Intel Corp (INTC)

[Elmer Phud]

Alan -

With Intel introducing strained silicon ahead of IBM, and the appearance that SOI is not all it was billed as, it appears to me that IBM is falling behind. As far as I can tell Intel and TI are the only remaining solo acts in process development.

I think it's a little premature to be religating IBM to second string process technology. Although I am not a process expert it looks to me like IBM can do some extremely sophisticated things. What differentiates Intel from IBM is that whatever Intel does it does in ultra high volume. They don't have a special receipe they only use for low volume high margin products where yields don't matter. So whatever unique exotic process IBM comes up with it shouldn't be construed to mean Intel can't match it. Intel only targets high volume manufacturing and there they have no peer.

EP