Intel increasingly letting customers lead the way
When you’re the world’s largest chipmaker, it’s hard to turn on a dime. It can be even harder to admit when you’ve overreached. A shift has taken place at Intel over the last year or so. Once known for dictating the direction of the PC market, Intel is increasingly letting its customers carve their own path. With that subtle yet important change, the PC industry is moving past its Model T era and entering a new world of style and design, where a simple black or gray box won’t do.
Intel’s product-planning priorities have changed as a result. The Nehalem generation of processors, due in the second half of this year, will be one of Intel’s most complicated launches ever because of the huge variety among different chips. Some will have integrated memory controllers. Some will have point-to-point interconnects. You’ll see dual-core, quad-core, and perhaps more in the server market. Some will be hot-and-heavy powerhouses, while others will be cool and nimble notebook chips. In short, Intel is going to have perhaps its widest variety ever of so-called SKUs (stock-keeping units) to offer its customers, allowing them to choose among several chip versions to find the one that best fits their go
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