THE CHIPS ARE UP--AGAIN
With some analysts predicting billion-dollar sales drops for the PC industry this year, and with Oracle dangling a $500 computer in front of consumers, you might expect to find Intel CEO Andy Grove sneaking a peek at other platforms. No chance. Grove's hole card: revolutionary Intel technology called MMX (matrix manipulation extensions) that will load already speedy Pentium chips with a set of fast multimedia instructions. Intel engineers say MMX is the company's greatest advance in a decade--bigger even than the Pentium.
Grove, who was in New York City last week to meet with analysts (word of...