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

To: The Vinman who wrote (58863)	6/26/1998 4:37:00 PM
From: Diamond Jim	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

yes, but how is your ERGO ? This was YOUR alternative to Intel. If you don't own it, then why do you bash it regularly ? Message 4477179 Message 4987038

To: The Vinman who wrote (58863)	6/26/1998 4:48:00 PM
From: Paul Engel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Vinman - Re: "Sun Microsystems with the UltraSPARC III microprocessor, available in late 98 or early 99 will put pricing pressure on the delayed Merced chip." How will this happen - when Sun just announced that their UltraSparc III is ALSO DELAYED? The UltraSparc III is a new chip of course, but not a new architecture. Such a major slip on an existing architecture, by Sun, makes Intel's Merced slip - which is an entirely new architecture - seem pretty mild. Intel has no monopoly on chip delays. Paul {======================} sumnet.com From Page One of Electronic News: June 22, 1998 Issue Sun Delays UltraSparc III Like Intel, firm says it has to do some fine-tuning of its chip By Jim DeTar Palo Alto, Calif.--Sun Microsystems has delayed the introduction of its next-generation 64-bit UltraSparc III architecture by at least two to three months, Electronic News has learned. The delay follows on the heels of a similar announcement by Intel, which recently said it will not ship the planned 64-bit Merced microprocessor in volume until the year 2000, a delay of six to nine months from the previous Intel schedule for Merced (EN, June 1). In a joint interview with EN at Sun headquarters here at the recent third annual Inside Sun Software day, Anant Agrawal, Sun Microelectronics VP of engineering; and Jeff O'Neal, Sun Microelectronics Sparc group marketing manager, outlined Sun's plans to stave off the Intel challenge in the workstation market. During the interview, Mr. Agrawal revealed that Sun will delay introduction of the UltraSparc III by several months. Although he attributed the delay to routine shakeouts associated with a new architecture, it raises questions as to whether there might be some difficulty getting the new architecture up on the EPIC-5 manufacturing process used by Sun's partner, Texas Instruments. TI will manufacture the first UltraSparc IIIs at the 0.25-micron geometry level. Sun's Opportunity Intel has said it will initially target the workstation/server segments with Merced, and later migrate the chip downward into the desktop PC market at the end of life of Pentium. According to Mr. Agrawal, despite the delay in the introduction of UltraSparc III, Intel's longer delay provides an opportunity for Sun to fine tune the architecture of the next-generation UltraSparc III. "The UltraSparc II is currently at 360MHz and the UltraSparc III's new architecture, which was introduced at last fall's Microprocessor Forum, will initially be offered at 600MHz at the end of this year. We have moved our introduction date for the UltraSparc III out by two to three months." At last year's Microprocessor Forum, Sun said it would sample the UltraSparc III by mid-summer '98. Now the company is saying it will have silicon by the end of this year. The delay may disappoint some workstation customers who have been waiting for UltraSparc III, which is expected at introduction to provide a 2- to 3x performance increase in terms of both integer and floating point performance over UltraSparc II due to its wide memory bandwidth of 2.4 gigabytes/sec. When asked why Sun had pushed out the introduction date for UltraSparc III, Mr. Agrawal responded, "We wanted to strengthen our design methodology." He said the company has not run into any unusual challenges but rather wanted to fine tune the architecture before release. "We are still planning on getting the design to silicon before the end of the year," he added. Mr. O'Neal said that Sun will continue to migrate the performance of UltraSparc II upward as it ramps UltraSparc III. "UltraSparc II will continue to push the microprocessor performance limits and we will go upwards of 500MHz with it. UltraSparc III will initially come out on 0.25-micron manufacturing process and the UltraSparc IV will come out on 0.18-micron." Sun provided a first look at the UltraSparc III architecture last fall at the 10th annual Microprocessor Forum in San Jose (EN, Oct. 13, 1997). Among the goals for the forthcoming architecture: scalability to 1,000-plus processor systems. Specifications for the soon to be released device include a six-layer metal, 0.25-micron design process, die size of 330 millimeters-squared, power draw of 70 watts at 1.8 volts, transistor count of 16 million consisting of 12 million transistors of RAM memory and 4 million logic transistors, in a 1,200-pin LGA package. Goals Expected This architecture is expected to enable UltraSparc III to reach an estimated SPECint95 integer rating of 35 and to push the SPECfp floating point performance rating to 60. The strong floating point measure for the chip will make it suitable for large data-set computing, such as computer-aided design and manufacturing (CAD/CAM), electronic design automation (EDA) and scientific modeling applications. Mr. Agrawal said he thinks the upcoming transition to the combined x86/PA-RISC architecture will pose a difficult challenge for Intel in terms of software. "The 860 was the last software transition for Intel. With the combination of PA-RISC and IA-32 with new (64-bit) instructions, they have a hard problem in terms of verification. There is no legacy software. "We are simply adding to our verification suite with the UltraSparc III, building on 14 years of experience. UltraSparc III will be our third generation of the Sparc architecture. We are continually doing verification, we have a building here where there are 1,500 to 2,000 machines constantly doing functional verification." Other Top Stories

To: The Vinman who wrote (58863)	6/26/1998 5:22:00 PM
From: Barry Grossman	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 186894

Vinman, <<PC makers are producing cheaper machines and demanding lower chip prices>> You have it backwards. Chip prices are going down because Intel (90% of the supply) keeps dropping their prices every quarter (because of their incredible manufacturing prowess) and the competition (10%) keeps dropping their's below Intel's in order to jump start their sales and keep the product moving - even if it moves at a loss. The result of all this on the market is that PC makers can sell their products for less and less, the price the buyers pay at the margin keeps dropping which increases affordability and boosts sales, and INTC makes every increasingly larger and larger piles of money while the competition takes it in the shorts. Pretty good game plan - IMO. Barry

To: The Vinman who wrote (58863)	6/26/1998 5:54:00 PM
From: Scarecrow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

ANALysts are always much more optimistic looking out Excuse me? And this "fact" is based on what data? If anything, they try to sandbag so that they can tout the stock as an earnings surprise. That's why half the time a company meets "estimates" only to see their share price dive. You have it backwards. ... competition from NSM and AMD is intensifying. AMD has announced that IBM will produce K6 Gimme a break! You confuse market share with profitability. To be fair, AMD has shown it can get customers at the K-mart end of the market. What they haven't shown is an ability to MAKE MONEY doing it. Anyone can give away crap.

To: The Vinman who wrote (58863)	6/26/1998 6:25:00 PM
From: Jeff Fox	Respond to of 186894

Vinman says yet again:"INTC has major problems with their business model." Hear ya - your on record... Now could you put a sock in it until you come up with new information? Jeff