| January 8, 1999 |
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By Mike Magee
January 8, 1999
The Register
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Sources close to Intel said today that
the Pentium III when released will cost less that the
450MHz PII does now. The Pentium II 450MHz currently
costs $459 when bought in units of 1000, suggesting that
Intel will pitch the Katmai-III lower than at first
expected.
And this is the update. Intel said today (Friday) that
the price of the CPU is currently $562. But, spookily,
the price we quoted above will not be far off the price
when the Pentium III is launched...spooky.
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By Mike Magee
January 8, 1999
The Register
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Intel has warned that 366MHz and 400MHz
Celerons it released early this week are likely to have
clock locking built into them. That follows a report
on hardware site The Overclocking Page that two
enthusiasts who have what they say are retail CPUs, are
able to overclock them to speeds of 550MHz and 600MHz.
An Intel representative confirmed the company was
building locks into future processors. "We're not
telling people exactly how we're doing it because we
don't want them to break the method," he said.
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By Stephen Shankland
January 7, 1999
C/Net
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Dell Computer and Sun Microsystems are
among the companies that will help Intel develop a new
technology to connect computer processors and components,
Intel announced today. Intel has been leading the
effort to develop a server architecture, called
Next-Generation Input/Output (NGIO), and has been working
to convince other companies to support the NGIO system.
Along with Dell and Sun, the other companies that will
lead NGIO development are Hitachi, NEC, and Siemens.
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By Michael Kanellos
January 7, 1999
C/Net
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Pentium III will be the name of the
next-generation chip from Intel, sources close to the
company have confirmed, a marketing decision that allows
the company to use its most successful brand name a fifth
time. Code-named Katmai, the processor will become the
standard-bearer for Intel's performance desktop chip
line. It's based around a Pentium II core, but contains
70 additional instructions that boost multimedia
performance.
Video will run more smoothly on a Pentium III, for
example, because a given computer can process more frames
per second. Game programs will also be able to
incorporate algorithms that improve how objects appear to
move.
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By Terho Uimonen
January 8, 1999
InfoWorld Electric
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Banking on its most successful brand
name, Intel will dub its next-generation chip the Pentium
III, according to sources close to the company. The chip,
formerly code-named Katmai, is expected to be unveiled
Monday. The new processor generation builds on the
current Pentium II core, but it adds a set of 70 new
multimedia-enhancing instructions known as the Katmai New
Instructions on top of the existing MMX instruction set.
Intel is expected to introduce the first two
iterations of the long-awaited processor series, running
at 450 MHz and 500 MHz, by early March, industry sources
said. The fastest Pentium II processor today runs at 450
MHz.
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| January 7, 1999 |
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By John G. Spooner
January 7, 1999
PC Week Online
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As part of a "branding
announcement" set for Monday, Jan. 11., Intel Corp.
is expected to officially name its next-generation
Pentium chip, code-named Katmai, the "Pentium
III." While the company declined to comment on the
announcement, one industry source called the name
"the best kept secret in Silicon Valley."
The Pentium III will begin at 450MHz and 500MHz,
sources said. Intel has already stated publicly that it
would release Katmai processors with those two clock
speeds in this quarter.
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By Rick Boyd-Merritt
January 6, 1999
EE Times
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Elbowing its way into the high-margin
world of computer servers, Intel Corp. this week said it
is designing multiple chip sets for eight-way
multiprocessing systems, the first of which will appear
before June. The CPU giant has also developed undisclosed
features and instructions in its upcoming
Katmai-generation processors that it hopes will give its
Pentium II microprocessors a leg up in some large
database processing jobs. The Katmai New Instructions
are expected to first appear in Intel's server chips in
March, when the company rolls out its Tanner CPUs. Intel
has documented some of the floating-point enhancements in
those new instructions that will benefit multimedia
functions such as graphics and voice recognition.
However, Intel revealed that Katmai New Instructions will
also include “a couple of things still under
non-disclosure that will improve performance of some
business applications . . . with instructions and
enhancements optimized for database environments,”
said John Miner, vice president and general manager of
Intel's Enterprise Server Group.
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By Stephen Shankland
January 6, 1999
C/Net
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A battle between major computing
companies is brewing over who has the best technology for
allowing computer processors and components to
communicate with each other. IBM, Compaq, and
Hewlett-Packard will face off against Intel next month in
the dispute, which will define the future specifications
for the technology.
The race to set the standard will have far reaching
implications, say observers. Research-intensive server
makers, who have complained about a lack of input into
the standards-setting process, believe that their
standard will offer more opportunity to differentiate
their products from the competition, especially from
companies that are light on R&D, such as Dell
Computer. In addition, the server vendors potentially
will be able to gain royalties if their spec is adopted.
As stated earlier by one IBM executive, the companies
want an environment where "you get a return on your
investment."
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By Mike Magee
January 7, 1999
The Register
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Intel introduced a cut down version of
its 300MHz Pentium chip for portables. The processor
is nothing to do with the announcements Intel will make
on the 24th of this month, as widely reported here and
elsewhere.
According to the company, the 300MHz Pentium with MMX
technology is aimed at the low end of the portable
market, as reported here.
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By Brian Neal
January 3, 1999
Ace's Hardware
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As I was grappling for a "New
Year's" article topic, I stumbled across some
interesting facts about the internet's favorite group of
heroes, fighting to usher in the new Millennium with a
giant leap in computing technology. Well, they aren't
exactly what you might consider "heroes," but
the stories flying around on the web paint things that
way. I don't have any more concrete information that
anyone who hasn't signed an NDA, but I have tried to put
a few of the pieces together, and whether or not it
proves fruitful, it was fun. Right now is the perfect
time for such an article, after all, it's 1999, and
chances are good that the most talked about company
without a product to speak of, Transmeta, will reveal at
least some sort of information regarding their
development and production plans before the close of the
century. |
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| January 6, 1999 |
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By Linley Gwennap
December 16, 1998
Microprocessor Report
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Intel's decision to release its
Mendocino processor without a module in 1Q99 is just the
tip of the iceberg. By the end of next year, we expect
Intel to be shipping moduleless processors into all of
its market segments, and by the end of 2000, virtually
all of its chips will plug into sockets instead of slots.
This trend will be enabled by a shift to on-die level-two
(L2) cache, which makes today's module structure
superfluous. The initial purpose of the Slot 1 module
was to hold the external L2 cache chips required by the
Klamath and Deschutes CPUs. Mendocino (see MPR 8/24/98,
p. 1) doesn't need external cache chips, as it is Intel's
first processor to incorporate the entire cache
subsystem. To maintain compatibility with these earlier
processors, Mendocino is currently shipping in a Slot 1
module, despite the fact that, other than the CPU, the
module contains no active components and is nearly empty.
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By Michael Slater
December 16, 1998
Microprocessor Report
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For nearly 20 years, derivatives of the
instruction-set architecture Intel created for the 8086
have dominated the world of general-purpose computing.
Thanks to the spectacular success of the IBM PC and the
standard it spawned, the x86 architecture has achieved a
level of success that no one would have dared hope for. For
years, the architecture evolved slowly, and often
ineptly. The 80186 was incompatible with existing PC
software, because Intel didn't fully anticipate the
rigors of DOS compatibility. The 286 inflicted on the
industry a memory-management scheme that wasted thousands
of man-years of programmer effort and held back OS and
application technology for years. With the 386 and its
paged memory management and 32-bit extensions, the x86
architecture finally achieved a level good enough for its
remaining weaknesses--plentiful as they are--to be
relatively insignificant.
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By Lisa DiCarlo, John G. Spooner and Carmen Nobel
January 5, 1999
PC Week Online
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Intel Corp. on Tuesday announced the
latest in its Pentium II Xeon family of processors,
spawning a host of new servers and workstations from PC
vendors. While Intel works to increase the speed and
performance of its processors, with the release today of
the new Xeon processor with support for four-way
processing and either 512K, 1MB or 2MB of Level 2 Cache,
the company is also working feverishly with several
server vendors to improve I/O performance.
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By Christopher Yates
January 4, 1999
PC Week Labs
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As hard as it is to believe, Intel
Corp.'s new 366MHz and 400MHz Celeron processors are just
as fast as 350MHz and 400MHz Pentium II chips. PC Week
Labs' tests of two Celeron-based systems released this
week show that the once-gutless--no L2 (Level 2)
cache--Celeron chip with a consumer focus has been
transformed into a serious contender for corporate
desktop PCs. Buyers will now find Celeron-equipped
systems as powerful as Pentium II machines for hundreds
of dollars less.
So what's the catch? Well, Intel sees the Celeron and
Pentium II processors as serving different markets. The
Celeron, company officials have claimed, is for the
"value-conscious" buyer, whereas the Pentium II
is for buyers who demand the most powerful system on the
market.
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Real World Tech
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One of the most common questions heard
today is "What platform provides the best upgrade
path?". There seem to be as many opinions on this as
there are users, mostly centered around whether Slot 1 or
Socket 7 provides the best option. Though some have
claimed that Intel will move to Slot 2 in the near
future, making Slot 1 another 'dead end' in the Intel
roadmap. most believe that Slot 1 is the answer. Many
have also said that Socket 7 is soon to be a platform of
the past and that Slot A will replace it by the end of
1999. Interestingly, some new information seems to
indicate that the real answer may be quite surprising. |
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| January 5, 1999 |
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By Mike Magee
January 5, 1999
The Register
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Sources said that Taiwanese company UMC
(United Microelectronics Corp) will be the foundry that
will make the mp6 family of processors for x.86 start up
company Rise. UMC, a Taiwanese company, has access to
the x.86 technology and the foundry ability to make the
parts, the source said.
Last month, we reported that Rise was aiming to
produce Socket 370 parts.
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By Mike Magee
January 4, 1999
The Register
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Although on the face of it IBM and AMD
have no cross licensing deal on x.86 technology, it now
appears that Big Blue will make K7 chips. The complex
cross licensing technology on copper technology -- which
exclusively prevents Intel from using it -- is likely to
lead to boards from IBM later in the year.
Last week The Register exclusively reported that a
1GHz K7 will emerge from AMD at the beginning of next
year.
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By Mike Magee
December 31, 1998
The Register
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Sources close to AMD said today that
future plans for the K7 are already well in place, after
its Dresden fab comes onstream next year. AMD has
always had designs to use copper, as first revealed by
The Register when it talked to senior VP Dana Krelle at
the introduction of the K6-2 in Versailles 15 months
back.
But now sources at the company have revealed that it
will launch a 1000MHz K7-Intel buster early in the year
2000.
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By Mike Magee
December 31, 1998
The Register
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Letters written by an Intel
microprocessor designer to an Internet overclocking site
have revealed that the practice is set to become a thing
of the past. Chip engineer Karl Andrews wrote to the
Overclockers Comparison Page earlier this month and said
that newer chips will have a "more effective speed
control method" built into them.
That means, said Andrews, that overclocking "will
soon become a dead subject".
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See Related
Stories Opinion:
Intel a whited sepulchre on overclocking
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By Mike Magee
January 4, 1999
The Register
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There’s no doubt about it, when it
comes to brazening things out, Intel is hard to beat. Just
a few days ago it emerged that Intel is to prevent
overclocking of future versions of its processors but the
reasons it advances for this decision are spurious.
Its mission, and it does accept it, is to boldly sell
more microprocessors than it has ever sold before.
That’s the reason Intel Architecture Labs is
currently developing 3D software (Miramar), intelligent
fridges and the like, and that’s the reason
it’s going to stop gamers and others overclocking
its chips.
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See Related
Stories Intel
says days of overclocking gone
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By Robert Lemos
December 28, 1998
ZD Net News
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Chip technology and information site
AnandTech has exposed No. 2 PC chip maker Advanced Micro
Devices Inc.'s next piece of silicon, the K6-3. Code-named
"Sharptooth," the chip is expected to be
released in January. While most of the details of
Sharptooth are public, AnandTech was the first site to
publish benchmarks of the forthcoming processor.
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Ever wonder what's lurking within the
dark corners, nooks and crannies of your computer? Is
some gremlin responsible for all those crashes---you
know, the ones that happen when you are trying to save
that critical document you've been working on so
diligently for the past three hours? We wondered too, so
we took a look to see what we could find. And guess what?
When we put the computer chips under the microscope we
found some very interesting creatures hiding there. |
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By Stephen Shankland
January 5, 1999
C/Net
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Compaq, Dell, and NEC will be among the
PC server makers taking advantage of Intel's improved
Xeon processor, set to be introduced today. After some
delay, the world's leading chipmaker plans to unveil
450-MHz versions of its high-performance Xeon. The new
processors will incorporate as much as 2MB of secondary
(or L2) cache, special high-speed memory that keeps the
chips fed with data and instructions.
The new Xeon chip's core remains the same as that used
in an ordinary Pentium II, but its cache runs at the same
clock speed as the chip, instead of half as fast. Also,
while a Pentium II comes with 512K of cache and can
accommodate systems with two processors, the Xeon will
come with 512K, 1MB or 2MB of secondary cache and can be
used in one-, two-, and powerful four-processor servers.
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January 5, 1999
The Register
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Intel formally introduced three 450MHz
additions to its high-end Pentium II Xeon chip family. The
processors come with 512K, 1Mb and 2Mb of level two cache
and are aimed at the server and workstation markets.
The chipset and processors will support four way
symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) machines.
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By Michael Kanellos
January 4, 1999
C/Net
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Intel kicked off the new year today by
releasing two new and faster Celeron processors,
launching into a busy month. January, and the first
quarter in general, will be an active time for processor
makers and PC manufacturers. As Intel rolls out 366-MHz
and 400-MHz versions of its Celeron chip for low-end PCs
and cuts prices on existing processors, new consumer
systems will arrive from leading computer makers.
In 1,000-unit quantities, the new 400-MHz Celeron is
priced at either $158 or $166, depending upon the
packaging option selected. The 366-MHz version costs
either $123 or $131, depending upon the packaging option
selected.
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By Lisa DiCarlo
January 4, 1999
PC Week Online
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Despite growing sales and the increased
capability of its low-cost Celeron processors, Intel
Corp. doesn't expect Celeron-based systems to gain a
foothold in large enterprises. And that's just fine
for Intel, whose healthy bottom line depends on selling
millions of more expensive processors like the Pentium II
and Pentium II Xeon.
The Santa Clara, Calif., company on Monday announced
new 366MHz and 400MHz Celerons. At the same time, many PC
makers also announced low-cost systems built around the
chips.
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By Ron Wilson
January 4, 1999
EE Times
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Intel Corp. executive vice president
Paul Otellini opened the 1999 business year today with a
new assault on the retail low end of the personal
computer CPU market. New Celeron CPU speed grades and
prices, further reliance on less expensive plastic PGA
packaging in place of the ill-accepted single-edge Slot-1
card format, and promised new core logic chip sets will
be Intel's weapons of choice. “Candidly, Intel was
not happy with our performance in retail PCs in
1998,” Otellini stated. “We were slow to
respond to the needs of that segment.”
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By Eva Glass
January 4, 1998
The Register
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The Digital Anvil, AMD and Microsoft
connection is to deliver further desktops using the K7
platform in Q3 1999, we can reveal. The source that
told The Register last week of the copper interconnect K7
in Y2K with a 400MHz bus, today revealed it has several
other customers interested in its products.
He said: "I don’t think [the Compaq Presario
with K7] will be an exclusive. We have other customer
wins too."
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By Andreas Stiller
Volume 26, 1998
c't Magazine
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Intel is lowering Celeron prices
drastically and has plans for a security chip, National
sees light at the end of the tunnel, and IBM & Co
seek their chances against Direct Rambus with DDR-SRAMS. Intel
is feeling generous around Christmas; after Via SiS will
now also receive a license for the Pentium-II bus. The
Sandia National Laboratories even got the license for
building Pentiums as a present. And the market leader is
also thinking about the processor buyer (and of course
also about the dwindling market shares in the lower price
segment): just before the launch of the socket version
Intel decreased the Celeron prices by 40 percent to 97
Dollars (Celeron 333) and 80 Dollars (Celeron 300A)
respectively.
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By Mike Magee
January 5, 1999
The Register
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A survey by Dataquest Europe said that
most of the top tier chip companies, with the exception
of Intel, Philips and ST Micro, suffered big declines in
sales in 1998. Joe D'Elia, associate director for
Dataquest Europe, who compiled the report, said:
"Semiconductor vendors around the world are glad to
see the back of 1998."
He said that the future of the DRAM memory market, in
particular, was unclear, after suffering its third bad
year in a row, hit by over capacity. The Asian financial
crisis affected the entire industry during 1998.
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