For as fast as competitive advantage fades for chipmakers, Intel
If it's for real -- Intel says the chip, which is the size of a fingernail, is five years away from commercial use -- the once-mighty Cell processor from Sony
Or not. Speed may be sexy, but, when it comes to chips, heat matters most. Cell has struck a nice balance and is now helping gaming geeks gun down aliens in Sony's PS3. But try to stuff a trillion calculations per second into your Xbox 360 and I'll show you a bonfire waiting to happen.
Then there's software. Intel's Itanium, built in conjunction with Hewlett-Packard
Intel could face the same here, but I don't think so. Five years is a long time, and while it took Microsoft
Do you agree? Disagree? Let me know.
Fool contributor Tim Beyers, who is ranked 1,025 out of more than 22,500 in our Motley Fool CAPS investor intelligence database, is a sucker for techie innovations. That's why he's a regular contributor to David Gardner's Motley Fool Rule Breakers high-growth stock-picking service. Tim owns shares of IBM. All of his portfolio holdings can be found at Tim's Fool profile. His thoughts on growth stocks, Foolishness, and investing in general may be found in his blog. Intel and Microsoft are Inside Value picks. The Motley Fool's disclosure policy is more like a chia pet than a pet rock.