Intel Corp (INTC)

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Greg, Re: Madison Tapeout

This happened a long time ago. Intel had Madison chips at IDF last month. So the 18 months that they are talking about between initial tapeout and volume revenue has actually already started.

As for frequency and performance, that's what we expected from previous information. A 1300-1500MHz Madison should be the highest performing floating point processor on Earth, and probably very competitive in SPECint. Power4 is expected to get to .13u manufacturing as well, and if IBM is still on track with frequency, it should hit 1800MHz. Still, I think Madison will have the advantage, since they are expecting almost superlinear scaling due to the extra cache. IBM's part will have increased frequency 38%, so if Madison gets a 50% frequency boost, it should outperform it soundly.

Lastly, the information on Montecito and Chivano is very encouraging. Intel announced that Montecito would be a 2004 part, and rumor is that Chivano will debut in 2005. One new outstanding part per year seems to be Intel's cadence with Itanium. In no time at all, it should easily tower over any other competitive part.

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