Here comes the blue meanies!

Intel Facts of Life

1. Intel will have a cC0 stepping next month, but it won’t help much.
2. No .13 micron PIIIs until well into 2001.
3. Willamette will be a mass-production non-factor in the year 2000.

4. Maybe they do another stepping, but cC0 is probably the last word in hard silicon from Intel for 2000.

AMD Facts of Life

1. There are actually two kinds of TBirds out there:
   • Aluminum-interconnect Austin chips (greenish tint)
   • Copper-interconnect Dresden chips (blueish tint)
2. All Durons are aluminum-based.
3. As Dresden revs up, and AMD’s speeds rev up, it seems extremely likely that Dresden will provide the more advanced copper-based high-speed TBirds, while Austin handles the Duron rampup. So AMD’s future is blue.

4. AMD will have at least one core revision before the end of the year, probably September/October, which will enable 1.5Ghz processors early next year.

Unless Intel has some tricks up its sleeve (and the only thing I can see are DDR mobos coming out ahead of Athlon DDR mobos), AMD should jump ahead for a while with their “blue meanie” Dresden chips. They should scare Intel
as much as the blue meanies scared the Beatles in Yellow Submarine.

Or maybe it’ll be a reverse Slaughterhouse Five on the high-end for the winter.

Email Ed