Slick - Re: " Why is everyone blaming AMD and Jerry Sanders? Did AMD expect a Celeron 433 in March? "
They should have.
Intel was accelerating their product roll-outs in December of last year - as reported below.
A prudent management would have expected even further pull-ins.
Jerry Sanders wasn't very prudent.
Paul
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ebnews.com
Intel simplifies transition to new
MPUs, chipsets
By Mark Hachman and Sandy Chen
Electronic Buyers' News
(12/04/98, 06:58:25 PM EDT)
Intel Corp. has backed up its pledge to simplify its chipset
schedule while speeding new product introductions through
manufacturing improvements, according to customers.
Intel's “transition management” program is designed to reduce
the testing and other qualifications necessary to convert to a new
product, especially a chipset. That strategy, as well as a hurried
pace of processor introductions, was spelled out in confidential
Intel product roadmaps obtained by EBN.
In effect, Intel's customers are asking the company to do more
with less. For business PCs, Intel now must produce chipsets
that support a larger number of available processors, without
sacrificing any features. At the same time, it must also anticipate
the needs of consumers, who have traditional-ly required the
latest technology almost before it is produced.
Intel first tipped off analysts that it was rewriting its chipset
roadmap at its November analysts meeting in San Francisco.
“There was one thing that didn't resonate so well, and that was
how fast we move things in terms of the architecture of the
platform,” said Paul Otellini, executive vice president and
general manager of Intel's Architecture Business Group, at last
month's meeting.
“Many of the [changes] require a qualification cycle at an
end-user site, and the qualification cycles are lengthy and
expensive, and the IT departments would rather not deal with
them,” Otellini added.
In response, Intel has lengthened the time between the
introductions of chipsets for business PCs from three to six
months, and now to 18 months, said Tim Teckman, director of
marketing for performance desktops at Intel in Hillsboro, Ore.
For example, the first mainstream chipset for the Pentium II, the
440FX, began shipping in volume in May 1997 and was
superseded by the 440LX just four months later.
The successor to the 440LX, known as the 440BX, was rolled
out last April and should last into 2000, according to Intel's latest
roadmap; that's a life span of more than 20 months. The 440BX
is expected to underwrite a range of microprocessors, from the
350-MHz to the 450-MHz Pentium II, as well as the 450- and
500-MHz Katmai processors.
The 440BX gradually will be replaced by the Intel 820 chipset-or
Camino-still scheduled for introduction in June 1999. However,
sources believe there may be two versions of the Camino, one
each for 100- and 133-MHz system buses. Also in June, the
low-cost Basic PC will include the Intel 810 chipset-or
Whitney-which connects to Intel's 370-pin Celeron chip, Intel's
customers said.
“Our goal is one major transition a year, with minor upgrades as
the technology and business solutions dictate,” Teckman said in
an interview with EBN this week. But he acknowledged that
anticipating the correct features customers will require over the
life of the chipset, as well as managing the more rapid
tran-sitions in the consumer space, will be a tough challenge.
In addition to extending the life of its chipsets, Intel has pledged
to increase the flow of information to its customers, who have
been occasionally surprised by unexpected features, Teckman
said.
Meanwhile, the company must satisfy designers of consumer
PCs, who want the latest technology yesterday. “For the most
part, consumers simply want faster clock rates on their
processors,” said Nathan Brookwood, an analyst at Insight 64,
Saratoga, Calif. “Every so often that will require a platform
change-[for example], the transition to Rambus [DRAM].”
Brookwood said he expects Intel to simplify its consumer chipset
roadmap as well, but with continued innovation and integration in
the Basic PC, which the confidential documents define as
costing less than $1,100.
While Intel has pared down its chipset roadmap, the company
has also made manufacturing improvements. In wafer starts per
week, Intel plans to commit more capacity to the 0.18-micron
equipment currently in development than it has to the 0.25- and
0.35-micron processes now in production, said Sunlin Chou,
vice president and general manager of Intel's Technology and
Manufacturing Group, at last month's analysts meeting.
By stepping up its manufacturing-process development, Intel will
cut expenses by amortizing its costs across a greater number of
dice per wafer. The process acceleration will also advance
several CPU-upgrade introduction dates by a quarter.
New 333- and 366-MHz Dixon mobile chips, which are sold
under the Celeron brand name, will be released in 1999's
second and third quarters, respectively, and will include 128
Kbytes of on-chip cache. Mobile Coppermine chips, at 400-,
500-, and “500 ”-MHz speeds, will be available in September
1999, according to the roadmap.
On the desktop, a 366-MHz Celeron will be launched Jan. 6, a
quarter earlier than first projected, while 400- and 433-MHz
Celeron roll-outs will be moved to the first and second quarters,
respectively. A 600-MHz Coppermine chip has also been moved
up three months, to late in the third quarter.
Additionally, Intel has added a 533-MHz speed grade to its
Katmai desktop lineup, which is slated for a second-quarter
introduction. In the workstation arena, Intel has added a 550-MHz
chip to its Tanner family and a 667-MHz device to its Cascades
processor line, both of which will be introduced in the second half
of 1999.
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