SOMETHING VERY FISHY is going on with the Pentium 4 ExtremeEdition. No, no erratum-not-bugs cropping up, no recalls, nothing bad, just nothing. When it was launched in September, the chips were slated to come out 60-90 days from the INQ"s pre-annoucement. That would be a week from today at the outer limit. Sure enough, it came out, so no paper launch. Or was it? Talking to some box builders over the last few days, an interesting distribution pattern emerged. If you happen to be one of the Intel anointed, say, Dell, you can get them, almost aplenty. If you are not Dell, but are a high profile gaming box builder, you can get them almost as aplenty as Dell.
If you are anyone else, the picture changes. I talked to four non-tier one vendors, not mom and pop shops, but solid regional or national companies, and they all told me roughly the same thing. The first one said that they put out a press release on the chips, being assured they could get them. When they actually tried to buy them, they were told January 15. Not a good thing, but I guess you should check actual availability before you advertise. That got me calling around. One major high end builder told me he had plenty in stock, as long as you consider five to be plenty, and don"t want more soon. Another call found a smaller vendor with 10, so you could count to their stock without taking off your shoes. The last one said he could "probably" get a few, but why bother, there is not enough to make a product line on yet.
So, was it a paper launch disguised by careful distribution? Did your company get some? Can you count to the number without going into the dangerous double digit range? Are you having flashbacks to Dell"s 36 Pentium III 1.13 chips? If you are a box builder, let me know how many you got, and when. If you tried to, or did, buy one of these chips, send me the details. If a different picture emerges from what I have heard so far, I will follow this up. Stay tuned people, this looks interesting.