 |  |
 | |
|  |
|  |
|  |
|  |
|  |
|  |
|  |
|  |
|  |
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Microprocessor
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top Stories for July 18, 2001 (details below) | |
| The Industry Standard | Intel Vows to Keep Up Price War |
| C/Net | Intel hits the gas on Pentium 4 |
| Truths...from the rumor mill | |
| The Inquirer | Intel had to hire Alpha engineers |
| The Inquirer | Via P4 chipset a go-go |
| The Inquirer | Intel stealth launches Tualatins |
| Microprocessor
Headline News Collected By Robert R. Collins |
Week of July 15, 2001 |
Older News |
| July 18, 2001 | |
Intel Vows to Keep Up Price WarBy Mark Boslet July 17, 2001 |
Intel said Tuesday that second-quarter profits plunged 94
percent from the same quarter a year earlier while sales
stumbled 24 percent to $6.3 billion. Wall Street had
anticipated the declines, and the company's financial results
met analysts' revenue expectations and beat their earnings
target. But what the financial community didn't expect was the Silicon Valley company's razor-sharp focus on continuing its price war with cross-town rival Advanced Micro Devices. Investors pushed Intel's stock down modestly in after-hours trading on news that the company's gross margin would fall to 47 percent or lower in the third quarter. |
Intel hits the gas on Pentium 4By John G. Spooner July 17, 2001 |
Intel is preparing a Pentium 4 blitz for the remainder of
2001, aiming to drive the chip into the heart of the desktop
PC market before the end of the year, executives said Tuesday
during a conference call after the chipmaker's second-quarter
earnings announcement. Intel intends to accelerate its Pentium 4 road map, cranking the clock speed of the chip past 2GHz before the end of the year. Although 2GHz-plus speeds have been expected for some time, Intel will likely introduce them sooner. |
| Truths...from the rumor mill | |
Intel had to hire Alpha engineersBy Mike Magee July 17, 2001 |
THE APPARENT INSOUCIANCE with which senior executives of both
Compaq and Intel displayed when asked if the Federal Trade
Commission (FTC) would be interested in the transfer of Alpha
technology has its roots in the settlement of Digital and
Intel's patent dispute. An ex-DEC employee has told the INQUIRER that under the terms of the settlement, engineers at Digital were told that if the company quit its Alpha business within seven years, Intel "was obligated" to make "fair offers" of employment to those engineers still working there. |
Via P4 chipset a go-goBy Mike Magee July 17, 2001 |
THE TAIWANESE PRESS is reporting that Via will introduce its
P4X266 double data rate (DDR) chipset towards the end of this
month in small quantities. Both Digitimes and the Economic News report the story, with the latter quoting Via VP Lee Tsung-chieh as its source. Lee appeared confident that Via will escape legal action by Intel but industry observers are not so sure that the chip giant will just sit back and let the Taiwanese firm erode its market share. |
Intel stealth launches TualatinsBy Mike Magee July 17, 2001 |
THE NOISE INTEL made yesterday about the introduction of its
mobile processors was so loud you could hear a pin drop. That's because Intel is in its "quiet period" which seems to last 365 days a year, apart from once every four years barring millenia, when it lasts 366 days. As we reliably reported weeks back, the firm cut prices on its family of mobile Pentium III .18 micron "Coppermine" processors for notebook PCs, but at the same time it also introduced several new flavours of copper-interconnect "Tualatin" chips at speeds of 1.13GHz, 1.06GHz, 933MHz and 866MHz. |
| July 16, 2001 | |
AMD's net profits plummetBy The Associated Press July 13, 2001 |
Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices barely beat Wall Street's
dramatically lowered expectations for its second-quarter
earnings Thursday and gave a grim outlook for the current
quarter. Chief executive Jerry Sanders said he believed, however, that business will pick up significantly in 2002. In the three-month period that ended July 1, AMD had a net profit of $17.4 million, or 5 cents a share, 92 percent lower than the earnings of $207.1 million, or 60 cents a share, in the comparable period of 2000. Sales slipped 16 percent to $985 million from $1.17 billion. |
Intel, AMD likely to hold the line on pricesBy John G. Spooner July 13, 2001 |
Chipmakers Intel and Advanced Micro Devices are likely to take
a breather from their price war, analysts say. With AMD's second-quarter earnings results now history, analysts say it's unlikely the two will continue their profit-draining price battle. Cutting prices further would erode each company's average selling prices, and the resulting revenue hit would likely offset any market share gains. |
Intel faces dilemma with processor rolloutsBy Jack Robertson July 11, 2001 |
It looks like Intel Corp. has gotten itself into a bit of a
mess with its rollout of new microprocessors -- its core
business. Clearly the MPU kingpin -- and the PC community that is joined at the hip with Intel -- needs a jumpstart for the Pentium 4, which has had a sputtering start since its introduction last November. Intel takes the position that every one of its new processor architectures has taken a little time to ramp up to take control of the market -- and Pentium 4 is no different. The company contends that the recent steep P4 price cuts, combined with a Taiwan vendor ramp-up of Pentium 4 motherboards, will make that chip the dominant PC processor. |
AMD has big expectations for retail notebooksBy Jack Robertson July 13, 2001 |
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. executives told analysts Thursday
they anticipates capturing half of the retail notebook PC
market by the end of the year - a huge leap from having almost
no mobile PC presence over a year ago. Chairman Jerry Sanders said such a meteoric rise in mobile processors would be made possible by its low-cost Duron chip and its new high performance Athlon 4, now sold almost solely to the notebook PC market. He said Duron, already the highest speed mobile processor at 950-MHz, will have a 1-GHz version introduced this quarter. |
AMD prepares SOI shift in PC processors with initial 0.13-micron process
|
In a bold move to convert 100% of its PC processors to
silicon-on-insulator technology, Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
has begun pilot production of 0.13-micron SOI processes in
Dresden, Germany, with a target to start up volume fabrication
by the end of this year, said AMD officials here during a
conference call with analysts. The 0.13-micron SOI technology was jointly developed with Motorola Inc. under an ongoing R&D alliance, which is also focused on other next-generation processes such as copper interconnects and low-k dielectrics. AMD has also licensed SOI design libraries from IBM Corp. These technologies are expected to play a role in migrating all of AMD's PC processors to silicon-on-insulator processes during the next couple of years, said Hector De J. Ruiz, president and chief operating officer. |
Rambus slashes royalty rate for SDRAM customerBy Jack Robertson July 13, 2001 |
Rambus Inc. for the next year will allow a "major (synchronous
DRAM) licensee" --- believed to be Samsung Electronics Co. ---
to make single reduced quarterly payments instead of paying
royalties, company officials revealed Thursday in the
conference call with financial analysts. Bob Eulua, vice president and chief financial officer, declined to identify the licensee getting relief. Analysts quickly tagged Samsung, the largest global SDRAM producer, as the beneficiary. Samsung officials could not be immediately reached for comment, but in the past U.S. officials have referred all licensing questions to the Korean headquarters, which is closed for the weekend. |
Rambus warns of slowing salesBy Reuters July 12, 2001 |
Rambus, a maker of PC memory chips that is facing an industry
slowdown and legal battles, announced third-quarter results
Thursday that were in line with Wall Street estimates but
warned that sales would drop further. Net income, including one-time items and a tax adjustment, fell to $3.7 million, or 4 cents per share, in the quarter ended June 30, from $4.6 million, or 4 cents per diluted share, in the year-ago period. Sales sales rose to $23.3 million from $17.76 million in the year-ago period, but fell from $31.25 million in the second quarter. |
Rambus plunges along with chip pricesBy Tiffany Kary July 13, 2001 |
Falling prices for memory chips translated into a falling
share price for Rambus Friday, after the memory-chip maker's
third-quarter report. Shares in the designer and licenser of Rambus Direct RAM (RDRAM) chips were down $1.03, or nearly 10 percent, to $9.85 at market close. Thursday night, Rambus reported third-quarter net income of $3.7 million, or 4 cents per share, in line with First Call's estimates but below the $4.6 million, or 4 cents per diluted share, reported in the year-ago period. |
| Truths...from the rumor mill | |
Ugly Itanic duck to become pretty swanBy Mike Magee July 13, 2001 |
SOURCES IN THE US suggest that current designs of of IA-64
processors may now be garotted to death inside Intel, to be
replaced by Alpha technology masquerading under the Itanic
cognomen. The move may make the job of porting all those applications and operating systems Compaq will hang onto much easier, being as future generations of the Itanic will really be the Alpha in disguise, the sources add. This information makes quite a little sense to us, seeing as Intel had an alternative team working on an alternative 64-bit architecture in Oregon, just in case the Merced-Itanic family couldn't quite cut it. |
More signs of PIII death arriveBy Mike Magee July 13, 2001 |
WE MIGHT ALL BE FEEDING off each other here, but it looks like
there's further confirmation that the Pentium III is not long
for this world, as first reported here. According to today's edition of the Taiwan Economic News, local vendors are saying that the Pentium 4 will become the mainstay of the industry, and sooner rather than later. The piece quotes gentlement from Synnex and Acer confirming that the Pentium III has got the itch to migrate to the chip equivalent of the Elysian Fields. |
Confusion reigns over AMD plansBy Mike Magee July 15, 2001 |
A NUMBER OF HARDWARE sites have pointed to some
inconsistencies in statements made by AMD as to when it will
shift production to silicon on insulator (SOI) and .13 micron
process technology. That follows statements made by AMD's chief executive, Hector Ruiz, who, as we reported here last week, said both processes were on target by Q4 of this year. But over at Via Hardware and on the Ace's Hardware forum, folk are suggesting inconsistencies between Ruiz' tale and the public roadmap AMD has on its page. |
Intel hunting Via downBy Mike Magee July 15, 2001 |
WHILE MOST OF THE FOCUS of attention over the last few months
has been the increasingly desperate price war between Intel
and AMD, sources tell the INQUIRER that Chipzilla is gunning
for plucky little CPU firm Via too. Via makes X86 compatible CPUs based on the GlennHenry "Centaur IDT" III core and has made headway in several Asian markets with its low cost chip, according to sources familiar with the situation. |
Tualatin Enigma reaches conclusionBy Mike Magee July 13, 2001 |
OUR GOOD friends at Xbit Labs posted some more information
about the now famous Tualatin .13 micron processors which you
can find here. The site also links to this Intel page here, which is a datasheet for the S370 processors. Intel launches its mobile Tualatins on the 15th of July, unless it has ripped up its plans again - you can find details of those price moves here. |
| Advertisement |