It really would be a good thing for Intel and its customers if the company would come clean ever so soon now and quash speculation on its Merced processor. Chat on message boards, including Silicon Investor is raising temperatures round the world and some Intel cooling technology could well be in, rather than out of order. According to the latest Scuttleboat on this board and from other sources, Intel is still working every hour God sends to get the thing to tape out, so it can deliver samples to its sundry waiting world. And other speculation is now circulating that the IA-64 processor has big problems and there are many months to come before the beast samples. Now, Intel spin paramedics have insisted to us since the very beginning of this year that Merced is still firmly on target to sample mid-year, and will ship in Q2, 2000. Isn't it about time the super-suits at Santa Clara decided this was getting to be a bit of an Andy Grove inflexion point and give us a clear and unambiguous idea? We'll ask them later on today. ®