Intel Corp (INTC)

[Elmer Phud]

Duke

In all fairness, Netburst was a marketing not a technical decision.

I agree but that doesn't absolve Grove of responsibility. He let marketing call the shots on that one and that responsibility lands square in his lap.

Rambus was not so much an Intel mistake as it was a Rambus mistake.

Intel committed to RamBus with no backup plan. No plan B. It was a chipset technical disaster and killed any chance that Timna could succeed. Intel had integrated graphics and an integrated memory controller years before AMD but couldn't deliver because of a stupid chipset problem and like I said, no plan B. A CEO should have asked what was the fallback plan.

Barrett was in love with Netburst and built 37 new factories to produce it.

Don't you think 37 is a bit high? The new factories would have been needed no matter what. They had nothing to do with Netburst. Barrett pushed 300mm and that's a good thing.

And Barrett may have clung to Netburst a little to long and 32 bit a little too long out of fear of cannibalizing Itanium

What could he do? You don't turn a new architecture overnight. When do you think Core 2 Duo was started? It was years ago.

but that doesn't excuse Barrett's what I think are 300 million dollars worth of stock options and paying 1.6 for Dialogic.

No argument there.