 |  |
 | |
|  |
|  |
|  |
|  |
|  |
|  |
|  |
|  |
|  |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Microprocessor
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Top Stories for October 8, 1999 (details below) |
|
| C/Net | Price war forces Rise to rethink chip strategy |
| EE Times | Intel Itanium looks over its shoulder, twice |
| ZDNet News | Chip giants go their own ways |
| C/Net | NEC halts production of Rambus chips |
| The Register Files | |
| The Register | Intel underestimated Rambus difficulty, Tyan says |
| Microprocessor
Headline News Collected By Robert R. Collins |
Week of October 3, 1999 |
Older News |
October 8, 1999 |
||
Price war forces Rise to rethink chip strategyBy Brooke Crothers October 7, 1999 |
Upstart Rise Technology is rethinking its overall strategy for making computer chips, a move that mirrors the difficulties other chipmakers have found in the PC segment.
Rise Technology, a small Silicon Valley chip upstart that designs low-cost processors for PCs and notebooks, was expected to provide details on its "Tiger" processor--a PC-compatible chip designed to be a clone of Intel's Celeron chip--this week at the Microprocessor Forum in San Jose, California. Instead, the company pulled its presentation and says now it is rethinking its future product plans. |
|
Intel Itanium looks over its shoulder, twiceBy David Lammers October 7, 1999 |
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and IBM Corp. sailed into the Microprocessor Forum this week with CPU strategies that could put a competitive squeeze on Intel Corp.'s IA-64 Itanium (a.k.a. Merced) processor in 2001 and beyond.
AMD disclosed it will extend the X86 architecture to the 64-bit realm in its eighth-generation Sledgehammer CPU, a strategy that could serve the low end of the PC server market as well as desktops. |
|
Chip giants go their own waysBy John G. Spooner October 6, 1999 |
Intel and AMD are preparing 64-bit chips with such contrasting technologies that
developers and users may have to choose sides.
The giants of the microprocessor industry are marching into next-generation technologies with such conflicting strategies that users may no longer be assured that software written for an Intel chip will work well with rival AMD processors. |
|
NEC halts production of Rambus chipsBy Bloomberg News October 6, 1999 |
NEC, Japan's largest chipmaker, said it will temporarily suspend production of Rambus chips after Intel delayed a product that works with the next-generation memory technology.
NEC has already switched production lines in Southern Japan and Scotland to produce synchronous DRAM (dynamic random-access memory) chips rather than the Direct Rambus chips--which are capable of faster data transfer than conventional computer memory chips--they were making before, said a company spokesman who asked not to be named. The company had planned to ship about 2 million Rambus chips monthly to PC makers from March. |
|
The Register Files |
||
Athlon Powers turns AMD loss into not-as-big AMD lossBy Sean Fleming October 7, 1999 |
AMD didn't lose quite as much money in its third quarter as had been expected, turning last Q3's profit of a tad more than $1 million into a loss of $105.6 million.
In Q2 of this year, it recorded a loss of $162 million, excluding exceptional items. During Q3 sales dipped by 3.4 per cent from $686 million to $662 million. The period was dominated by the launch of the Athlon chip - the stick with which AMD hopes to give Intel a good hiding. |
|
October 7, 1999 |
||
Rise Technology's future in doubt as company eyes System-On-A-Chip strategyBy Mark Hachman October 6, 1999 |
It's all up for grabs at Rise Technology Co. After it bowed out of the Microprocessor Forum Tuesday, executives at the x86 microprocessor startup said the company's entire future is in doubt.
Only two months after Rise's chairman and CEO, David T. Lin, expressed optimism about the low end of the PC market, executives said the company's product portfolio may be completely overhauled, as may Rise's strategic direction. The uncertainty, coupled with the questions rshadowing Centaur Technology and Cyrix Corp. after their acquisition by Via Technologies Inc., creates new questions about which company will be the chip supplier for low-end PCs. |
|
Via tips plans for inexpensive X86 chipsBy Rick Merritt October 6, 1999 |
Via Technologies plans to unwrap at least two fast, inexpensive X86 microprocessors for Christmas 2000. But plans for highly integrated CPUs are not yet on the road map of the company, which recently acquired Cyrix Corp. from National Semiconductor and the Centaur processor division from Integrated Device Technology Inc.
"We have a strategy," said Glenn Henry, who heads the Centaur design group. "It's very basic, but we think it is the right one to go after the low end," he said. |
|
Intel's competitors refuse to follow the leaderBy Stephen Shankland October 6, 1999 |
Intel is forging ahead with high-end processor plans, although the chip giant is moving in a direction that no one else seems interested in following.
While Intel's upcoming Itanium chip, code-named Merced, speaks a brand-new language, IBM, Compaq Computer, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, AMD, and other competitors are sticking with the chip architectures they already have. Those Intel competitors laid down the gauntlet yesterday, unveiling high-end chip plans at the Microprocessor Forum here and revealing a wide variety of ways to extend their current chip designs. |
|
Silicon Valley chip start-up makes Intel patent moveBy Richard Wilson October 6, 1999 |
The highly secretive Silicon Valley chip start-up company Transmeta has tipped its hand on what it is
working on with a recent patent filing focused on Intel compatible technology.
The patent filing describes a technology that could allow Transmeta to develop powerful microprocessors that emulate Intel microprocessors while at the same time side stepping Intel's patents. The patent would allow Transmeta to produce a chip that can emulate any type of processor but its chief target appears to be Intel architecture chips. |
|
AMD unveils plan to upstage Intel
|
Intel Corp.'s drive to create an entirely new chip design for high-powered computing has left the door wide open for Advanced Micro Devices Inc. to take the lead in designing the microprocessor standard that Intel originally invented.
The two companies took center stage Tuesday at the Microprocessor Forum 1999 conference in San Jose, with each attempting to define the best way to expand their existing processor designs for use in the explosive high-powered server market -- the powerful computers used to manage the flow of data and communications over the Internet. The latest struggle between the two rivals is over how to design chips that can address 64 bits of information at one time. For the past five years, Intel has been developing such a chip, based on a radical new architecture known as Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing. |
See Today's Related Stories |
AMD reports a loss but beats expectationsBy Stephen Shankland October 6, 1999 |
AMD, a company with grand plans but short-term difficulties, today soundly beat analysts' earnings expectations by 25 cents.
The chipmaker and Intel rival reported a net loss of 72 cents per share for the third quarter. It was expected to lose 97 cents per share for the quarter, according to financial analysts surveyed by First Call. The loss is considerably greater than the 1-cent-per-share profit from the same quarter a year ago but not as severe as the $1.10 loss posted last quarter. |
See Today's Related Stories |
AMD cuts Q3 losses, looks to sell communications unitBy Sergio G. Non October 6, 1999 |
Athlon chips carried Advanced Micro Devices Inc. easily past third-quarter estimates. And the company
expects more to come.
In results released after market close Wednesday, the chip maker reported a net loss of $105.5 million, or 72 cents per share. First Call's survey of 19 analysts predicted a loss of 97 cents per share for the quarter ended Sept. 26. Quarterly sales of $662.2 million represent gains of 16 percent sequentially and 1 percent year-over-year for ongoing operations. Flash memory sale increases of 28 percent combined with Athlon chips, which carry higher margins than their K6 predecessors, helped AMD cut its losses. |
See Today's Related Stories |
Post-quake component crunch hits PC motherboardsBy Mark Carroll October 6, 1999 |
Even before last month's devastating earthquake, Taiwan's motherboard industry was scrambling to find enough core logic to meet customers' demands. The Sept. 21 quake has made the lack of product from the island's core-logic vendors even worse.
In early September, Intel Corp. was willing to concede that Taiwanese suppliers had a window of opportunity to gain market share in core logic. "We are still [producing] wafer out of our BX chip set," said David Dan of Intel Taiwan. "The Taiwanese chip set vendors, though, can support the shortage in the market until our introduction of our 820 chip set." |
|
Intel sells half of all its chips over the InternetOctober 6, 1999 |
Computer chip giant Intel Corp., which is loudly urging companies to conduct more business over the Internet, has aggressively taken its own advice.
Intel chief executive Craig Barrett says it's selling a stunning $1 billion a month in chips through Web sites it sets up for customers such as computer makers -- nearly half the company's roughly $30 billion in annual sales -- and will sell virtually all its chips this way within a year. |
|
The Register Files |
||
Intel underestimated Rambus difficulty, Tyan saysBy Drew Cullen October 6, 1999 |
Motherboard supply will return to normal in December, a leading vendor forecasts. That's how long it will take for vendors to overcome the dislocations caused by the Taiwan earthquake and the Great BX chipset shortage in August and September.
The industry had already been under supply constraints prior to last month's earthquake, Don Clegg, VP sales and marketing at Californian mobo maker Tyan Computer notes. "In August and September, Intel under-estimated BX product demand," he says. "It was late with a number of product launches, and already a little late with Whtney product. That left no alternative but the BX chipset." |
|
Today's Related Stories |
||
AMD Posts $105 Million LossBy Bolaji Ojo October 6, 1999 |
Strong sales of its Athlon processors and flash-memory products failed to stem losses at Advanced Micro Devices during the third quarter, forcing the company to take more radical steps to return to profitability.
AMD, in Sunnyvale, Calif., said Wednesday that it will sell its Communications group, which has 400 employees and accounted for slightly more than 10 percemt of the company's revenue in the third quarter. The Communications group, including the Communications Products division that supplies ICs for telecommunications applications, and the Network Products unit, which makes ICs for data communications and computer connectivity, is expected to be sold by the first half of 2000, the company said. |
|
Advanced Micro Devices narrows quarterly lossOctober 6, 1999 |
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. posted a smaller-than-expected quarterly loss on Wednesday as sales of a new, high-end microprocessor offset declining sales of other computer chips.
For the three months ended Sept. 26, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company reported a net loss of $105.5 million, or 72 cents a share, compared to a net gain of $1 million, or 1 cent per share, the comparable period a year earlier. |
|
October 6, 1999 |
||
Rise Technology re-evaluating microprocessor roadmapBy Mark Hachman October 5, 1999 |
Chip start-up Rise Technology Co. is "re-evaluating its roadmap" and will not appear at the Microprocessor Forum currently in progress in San Jose, analysts said today.
Michael Slater, president of MicroDesign Resources in Sebastopol, Calif., said that Santa Clara, Calif.-based Rise is "re-evaluating its roadmap in light of current market conditions" and would not appear. Glenn Henry, the president of Centaur Technologies, has been substituted for Rise. Centaur was acquired last month by chipset manufacturer Via Technologies Inc., and Henry is expected to explain how Via plans to integrate Centaur and fellow X86 design house Cyrix Corp. |
|
AMD takes "SledgeHammer" to IntelBy Michael Kanellos and Brooke Crothers October 5, 1999 |
Advanced Micro Devices today is detailing a new 64-bit chip that will compete against Intel's Itanium processor, formerly called Merced.
As previously reported, the "SledgeHammer" chip, due in 2001, marks AMD's attempt to get into the lucrative market for server and workstation processors--a segment that the struggling chipmaker has long coveted. The AMD project had been known as the K8 to analysts. The chip will be an extension of the current Intel-compatible chip design, or so-called x86 architecture, said Fred Weber, vice president of engineering at AMD's computation products group, at a processor industry conference here today. Intel's next-generation design, Itanium, will be a wholly new architecture. |
See Today's Related Stories |
AMD takes the offensive with AthlonBy John Spooner October 5, 1999 |
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. is expected Tuesday to wield a sledge hammer against
rival Intel Corp.'s Itanium chip.
AMD (AMD) will discuss "SledgeHammer," the code-name for a forthcoming 64-bit processor, here at this week's Microprocessor Forum, a conference focusing on processor design. SledgeHammer has also been refereed to in some instances as the K8 chip. Intel (INTC) announced Monday that its first 64-bit processor will be named Itanium. The chip, formerly known as Merced, will be available in mid-2000, the company says. |
See Today's Related Stories |
Intel keeps Itanium processor frequency under wrapsBy Ephraim Schwartz October 5, 1999 |
Intel on Tuesday announced more performance details of the Itanium processor, formerly know as Merced, at the Microprocessor Forum in San Jose. The only thing missing was the one feature by which most computer users gauge a microprocessor's significance -- megahertz.
At the forum, the chip giant disclosed that the Itanium processor will include three levels of on-chip cache, with Level 3 cache offered in a 2MB or a 4MB package. IA-32 processors, like the Pentium II and III, have only two levels of on-chip cache. Despite the fact that Intel has let out a slow, but steady, stream of details about the Itanium over the last three years, the processor speed was not part of Tuesday's announcement. |
|
Micron readies DDR memoryBy Will Wade October 5, 1999 |
Micron Technology Inc. officials are showing working versions of double data-rate DRAM devices, and say they will be able to ship the devices in volume early next year. Not only has the DRAM vendor designed the faster memory chips, its current showcase also features a Micron-designed core logic component to support DDR DRAM.
"We expect the design will be qualified by the end of the year," said Dean Klein, vice president of integrated products for the Boise, Idaho-based company. The chips are produced at the 0.18-micron level, and Klein said there is almost no die size penalty, and almost no price penalty, over standard SDRAM. "We are essentially ready to turn on the switch and start turning these things out." |
|
The Register Files |
||
Chipzilla coughs on CoppermineBy Tony Smith October 5, 1999 |
Intel took the wraps off its Coppermine "next generation... with performance
optimisations" Pentium III chip at Microprocessor Forum today.
Chipzilla project architecture manager Jim Wilson would only say that Coppermine will become available "later this month" at 700MHz or greater, but as The Register has already reported, the chip is set to ship on 24 October in at 733MHz. Wilson said the chip will be made available in standard desktop, Mobile and Xeon server/workstation versions simultaneously. |
|
Intel Itanium to make moves on mainstreamBy Tony Smith October 5, 1999 |
Intel today relaunched its IA-64 architecture, moving the processor once codenamed Merced but now officially branded Itanium much, much closer to the mainstream desktop PC market than Chipzilla has previously suggested.
At last year's Microprocessor Forum, Intel spokesfolks poo-pooed claims that Merced was anything more than a high-end architecture aimed at big league, 64-bit applications, specifically databases and operating systems. |
|
AMD unveils server-oriented Athlon 'Xeon'By Tony Smith October 5, 1999 |
AMD followed yesterday's launch of the 700MHz Athlon with the announcement today that it wants to push the chip into the more lucrative server and workstation markets.
And in a bid to take Intel's own new server and workstation processor, Itanium (aka Merced) head on, the Chipzilla wannabe launched it's own move into 64-bit computing: x86-64, a 64-bit extension to the AMD's existing 32-bit instruction set architecture (ISA). The move into the server and workstation worlds is clearly part of AMD's attempt to be perceived as something more than an x86 knock-off merchant. The success it has had with its 3D Now! technology and Athlon itself have helped here, but getting into more 'serious' markets should, the company hopes, prove once and for all that it's not about chasing marketshare in the low-end PC market. |
|
AMD takes SledgeHammer to beat Intel's MercedBy John Lettice October 5, 1999 |
AMD is today poised to build on the buzz surrounding the Athlon by announcing its 64-bit successor, SledgeHammer. It's scheduled to ship in 2001, after Intel's H2
Merced/Itanium target, but it appears AMD has been reading Intel's roadmaps diligently, and has an ambush planned.
For over a year now Intel has been talking down prospects for Merced/Itanium (we'll decide what to call the renamed chip once the market decides). The company says it expects Merced (screw it...) to be important as a development platform for 64-bit systems, but that it's going to be a while before there's sufficient 64-bit software around for customers to derive major benefits from it. |
|
Today's Related Stories |
||
AMD prepares to wield SledgeHammerBy Nancy Weil October 5, 1999 |
The code name for the eighth-generation microprocessor from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) may indicate what the company would like to use on rival Intel Corp.'s 64-bit chip: a SledgeHammer.
Fred Weber , AMD's vice president of engineering, provided details about the x86 64-bit architecture at the Microprocessor Forum on Tuesday, and also outlined plans for a future system bus, called Lightning Data Transport. The x86 64-bit architecture from AMD will allow users to continue running 32-bit applications while they make the transition, according to a statement from AMD. |
|
AMD Reveals Its 64-Bit Strategy
|
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Tuesday unveiled its answer to Intel Corp.'s 64-bit Itanium chip with its own 64-bit chip, code-named SledgeHammer.
At the Microprocessor Forum, held here, AMD disclosed details of its plan to extend the x86 architecture to 64 bits. Fred Weber, vice president of engineering at AMD, said extending the x86 architecture to 64 bits allows a "seamless or user-driven transition from 32-bit computing to 64-bit computing." |
|
AMD discloses internally-developed 64-bit architectureBy Mark Hachman October 5, 1999 |
Taking another step to distinguish itself from Intel Corp., Advanced Micro Devices Inc. today disclosed an internally developed 64-bit microprocessor architecture and complementary bus design.
Once a manufacturer of cloned Intel chips, AMD is moving to position itself as a true alternative supplier to Intel. AMD will debut its "X86-64" architecture today at the Microprocessor Forum in San Jose, along with its Lightning Data Transport (LDT) I/O architecture. AMD executives also said they're considering a so-called K6-2 Plus chip: a K6-2 processor with integrated cache produced in the company's new 0.18-micron process technology. The K6-2 Plus would complement the Athlon Ultra workstation/server chip that AMD plans to ship next year, the company said. |
|
October 5, 1999 |
||
Intel, AMD plan dueling announcementsBy John G. Spooner October 4, 1999 |
The latest round of the Intel Corp. vs. Advanced Micro Devices Inc. megahertz battle begins Monday.
AMD (AMD) will announce that its latest Athlon processor, running at 700MHz, is shipping in systems from IBM (IBM) and Compaq Computer Corp. (CPQ). Meanwhile, Intel (INTC) at this week's Microprocessor Forum in San Jose, Calif., will disclose new details on its Coppermine technology, which will be the basis of a number of new Pentium III processors to be announced at the end of the month. |
|
AMD Speeds Up Athlon To 700MHZBy Marcia Savage October 4, 1999 |
Racing further ahead in the megahertz race, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Monday rolled out a 700MHz version of its Athlon processor.
AMD, based here, also cut prices of its current Athlon chips. At 700MHz, the new Athlon is faster than Intel Corp.'s top Pentium III, which operates at 600MHz. Intel is expected to launch its enhanced Pentium III, code-named Coppermine, on Oct. 25, sources said. The chip is expected to operate at 733MHz and 700MHz. |
See Today's Related Stories |
Intel names Merced chip ItaniumBy Michael Kanellos October 4, 1999 |
Itanium--think "Titanium" with a slight regional accent--will be the official name of Intel's Merced processor, and the company will provide more details on the chip's microarchitecture at the Microprocessor Forum in San Jose, California, tomorrow.
The name Itanium was chosen to "reflect the strength and performance of the processor," said Jami Dover, vice president of marketing at Intel. Sausalito, California-based Lexicon, which also coined the chip names Celeron and Xeon, came up with the name, she said. Itanium, due toward the middle of next year, will be the chipmaker's first 64-bit processor, which means that the chip can process information in 64-bit chunks. Current Intel processors work with 32-bit chunks. |
See Today's Related Stories |
Intel readies details of new Itanium 64-bit processorBy Mark Hachman October 4, 1999 |
Intel Corp. has branded its upcoming line of high-end 64-bit chips “Itanium,” and the company will discuss more architectural details tomorrow in presentations at the Microprocessor Forum here.
Among the details likely to be disclosed are more examples of the parallelism of the chip, according to Ron Curry, director of marketing for IA-64 products at Intel. The Itanium architecture contains 128 floating-point and 128 integer registers, with 64 predict and 8 branch registers -- four to eight times the number used in competing RISC architectures, Curry said. The Itanium chip uses a 10-stage pipeline. |
See Today's Related Stories |
Itanium: Behind Intel's new brandBy John G. Spooner October 4, 1999 |
First there was Pentium. Then Xeon. Now Intel Corp. has invented another word to introduce its
latest-generation processors to the market: Itanium.
The company today revealed that Itanium is the brand name for its first IA-64 processor. The brand name will replace Merced, the product's code name. Intel (Nasdaq:INTC) officials said they liked the solid metal imagery that Itanium conjured up in market tests. |
|
IBM licenses Via's 133-MHz chip set, with plans to be second sourceBy Jack Robertson October 4, 1999 |
Via Technologies Inc. of Taiwan has licensed its latest core-logic chip set to IBM Corp., which will serve as a second source for Via and could manufacture the device for use in its own PC lines,
sources close to the companies told EBN this week.
With the launch of Direct Rambus DRAM and Intel Corp.'s Camino chip set on hold, PC manufacturers are looking for alternatives that include flavors of conventional SDRAM. Though its platform was in the works long before the Rambus delay, IBM's PC division this week threw support to PC133 SDRAM by designing it into its new line of 300PL desktop computers, which also use Taipei-based Via's latest Apollo Pro133/4X AGP chipset. |
|
The Register Files |
||
Micron crows over Rambus roadkillBy John Lettice October 4, 1999 |
Here's a puzzle. US PC manufacturer Micron didn't commit to Rambus, and so has seen orders for its PC-133-based machines climb since Intel announced its unfortunate 820 accident. A Micron 21-day backlog on some models is reported in today's WSJ, but at the same time Micron looks set to make matters worse by kicking off an ad campaign chuckling at its rivals' woes.
All in the best possible taste, apparently. "Dell and Gateway missed the bus (the 133MHz system, that is)" says the ad. Well, yes indeed they did, and they're going to have to switch their testing and manufacturing accordingly. But as Micron will find itself filling the gap while they and other 820-fanciers get their act together, it's already going to be having more orders than it had previously planned on needing to fulfill. |
|
Quake ripples and Rambus fiasco hit Dell, HPBy John Lettice October 4, 1999 |
Although Taiwanese production is now coming back on-stream after the quake, knock-on supply disruption is causing problems for some PC manufacturers. On top of this, the Rambus fiasco also looks like messing up the supply chain.
Analysts think Dell has been hit by what you might call Compaq's Revenge. One of Dell's advantages against other PC manufacturers has historically been its build to order model and the short inventory tail associated with it. But go figure - if you don't have a large components inventory, and a prime source of components like Taiwan is knocked out of production for two weeks (the most conservative estimate) then you've probably got trouble. |
|
K7s cheaper than PIIIs 'at all speeds'By Drew Cullen October 4, 1999 |
AMD's Athlons are cheaper than the P3 at all speeds, following today’s price cuts. K7+ mobo combinations are cheaper than P3+BH6 at 550 & 600MHz.
And no we haven't cranked the numbers through RegMark, our famous/infamous benchmarking standard. This time it's CPU Review’s William Henning, who's getting out the bangs per bucks slide rule. You can see the fully monty here. |
|
Merced now called ItaniumBy Peter Sherriff October 4, 1999 |
So the brand name for Merced is Intel Itanium, as revealed --sort of -- by The Register back in May.
Still billed for launch in the middle of next year, the first IA64 chip is already sampling to a select few OEMs. And with the chip behemoth smarting from the Camino debacle, let's hope this one appears on time. Itanium processor-based servers and workstations will be available in the second half of the year 2000, the company says. |
|
Nine new PIII flavours revealedBy Linda Harrison October 4, 1999 |
Intel is due to launch nine more versions of its Pentium III chip this quarter.
The chip giant is on track to add 733 and 667MHz versions of the processor, with SECC2 Package, .18 micron process technology, supporting 133MHz system bus, by the end of 1999. They will come with 256KB on-Die full speed L2 Cache. These will have the same specifications as the 600EB and 533EB versions of the Coppermine family, which is due to launch on 24 October. |
|
Today's Related Stories |
||
Intel brands Merced with new nameBy Ephraim Schwartz October 4, 1999 |
After more than three years of identifying Intel's first IA-64 processor by its code name, Merced, the chip giant on Monday announced that henceforth the Merced processor will be officially branded and renamed
Itanium.
The Itanium brand name, selected by Intel's brand management team, represents both strength and performance, said Jami Dover, vice president of Intel's sales and marketing group, in Santa Clara, Calif. It is likely that Intel will follow a naming convention similar to its Pentium product line of Pentium IIs and IIIs, with succeeding IA-64 chips using the name Itanium along with a Roman numeral, according to Ron Curry, director of marketing at the IA-64 processor division in Santa Clara. |
|
Intel set to unveil more features of Itanium processorBy Ephraim Schwartz October 4, 1999 |
On Tuesday, Intel will announce more performance details of the Itanium processor, formerly know as Merced, at the Microprocessor Forum in San Jose.
At the forum, the chip giant will disclose that the Itanium processor will include three levels of on-chip cache, with Level 3 cache offered in a 2MB or a 4MB package. IA-32 processors, like the Pentium II and III, have only two levels of on-chip cache. Despite the fact that Intel has let out a slow but steady stream of details about the Itanium over the last three years, it seems there are still more details yet to come. |
|
AMD announces 700-MHz Athlon, with Compaq and IBM on boardOctober 4, 1999 |
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. here today announced its new 700-MHz Athlon processor, and both Compaq Computer Corp. and IBM Corp. have announced they will offer systems based on the chip, the industry's fastest x86 architecture.
AMD is positioning the 700-MHz Athlon against Intel Corp.'s top-of-the-line 600-MHz Pentium III. The Sunnyvale company claims the new MPU outperforms the Pentium III in such applications digital content creation, 3-D graphics, commercial 3-D modeling, image compression, speed recognition, and most mainstream applications. |
|
Merced Has New Name: Itanium Made-Up Moniker Aims To Connote StrengthBy Marcia Savage October 4, 1999 |
Merced now has an official name, and it is Itanium.
Intel Corp. Monday announced Itanium will be the brand name for the long-awaited Merced, the first chip in Intel's planned series of 64-bit processors for high-end servers and workstations. The chip is scheduled for production in mid-2000, with systems available at about the same time. Ron Curry, director of marketing at Intel's microprocessor products group, said the company chose the name based on a combination of research, its opinion, and its goal to provide the perception it feels is appropriate for the product. |
|
October 4, 1999 |
||
Intel struggles to explain Rambus delay; DRAM industry makes new plansBy Jack Robertson October 1, 1999 |
With its long-awaited high-speed memory program idled on the launching pad, Intel Corp. late late today remained at a loss to explain the glitch that triggered an embarrassing last-minute delay of its much-vaunted Direct Rambus DRAM debut.
The awkward eleventh-hour pullout has placed the chip giant in a precarious position with its DRAM and OEM partners, which spent millions designing and prepping Direct RDRAM chips and PCs for a September rollout. In an interview this week, Intel conceded that it has arrived at no permanent solution for the system errors plaguing its platform, errors that forced the Santa Clara, Calif., company not only to push out its Rambus program but to table the introduction of its Camino chipset. |
|
AMD to raise speed bar with 700-MHz AthlonBy Michael Kanellos October 1, 1999 |
Speeds will increase for PCs next week when Advanced Micro Devices releases a 700-MHz version of its Athlon chip, a move that will be followed by new computers from IBM and Compaq Computer. The new chip, expected to be announced Monday, will mean that AMD will continue to enjoy a speed and performance advantage over Intel's top chips, according to analysts and other sources. Intel won't be far behind, however; it is slated to come out with 700-MHz and 733-MHz Pentium IIIs on October 25, sources said. The fastest Pentium III now tops out at 600 MHz. Overall, Athlon achieves a higher level of performance than the Pentium III at equal speeds, leading to crisper, more realistic graphics, according to testers. |
|
IBM licenses Via's Apollo Pro 133; will fab chipsets as second sourceBy Jack Robertson October 1, 1999 |
Via Technologies Inc. has licensed its latest core-logic chipset to IBM Corp., which will serve as a second source for Via and could manufacture the device for use in its own PC lines, sources close to the companies told EBN this week.
With the launch of Direct Rambus DRAM and Intel Corp.'s Camino chipset on hold, OEMs are looking for alternatives that include flavors of conventional SDRAM. Though its platform was in the works long before the Rambus delay, IBM's PC division this week threw support to PC133 SDRAM by designing it into its new line of 300PL desktop computers, which also use Taipei, Taiwan-based Via's latest Apollo Pro133/4X AGP chipset. |
|
Earthquake Shakes Up Via
|
Via Technologies might be wishing it had cashed in its chips. The chip maker, which gained a window of opportunity for its new Apollo Pro chip set last week when Intel halted shipments of its 820 chip set, is reeling from a blow dealt by Mother Nature.
Via on Friday announced that last week's devastating earthquake in Taiwan will delay shipment of the company's chip sets. Via had hoped that Intel's delay would draw additional customers to its own new chip set, which supports 133MHz memory and system bus speeds, compared with the 100MHz offerings currently available from Intel. |
|
| Advertisement |