[Ti] History lessons

[Chris Olson]

It has long been said that history repeats itself.  It has more  
recently been mentioned that history is speeding up.  But who knew that  
it had gotten so fast that giant corporations would line up to blow  
their brains out exactly the same way within three years of one  
another?

April 1998: a horrible accidental suicide begins, a suicide which will  
take upwards of three years to run its gory course.  It begins as a  
strategic alliance.  The victim is SGI which, seduced by Intel, decides  
to streamline its operations by focusing on making systems and  
software; SGI intends to cut hardware development costs by turning to  
Intel for all its processor needs.  64-bit MIPS chips look dull  
compared to the Intel Powerpoint-performance specs for IA64, so SGI  
spins off its MIPS business and bets the farm on IA64 being out by late  
1999.

Intel sure pushes good crack.  Craig Barrett, president and CEO of  
Intel: "We'll work closely with SGI to help them produce best-of-class  
Intel-based systems throughout their product line - from personal  
through high-end workstations to servers and supercomputers... Both  
Intel and SGI will work further on 64-bit systems as Intel's Merced  
processor becomes available in 1999 and SGI ports the IRIX operating  
system to Merced."

Midway through 2001 SGI still hadn't shipped an IA64 system because,  
well, Intel hasn't really shipped a usable IA64 just yet.

SGI's 1997 assets of $3.3 billion have, by now, been whittled away to  
$1.5 billion, with almost $800 million in losses reported in 2000  
alone.  Since the 2000 annual report came out, in fact, SGI has sold  
off another $100 million in property and yet, in spite of that, has  
burned through half its cash in about six months.

The writing is on the wall.  SGI is bleeding out.  And this is why it's  
so surprising that history is repeating itself so dramatically, so  
soon...

June, 2001: a horrible accidental suicide begins, a suicide which will  
take upwards of three years to run its gory course.  It begins as a  
strategic alliance.  The victim is Compaq which, seduced by Intel,  
decides to streamline its operations by focusing on making systems and  
software; Compaq intends to cut hardware development costs by turning  
to Intel for all its processor needs.  64-bit Alpha chips look dull  
compared to the Intel Powerpoint-performance specs for IA64, so Compaq  
gives all the Alpha technology to Intel and bets the farm on a  
high-performance IA64 being out well before 2004.

Intel sure pushes good crack.  Craig Barrett, president and CEO of  
Intel: "This agreement with Compaq furthers our shared vision of  
delivering customer value by advancing high-performance, high-volume  
building blocks. Our agreement will bring higher levels of performance,  
availability and scalability to systems based on the Itanium processor  
family."

The writing is on the wall.  Compaq's wrists are slit.

June, 2005: a horrible accidental suicide begins, a suicide which will  
take upwards of three years to run its gory course.  It begins as a  
strategic alliance.  The victim is Apple Computer which, seduced by  
Intel, decides to streamline its operations ...

http://projects.csail.mit.edu/gsb/archives/old/gsb-archive/gsb2001-06 
-29.html