Intel: Over promise, under deliver (revisited) Intel is being pressed by a competitor in the processor business for the first time in years. Is the pressure getting to them?
September 29, 2000 (revisited October 3, 2000) by Eric Svetcov What a difference a few days make. Last week when we heard the first whispers of the Pentium 4 slip nobody knew that Intel was also going to eliminate Timna, Intel’s low cost integrated processor for the very low-end market. We also found out that the P4 slip has been narrowed down to motherboard chipset problems and is not actually a problem with the processor (or so they say). Manufacturers are now saying that because of the P4 slip that their will be few, if any, P4 systems in time for Christmas. This sounds like another big win for AMD. Today the report is that Intel will slip the Pentium 4 at least another 3 week into November and there are folks out there who believe it will slip even further than that. In August, Intel recalled the P3 1.113GHz processor because it had too many problems running at that speed (crank it down to something under 1GHz and there were no problems). Earlier in the year Intel recalled motherboards with the Memory Translation Hub (MTH). The unit that allowed motherboards designed for RDRAM to use reasonably priced SDRAM in exchange for a rather large performance penalty. Before that, a few days after AMD announced the 1GHz Athlon, Intel announced the 1GHz Pentium 3....unfortunately, because of supply constraints, in Q2 2000, the Athlon 1GHz outsold the P3 1GHz approximately 10 to 1....because, quite frankly, there were no 1GHz P3s anywhere to be found....except in system from Dell. Does anyone detect a pattern of over promising and under delivering? We have to look back in time approximately a year until we get to a point where Intel actually succeeded in delivering on a promise when they transitioned to the Coppermine P3 core. That transition occurred right as the Athlon was beginning to hit the market and I believe was the last Intel product enhancement that wasn’t pushed out the door prematurely. Of course, at that time I do not believe that Intel was feeling much pressure from the relatively untested Athlon. It’s time for Intel to take a big step back, gather itself and create a roadmap that is a bit more realistic. The competition that AMD has introduced into this space is great for the marketplace, but AMD does not have the capacity at this time to provide all the processors that PCs need in the world. Intel has time to correct their problems and then continue to provide cutting edge products that all of us will use. Intel if you are reading this, take your time and deliver on your promises. Nobody is going to catch you this year; however, if you continue along the path you took over the last 9 months many of your most loyal customers may end up moving over to AMD....and if you’re not careful, that might even include Dell. Am I off base? Send me a letter. I want to know what you think. |