1998 11:39:00 AM
From: Burt Masnick	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 186894

Kurlak's analogy with Memory chips is off base because - 1) Memory chips really were a commodity 2) Dozens of companies were producing identical products 3) The laws of economics then went to work BUT: 1)Microprocesors are not commodities 2)Only three companies produce any volume 3)He could have said the same time anytime in the past that there was a die shrink or process change. All of sudden your factory (and thus the world supply) is suddenly bigger by 50%. It used to be that Tom Kurlak erred by assuming that shipments levels of the past were a perfect predictor of the future. Now he is predicting that die shrinks and process changes are an inevitable problem. All Intel has to do is control wafer starts and the "problem" goes away. Of course there will be no large new markets for processors (like Europe, Asia, South America), no new applications (like automobiles, set top boxes),no switch in buying habits (one computer per child plus 1 for the parents, like tv sets). Interesting fact. Our company has almost completed upgrading every computer in the company. There are a lot of otherwise perfectly usable replaced 486 computers that are going to be auctioned off. Only, nobody wants them. Such is the world. Burt