| May 8, 1998 |
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By Tom Quinlan
May 8, 1998
San Jose Mercury News
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Intel Corp., convinced that federal
regulators are nearing an action against it, is
considering softening some of its most aggressive
business practices in hopes of staving off legal trouble,
sources close to the company said. As part of a broader
probe of the Santa Clara chip giant, the Federal Trade
Commission has focused in recent months on Intel's
efforts to retrieve or withhold engineering information
regarding its chips from companies with which it has
disputes. Losing this information could devastate a
computer manufacturer, because there is no practical
alternative to Intel microprocessors in many parts of the
desktop computing market.
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Related Storiess FTC adds condition to Intel-DEC settlement
acceptance
FTC Ruling for Alpha Chip
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By: Sandy Chen
May 7, 1998
Electronic Buyer's News
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Despite being threatened with suits from
Intel Corp., Taiwan's Silicon Integrated Systems (SIS)
Corp. is moving ahead by sampling its first chipsets to
support Intel Corp.'s low- and high-end Pentium II
processors. The chipsets from SIS are not
pin-compatible with Intel's comparable core-logic
devices. Still, SIS is bringing out what analysts
believed are low-priced, competitive offerings.
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May 7, 1998
BootNet
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Despite the dangers of angering the
behemoth known as Intel, it certainly didn't take VIA
Technologies very long to jump on the Pentium II chipset
bandwagon. And its new Apollo Pro AGPset is the first
available alternative Slot-1 core logic chipset. The
Apollo Pro is a two-chip set supporting both desktop and
mobile designs. Complimenting VIA's new Apollo Pro
VT82C691 north bridge core logic chip is a new south
bridge, the VT82C596, which also upgrades the Apollo MVP3
Socket-7 chipset.
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By Michael Kanellos
May 7, 1998
C/Net
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Software developers will receive
prototypes of "Katmai" processors along with
related software tools this summer, as part of Intel's
effort to get the ball rolling on its next generation of
chip technology. Intel outlined the Katmai roadmap to
approximately 50 application developers at the Computer
Game Developers Conference this week in Long Beach,
California. The chipmaker said that this summer they can
expect to receive demonstration systems running the
chips, as well as a host of tools to speed the writing of
code.
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By Jonathan Blackwood
May 7, 1998
WinMag
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Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announced
that it will roll out the next generation of its K6
processor at the E3 trade show on May 28. The processor,
which was previously called K6-3D, will debut as the
AMD-K6-2. The AMD-K6-2 will be the first processor on
the market to incorporate the 21 new instructions for 3D
operations; these instructions were jointly developed by
AMD and its rivals in the not-Intel club, National
Semiconductor's Cyrix Division and Integrated Device
Technology's (IDT) Centaur Group. Dubbed 3DNow, the new
3D shorthand will be supported in Microsoft's upcoming
DirectX 6.0 technology that is set to launch in tandem
with Windows NT 5.0.
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By C/Net Staff Writer
May 7, 1998
C/Net
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Hitachi will open a laboratory for
developing software applications based on Intel's
forthcoming 64-bit Merced processor, according to a
report in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, another sign that the
Japanese vendor is making a transition from mainframes to
high-end PC servers. In July, one of the world's
largest computer manufacturers will begin assisting
software vendors whose products will run on servers and
workstations based on Intel's first 64-bit chip. The
facility is intended to ease Hitachi's entry into the
corporate "enterprise" server market, where it
has not had a strong presence outside of Japan.
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By Reuters
May 8, 1998
C/Net
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Intel chairman and chief executive
officer Andrew Grove said today that the effect of the
Asian financial crisis on the computer chip giant will
not disappear overnight. "My general expectation
is that this is not an instantaneous problem--it's not
something like a bad dream that you wake up from,"
Grove told a media briefing.
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| May 7, 1998 |
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By Anthony Cataldo
May 7, 1998
EE Times
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Intel Corp. has completed the beta
version of its instruction set for the Katmai processor
and is now working with more than 50 software-game
developers to optimize their code for the some 70 Single
Instruction, Multiple Data (SIMD) floating-point
instructions, the company said. At the same time, both
Intel and Microsoft are providing low-level compiler
tools for the new instruction set. The tools are
considered a critical ingredient that was missing from
Intel's previous MMX development program. |
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By: Ismini Scouras
May 6, 1998
Electronic Buyer's News
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Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Sunnyvale,
Calif. announced Wednesday that it began a public
offering of $450 million of 6% convertible subordinated
notes due 2005 convertible into the company’s common
stock. |
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By Staff Writer
May 6, 1998
Semiconductor Business News
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Advanced Micro Devices said Wednesday
that it has begun a $450 million public offering of 6
percent convertible subordinate notes, which are due in
2005 and convertible into AMD common stock. The
Sunnyvale, Calif., chip maker announced its plans to make
the offering last week to raise money for capital
expenditures, working capital, and general corporate
purposes. |
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By Peter Coffee
May 6, 1998
PC Week Online
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Bill Gates doesn't get it. Vice
President Al Gore doesn't get it. But Andy Grove does get
it, and we can learn by watching where Grove spends his
time. Yesterday, these men could have been sent by
central casting to play their parts as symbols of
different viewpoints. Microsoft Chairman Gates went to
New York to rally support for Windows 98; he believes
that IT follows the money. Gore was in Washington; he and
others in government believe that IT's future needs to be
ruled by laws, not by the freely chosen actions of buyers
and sellers.
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By Bill Savadove
May 7, 1998
Inter@ctive Week
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Intel Corp on Thursday officially opened
a $198 million flash memory chip plant in Shanghai in
what company officials said was a vote of confidence in
China despite the Asian financial crisis. The factory
in Shanghai's premier Pudong development zone would
assemble and test flash memory products -- an industry
term for high-speed memory chips used widely in personal
computers, mobile telephones and digital cameras.
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| May 6, 1998 |
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Scripps-McClatchy Western Service
May 5, 1998
San Jose Mercury News
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In an effort to trim the cost of making
PCs, Packard Bell NEC may begin using Cyrix
microprocessors in some of its computers, sources say. In
switching to Cyrix, the Sacramento-based computer maker
would join Compaq Computer and IBM among the U.S.
computer makers that have branched out beyond traditional
supplier Intel Corp., whose microprocessors are used in
nearly 90 percent of the world's personal computers.
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By Reuters
May 5, 1998
C/Net
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Intel chairman Andrew Grove today
announced plans to invest $50 million over the next five
years in the building of an information technology
research center in China. The Beijing-based Intel
Research Center will do original and applied research on
Internet-related topics and technology with relevance to
Chinese-language applications, Grove told a news
conference in the Chinese capital.
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By Alexander Wolfe
May 5, 1998
EE Times
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Wintel Watch recently talked with
Wen-Mei Hwu, professor of electrical and computer
engineering, and chairman of the computer-engineering
program at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign. Hwu was named Intel Associate Professor
at the University in 1992. He is also director of the
school's Impact advanced-compiler project. Hwu is an
expert in predication and speculation, two techniques at
the heart of Intel's IA-64 architecture, and we wanted to
get his take on the software forces affecting Merced. Wintel
Watch: How important will software be to the success of
Intel's IA-64 architecture, which exploits speculative
and predicative execution? [Predication removes
unnecessary branches from an application program, while
speculation masks memory latency by executing load
instructions as soon as possible.] 45
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By Staff Writer
May 5, 1998
Semiconductor Business News
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Advanced Micro Devices Inc. here today
said it has begun a $450 million public offering of 6%
convertible subordinate notes, which are due in 2005 and
convertible into AMD common stock. The chip maker
announced its plans to make the offering last week to
raise money for capital expenditures, working capital and
general corporate puruposes. |
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| May 5, 1998 |
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By Lisa DiCarlo
May 4, 1998
PC Week Online
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Intel Corp. (INTC), citing yield
improvements, has modified its 1998 Celeron road map. The
Santa Clara, Calif., company will introduce a 300MHz
cacheless Celeron next month and a 333MHz version with
128KB of integrated L2 cache in the fourth quarter,
according to Intel spokeswoman Luanne Darbonne.
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See
Today's Related Stories |
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By Lisa DiCarlo
May 4, 1998
PC Week Online
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Digital Equipment Corp. is doing all it
can to ensure that the Federal Trade Commission approves
the sale of its semiconductor business to Intel Corp. The
Maynard, Mass., company has a memo of understanding with
Advanced Micro Devices Inc., which would build the Alpha
for Digital and, potentially, other OEMs. A deal may
close as early as this quarter, according to sources.
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By Andrew MacLellan, Mark Hachman, and Mark
LaPedus
May 5, 1998
Electronic Buyers' News
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With the possible exception of
Microsoft, no high-tech company is more feared in the
marketplace than Intel. Its dominance in microprocessors
is unquestioned, and its expansion into new markets has
triggered waves of panic among nervous competitors. So
formidable has Intel's (company profile) reputation
become that it has attracted the scrutiny of the U.S.
Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which is investigating
whether the chip manufacturer has used its clout to
violate U.S. antitrust laws. And in some sectors, there
is no doubt Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel has driven
its rivals into the ground.
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By Roger C. Lanctot
May 4, 1998
Computer Retail Week
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With Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) set to
launch its K6-2, 300-MHz processors with 3DNow!, 3-D
enhancements on May 28, the battle lines are being drawn
over the next microprocessor bound to move through the
sub-$1,000 price barrier. Although it is not yet clear
where K6-2-based PCs will be priced at retail, a June 7,
K6 price reduction from AMD (to coincide with reductions
at Intel) will likely bring older-technology 300-MHz PCs
to the retail market below the $1,000 price point. |
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By Joe Wilcox
May 04, 1998
Computer Reseller News
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Tuesday, chief executives from Digital
Equipment Corp., Compaq Computer Corp. and Oracle Corp.
will gather in New York to dispel rumors that Digital
Unix is dead. But because of the quiet period surrounding
the Compaq-Digital merger, which is slated to be
completed in June, neither chief executive will be able
to fully detail plans for the operating system. However,
Jesse Lipcon, vice president of Digital's Unix and
OpenVMS Systems Business Unit, recently spoke with CRN
Section Editor Joe Wilcox about the future of Digital
Unix in relation to the Digital's Alpha chip and Intel
Corp.'s Merced processor. |
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| Today's Related Stories |
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By Michael Kanellos
May 4, 1998
C/Net
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Intel has decided to speed up the
development plan on its Celeron processors and will
release two more versions of the chip rather than one
this year. During the third quarter, Intel will
release a 300-MHz Celeron processor that does not include
the extra "secondary cache" high-speed memory
chip. Currently, the Celeron runs at 266 MHz.
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By James Niccolai
May 5, 1998
InfoWorld Electric
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Intel has revised the delivery schedule
for its Celeron Pentium II processor, and now plans to
release two new versions of the chip before the year is
out, an Intel official said Monday. Celeron is Intel's
processor aimed at the low-end PC market and was rolled
out in April in a 266-MHz version.
Intel in the third quarter will release a version of
the processor that runs at 300 MHz. That chip will be
followed in the fourth quarter with a 333-MHz version,
which will have 128KB of Level 2 cache memory built into
the same piece of silicon as the processor, Intel
spokesman Seth Walker said.
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| May 4, 1998 |
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By Will Wade
May 1, 1998
Semiconductor Business News
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Moody's Investors Services in New York
today issued a downgrade on all debt ratings of Advanced
Micro Devices Inc. because of concerns that AMD will not
be able to successfully push its K6 microprocessor into
the marketplace. The research firm noted that
Sunnyvale-based AMD will face increasing competition in
the low-end of the MPU segment with both Intel Corp. and
National Semiconductor Corp.'s Cyrix division
aggressively targeting processors at sub-$1,000 PC
systems.
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May 1, 1998
The Register
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The Celeron processor which Intel
released in mid-April is giving surprising performance
results, an Intel representative has confirmed. The
processor, which runs at an official speed of 266MHz, and
comes without second level cache, is capable of being
"overclocked" and in some benchmarks has shown
speeds which put it in second or third place behind the
high performance Intel PII 350MHz and 400MHz processors.
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April 28, 1998
The Register
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A US pension fund has called for the
head of AMD to be removed from his position as a
shareholders meeting looms on the 30th of this month.
The California Public Employees Retirement System - the
world’s biggest private pension fund - has posted a
letter to AMD shareholders on the Web suggesting they
vote Sanders off the board and appoint a third party
chairman. The pension fund has half a million shares in
AMD and have a beef against Sanders because its shares
have not performed as well as it expected. According to
the group, Sanders’ position as chairman and CEO has
a bad effect on the company’s business because of a
lack of objectivity. It is calling for an independent to
be appointed because she or he would represent the
interests of the shareholders better. |
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May 1, 1998
The Register
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AMD's CEO Jerry Sanders III has fought
off attempts by shareholders to topple him from the
company he founded. See related story this week. At a
meeting in New York yesterday, AMD shareholders ruled out
proposals by a large Californian pension fund that he
should be replaced by an independent chairman. Officials
at the fund had complained that shares had not shown the
results it expected.
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By Michael Kanellos
May 1, 1998
C/Net
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Advanced Micro Devices has renamed the
K6 3D chip just before its launch and given some
indications that it may try to price its lead processor
against Pentium II chips for the first time. The K6 3D
is now the K6-2, chief executive officer Jerry Sanders
announced yesterday at meeting for AMD shareholders.
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By Rick Boyd-Merritt
May 1, 1998
EE Times
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Centaur Technology has started to sample
a new version of its WinChip C6 Pentium-clone processor.
The chip uses the floating-point instruction-set
enhancements for 3-D graphics as well as the 100-MHz
Super 7 processor bus, which is defined by and licensed
from Advanced Micro Devices, and geared to compete with
Intel's MMX instruction-set extensions and 100-MHz
processor bus of the Pentium II. Centaur plans to
officially announce in late May its new version of the C6
as the WinChip 2. The chip should hit volume production
by early July, just a few weeks after AMD's own processor
using the new instructions and 100-MHz bus is slated to
hit volume production. The 300-MHz AMD K6-2 will
officially roll out on May 28.
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By Alexander Wolfe
May 4, 1998
EE Times
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Intel Corp. is seeding the development
of a new generation of 64-bit compilers and operating
systems. Surprisingly, Java won't play a key role when
the Merced MPU hits the streets in 1999. Rather, the
stalwart C++ programming language will lead the Merced
software parade, with compilers currently in the works at
Intel, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft. Two lesser- known
software companies Metaware Inc. (Santa Cruz, Calif.) and
Edinburgh Portable Compilers Ltd. (Edinburgh, Scotland)
are also developing heavy-duty, Merced-capable compilers. |
Related Stories HP paves software path toward Merced
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April 28, 1998
The Register
|
Hewlett-Packard's IA-64 implementation
of Unix, HP-UX, has received a shot in the arm with the
news that it is to be licensed by Hitachi, NEC and
Stratus Computer, who will all implement HP-UX on their
own IA-64 systems. Although it's still early days for
Unix on Intel's next generation of processor, the licence
announcements clearly put HP in the lead, and in the
happy position of being a potential supplier of industry
standard operating system software. |
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April 29, 1998
The Register
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The prospect of the US government taking
anti-trust action against Intel has edged closer after
officials from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) took
depositions from company officials. Reports are
circulating that the FTC is set to attack Intel on two
fronts, with the possibility of the action happening
sooner rather than later.
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By Lisa Dicarlo
May 4, 1998
PC Week Online
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While federal and state governments
appear ready to rain down on Microsoft Corp., legal storm
clouds are also gathering over Intel Corp., Microsoft's
partner in the Wintel Duopoly. Despite the Federal
Trade Commission's recent approvals of Intel's purchase
of Chips and Technologies Inc. and of Digital Equipment
Corp.'s semiconductor business, the FTC may still be
preparing to launch a broad antitrust suit against the
world's leading microprocessor maker.
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By Andrew MacLellan, Mark Hachman and Mark LaPedus
May 1, 1998
Electronic Buyer's News
|
With the possible exception of
Microsoft, no high-tech company is more feared in the
marketplace than Intel. Its dominance in microprocessors
is unquestioned, and its expansion into new markets has
triggered waves of panic among nervous competitors. So
formidable has Intel Corp.’s reputation become that
it has attracted the scrutiny of the Federal Trade
Commission, which is investigating whether the chip
manufacturer has used its clout to violate U.S. antitrust
laws. And in some sectors, there is no doubt that Intel
has driven its rivals into the ground.
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By Michael Kanellos
May 1, 1998
C/Net
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Although locked in a bitter legal battle
with Intel, workstation vendor Intergraph will add to its
product lines Monday by announcing a new workstation and
a PC based around Pentium II processors. In the
workstation arena, Intergraph will introduce the TDZ
2000, a 400-MHz Pentium II workstation that comes with a
choice of four different graphics subsystems. The base
configuration comes with 32MB of memory, a 4.3GB hard
drive, and the Matrox 2D Millennium II AGP graphics
accelerator for $3,250.
|
Related Stories Intergraph wins Intel injunction
Intergraph: Intel fray causes loss
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By Terry Costlow
May 1, 1998
EE Times
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Intel has signed a slew of agreements
designed to foster its X86 as the de facto architecture
for the emerging automotive PC. At the Intelligent
Transportation Systems Conference this week, Intel will
disclose board and system pacts with RadiSys, Mitac,
Kontron and Comroad. Also, Dearborn Group, Intelliworxx,
Lernout & Hauspie, Magneti Marelli, On-Guard,
Qualcomm, Research in Motion (RIM), SiRF Technology,
Smart Route and Sumitomo Electric Systems have agreed to
develop software or services for X86-based in-auto PCs. |
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By Michael Kanellos
May 1, 1998
C/Net
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Although the existence of counterfeit
300-MHz Pentium II chips was believed to be largely
confined to Europe, the majority of occurrences so far
have turned up in the United States. A software program
created by the German publication c't to detect whether a
computer contains one of the dubious chips has turned up
more problems domestically than anywhere else. In the
first three days of testing, c't has confirmed 72
instances of counterfeit--or
"remarked"--300-MHz Pentium IIs worldwide. Of
those, 42 were found in the United States.
|
Related Stories How to spot Pentium II fakes
Acid Test
c't software exposes fake
Pentium II models
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April 30, 1998
The Register
|
The Federal Trading Commission (FTC) is
making an extraordinary condition on Digital's sale of
its semiconductor operations to Intel - a trustee will
have to be appointed to supervise the licensing of Alpha
to other manufacturers, and if the FTC doesn't agree with
decisions that are made, it will step in and look after
the chip's future itself. This condition is included in
the consent decree permitting the Intel-Digital deal to
go ahead, and is an unprecedented piece of government
intervention in the free market, in order to preserve it. |
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