Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Apple Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alomex who wrote (14232)	6/2/1998 1:33:00 PM
From: Richard Habib	Respond to of 213177

Actually, no Merced is not similar to the P6 intro. Intel has basically 4 lines of PC chips. The low end Celeron, the middle Slot 1 PII, the high end Katmai Slot 2 coming out this month ($2700-$4000 per chip in systems $10K+) and then there is Merced, 64 bit explicitly parallel at the very highest end. Intel's roadmap shows the IA-32 chips continuing out beyond 2003 and while eventually 64 bit Merced may come to PCs I don't think it's in the foreseeable future nor was it ever intended to be since this roadmap has existed for quite some time. There are many reporters and analysts that are completely in the dark re Intel's roadmap as Eric has pointed out. If the G4 comes in at 64 bit and speeds comparable to an SGI/Sun/HP/Merced than I would expect it to be priced within an order of magnitude of current prices. If that's the case you have a $20K machine. What exactly would Apple's plans be for that. You might notice the old PowerPC roadmap on Eric's site shows 64 bit PowerPC's from the 604 up. Why were they never produced? Because it's not a traditional Apple market. I think with Apple's precarious situation this would be a bad moment to embark on a whole new market with which they have no experience. Lastly, the Merced is supposed to have IA-32 bit compatibility. That's because the vast majority of even the most sophisticated enterprise and workstation software is 32 bit. I think there's alot of bad information re Merced because it's Intel. Intel makes PC chips and so it's assumed Merced is a PC chip. But Merced is meant to go head to head with the most sophisticated mainframes, servers and workstations. That's the point, Merced is Intel's launch into a whole different market. Just because Intel is going there, should Apple follow? Rich