If Centrino weighs the same as a duck...

posted by Jeff Moriarty on June 29, 2007

Hmmm, yes. Quite an auspicious start for the Web 2.0 Design Engineer to go over a week without a blog. My excuse, such as it is, is that I’ve had so much interest crop up internally I can barely keep up with it. By far not the worst problem to have, so I shall cease whining… now. To make sure I keep up my obligations on this external blog I’m going to go back to some blogging basics and go on a schedule. I’ll be posting from hence out on Mondays and Wednesdays, holidays excluded.

In the meantime I thought I’d do a mini-rant about something that has bugged me my entire seven year+ stint at Intel. Lest anyone out there think that they are the only ones who have trouble keeping all of Intel’s processor, platform, and code names straight, we’re as baffled by it as the rest of the world.

In fact, an internal marketing group recently put together a “cheat sheet” so our own employees could try to understand our wacky roadmap when friends and family ask. They were able to get the sheet down to two pages (from the original thirty-seven), but it made me wonder how any of our partners or end users can possibly sort through this maze when determining what to order. At any rate, it reminded me of a scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail:

Bridgekeeper: Stop. Who would order the Chipsets of Death must answer me these questions three, ere the completed shipment he see.
Sir Michael: Ask me the questions, bridgekeeper. I am not afraid.
Bridgekeeper: What… is your name?
Sir Michael: My name is Sir Michael of Dell.
Bridgekeeper: What… is your quest?
Sir Michael: To sell Dual Core.
Bridgekeeper: What… is your favorite color?
Sir Michael: Money.
Bridgekeeper: Go on. Off you go.
Sir Michael: Oh, thank you. Thank you very much.
Sir Hurd: That’s easy.
Bridgekeeper: Stop. Who would orders the Chips of Death must answer me these questions three, ere the completed shipment he see.
Sir Hurd: Ask me the questions, Bridgekeeper. I’m not afraid.
Bridgekeeper: What… is your name?
Sir Hurd: Sir Hurd of Packard.
Bridgekeeper: What… is your quest?
Sir Hurd: To find customers for Itanium.
Bridgekeeper: What… is the code name for the 45nm processor in the Santa Rosa platform?
[pause]
Sir Hurd: I don’t know that.
[he is thrown over the edge into the volcano]
Sir Hurd: Auuuuuuuugh.
Bridgekeeper: Stop. What… is your name?
Palmisano: Sir Palmisano of IBMalot.
Bridgekeeper: What… is your quest?
Palmisano: I seek Enterprise Contracts.
Bridgekeeper: What… is the platform type in which you will find Kentsfield process with the Q6600 chipset?
Palmisano: Bridge Creek. No, Salt…
[he is also thrown over the edge]
Palmisano: auuuuuuuugh.
Bridgekeeper: Hee hee hee. Stop. What… is your name?
King Jobs: It is ‘Jobs’, King of the iBritons.
Bridgekeeper: What… is your quest?
King Jobs: To wear turtlenecks.
Bridgekeeper: What… is the cache size of the McCaslin ultra mobile processors?
King Jobs: Why does it matter? If we used them in our iPhone would it in any way augment the near rapture-level geek cred you would already get?
Bridgekeeper: Huh? I… I don’t know that.
[the bridgekeeper is thrown over]
Bridgekeeper: Auuuuuuuugh.
Sir Bedevere: How do know so much about geeks?
King Jobs: Well, you have to know these things when you’re a king, you know.

~ fin ~

Joking aside, such is Intel that the solution isn’t to make our roadmaps easier to understand, but rather to make complicated cheat sheets to explain them.

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tagged: Centrino Duo, Core 2 Duo, maze, roadmap, Web 2.0