Could Intel policy at last be forcing An innovation in second sourcing?
Spencer Katt's suggestion in January 16's PC Week that Chips & Technologies may "second source" the Intel 386 by cloning it in RISC technology reminds me of something Hal Hardenbergh wrote over seven years ago. In issue #4 of his DTACK Grounded newsletter back in November 1981, Hardenbergh told a hilarious story of Intel's search for a domestic second source (dss) for the 8086 to satisfy its new customer, IBM. After negotiations with Jerry Sanders' AMD blew up, Intel lined up Mostek as dss, but declined to give Mostek the mask set, expecting Mostek engineers to reconstruct the chip from the logic design data. This arrangement did not result in any 8086 chips being produced by Mostek, and Mostek eventually defected to Motorola. At this point, under pressure from its biggest customer to line up a dss, Intel looked around and found only one candidate not pursuing its own device or working with Motorola, swallowed hard, and approached that candidate. What Intel swallowed was apparently crow, served at Jerry Sanders' table.
Hardenbergh opened, "Intel has never been philosophically attuned to the idea of a second source."
Hardenbergh has generally been insightful, and all of three years ago pointed out the overuse of the word "paradigm" in technical writing
Perils emerge in the new bus master: You're risking a crash if you drive much faster.
Steve Gibson sometimes leaves his InfoWorld readers in the dust as he hot-rods over the techie terrain. He took some abuse recently for complaining that PostScript is too slow, which it is, but which is not interesting news to people who believe that PostScript is the only game in town. Subsequently, he pointed out a big problem with bus master cards for the original AT bus. Seems that the cards, which take over control of the bus to speed SCSI hard disk access, work OK with a 286 or a simple 386 system, but send the system south fast when invoked while running in protected mode with memory mapping enabled. He discussed it in the January 16 InfoWorld.
People and firms, it's my job to report, Are judged by the companies with which they consort.
George Bush says he wants to be the education president. Well, American education could use some attention, and he is the most intellectual president we've had in eight years. The IEEE wants to help, and has offered George some advice on education and scientific policy. The IEEE U.S. Technology Policy Conference, Policy Imperatives for Commercialization of U.S. Technology, presented the IEEE's agenda for engineering education, technical innovation, international competitiveness, and effective utilization of science and technology. Interestingly, from what I could tell (I wasn't there), the panel on technological innovation appeared to be a pitch for federal support for consortiums. Sure, I thought that was where innovation took place, didn't you?
The problem with which John Sculley must grapple Is, how many ways can you slice up an apple?
How many different ways can a company be structured? Since Jobs left, Apple has been organized and reorganized along -- at least -- product, business function, and now geopolitical lines. My bet for the next organizational dimension is product footprint. Seriously.
There is little of which M. Gasse is fonder Than comparing himself to the chairman of Honda.
Jean-Louis Gasse wasn't at his charming best when he spoke at Macworld Expo in January. His first mistake was in choosing Harry "Absent-Minded Professor" Anderson to introduce him. Anderson's hilarious speech would have been tough for anyone to follow. Then he downplayed the importance of voice recognition, a technology crucial to Apple's public daydream, Knowledge Navigator. Finally, he came off cold in responding to questioners who wanted to know why the Education Computer Company couldn't sell a home-priced Mac that people could buy for the kids. Gasse compared Apple to Honda, saying that Apple wasn't in the low-priced computer business. That would go down easier if we didn't know what would happen to a low-priced computer company that tried to fill the gap with a Mac clone.
Copyright © 1989, Dr. Dobb's Journal