Why change that now and make new chips for cheap PCs and other inexpensive digital devices?
When all is said and done, we are a manufacturer–a high-volume manufacturer. And all the investment we put in technology and manufacturing capability is meant to produce things by the hundreds of millions. So for us to walk away from a market whose size is going to be measured in tens of millions of units per year, maybe bigger, is inconceivable. Q: Why not just use older technology, say, Pentium MMX chips, for low-cost devices? A: [Grimacing] You can see my reaction. We are what we are because we push technology as fast as we can. Our whole belief is that technology is good, and more technology is better. How could we slow down technology? It’s not good for anybody: for the software developer, for us, and most important, it’s not good for the consumer. Q: Is this a strategic inflection point for Intel? A “10x change,” as you call it in your most recent book? A: I don’t think so. I don’t think we are dealing with any technological phenomenon. What Intel has done in 1997 is to introduc
