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| Top Stories for March 30, 2001 (details below) | |
| C/Net | Transmeta gains toehold in corporate market |
| Electronic News Online | Transmeta Up Against Intel For Tablet PCs |
| EBN | Transmeta-Microsoft alliance tackles uncertain terrain |
| Infoworld.com | Intel CTO sees 'Giga PC' arriving by holiday season |
| Semiconductor Business News | Morningstar analyst says Intel will admit to cutting capital spending |
| San Jose Mercury News | Please, Intel, lay off those blue guys |
| EE Times | Vendors race to finish Pentium 4 components |
| Bloomberg.com | Via Says It Plans to Boost Speeds of Processors by End of Year |
| C/Net | IBM touts chipmaking technology |
|
Truths...from the rumor mill |
|
| The Inquirer | 1.33GHz Athlon kicks 1.5GHz Pentium 4 |
| The Inquirer | P4 not much better than P3 - Intel |
| The Inquirer | Transmeta gets sharp end of Intel's tongue |
| The Inquirer |
Compaq backs
DDR-AMD and Rambus-Intel Riding two horses again - yeehah |
| The Register | AMD aims high with mobile roadmap |
| Microprocessor
Headline News Collected By Robert R. Collins |
Week of March 25, 2001 |
Older News |
| March 30, 2001 | |
Transmeta gains toehold in corporate marketBy Stephen Shankland March 29, 2001 |
Transmeta has won a major foothold in the corporate market, with Fujitsu choosing its chips to power 12,000 laptops that will be used by a Japanese insurance company.
All employees of Taiyo Life Insurance's sales force will use the laptops, which will be distributed starting Monday. The systems will be used by salespeople on the road, selling insurance, calculating rates and generating maps for driving to customer sites, said Jim Chapman, Transmeta's senior vice president of sales and marketing. |
Transmeta Up Against Intel For Tablet PCsBy Alex Romanelli March 29, 2001 |
Transmeta Corp.’s recent woes may not be behind them just yet. On Monday , the Santa Clara, Calif.-based microprocessor company announced it was collaborating with Microsoft Corp. to provide its Crusoe processors for the Redmond, Wash.-based Windows giant’s (nasdaq: MSFT) new line of Tablet PC mobile computers. However, when Bill Gates officially announced Microsoft’s reference design for Tablet PCs on Monday at the Windows Hardware and Engineering Conference in Anaheim, Calif., Microsoft revealed that Transmeta would be going up against Intel Corp. for a piece of the Tablet PC pie. |
Transmeta-Microsoft alliance tackles uncertain terrainBy Bruce Gain March 29, 2001 |
Microsoft Corp.'s debut this week of a Tablet PC powered by Transmeta Corp.'s Crusoe processor represents a high-stakes play for both companies in a U.S. market plagued by numerous duds.
Microsoft's efforts to push its Windows operating system into the Web appliance market comes even as Gateway, 3Com, and other players are either discontinuing product lines or putting developments on hold. |
Intel CTO sees 'Giga PC' arriving by holiday seasonBy Dan Neel March 27, 2001 |
Pat Gelsinger, vice president and CTO of Intel, said Tuesday that innovations from Intel and Microsoft, combined with work by computer makers, will deliver what Gelsinger called the
"Giga PC" by the end of the year.
In his keynote address Tuesday at the WinHEC 2001 conference, Gelsinger said the arrival of innovations such as gigahertz-speed system buses, gigabit connectivity, gigabyte storage capacity, and faster Intel Pentium 4 processors will all happen before the end of the year. |
Morningstar analyst says Intel will admit to cutting capital spendingMarch 29, 2001 |
Another financial analyst is predicting that Intel Corp. will soon buckle to the chip recession and cut capital spending from the company's current budget of $7.5 billion. In a new report, Morningstar Inc. analyst Jeremy Lopez said it is only a question of how much Intel will cut back from its record capital spending plans.
Until now, however, Intel executives have insisted that the Santa Clara, Calif., chip giant has no plans to lower its $7.5 billion budget this year, despite the fact it has pushed back a number of major projects. Earlier this month, Intel confirmed it was delaying a 300-mm wafer fab in Ireland. |
Please, Intel, lay off those blue guysBy Mike Cassidy March 29, 2001 |
It's a shame Intel has to cut 5,000 jobs, but as long as it has to, any chance it could start with the Blue Man Group?
You know Blue Man Group. Everybody knows Blue Man Group. (Even I do, now.) They're fast becoming the next Pokémon: Everywhere. All the time. I've been watching the NCAA basketball tournament a lot lately and I've been seeing a lot of Blue Man Group. I know them as the bug-eyed, bald, blue, human jumping beans that show up every 15 minutes on commercials promoting Intel's newest processor. The three blue guys creep me out. It's spasmodic mimes in blue. |
Vendors race to finish Pentium 4 componentsBy Will Wade March 29, 2001 |
Two Taiwanese chip vendors are in the final stages of completing chip sets to link Intel Corp.'s Pentium 4 microprocessor with double-data-rate SDRAM. The release of these parts will be a big boost for Intel, which needs the chip sets to hit the market in order to assist the ramp of its flagship processor.
At the same time, the chip sets pose a potential embarrassment, since they will compete this year against Intel's own upcoming chip set, which uses standard SDRAM and will likely be overshadowed by the faster DDR SDRAM designs. |
Via Says It Plans to Boost Speeds of Processors by End of YearBy Alan Patterson March 30, 2001 |
Via Technologies Inc., Taiwan's largest chip designer, said it will by the end of the year introduce more powerful versions of its computer processors that compete with Intel Corp. in PCs selling for $500 and less.
The processor -- codenamed Ezra -- will compete with Intel's Celeron chips, the fastest of which currently operate at 633 megahertz. A higher megahertz speed indicates a processor can handle more tasks, called instructions, in a given period. |
IBM touts chipmaking technologyBy John G. Spooner March 29, 2001 |
IBM Microelectronics is hitting the road with its new spin on silicon for making faster computer chips.
The IBM chipmaking division is working to popularize its relatively new silicon-on-insulator (SOI) chipmaking technology, both through licensing and manufacturing agreements as well as by using it in its own chips. Wide adoption of SOI technology, used to increase performance or lower the power consumption of a processor, would be a point of pride for IBM as it would prove detractors of the technology wrong. At the same time, licensing fees and contract manufacturing would help boost IBM Microeleclronics' bottom line. |
Truths...from the rumor mill |
|
1.33GHz Athlon kicks 1.5GHz Pentium 4By Mike Magee March 29, 2001 |
Ace's Hardware has posted some interesting benchmarks, comparing the 1.33GHz Athlon with the 1.5GHz Pentium 4. You can find the table of results here. My original headline said that the Athlon thrashed the Intel processor. Some readers disagree and say the results show the opposite. See what you think. Availability details bear out our sources too (see other story on this site).
Damn, there's a piece about some maniac or other with the same name as mine, over at Kick Ass Gear. |
P4 not much better than P3 - Intel March 29, 2001 |
Intel is engaged in a major propaganda offensive over claims by UK heavyweight PC mags that the P4 is an overpriced irrelevance, that fails to perform any better than well set up (and hugely cheaper) Athlon, not to mention a nice Pentium III.
Intel engineers have tipped up at magazines' premises brandishing disks that show why P4 is actually quite a nippy little performer after all, especially if you're into streaming video, playing MP3s, 3D modelling and video editing - preferably all at once. |
Transmeta gets sharp end of Intel's tongueBy Mike Magee March 29, 2001 |
Don MacDonald, Intel US' director of its mobile marketing group, said today that his firm had no difficulty successfully beating off competition from both AMD and start-up Transmeta.
Speaking in London this morning, MacDonald said that he was confident Intel was able to execute fast enough on both marketing and technology to stay ahead of the two firms. Transmeta was showing little signs of fulfilling the promise some thought it would deliver. |
Compaq backs DDR-AMD and
Rambus-Intel
|
A report in US publication The Wall Street Journal suggests that big PC company Compaq is backing double data rate (DDR) memory over RDRAM (Rambus) memory for its family of desktops.
Hyundai said it will provide the parts to both HP and to Compaq for use with the Athlon range of PCs. The report, by Terho Uimonen (don't we know that name from somewhere?), will be a big blow to Intel, which is unlikely to get its own DDR chipset out of the door until the third quarter of this year at the earliest. |
AMD aims high with mobile roadmapBy Drew Cullen March 27, 2001 |
AMD may be late to the high-performance mobile processor table, but it's trying hard to make up for its tardiness in 2001.
In its most recent mobile processor roadmap, issued at CeBIT, the company says that notebook systems using mobile AMD Athlon processors, based on Palomino, are "planned" to be in the channel in Q2 this year. Of course, this will depend on the widespread availability of VIA or ALi chipsets, currently thought to be in short supply, for the Palomino mobile version. |
| March 27, 2001 | |
Intel takes new approach to battery lifeBy Michael Kanellos March 26, 2001 |
Intel will try a new tactic to improve laptop battery life when it comes out next year with "Banias," its first chip designed from the ground up to power notebooks. Banias, due out toward the end of 2002, is part of an increased focus on the laptop market by Intel and other chipmakers. Although desktop PC sales are limping, many manufacturers say that the worldwide market for mobile computers is faring somewhat better. |
Gates taps Intel, Transmeta for Tablet PCBy John G. Spooner and Ian Fried March 26, 2001 |
Microsoft's Bill Gates on Monday showcased the company's new Web-surfing computer tablet that is expected to incorporate chip technology from Intel, as well as from upstart Transmeta.
Microsoft is working with the two chipmakers and five PC makers, including Toshiba, Sony and Compaq Computer, to produce a number of Tablet PC prototypes. "You can think of it as evolutionary or revolutionary," Gates told developers Monday at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference here. |
Truths...from the rumor mill |
|
Inquirer starts with
Rambus phlegm
|
To Mike Magee from an anonymous Ramboid...
|
Crisp, Magee and Rambus do gavotte
|
A whole heap of fresh depositions in the different cases between Rambus, Infineon and Micron have arrived on the
Rambusite.
First, let's make it quite clear, the Magee that's going to be a witness is no relation to the Mike Magee that used to work somewhere else. Richard Crisp, Rambus has now confirmed, carried on working at the company until last year. |
AMD nails IBM to Hammer mastBy Drew Cullen March 26, 2001 |
AMD is to use proprietary IBM silicon on insulator (SOI) technology in its forthcoming 64-bit Hammer microprocessor family.
The company is to also lean on IBM for some design services and will cross-licence some patents of its own, in a "multi-million dollar" deal, the FT reports. The use of IBM's SOI design could speed up Hammer chips by up to 30 per cent, making it run faster than the Itanium, Intel's rival 64-bit technology. The technology is also claimed to run at a lower temperature than the Itanium. |
Transmeta preps pumped up CrusoeBy John Leyden March 26, 2001 |
David Ditzel, chief technology officer of low-powered chip maker Transmeta, said the industry would see "much greater" performance improvements than the traditional 20 per cent per silicon generation, when it ships the next version of its Crusoe processor.
The TM5800, which will ship in the second half of this year, will feature processor speeds of greater than 700Mhz, according to Ditzel. It will feature the same 516KB of L2 cache as the TM5600, will is currently available, but will use 0.13 micron processor technology, unlike the 500-667MHz TM5600, which uses older 0.18 micron fabrication techniques. |
British, American scientists discover Gelsinger co-efficientBy Andrew Orlowski March 26, 2001 |
British and American scientists have succeeded in discovering one of the most elusive technical challenges in semiconductor science: the Gelsinger co-efficient. The Gelsinger co-efficient is the point at which Intel's VP Pat Gelsinger overheats. Usually in mid-keynote.
The breakthrough could pave the way for cooler, more reliable keynotes in the future. |
Via takes the yrix out of Cyrix
|
Thanks to Jon Hou at Fullon 3D for letting me know about the Samuel II announcement made at Snowy Cebit in Hannover today.
The press release turned up after he'd emailed me, so I'm pleased to see that Via has alternative email addresses for yours truly. Widely pre-broadcast, Via duly went ahead and announced the C3, which will bumble along at a sub-1GHz speed of 733MHz. |
Via's Yrix takes stealth approach
|
I've written for a while that Via, the apparently small-bit player in the x86 game, is one to watch.
From time to time, I'd bump into harassed executives of the firm, mostly in Taipei, where it's based, and hear mild complaints that no-one seemed to have heard of Via, and that the press was, somewhat unfairly in its view, focusing on Intel and AMD. |
| March 26, 2001 | |
Transmeta, Microsoft team up on Tablet PCBy Therese Poletti March 25, 2001 |
In what could be a boon for Transmeta, the Santa Clara-based developer of low-powered PC processors is expected to announce Monday that it is working with software giant Microsoft to incorporate its Crusoe chip into Microsoft's Tablet PC.
The announcement is expected to be made at WinHEC (Windows Hardware Engineering Conference), a hardware developer conference in Anaheim this week. |
AMD forms chip technology alliance with IBMBy Tom Foremski March 25 2001 |
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), the chief competitor to Intel in microprocessors, has teamed up with IBM to implement a key chip technology in its forthcoming high-end microprocessors.
The move is likely to intensify pressure on Intel to follow suit and give AMD an important advantage in the high-stakes battle to provide chips for powerful servers, a highly profitable market and one that Intel is relying on to help drive revenues. |
Via takes collision course toward IntelBy Ken Popovich March 23, 2001 |
Via Technologies Inc., the Taiwan-based chip maker that has become a thorn in the side of Intel Corp. in recent years over its disputed use of licensed technology, is set once again to take a poke at the chip giant.
Later this year, Via will market a DDR (Double Data Rate) based chip set for use with Intel's Pentium 4, either with or without Intel's blessing, a Via spokesman confirmed here Thursday at the CeBit show. |
Pentium 4 cost forces Intel to stick with $7.5 billion cap spending planBy Jack Robertson March 23, 2001 |
The pressure on Intel Corp. to cut Pentium 4 manufacturing costs is causing the company to hold fast to this year's massive $7.5 billion capital spending plan, according to analysts.
The company's mettle was tested earlier this month when it announced delays on two fab projects while forecasting a 25% drop in first-quarter revenue. Many in the industry expected a commensurate decline in capital spending, but Intel president and chief executive Craig Barrett clung steadfast to the company's budget projections. |
Intel CEO sees shadows on the horizonBy Reuters March 22, 2001 |
Craig Barrett, chief executive of the top U.S. computer chipmaker Intel, said on Thursday that his company's outlook for the next three months was not bright, while the U.S. markets had entered uncharted territory.
"We don't know how long this slowdown is going to last. It may last six months, 12 months or 18 months," Barrett told Britain's Channel Four TV station in a report from the United States. |
Rambus rockets on settlement speculationBy Bloomberg News March 22, 2001 |
Rambus shares shot up 33 percent Thursday after an analyst said recent developments in the chip designer's patent lawsuit against Infineon Technologies might lead to an out-of-court settlement.
Rambus rose $5.66 to $22.95. Shares of the Los Altos, Calif.-based company have fallen about 36 percent this year. Transcripts of U.S. District Judge Robert Payne's decision to delay the trial to April 10 suggest the potential for Infineon to seek a settlement "has increased significantly," Morgan Stanley Dean Witter analyst Mark Edelstone said in a report. |
AMD to unveil new chips, delay othersBy John G. Spooner March 22, 2001 |
Advanced Micro Devices will unveil a pair of new desktop PC processors on Thursday but has delayed some future products.
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. will unveil a pair of new desktop PC processors on Thursday but has delayed some future products. The chip maker will announce its new 1.3GHz and 1.33GHz Athlon chips for desktop PCs. The more powerful Athlon chips will be available mmediately in PCs from Compaq Computer Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. |
Transmeta revs up power-saving effortsBy Stephen Shankland March 22, 2001 |
Germany--Transmeta is preparing a serious assault on Intel, planning two major
power-saving products this year and two new chips for 2002.
The plans could give an added boost to Santa Clara, Calif.-based Transmeta, an upstart chipmaker that has been battling hard against rival Intel and the giant's recent push to create similar processors that require less power to operate. |
The Register Files |
|
Old trick aids Intel in 1GHz notebook spinBy Mike Magee March 21, 2001 |
Intel's SpeedStep technology allowed it to intro a 1GHz Pentium III mobile this week, beating AMD to the coveted speed tag.
But the jury is out on just how much chips used in high end notebooks really can be truthfully described as running at 1000MHz. Intel's SpeedStep (GeyservilLe) technology goes head-to-head against technology from AMD (PowerNow) and Transmeta (LongRun). All are techniques to control power consumption in mobile microprocessors and so let the battery last longer. Via also has a system for the few fanless mobile CPUs it flogs. |
Intel moves to throttle throttle-bottle storyBy Mike Magee March 23, 2001 |
Intel has taken speedy steps to clarify what it believes are the issues that lie behind the phenomenon of clock throttling.
Earlier this week, we suggested that describing notebook machines as running at 1GHz was misleading, and that in reality machines using a chip running at this speed only did so for a brief period of time, even when they were plugged into the mains. |
Infineon (Siemens) accused of deliberate patent theftBy Mike Magee March 22, 2001 |
Documents now available on the Rambusite show that the real reason the patent trial between Rambus and Infineon is delayed is because a fresh deposition accuses Siemens Semiconductor, which spun off Infineon as a separate unit, of deliberately and knowingly appropriating its technology.
The trial, which was supposed to start Monday of this week, is now scheduled to begin in April. |
AMD issues fresh, bracing Cebit roadmapBy Mike Magee March 22, 2001 |
Chip contender AMD has issued a fresh roadmap to coincide with its introduction of its 1.3 and 1.33GHz Athlons earlier today.
At Cebit, it also demonstrated dual Athlon systems and a 1.5GHz chip with a core named after a breed of horse dubbed Palomino. The 30 page document claim AMD is still on target for its Morgan and Palomino processors, which will be ready in Q2 onwards, although to us it seems there is a bit of a slippage. |
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