Conference 7.286::digital_investing

    Well, there was a help-wanted ad in yesterday's ComputerWorld from
    Intel in Oregon looking for VMS systems managers.  VMS is good for
    production-critical processing of that sort; that's what it was
    designed to do.
    
    /Charlotte

This idea of purchase agreements expiring at the end of Q3 concerns me.

Regardless of our position, all Intel has to do is stop shipping chips
to us.  We can then sue them over breach of contract I suppose, but likely
the damge will be done by the time its settled.  

But then again, I'm no legal scholar or strategist.  Certainly BP and company
must have considered this, and they must have an alternative plan in place,
No?  So why not a more re-assuring press release? 

    Re: Intel not shipping chips.
    
    So what?  We have at least one other (cheaper) source, with the
    capacity to more than supply what we need to buy.
    

>    Re: Intel not shipping chips.
>    
>    So what?  We have at least one other (cheaper) source, with the
>    capacity to more than supply what we need to buy.
    
I don't know. Could it be that the customers have visions of shiny,
metallic-clad Intel clean-room men dancing in their heads, and that they insist
on "Intel Inside" on their PCs?

    

    At Customer Support Center we get calls from Intel for VMS support.
    I guess the next thing we could get real nasty about sticking strictly
    to the support contracts next time they call about having a production
    line shut down because the system crashed.....Like no valid support
    contract, or people calling that are not on the "contact" list.

    fred();

I hope 500 wasn't serious becuase 501 hit it on the nose.

    

    How about dropping the price of ALPHA based PC'S to match Pentium.
    Along with a major add campaign about how Alpha is _still_ twice
    as fast (with some thinly veiled references to being twice as fast
    in spite of them stealing our technology.

    fred();

| But then again, I'm no legal scholar or strategist.  Certainly BP and company
| must have considered this, and they must have an alternative plan in place,
| No?  So why not a more re-assuring press release? 

I'm no strategiest either, but I think Intel stands to lose more than Digital
by not delivering chips. Not in direct monitary terms, but in terms of PR. 
Also, by virtue of their 85% monopoly on the market, they also have to do a
balancing act with a possible anti-trust suit.

I guess Intel is trying to say that they can, at their will, turn off the
switch of our PC business. Even if they won't, they may want the rest of
the market to think that way and to migrate over to other vendors. I hope
I am not stepping on someone's toes, but I doubt our PC customers come to us
just because we have the best PCs. I think the system itself is but one
component. If worst come to worst, we could just rebadge Gateway 2000s for
that particular building block of our solution. Or, not even that, just
subcontract the Intel specific part of the motherboard to someone else.

>Per

    

    I always thought it was public-image suicide anyway to try to claim 
    that we were the best chip-makers around---then go buy chips from
    Intel.

    fred();

>                     <<< Note 13.497 by HELIX::SONTAKKE >>>
>
>    Somebody mentioned that Intel FABs use OpenVMS.  Can anybody provide a
>    pointer so that this information can be independently verified?
>


I work in Technical Sales Support, and Intel is one of the accounts I
support. 

They do, in fact, use OpenVMS (mostly VAX) to run their 24x365 production 
FABs - however, they never let us mention that outside of DIGITAL.

They do quite a bit of business with DIGITAL world-wide, but I don't 
think it's appropriate for me to put the specific numbers here.

re .502

I think that's the kind of note that makes lawyers cringe.  We need to be 
sure we are all acting just the way we were before the suits.

Bruce

|    Somebody mentioned that Intel FABs use OpenVMS.  Can anybody provide a
|    pointer so that this information can be independently verified?
    
    Wouldn't be that hard to do.  The DEC salesperson that has the Intel
    account for the Phoenix area (Chandler) fabs notes in here.  Intel 
    offered me a position with their FAB-6 site in January (where the 
    Pentiums are built).  I toured their datacenters.  Pretty much doing the 
    same thing with OpenVMS VAXclusters there that I do here with CCS 
    production systems.  Even the layered software applications were the same.
    
    Mike

|But then again, I'm no legal scholar or strategist.  Certainly BP and company
|must have considered this, and they must have an alternative plan in place,
|No?  So why not a more re-assuring press release? 
    
    See the AMD K6 agreements with DEC.  Comparable benchmarks to Pentium
    II for a lot less $.

|    I guess the next thing we could get real nasty about sticking strictly
|    to the support contracts next time they call about having a production
|    line shut down because the system crashed.....Like no valid support
|    contract, or people calling that are not on the "contact" list.
    
    I can tell you for a fact that they lose $3M/hour from downtime.  The
    day I interviewed at their FAB-6 site, a major water main broke in the
    street outside their campus.  The security guards were on the PA
    system all morning about not using the restrooms or water fountains due
    to water pressure problems.  They truly are a 24x7 operation!
    
    Mike

|    Assuming you're referring to AMD, AMD doesn't support multiprocessing,
|    so there goes DIGITAL's Intel server market (and that's 90% of
|    DIGITAL's NT server sales).  K6 also doesn't do quite as well as
|    PentiumPro or Pentium II (despite AMD's claims), so the high-end
|    Intel market will likely vanish (70% of Workstation's sales).
    
    See June 10th's "PC Magazine" on pg. 4
    
    Winstone benchmark scores
    -------------------------
    Pentium II/266	54
    Pentium II/233	51
    AMD K6/233		51
    Pentium MMX/200	44
    Pentium Pro/200	43
    Pentium/200		39
    
    *Averages for Windows 95 systems with 32Mb RAM

re: Note 13.497 by HELIX::SONTAKKE 

>    Somebody mentioned that Intel FABs use OpenVMS.  Can anybody provide a
>    pointer so that this information can be independently verified?
    
    Intel is still using WorkStream Classic in some if not all it's FABs. 
    WorkStream Clasic is a WIP tracking(shop floor control) system used by 
    many semiconductor manufacturers. It runs on OpenVMS and uses DBMS. 
    
    A company called Promis also has WIP traking software for the 
    semicondcutor industry that runs on OpenVMS. 
    
    -Bruce 

    To the moderator:
    
    Seems to me the discussion in this thread has gone beyond simply
    posting information to rampant raging commentary on the lawsuit.
    
    Wasn't this to be avoided?

    Good point Martin... I deleted my notes.
    It's just "business as usual" according to Palmer's DVN. 
    K

    .509, .511
    
    Thanks for the reassurance.  However, I am looking for independent
    verification.  For example, a past news clipping related to Intel where
    OpenVMS might have mentioned. Unfortunately, you just told us that the
    fact Intel uses OpenVMS can NOT be mentioned outside of Digital.
    
    I did Alta Vista search (or tried to) to see if I can find any snippet
    with Intel + OpenVMS but did not come up with any relevant match.
    
    Digital's usage of Intel chips is public knowledge.  I wanted to know
    if Intel's use of OpenVMS is known outside of Intel and Digital.
    
    I wonder if not being able to toot our horn is due to lack of our own
    marketing muscle.  I see many opportunities where Digital fails
    to extract significant coinage.  And even if I do ocassionally find 
    Digital name mentioned, it comes from our own internal PR wire.
    
    - Vikas

Somebody with moderator privilege needs to delete the discussion including this reply,
interesting information though.

    Re: they never let us mention that outside of DIGITAL.
    
    Is this restriction in writing?
    

>    I wonder if not being able to toot our horn is due to lack of our own
>    marketing muscle.  I see many opportunities where Digital fails
>    to extract significant coinage.  And even if I do ocassionally find 
>    Digital name mentioned, it comes from our own internal PR wire.
    
    The problem might be that if you asked Intel why they used VAXes and 
    VMS they might say "We don't want to, but it is the only platform
    this 15 year old software we use runs on".
    
    -Bruce 
    

    
    
    I wonder how much trouble a guy would get into if he went and hung
    a big banner on their fab plant that said:
    
    
    
    
    				digital
    				inside
    
    
    
    fred(:^));
    
    

We don't mention it because Intel has asked us not to.  They are a large 
customer.