Thursday, April 10, 2008

My CEO was all over Intel at today's financial analyst meeting. Intel has been just plain buttheads lately, saying just things to create FUD. The problem is that too many people just assume Intel will follow through without any real understanding of Intel's strengths and weaknesses. Look at Intel's track record outside of x86 processors for PCs: DRAM (fail), flash memory (spin-off), i860 (fail), i960 (fail), 432 (fail), XScale (fail), Itanium (niche, never replaced x86 = fail), optical (sold off), supercomputers (fail), integrated graphics (crap to date), i740 discrete graphics (fail), bit slice (fail), LCOS (fail). The record speaks for itself - on a level playing field Intel fails. Only if it has a proprietary volume product (x86 processors) does it succeed. Intel understands that now, so its using x86 for everything - Router SoC chips, applications processors (cell phones), embedded, and now graphics. To the world, the x86 is Intel's hammer and every market now looks like a nail.

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