NYT on Pentium

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

John Markoff writes today on Intel's mishandling of the Pentium 
flaw.  Mr. T May quoted.

For email copy send blank message with subject:  585_999

Here are few excerpts:

   In recent weeks, evoking memories of Richard Nixon at the
   height of the Watergate crisis, Mr. Grove has retreated to
   his "war room" inside the company's corporate headquarters
   in Santa Clara.

   ***

   'Righteousness'

   How did a sporadic arithmetic error that was not detected
   for months, in the chip that Intel insists is its most
   heavily tested microprocessor in history, become the heart
   of such a debacle?

   The answer is rooted in Intel's distinctive corporate
   culture, and suggests that Intel went wrong in much the
   same way as other big and unresponsive companies before it.

   Intel has traditionally valued engineering over product
   marketing. Inward-looking and wary of competitors (from
   experience with the Japanese), it developed a bunker
   mentality, a go-for-the-jugular attitude and a reputation
   for arrogance.

   "There are certain elements in Intel's culture, and one is
   righteousness," said Federico Faggin, a former Intel
   engineer and co-inventor of its first microprocessor.

   "The attitude at Intel is, 'We're better than everyone else
   and what we do is right and we never make mistakes.' "

   ***

   But the technologist's mind-set did little to prepare Intel
   for the consumer marketplace. Although it spent hundreds of
   millions of dollars on its "Intel Inside" and Pentium ad
   campaigns, the consumer-oriented strategy unraveled last
   month when Mr. Grove dismissed customers' requests for
   chips to replace the Pentium.

   ***

   "What Intel clearly should have done is issued a bug report
   as soon as they found out it was a reproducible problem,"
   said Timothy May, a former Intel semiconductor engineer.
   "Instead, by keeping it mum, they backed themselves into a
   corner."

   But although he has issued a public apology for the flaw,
   Mr. Grove has been unwilling to personally come forward in
   an effort to restore customer confidence.

   "The test of a great company is in how they handle
   disasters," said James F. Moore, head of Geopartners, a
   high-tech consulting firm. "This is one where you can't
   behave like a paranoid. This is one where only the
   compassionate survive."