What could cause Intel to fail to supply their popular Petium III's?

Posted 26/01/2000 6:17pm by Mike Magee

Intel cancels Pentium III supplies for February

Intel has told distributors across the world that it cannot supply Pentium III parts in February.

One major European distributor told The Register today that it has lost its February backlog allocation of 15,000 Pentium IIIs.

Each part would have been worth $150 to its bottom line.

The European position was confirmed by an American distributor who said his February backlog had been cancelled too.

Pentium III parts are -- he reckons -- being diverted to vendors in the Chip Direct programme.

AMD's backlog on Athlon parts is still intact and it has no problems meeting dealer demand, according to a European distributor.

The Pentium III shortage also begs questions about the company's public position on Slot One microprocessors and the flip chip parts the company is attempting to push into the market..

Link to story:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), January 26, 2000

Answers

G4

nuff said :-)

This is a very interesting development. AMD has got to love this...wonder what kind of hit Intel stock is taking?

Mike

===================================================================

-- Mike Taylor (mtdesign3@aol.com), January 27, 2000.

My companies been screwed all this month, looks like next month too.. thank god we do more than just push boxes out the door.. all slot 1 motherboards from Intel have been no-shows, at least at our level, since mid December, all we've been able to get are the 810 boards and PIII "flip-chips".... or Celerons...

Something's up they aren't talking about... companies like myself account for slightly over 50% of all pc's shipped, but none of us have been able to get PIII slot 1 processors, or the boards they work on, like the SE440 or the mythical 820's...

And 810 boards and "flip-chips" aren't too plentiful either...

Unless Intel is trying to help the Tier 1 boys out by squeezing all the Tier 2 & 3 players out with artificial shortages, a BIG snafu is up in the supply chain dynamics of PC's...

-- Carl (clilly@goentre.com), January 27, 2000.

Very interesting.

Gateway, Compaq, and Dell have all warned about earnings shortfalls due to "supplier problems", which many analysts read as "we couldn't get enough chips from Intel." Now we have both this article from the UK and our friend Carl confirming similar difficulties. That's a fair amount of corroboration, methinks.

Wonder if Intel can pull another fast ramadoola with their next earnings report if (a) they're having problems supplying product, and (b) their investment portfolio has been whacked by a down market caused (to some extent) by their own impact on companies like Dell and Compaq...

-- DeeEmBee (macbeth1@pacbell.net), January 27, 2000.

Stay with the Pentium II or AMD. Pentium III is a spy chip. (Each has a serial number burned in for tracking you [your machine] on the internet.)

-- A (A@AisA.com), January 27, 2000.

--A, you get spied either way, question is will only .gov spy, or will the commercial industry spy? A bigger questio is: is there a difference, heh?

-- Hokie (Hokie_@hotmail.com), January 27, 2000.

What does this mean:

"Pentium III parts are -- he reckons -- being diverted to vendors in the Chip Direct programme. "

Does this mean Intel's vendors are able to manufacture, just shipping elsewhere? If so, then who needs all these components? There's a hell of a trail here to follow...?

-- Hokie (Hokie_@hotmail.com), January 27, 2000.

-cough-cough-, oh my joints, my back.

Last year, Tim May, a former senior member of the technical staff at Intel, wrote an extensive analysis of the supply chain problem in the PeeCee industry.

Essentially, a lot of key components and feeder materials come from far, far away and are made in strange, unstable places by one or two companies in one or two factories.

He cited the DRAM incident about 10 years ago when a plastics factory in Japan caught fire and caused a world-wide DRAM shortage that lasted for a year.

I don't have Tim's paper handy but it's in www.dejanews.com, search for TCMAY@got.net, DRAM, supply chain, etc.

One word of caution, Tim has a political agenda and likes to get people excited.

WRP135 is scheduled for Feb 1, weather permitting. It's about what went right.

Take care everyone, keep safe and warm.

-- cory (kiyoinc@ATTGlobal.XOUT.net), January 27, 2000.

Are any of these chips made in Asia? Just wondering if this could be related to production problems over there.

Flash

-- flash (nazflash@northlink.com), January 27, 2000.

I'm wondering, specifically, whether any of this might reflect lingering problems from the Taiwan earthquake.

-- Brooks (brooksbie@hotmail.com), January 27, 2000.

We bought a new computer last week and two different sales people said the Pentium shortage is due to the Taiwan earthquake. The purchase was at Circuit City.

-- (I'm@pol.ly), January 27, 2000.

I use a Gateway, have the last Pentium II (450 MHz) and will stick with that for a couple of years. Then, I don't know...maybe I'll try a Mac, or not. Either way, I'm getting off the Intel (and possibly Microsoft) merry go round!

-- K. Stevens (kstevens@ It ALL went away 27days ago .com), January 27, 2000.

AMD gets lucky at last! (About time their luck changed).

Even if Intel weren't in trouble, buying AMD-powered machines is a smart move anyway. They've always been better on price/performance grounds. With the new Athlons, they're plain better.

-- Nigel (nra@maxwell.ph.kcl.ac.uk), January 27, 2000.

Go Mac! With OSX coming out, Apple may leap-frop to the Top to RULE the sensible computing world!

{one can always hope the best system wins ;^}

-- we like Mike (g) (allaha@earthlink.net), January 27, 2000.

A light bulb just went on while I read this thread. I'm willing to bet that there is a problem with the production equipment used to produce the PIII motherboards. Somebody mentioned "flip chip" and I realized what the exact problem could be. I worked on flip-chip placement machines destined for Intel.

Up until mid-1998 I was working at a manufacturere who's product is the market leader for precision chip placement in assembling circuit boards and even chips themselves. As of mid-1998 their products weren't Y2K compliant and Intel was buying lots of their machines.

A week or so ago someone mentioned a manufacturing system embeddeds problem where the solution was new circuit boards coming from Germany. I'll bet that this was an instance of somebody not buying the Y2K upgrade offered by the equipment manufacturer in late 1999. The boards used in the equipment I was involved with used German-made single-board computers and other circuit boards.

The Intel PIII situation may be another example of somebody deciding to go "fix on failure" for this equipment. Only to discover that there's a backlog of orders for for the Y2K upgrade kits.

And they better hope that a certain German company which produces VME circuit boards bought the Y2K upgrade for their assembly machines. Let me say it this way: "May the FORCE be with them".

WW

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), January 27, 2000.

Today been scrambling trying to source whats out there, and what we can expect to see... Intel basically forcefeed the market the flipchip and the 810 boards, it was all we could get. The 820 boards finally showed up, but guess what, you can't get the f**king processors for them...

My memory suppliers are pissing and moaning because we're not buying memory, even tho the price is back down from the ozone... don't need it if I can't get processors & motherboards... same goes for all the other goodies, displays, drives., etc...

As far as AMD picking up the clack, hell, they couldn't produce enough to keep up with the demand they had when PIII's were available, much less the mess you have now...

Real cute of Chipzilla to drop prices on their non-existent processors.... something is real screwy over at Intel land right now and thats a fact... the economic fallout is spreading through all the tiers in our industry.

At least we have the services side, but the little companies that are coming to us to FOF are F**ked for now...

-- Carl (clilly@goentre.com), January 27, 2000.

Carl -

Thanks for the insight - always good to get G2 from someone "on the ground".

Wonder how long it will take for this PIII info to hit the mainstream PC tech mags?

-- DeeEmBee (macbeth1@pacbell.net), January 27, 2000.

Three days ago QVC was taking orders for Pionex Pentium 3 to be delivered in March.I had odered a Pionex P 3 just before Christmas from them. I have had it for a month now but still using my Acer and Nec P 2 from intel because I am afraid to set it up before Feb 29.Since I am not a geek, I don't know whether or not it will make any difference, jut being cautious. What do you think?

-- Betty Alice (Barn266@aol.com), January 28, 2000.

When I worked helpdesk in mid- to late-1999 at a BIG (you've heard the name) computer co., orders were given out to send clients ANY part that might do the job instead of motherboards if at all possible, and this was before the Taiwan quake. Draw your own conclusions.

www.y2ksafeminnesota.com

-- MinnesotaSmith (y2ksafeminnesota@hotmail.com), January 28, 2000.