Intel Corp (INTC)

[SemiconEng]

If this is true, it's the death knell for Intel, isn't it? How could they possibly sell systems at this price? Even if they sold more systems, this would be like any other "China priced" market. There comes a time where there are only very low margins. This would not fit well with Intel's operational environment of driving geometries and massive volumes and more fabs...
Smooth


First, because, for the recently reported chip (if true), intel most likely, reused a previous design, shrunk it to 90nm and sliced off the cache. Since the logic was already designed, and layed out, there would be little development cost there, except for straight shrink, and cutting out the cache. Second, since the individual die would now be smaller without the cache, you can fit more die on a wafer, reducing the individual die cost. Third, it's on 90nm and 12 inch wafers, so again, more die available, and again, the manufacturing costs per die are reduced further.

No, I don't think this is a "death knell" for intel. Not at all. It does however occur to me that it could be the beginning of a death knell for "some other companies" recently introduced product.