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| Top Stories for August 25, 2000 (details below) | |
| VNU Net | Toshiba questions Transmeta power claims |
| Electronic Buyers' News | Intel offers details behind Pentium 4 performance increase |
| Semiconductor Business News | Intel unviels new high-speed graphics initiative |
| The Register Files | |
| The Register | Intel lobs software grenade back at chippy Redmond |
| The Register | Pentium 4: performance puzzle begins |
| The Register | Pentium 4 to launch in October |
| Microprocessor
Headline News Collected By Robert R. Collins |
Week of August 20, 2000 |
Older News |
| August 25, 2000 | ||
Toshiba questions Transmeta power claimsBy Jo Ticehurst August 24, 2000 |
Toshiba has poured cold water on Transmeta's claims about the low power consumption and heat generation of its Crusoe chip, despite the fact that it is an investor in the chip startup.
Transmeta claims that Crusoe increases battery life in lightweight notebooks to eight hours, more than doubling the two to four hours provided by equivalent Intel chips. It also claims that notebooks running the chips are quieter as Crusoe does not need noisy cooling fans. |
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Intel offers details behind Pentium 4 performance increaseBy Jack Robertson August 24, 2000 |
Countering claims made recently by an industry microprocessor research firm, Intel Corp. at this week's Intel Developers Forum in San Jose said the upcoming Pentium 4 has no deep pipeline performance penalty.
Intel executives here at IDF detailed the Pentium 4's NetBurst technology, which they said significantly increases performance over other processors, while nearly doubling the number of processor pipeline stages. |
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Intel unviels new high-speed graphics initiativeAugust 24, 2000 |
Intel Corp. here today announced a new initiative designed to double the graphics performance for next-generation PCs and workstations.
At the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in San Jose, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company offered a glimpse of its new Advanced Graphics Port (AGP) 8x roadmap for next-generation graphics applications in desktops. |
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The Register Files |
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Intel lobs software grenade back at chippy RedmondBy Andrew Orlowski August 24, 2000 |
Although it got buried in the XScale announcements this week, Intel is stepping up its software offerings in intriguing fashion. Intel's Integrated Performance Primitives are a set of libraries that run across Intel architectures and began life as way of tapping MMX and Screaming Sindy instructions without dropping down to assembler code. These libraries already exist for image processing, signal processing, maths and recognition primitives including Hidden Markov models and neural nets. That's already a substantial body of useful code, and not something you'd knock together over a weekend. | |
Pentium 4: performance puzzle beginsBy Mike Magee August 25, 2000 |
At a technical track in San Jose today, the principal architect of the Pentium 4, Doug Carmeon, briefed delegates on the performance of the up-and-coming Pentium 4.
But although Carmeon gave many comparisons between a 1.4GHz Pentium 4 and a 1GHz Pentium III, the information from his talk was hard to interpret. First off, the die size for the Pentium 4 has increased from the projected 170mm to 217mm, meaning that the processor may cost more than Intel or the world originally anticipated. |
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Pentium 4 to launch in OctoberBy Andrew Thomas August 24, 2000 |
Intel's Willamette, aka Pentium 4, is to launch in Mid October. The 32 bit chip will first appear as a 1.4GHz part, with a speed bump to 1.5GHz before the end of the year.
The Pentium 4 will have a 400MHz bus, employ 128 bit Screaming Sindy Two (SSE2) rather than the current 64 bit SSE. At IDF this week, Senior Intel VP Albert Yu demoed a Pentium 4 running at 2GHz. The October date is a bitter personal disappointment as I bet Mike £5 that Willamette would appear before the end of August. |
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| August 24, 2000 | ||
Server makers struggle with Xeon chip shortageBy Stephen Shankland August 23, 2000 |
Intel's chip shortage, an ongoing problem since last October, has extended to its high-end Xeon line for servers, Intel executives said.
"The 700-MHz Cascade (chips) are in really tight supply," Mike Fister, general manager of Intel's enterprise platforms group, said in a news conference yesterday at the Intel Developer Forum. "Cascade" is Intel's name for the Xeon chip, a high-end version of the Pentium III used primarily in multiprocessor servers, generally the most powerful and expensive Intel-based computers. |
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First Itaniums to run at 733MHzBy Ken Popovich August 23, 2000 |
Nine Itanium-based computer makers are eager to chat up their prototype workstations and servers on display here at this week's Intel Developer Forum, but there's one question they'd prefer not to answer.
"We can't tell you at what speed the chip is running at. Intel told us not to talk about that," said one vendor representative, who asked not to be identified. Indeed, Intel Corp. disappointed some industry observers Tuesday when it announced that the Itanium will be introduced initially at 733MHz, not at the 800MHz clock speed it had earlier promised. |
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Intel details chipset plans for two-way serversBy Jack Robertson August 23, 2000 |
Intel Corp.'s Plumas double-data-rate (DDR) chipset for two-way servers, disclosed this week for the first time at the Intel Developers Forum, will support another newly revealed processor code-named Gallatin in 2002.
Hermant Dhulla, Intel's director of enterprise chipset marketing, told EBN that Plumas will be the first in a family of chipsets for the volume two-way server market. Company executives Tuesday identified the upcoming Gallatin server processor as the first MPU to use the new chipset, when the MPU is introduced in two years to replace the IA-32-based Foster. |
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Intel chief talks strategy August 23, 2000 |
Intel chief executive Craig Barrett today said he is focusing on the chipmaker's growth rate to persuade Wall Street the company is a high-growth stock.
In an interview here at the Intel Developer Forum conference, Barrett said his goal is 15 to 20 percent annually. Intel has recently faced stiffened competition from Advanced Micro Devices and newcomer Transmeta. |
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The Register Files |
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Sun versus Intel: war declaredBy Mike Magee August 24, 2000 |
The undercurrent of dislike between Intel and Sun, which boiled over into an unseemly row at the last Intel Developer Forum, now seems to have turned into a full-scale battle.
There's lots of evidence for this, extending even right up to the top of the Intel Corporation. At a press conference shortly after his keynote speech yesterday, CEO Craig Barrett described Sun as its chief competitor, and ruled out the possibility of cooperation with McNealy's mob. |
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Reg beards Cheapzilla in Chipzilla denBy Mike Magee August 24, 2000 |
We finally tracked AMD staff down at the San Jose and Towers Hilton, the very hotel packed with journalists, analysts, delegates, and Intel staffers, all in town for the Developer Forum held next door at the convention
centre.
After Sharky Extreme departed, the staff holding the Cheapzilla redoubt seemed undismayed by words uttered by a very senior Intel exec we bumped into earlier in the day but who we won't name cos we like him a lot. |
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| August 23, 2000 | ||
Intel's new Itanium chip drags its feetBy Stephen Shankland and Michael Kanellos August 22, 2000 |
Intel said most of its initial Itanium chips will run at 733 MHz, slower than the 800 MHz expected, but the company also announced today a host of other high-end computer products to compensate for the disappointment.
Most Itaniums are expected to ship at the lower speed, Mike Fister, general manager of Intel's enterprise platforms group, said during a news conference at the Intel Developer Forum. Intel will start selling the chip in the fourth quarter of 2000, said spokeswoman Christine Chartier. |
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Intel Unveils Technical Details of P4 ArchitectureAugust 22, 2000 |
At the Intel Developer Forum in San Jose today, Intel officially announced details of the Pentium 4 processor.
This week, Intel will unveil technical details of its NetBurst architecture, the next-generation internal processor design behind the Pentium 4 chip. NetBurst is Intel’s first new core design since the P6 architecture first seen in the Pentium Pro processor in 1994. |
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Intel super-sizes Pentium 4 chipBy Michael Kanellos August 22, 2000 |
Intel's upcoming Pentium 4 will be more than twice as big as the Pentium III and approximately 28 percent bigger than anticipated, an increase that will boost Intel's manufacturing cost and limit the number of chips produced.
The Pentium 4 will measure 217 square millimeters, according to several sources at the Intel Developer Forum, which began today in San Jose, Calif. The current Pentium III and Celeron chips, by contrast, take up about 100 square millimeters. |
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Intel shows off 2GHz Pentium 4
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Executives kicked off the Intel Developer Forum here Tuesday with a 2GHz Pentium 4 demo and a charge to developers to work together to create standard building blocks for the Net.
Intel Corp. President and CEO Craig Barrett urged developers to borrow a page from the PC market and work together to create interoperability standards and modular products for Internet infrastructure and the communications markets. "Our collective task is to make those building blocks play together effortlessly and seamlessly," Barrett said. "We firmly believe that this innovation and optimization occurs when you build standard building blocks." |
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Intel unwraps 400-MHz front-side-bus architectureBy Jack Robertson August 22, 2000 |
Intel Corp. coined the name “NetBurst” for its new 400-MHz front-side-bus IA-32 architecture for Pentium 4 and future processors.
Unlike the P6 architecture, the new FSB divides each clock cycle to achieve a much higher speed. Albert Yu, senior vice president of Intel's architecture group, said the new architecture will allow the arithmetic logic unit to run at different speeds. |
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Chip set planned by Intel will support DDR or Rambus for serversBy Jack Robertson August 22, 2000 |
Presentations today at the Intel Developer Forum disclosed that the upcoming Intel 870 chip set for next generation servers will support either Direct Rambus or double data rate (DDR) synchronous
DRAMs.
The 870 will debut in late 2001 or early 2002 to support the 64-bit "McKinley" server processor, which is the successor to Intel's Itanium chip, said Mike Fister, vice president and general manager of Intel's Enterprise Platforms group. He said about one quarter later the same 870 chip set would be available for the 32-bit "Foster" processors for server systems--which would be in the first half of 2002. |
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Intel likely to grant Pentium 4 licenses to DDR chip set suppliersBy Jack Robertson August 22, 2000 |
Intel Corp. top executives today said the company will likely grant licenses to chip-set suppliers supporting double data rate (DDR) memories for its next-generation Pentium 4 processors.
"Intel has licensed third-party chip set suppliers for our architectures in the past, and we will continue to do so," said Albert Y.C. Yu, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Architecture Platform, while fielding questions at the Intel Developer Forum. So far Intel has refused to license technology for chip sets supporting its Pentium 4. When asked specifically about the Pentium 4, Yu repeated his statement and said Intel is not changing its policy of granting licenses for future architectures. |
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AMD, Transmeta discuss possible MPU cooperation, says RuizBy Jack Robertson August 22, 2000 |
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. here is discussing various types of cooperation with microprocessor startup Transmeta Corp., including possible technology exchanges for chips serving very low-end consumer PC appliance, according to AMD president Hector de J. Ruiz in an interview.
AMD is also interested in Transmeta's low-power processor technology, which could reduce power consumption of its own Athlon and Duron microprocessors, Ruiz added. AMD itself is developing new Athlong and Duron versions that will cut the present power consumption below 3 watts but Transmeta's technology might be able to cut the level to 1 watt, said Ruiz, who surprised the industry by joining AMD as president in January after heading up Motorola Inc.'s chip business for nearly three years. |
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Taiwan's Via plans initiative for new class of low-cost PCsAugust 21, 2000 |
Via Technologies Inc. here announced a new initiative aimed at helping system manufacturers build a new class of PC-like systems that sell for $199 and below. Disclosure of the initiative came on Monday, one day before the start of the Fall Intel Developer Forum in San Jose, which is hosted by Via's giant rival, Intel Corp.
Via's Information PC Platform Initiative will help OEMs develop systems that bridges the gap between full-function PCs and low-cost information appliances (IA), according to officials from the Taipei, Taiwan-based supplier of microprocessors and chip sets. |
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At Intel forum, suppliers of USB 2.0 chips press hard for early leadAugust 22, 2000 |
The rush in on to claim an early lead in chips supporting the faster Universal Serial Bus 2.0 standard. Starting today at the Intel Developer Forum here Cypress, Philips, Lucent and others plan to flex their USB 2.0 muscles by demonstrating new controllers and transceiver chips for PC-to-peripheral interfaces running 40 times faster than the existing USB 1.1 standard.
Philips Semiconductors of the Netherlands claims to be the first company to begin sampling a USB 2.0 controller chip. Cypress Semiconductor Corp. today said its EZ-USB FX2 chip was the first integrated peripheral controller for USB 2.0 to demonstrate full functionality in Intel Corp.'s labs. Lucent Technologies Inc. this week also announced a single-chip host controller and a transceiver for USB 2.0, promising samples of those 0.25-micron ICs by this fall. |
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The Register Files |
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Transmeta serendipity dogs RegisterBy Adamson Rust August 22, 2000 |
Your Register staffer became an honorary German Sunday, joining three wild boys who decided to hire a green Mustang convertible and head for the beach.
Although all four of us Germans are now easily identifiable because we were driving with the top down all day, and we all look like none of us can stop blushing, we had one of those serendipitous encounters close to Neptune World down on Santa Cruz beach. |
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Pentium 4 notebook chips on wayBy Mike Magee August 22, 2000 |
The general manager of Intel's mobile platforms group said today that the firm has plans to deploy Pentium 4 technology for the mobile market.
But chips utilizing the technology seem to be a fair way off, with Frank Spindler refusing to be drawn on a launch date. Meanwhile, he showed a roadmap confirming our earlier reports that Intel has 800MHz, 850MHz, 1GHz and 1GHz plus versions of its Pentium III mobile platform slated for this year and early next. The 800 and 850MHz parts will arrive this autumn, while the 1GHz and higher speeds are expected to arrive early next year. |
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| August 22, 2000 | ||
IDF Loses Its MemoryBy Steven Fyffe August 21, 2000 |
Intel Corp. has canned plans for a memory update and denied all media requests for interviews with a key executive at this week’s Intel Developers Forum
(IDF).
At an IDF press preview last month, Intel said it was planning to go ahead with its traditional memory roadmap update. “From a press point of view, you can expect to hear a good memory update,” Matt Haller, platform evangelism manager for Intel, said last month. Not anymore. |
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Intel mum on chipset, memory plans at IDFBy Jack Robertson August 21, 2000 |
Intel Corp. may have little to say at this week's Intel Developers Forum when it comes to two areas of intense interest to the computing industry: the launch dates for its Pentium 4 and 64-bit Itanium processors, and details of the company's chipset and memory roadmap.
As it gears up for IDF, Intel is struggling to bring Pentium 4 performance to the point where the company can disclose a launch date, according to observers. Separately, the company also appears to have been unable to bring its 64-bit Itanium processor to the promised introductory target speed of 800 MHz. At the Linux World show little more than a week ago, Intel was demonstrating a 500-MHz pre-production Itanium processor, while NEC Corp. was showing an Itanium-processor server that company executives said was well under the 800-MHz threshold. |
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Intel to share Pentium 4 details at forumBy Michael Kanellos August 21, 2000 |
Intel will fill in the details on the Pentium 4 at its developer forum in San Jose, Calif., this week and will show off new chips for cell phones and handheld computers.
The Pentium 4 will feature a completely new architecture called "NetBurst" designed to handle tasks--such as data encryption, video compression or Napster-like peer-to-peer networking--that have grown in popularity with the Internet, said Albert Yu, senior vice president of the Intel Architecture Group. |
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The Register Files |
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Intel paranoid about Transmeta -- OfficialBy Mike Magee August 22, 2000 |
Andy Grove, chairman of the Intel board, said here this afternoon that the firm is not complacent about threats to its business from chip competitors such as AMD or
Transmeta.
Grove said: "The magnitude of Transmeta's impact on our business is negligible at the moment, because to the best of my knowledge, they haven't shipped product. "We view them very seriously. We are driven by fear of a new technology. We take any new or any old competitor very seriously," he said. |
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Intel widens Rambus gapBy Mike Magee August 22, 2000 |
At a press conference held in San Jose this afternoon, Pat Gelsinger, chief technology officer of Intel's architecture group, acknowledged that the price of Rambus RIMMs had disappointed the firm.
But, at the same time, he said that Intel still considered Rambus memory to be the best technology for its up-and-coming Pentium 4 (Willamette) 32-bit processor. Gelsinger said: "RDRAM hasn't hit the price and volume levels we were hoping for. Unfortunately, the volume and price levels haven't developed as fast as we hope. |
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Pentium 4 platform renamedBy Mike Magee August 21, 2000 |
Sources said Intel has briefed senior US journalists about where it wants to place its Pentium 4 (Willamette) against offerings from AMD and the other.
The answer seems (to us) to have been cooked up by a marchitecture meister or meisteress in spin-engineering, obviously dictated to by Intel powers. There are two key words and phrases you, our readers must note. First of all, the Pentium 4 marchitecture is now to be described as Netburst, and the second phrase is that this architecture should be described as the repeated engineer execution (REE). We know what REE stands for but we prefer our version. |
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| August 21, 2000 | ||
Transmeta, AMD deal may be imminentBy John G. Spooner and Charles Cooper August 18, 2000 |
The hard-charging chip maker is close to a deal with AMD ... and the 1GHz speed
barrier. Should Intel be worried?
As the old saying goes, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Transmeta Corp. are about to announce a relationship. The chip makers are expected to soon announce the scope of cooperation, according to AMD chairman and CEO Jerry Sanders. However, Sanders remained mum on the details. |
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Transmeta IPO Filing Reveals Company's RoadmapBy Mark Hachman August 18, 2000 |
Transmeta Corp.'s IPO filing Thursday offered glimpses into the company's past and future, including a plan to manufacture a 1-GHz chip by 2001.
The company filed an S1 form with the Securities and Exchange Commission Thursday, announcing the company's intent to file for a public offering at a forthcoming date. But for now, Transmeta, Santa Clara, Calif., has all of the current appeal --and all of the profits -- of yesterday's dot-com company. |
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Intel to spill Pentium 4 details at forumBy Michael Kanellos August 20, 2000 |
Intel will fill in the details on the Pentium 4 at its developer forum in San Jose, Calif., this week and will show off new chips for cell phones and handheld computers.
The Pentium 4 will feature a completely new architecture called "NetBurst" designed to handle tasks--such as data encryption, video compression or Napster-like peer-to-peer networking--that have grown in popularity with the Internet, said Albert Yu, senior vice president of the Intel Architecture Group. |
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Intel upgrades firmware for IA-64By Alexander Wolfe August 18, 2000 |
In advance of the Developer Forum to be held over the next week, Intel Corp. has released the greatest amount of detailed technical information to date on its IA-64 architecture. Perhaps most interesting is new firmware Intel has included that will enable OEMs to differentiate their IA-64 servers from one another.
The architecture will see its first realization in the Itanium — formerly Merced — and McKinley microprocessors. |
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Infineon won't be alone in fight against RambusBy Jack Robertson August 18, 2000 |
Rambus Inc. has given the DRAM industry what it has long coveted: a definitive lawsuit to challenge the validity of
Rambus' patents on synchronous DRAMs and logic interfaces. DRAM protagonists have been considering filing a patent suit against
Rambus, which has now obliged them by suing Infineon Technologies AG for patent violations.
After licensing its SDRAM technology to three Japanese DRAM makers, Rambus is carrying through on threats to sue recalcitrant chip makers that are balking at coming to terms with the design firm. By taking on Infineon, which is still majority-owned by German giant Siemens AG, Rambus has dispelled all charges that it is only going after DRAM companies likely to become licensees rather than endure a long legal fight. |
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The Register Files |
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AMD's Sanders rants up the riverBy Adamson Rust August 17, 2000 |
Never ashamed to beat his chest and display his matt of hair to the world, AMD CEO William Jeremiah Sanders III has climbed to the top of the Empire State Building and becoming a virtual King Kong in a Web TV interview.
Sanders, rarely glimpsed outside the chip jungle, was interviewed on ON24, and dilated at length about, you guessed it, microprocessors and also confirmed what a man he is. |
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Rambus prices drop like pantsBy Mike Magee August 20, 2000 |
Rambus RIMMs are continuing to drop in price as Intel moves closer to the fateful day when its Pentium 4 "Willamette" processor starts edging out of the
fabs.
Figures from a number of online sources confirm the onward trend of the price cuts downwards, with for example, the lowest end use price for a PC800 128MB RIMM costing $259. Similar RIMMs from 12 other vendors have prices in between $260 and $300. |
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