In a bid to ensure Merced has a run for its money before McKinley swamps its chances, Intel is recruiting a large number of IA-64 engineers. And adverts posted earlier this month show that it is seeking to step up its recruitment rate at Microsoft in Seattle, too. Intel is offering a large number of posts in areas relating specifically to Merced. It wants software engineers in its Santa Clara microcomputer labs to work on future IA processors. These posts will involve ports of "major commercially available OS software" to Merced, and assisting OS vendors in their ports. It also wants staff to join it at its labs in Seattle-Tacoma, WA to help design "major commercially available operating systems software". It doesn't take a genius to figure out that this project is in conjunction with Microsoft, and it seems to us the software in question is likely to be Word and Excel. Microsoft is understood to be doing the major port of WinNT to Merced. ®