Intel slows things down a bit
IS INTEL PREPARING for a technology slowdown, both product-wise and market-wise? There have been just too many stories out of Chipzilla in recent days suggesting that for the idea to be crazed.
First off, we heard that Intel is flogging some businesses off to Emcore. In a bid to streamline its core business, Intel is getting rid of a few of the more 'experimenty' things it has been toying with. It appears to be staving off accusations of spreading the butter too thin before they occur.
Then there was this story which quoted one of Intel's top VC men as saying that investments in technology startups were slowing with fewer investments being made - and with the suggestion that the mobile web is being killed by telecoms operators.
We have also been following the rumour that Penryn mass roll-out has been delayed a few months. The crux? Intel's non-denial - that Penryn is still on track for 'Q1', which is a change from the previous 'January' position (a window of another two months, you see).
We've recently seen Skulltrail all-but-canned as DAAMIT also drops its eight-core idea, and mumblings that X48 is being held back whilst X38 clears the channel.
So is Intel just chilling, thanks to its apparently unassailable position? Or are there genuine reasons behind the myriad delays and streamlines that will come to light? Or is the whole thing being blown out of proportion? We can but wait to see. µ
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... there will be no reasons why Intel would be slowing down. If Intel releases the Nehalem EX 8-core CPU in the Q3/Q4 2008 timeframe, along with a motherboard chipset capable of Quad-Channel DDR3 support, then it will still have the best product on the market for a couple of years. 
Only Sony/Toshiba/IBM Cell 8-core could be a serious competitor to the future Nehalem EX CPU. But since nor IBM or Sony and neither Toshiba is going to push Cell on the PC market against x86/x64, that won't happen. 
And AMD is just unable to do anything serious. Since they bought ATI they slowed down like never before, up to the point that they might go bankrupt in a couple years.

The net effect of AMD going bankrupt would generate a massive backlash against Intel - giving increased credibility to the anti-competitive behaviour perception now widely held by the "geek" public; creating a real monopoly instead of a virtual one; and no clear third party fabricator with patent licenses to be able to fill the void.

It also wouldn't be in NVidia's interest ... as the crosshair would then shift to them.

Intel might be a virtual Microsoft, but it doesn't want to be a real one.

To be a tall poppy is nice ... to be the only one?? Maybe not so nice.
Does anyone else think that yields might be the problem here?
And just how will Intel's proposed slowdown affect Apple's mid-Jan proposal to upgrade its MacPro and iMac desktops with the new, faster Penys and chipsets ?
...just lack of competition. AMD can't produce competitive products, so Intel can slow down development to cut costs. We need high-clocked bug-free Phenoms, and we need them Q1.
I came across this link which states that there is some bug in the Penyrn.The Bug as such is not being mentioned, but it states that it's a rare bug that can cause the system crash.

http://www.behardware.com/news/9264/the-yorkfield-delayed.html
Chip Monks roasting on an open fire...
I wonder just how many Intel engineers are going to be trolled into revealing what's really going on.

*casts fishing line* 

Intel is acting like the rabbit in the rabbit-turtois race! It's gonna lose in the end! HAHAHA!!1!one
Intel slows down for a long time, prevents the industry from any real advancement for years, then AMD comes and kicks intel's ass. intel gets caught asleep, takes 2 years to wake up and kicks AMD's ass. Now that AMD is sufficiently kicked, intel goes back to sleep. Recent advancements were fun, so get ready for another few years in the doldrums.

Score one for competition.
Intel fanboys/AMD haters take note! Things are best for us consumers when both companies are on roughly equal footing. AMD will never compete with Intel to the point of equalling it in market share, and certainly not in profit, but that doesn't mean they don't have a big effect on Intel's product releases and pricing.

With Intel having such superiority over AMD offerings, where is the incentive for Intel to push for 4 GHz as their latest CPUs seem to be easily capable of based on the overclocking results? Where is their incentive to aggressively cut prices?

Those of us who have been around long enough to remember when Pentium MMX was the king of the hill for desktop CPUs recall how Intel took months between upgrades of a single speed grade, and their cheapest CPU was over $150. It wasn't until AMD start hurting them on the low end that they introduced Celeron as a way of keeping them from stealing market share.

If AMD continues to have problems or even goes bankrupt as some foolish Intel fanboys seem to want, look for the Celeron line to disappear, $200+ to be the price floor, speed grades to be dribbled out at a snail's pace, and everything possible done to prevent overclocking.

Yes, there are rumors about the Intel 45nm CPUs having some sort of errata and that's the reason for the delay, but I almost wonder if Intel didn't start those rumors so people would excuse them for going back to their monopolist ways.
There is one area Intel cannot afford to slow down in and thats the Itanuim IA64 architecture. Its way behind at the moment and one would expect them to get it up to scratch with its X86 offerings. Why would one want to buy just a two core dinosaur IA64 CPU when you can have a four core or soon eight core at a fraction of the price. When will Intel fix there black sheep of their flock?
Sorry Intel fanbois, but we need AMD to live. I would even like to see other chip makers come to the front and compete with Intel. Remember Cyrix and IBM? If it wasn't for AMD, Cyrix, we would all still be working on Intel 386 sx 40 cpus and running windows 3.1.