INTEL's problem is extremely simple

Doug Freedman of American Technology Research commented that "we do believe that should things remain off course, the (INTEL) board will be forced to step in and make the necessary adjustments".

Doug, let me put the nail on the coffin, INTEL's problem is very simple: too little, too late.

Firing Paul Otellini or Eric Kim won't do any good or bad -- it's a little too late for that. What INTEL needs is a competitive chip design. And let me tell you this: no matter how many billions INTEL can pile up for the job, it takes years to design an architecture that is as advanced as AMD's AMD64.

The DELL dudes used to think like this (it's so funny, let me quote the silly big mouth):

ZDNet: Any thoughts on whether Intel will go the hybrid 32/64-bit route as AMD has with Opteron?

Joe Marengi (Senior VP, Dell Americas) : Intel is there. I'm not saying that they have the technology ready or that I've seen it. But for them to put that technology into the marketplace would take a nanosecond.

Such comments show that DELL dudes are pretty much uniformly uninformed and lack basic understanding of the hi-tech industry (It will be a shame if SUN can't beat them to the punch). They think they can make big bucks selling INTEL CPUs at a higher price than they paid. They think things are as easy as screw drivers. A nanosecond! Does the big mouth even know how long a nanosecond is?

But INTEL folks know better themselves, AMD is at least three generations and five years ahead of anything INTEL can offer today or next year. After so many years, INTEL is still trying to figure out how to copy AMD64 instruction set to the Core Duo. I guess Michael Dell must have learnt a lesson or two now: while PC assembly is no more than screw driver work, CPU design and manufacturing is harder than rocket science.

It took the brightest minds of DEC, IBM, SUN and AMD to create the Opteron. From that, we pull down a bit, and get Athlon 64 and Turion 64.

Maybe INTEL can spend a billion and hire the greatest engineers from AMD and design a new chip, but that will still take years.

But, the world can't wait no more, not even the Dell dudes.

Game over!