| July 31, 1998 |
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By Elinor Mills
July 31, 1998
InfoWorld Electric
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National Semiconductor will furlough all
of its workers in the coming months to help cut costs
during a "tight" financial period, a company
spokesman said Thursday. All of the company's 13,000
employees worldwide have been asked to take 10 days off,
as vacation or unpaid leave, between Sept. 1 and Dec. 1,
said spokesman Bill Callahan.
"It's kind of a bad market right now. The economy
is still suffering the after-effects of the Asian
situation," or financial crisis, he said. This
furlough plan "lets the company get expenses out of
the way, get vacations off the books during the second
quarter. And it improves the bottom line."
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By Kurt Oeler
July 30, 1998
C/Net
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Although its first 64-bit processor has
been delayed, Intel has been diligently assisting
hardware and software vendors to optimize their products
for its future chip architecture. The effort seeks to
advance the Xeon and especially the Merced chip as a
platform for high-end corporate, or
"enterprise," computing.
Now in its third year, Intel's Server Software
Initiative taps specially chosen companies for two- to
three-month projects that culminate in two weeks' of
laboratory testing at one of four Intel sites. The
chipmaker picks up the cost of participating in the
program, whose price tag is undisclosed.
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By Michael Kanellos
July 30, 1998
C/Net
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The alliance between Motorola and
Advanced Micro Devices appears to be getting stronger by
the day. AMD now says that Motorola is getting ready to
manufacture its upcoming K7 processors, while the Intel
rival will likely become a stand-in manufacturer for the
diversified communications giant.
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July 30, 1998
The Register
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National-Cyrix said today that IBM
Microelectronics was undercutting it on price, even
though the chip both companies are selling is the same. Thomas
Rothhaupt, marketing manager of Cyrix Europe, said:
"IBM has always tried to sell below our price. Our
agreement lasts until the end of 1999." IBM had even
recruited the same distributors as National-Cyrix, said
Rothhaupt, but there was little that his company could do
to stop that.
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By Andrew Maclellan
July 30, 1998
Electronic Buyer's News
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Responding to weak earnings and an
unsettled outlook for the remainder of the year, Silicon
Valley companies are coming up with various ways to trim
costs without triggering further layoffs. In an effort
not to add to the semiconductor industry's mounting body
count, National Semiconductor Corp., is asking its
employees to take a voluntary furlough this fall in that
company's latest cost cutting move.
National, Santa Clara, Calif., laid off 1,400 staff
earlier this year, but found that its workforce reduction
had not gone deep enough.
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By Jennifer L. Baljko
July 30, 1998
Electronic Buyer's News
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Shortly after laying out its marketing
objectives and financial goals to investors attending the
BancAmerica Robertson Stephens’ conference here,
Rambus Inc’s stock price climbed $9, or about 17%,
from it’s opening price of $52.13 to $62.13 in
mid-day trading Thursday. The company’s president
and chief executive Geoff Tate told investors that all
future Intel memory chipsets will use Rambus, and that
three OEMs are shipping Direct Rambus DRAM, with a fourth
one expected to do so next week. Tate declined to name
the latest company.
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| July 30, 1998 |
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By James Niccolai
July 30, 1998
InfoWorld Electric
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Jerry Sanders, chairman and CEO of
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), made the bullish prediction
here Wednesday that his company will return to
profitability in the fourth quarter of fiscal 1998,
helped by strong sales of AMD's K6-2 desktop processor. Along
with the rest of the semiconductor industry, AMD has been
feeling the heat from the ongoing financial turmoil in
Asia and fierce price competition in the desktop PC
market which has driven down prices for microprocessors
and other chips. Earlier this month, AMD reported a much
larger than expected loss of $64.6 million for its second
financial quarter of fiscal 1998 -- the company's fourth
consecutive quarter in the red.
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By Michael Kanellos
July 29, 1998
C/Net
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Advanced Micro Devices will release a
450-MHz version of the K6-2 and the first K6-3 chips
toward the first part of 1999, and will turn a profit by
this year's end, according to CEO Jerry Sanders. The
catch is that a return to black will require AMD to
nearly double its market share in the next five
months--an ambitious goal to say the least.
But AMD's technical and marketing plans stem from
market realities, Sanders told an audience of investors
and analysts at the BancAmerica Robertson Stephens in San
Francisco today.
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By Stephanie Miles
July 29, 1998
C/Net
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Next month, Micro Express will introduce
a new notebook featuring an AMD K6-2 processor and a
large display for under $2,300. The new notebook will
come with a 300-MHz K6-2 (a Pentium II-class chip) and a
13.1-inch active-matrix display for $2,299, according to
sources close to the Irvine, California, PC vendor.
Similarly configured notebooks with a Pentium II sell for
at least several hundred dollars more.
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By Andy Patrizio
July 28, 1998
TechWeb
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Microsoft and Intel have finalized the
PC 99 specification -- a baseline definition for design
recommendations for PCs that will begin shipping next
year. PC 99 spells the end of two familiar technologies
-- CD-ROM and the Industry Standard Architecture (ISA)
bus. The spec is co-authored by Microsoft and Intel, but
has been reviewed by more than 200 independent hardware
vendors.
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| July 29, 1998 |
AMD
completes K7 plan
Slot A taped out and 350MHz K6-2 ships
in volume
July 28, 1998
The Register
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A reliable source close to chip company
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) said today that it has
completed testing of its future K7 product. The
processor, which will be produced in its Dresden, Germany
fabrication plant, is on target for early release in
1999, the source said.
And other processors will be introduced by AMD in the
build up to the K7, which uses Slot A architecture,
licensed from Digital.
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July 28, 1998
C/Net
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As it's done for a year and half,
Advanced Micro Devices matched Intel price drops by
lowering processors to undercut its rival by 25 percent.
Meanwhile, Motorola introduced speedier PowerPCs for the
Macintosh, while Intel indicated it will move
aggressively on the intelligent device market with its
low-cost StrongARM line. |
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By Michael Kanellos
July 28, 1998
C/Net
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Just has it has done for over a year and
half, Advanced Micro Devices has adjusted its processor
prices to undercut Intel's by 25 percent. Although the
reductions siphon profits, maintaining pace with Intel
has paid off for AMD in terms of visibility.
Since the beginning of the year, the K6 has been
appearing in a wide range of new PCs from top-tier
vendors such as Compaq and Hewlett-Packard, thereby
gaining market share on Intel in consumer computers.
Research firm PC Data recently reported that AMD held
more than 50 percent of the market for sub-$1,000 systems
in retail for June.
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By Michael Kanellos
July 28, 1998
C/Net
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After months of speculation, Intel is
moving full speed toward selling and developing
processors for consumer-oriented electronic devices based
on the StrongARM chip, an architecture that's completely
different from its long-established PC chip standard. Even
as it launches plans to more aggressively market the
current line of StrongARM
microprocessors, Intel is working on a succeeding
generation of chips that will be twice as powerful,
according to sources at the company.
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Intel in
talks with SCO
Speculation mounts that Project Gemini
is up for grabs
July 28, 1998
The Register
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Rumours are mounting that Intel is set
to take over the Santa Cruz Organization, although the
chip giant maintains it is "agnostic" about
operating systems that run on its chips. Both Intel
and SCO today refused to comment on the speculation, but
a senior source at the Santa-Clara based organisation
said that if did happen, it would be a matter of months,
rather than days.
The logic behind the talks is that Intel does not want
its platforms to only use the Microsoft NT operating
system. It has promoted SCO as the integrator of
different Unix platforms.
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By Gabrielle Jonas
July 28, 1998
TechInvestor
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Shares of Intel gained early Tuesday on
a morning upgrade by Gruntal & Co., that raised the
shares to buy from hold. The analyst upping the stock
was Mona Eraiba, a senior vice president at the New York
City-based Gruntal & Co. Eraiba said in her research
spot report that Intel's prices cuts of Monday convinced
her "the company is escalating its drive to
stimulate market demand for PCs, as well as reclaiming
its market share at the low-end."
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July 27, 1998
The Register
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Karma UK has emerged as a hot favourite
to win a highly-prized Intel franchise, according to
informed channel sources. But Intel may make room for
the company, a CHS subsidiary and Europe's biggest
computer components distributor, by sacking one of its
four existing UK distributors.
Franchises for broadband distribution of Intel
processors are up for grabs, according to channel
insiders.
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By Mitch Wagner
July 29, 1998
InternetWeek
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Intel said it plans next month to
introduce a 450-MHz Pentium II chip for desktop
computers, overtaking the existing top-of-the-line
400-MHz PII microprocessor. Although the new chip is
expected to appear in business computers, Intel timed its
introduction so the chips can get into consumer PCs for
the back-to-school and holiday shopping seasons, sources
said. The new chips are part of the Santa Clara,
Calif., company's ( company profile) strategy for
carrying the Intel line forward through 1999. Intel said
it also plans this month to ship more powerful Celeron
chips for low-cost PCs and new high-end server and
workstation processors in the Xeon line.
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| July 28, 1998 |
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By Andy Santoni
July 27, 1998
InfoWorld Electric
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Intel plans to expand its segmentation
strategy beyond PCs with the StrongARM microprocessor
architecture acquired from Digital. "The
StrongARM architecture is a complementary extension to
our existing microprocessor product lines," said Ron
Smith, vice president and general manager at Intel's
Computing Enhancement Group.
Intel will focus the StrongARM product line into
markets that require low power and high performance. Key
segments include PC companions, smart mobile telephones,
and mobile point-of-sale devices, as well as digital TV
set-top products and Web-enabled desktop screen phones.
The StrongARM product line will also target embedded
control segments such as soft modem banks,
high-performance storage and RAID, adapter cards, and
switches and routers.
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July 27, 1998
The Register
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The marketing director of Cyrix Europe
said today that chip giant Intel was in a position where
it was being forced to sell Celeron processors at or
below cost. Intel yesterday cut prices of its entry
level Celeron 266MHz part to $80 when bought in units of
one thousand.
Thomas Rotthaupt, at Cyrix-NatSemi Germany, said:
"We consider this to be a reaction to the market
situation. Celeron is not selling very well. We have
products at a better price and a better speed than Intel
and we will take action against its pricing when we see
fit."
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By Mark Hachman
July 27, 1998
Electronic Buyers' News
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Intel Corp.'s regularly scheduled price
cuts contained an unexpected surprise, as tags on its
Celeron microprocessors fell by larger amounts than
expected. Effective on Sunday (July 26), the price of
a 266-MHz "Covington" Celeron without Level 2
cache is $86, which is believed to be Intel's lowest
published price for a microprocessor. A 300-MHz version
of the same Celeron chip will cost OEMs $112. Intel's
previous road maps predicted that those chips in August
would cost approximately $106 and $159, respectively.
These prices, as well as all of Intel's other recent
price changes, are based on quantities of 1,000 units.
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| July 27, 1998 |
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July 26, 1998
The Register
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Semiconductor manufacturer IDT, which
owns the Centaur WinChip family, has released details of
its first quarter and has posted a loss of $50 million on
turnover of $134.5 million. Over four hundred jobs will
go over the next six months. The company blamed
operating costs and sales and marketing programmes
associated with the development of the WinChip x.86
family, and said it was taking steps to adjust its
business models.
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By Amber Howle
July 24, 1998
Computer Reseller News
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Integrated Device Technology (IDT)
posted what president and CEO Len Perham called in a
prepared statement disappointing first quarter results. The
Santa Clara, Calif.-based semiconductor company announced
Wednesday a net loss of $50 million, or 61 cents per
share, for its first quarter ended June 28. Earnings were
2 cents per share in both the immediately prior quarter
and year-ago quarter.
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By Rick Boyd-Merritt and Peter Clarke
July 24, 1998
EE Times
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At next month's Hot Chips conference
that will convene here the paper on the StrongARM 1500
microprocessor will mark a significant new direction for
Intel Corp. Intel will for the first time discuss a
specific product it apparently backs. Prashant P. Gandhi,
a senior engineer in the StrongARM and Bridges division
of Intel's Computer Enhancement Group (Chandler, Ariz.),
will detail the StrongARM 1500 as a part aimed at
everything from set-top boxes and digital TVs to modem
banks and video games. The chip combines a 32-bit
StrongARM 110 core with a DSP-like, dual-issue media
processor in a single 60 mm2 die that draws less than 2.5
W at 2 V and runs at 300 MHz. Designers say the chip,
which incorporates 3.3 million transistors and is built
in a 0.28-micron process, can run MPEG-2 MP@ML video
decoding and a software modem in parallel.
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July 25, 1998
The Register
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Intel said today that it has formally
decided to kill the Pentium Pro in favour of the Pentium
II platform. It will honour existing orders and give its
OEM customers six months to make new orders. See earlier
story and Pentium Pro to meet early doom. The processor
will finally disappear in 1999. It is suffering a cruel
and unnatural type of punishment, and will linger on
death row for a little while yet, as Intel makes sure
that vendors existing SMP systems are supported. There is
no chance of a successful appeal against death sentence.
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By Stephan Ohr
July 24, 1998
EE Times
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Lucent is among the growing list of
semiconductor makers considering how rapidly to use
copper-interconnect materials on high-speed digital
integrated circuits. While Lucent will inevitably turn to
copper, it doesn't see the technology as cost-effective
for the next generation of circuits, said Emelio
Martinez, who heads interconnect research at Lucent's
Bell Laboratories. Martinez' disclosure came on the
heels of dazzling introductions at the annual Semicon
exhibition here in San Francisco, where expensive new
equipment for copper took center stage. The price tags
caught many by surprise.
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By Andreas Stiller
Volume 14, 1998
c't Magazine
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Bugs rained on Intels Xeon parade, Acer
enters the processor business, IBM is considering to
license Alpha and Gary Boone is entitled to more
microprocessor-inventor-laurels. A few days before the
official introduction of Intels new Xeon processor a
rumor kept going around: Xeon has a huge bug. Intel
confirmed this rumor eventually, but blamed the server
chipset NX. Later they admitted however, that the crash
causing bug did indeed affect the processor (Xeon-Erratum
No. 37: DBSY). It supposedly comes into play when using
the NX chipset in a four-processor configuration - and
even then only in 'very configuration dependent
environments'.
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By Alexander Wolfe
July 24, 1998
EE Times
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Foreseeing Hollywood-class computer
graphics as the potential killer app that could
reenergize the flagging mainstream PC market, Intel Corp.
and Microsoft Corp. used the recent Siggraph '98 to
disclose separate, ambitious research efforts dedicated
to pushing the envelope in 3-D animation and rendering
software. The goal: to make 3-D graphics on systems
with Intel CPUs and Windows NT a competitive threat to
the Unix workstations that now dominate the high-end
market.
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July 26, 1998
The Register
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Intel has chosen today, Sunday, to
release details of its price cuts on its range of
processors and has slashed the price of its entry level
266MHz Celeron processor to $80/1000, while releasing
details of its 450MHz Pentium II processor, available in
a few days, which is now expected to cost $630/1000. The
300MHz Celeron drops in price from $130/1000 to
$104/1000. Rival AMD can be expected to cut its pricing
in the next day or so to maintain its 25 per cent
differential below Intel pricing, while NatSemi-Cyrix is
also likely to follow suit in the next week, according to
sources. On Friday, Intel announced it would kill off the
Pentium Pro.
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See
Today's Related Stories |
| Today's Related Stories |
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By Michael Kanellos
July 24, 1998
C/Net
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A new round of price cuts from Intel is
expected this Sunday, while a 450-MHz chip--the fastest
Pentium II yet--should hit the streets next month. The
reductions will be the latest in this year's flurry of
pricing activity by the industry's leading chipmaker. The
July round would be the fourth desktop processor price
cut in 1998, and at least two more are scheduled for
September and October. In past years Intel has cut prices
four times in the whole year.
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