Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!cbmvax!daveh
From: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: C= Chip Set (was for all those who want more advertising)
Message-ID: <15727@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Date: 8 Nov 90 18:40:16 GMT
References: <34391@nigel.ee.udel.edu| <3422@corpane.UUCP> <1154@iceman.jcu.oz>
Reply-To: daveh@cbmvax.commodore.com (Dave Haynie)
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA
Lines: 48

In article <1154@iceman.jcu.oz> cpca@iceman.jcu.oz (C Adams) writes:
>In article <3422@corpane.UUCP>, sparks@corpane.UUCP (John Sparks) writes:

>> Designing IC's are a bit harder than you think.

>And if C= had announced their new chipset over a year ago, and weren't
>shipping in quantity by now, I think people would have been flaming
>Commodore even more for vapourware.  If big chip companies like
>Motorola and Intel (with the i486 and 040) can't release bug free
>chips on time, it's a bit much to expect C= to.

There's also a world of difference between Commodore announcing a new chip
set and Motorola or Intel announcing a new chip.  Even with ECS, which was
a drop-in replacement for the current Amiga chips, the main point of any
Commodore announcement is, "here's what's going in our system".  You can bet
that if ECS had required a new system and didn't simply drop in, you wouldn't
have heard much if anything outside of nondisclosure until the A3000 was
introduced.  Moto and Intel, on the other hand, are mainly concerned with
sales of chips, though both do run small computer board and/or system level
businesses.  If Intel has a new chip and Moto don't have an answer to it, or
visa-versa, you may very well find designers going over to this new chip, 
even if they favor the other company.  So these chip guys pre-announce their
new chips, and it's getting worse -- some IC companies are starting to make
announcements when the design is done, before they even have first silicon.

In some respect, they don't have much to lose from early announcements.  It
may take a year for systems to be designed to work with the new parts, and
their old customers are still making systems with the old parts.  So they
hope for new design wins even before the chips are available.  This can have
a slowdown of some kind on the older chips, since you may hold off on the
purchase of your new DH0030z based system if you hear about this great new
DH0040z system coming along.  But probably not, since everyone expects to 
wait 6 months to a year or more for the new chips to actually materialize.  If
Commodore started talking about some fancy new chip to go into some fancy new
computer 6 months to a year before the thing was ready, they invite the 
"Osborne Syndrome", in which everyone stops buying the old machine in 
anticipation of the new machine.  You'll notice the main folks actually talking
about particular 68040 systems are those who say either [a] here's a system 
that's an '040 system, only we put an '030 in it so you can buy now and upgrade
later, or [b] we're not selling any of these '030 systems, so we might as well
make a splash with some '040 system announcements.  

>Colin Adams        You need to have a woman, before you can have a Sun :-)

-- 
Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Amiga 3000) "The Crew That Never Rests"
   {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!daveh      PLINK: hazy     BIX: hazy
	Standing on the shoulders of giants leaves me cold	-REM