Collected By Robert R. Collins

Week of August 5, 2001

Older News

Intel pushing hard on Pentium 4

By John G. Spooner

August 7, 2001
C/Net

During a U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray conference for financial analysts, Anand Chandrasekher, vice president of Intel's Architecture Group, all but confirmed that the chipmaker would launch its 2GHz Pentium 4 later this month, cut prices and go for the jugular of rival Advanced Micro Devices.

Repeating statements made by Executive Vice President Paul Otellini during the company's second-quarter earnings conference call, Chandrasekher said Intel will move aggressively to make Pentium 4 the standard chip for PCs. The main weapon will be price cuts, prompted by more efficient chipmaking methods and the introduction of Intel's 845 chipset, which will allow PC makers to pair the Pentium 4 with cheaper SDRAM memory.

Intel exec says price-cuts not only play on Pentium 4

By Reuters

August 7, 2001
SiliconValley.com

Intel's Pentium 4 comes with better yields and lower material costs, said Anand Chandrasekher, Intel's vice president of architecture and marketing. Those efficiencies could help stabilize Intel's profits amid an ongoing price war with rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

Wall Street jittery over Intel price cuts

By Larry Dignan

August 6, 2001
C/Net

In a research note, Lehman Brothers analyst Dan Niles said Intel is hatching a plan to regain market share from Advanced Micro Devices, sparking a price war that will hurt earnings. Intel will make its move Aug. 26, he said.

According to Niles, Intel plans to cut prices by 50 percent on its high-end Pentium 4 chip. The chip giant will cut the price on its 1.8GHz Pentium 4 from $562 to $260. And if that cut doesn't work, Niles said there is "an additional 10 percent to 25 percent price cut on Oct. 28."

SiS and Via prepare Pentium 4 chipsets

August 6, 2001
C/Net

Two Taiwanese chipset manufacturers are planning to beat Intel to the punch with their own new chipsets for Intel's Pentium 4 processor.

Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) and Via Technologies have rolled up the launch dates for the 645 and the P4X266 chipsets from September to mid-August, according to a report in Taiwan industry journal DigiTimes on Monday. Intel is releasing its 845 Pentium 4 chipset, which will be the first to support the SDRAM (synchronous dynamic RAM) memory standard, in September.

Windows XP sidesteps Intel SpeedStep

By Andrew Thomas

August 7, 2001
The Inquirer

But when XP RC1 displayed the same approach - bombing out the Intel applet that provides SpeedStep functionality under Win2K and ME on the grounds that support is built into the OS, but singularly failing to do any such thing - we asked Redmond what was going on.

Itanic will use Alpha EV8, SMT features

By Mike Magee

August 6, 2001
The Inquirer

The most recent presentation seen by the INQUIRER today over the bar of the Porcupine near Chinatown in Soho, also demonstrates that Compaq has the backing of some of its bigger customers in its move to port its software to the Intalpha platform.

Intel preps all out anti-Via attack

By Mike Magee

August 7, 2001
The Inquirer

The short presentation seems aimed at establishing Intel's lead in supporting double data rate (DDR) technology and saying its implementation with the Pentium 4 is better than anyone else's.

The first slide on the presentation alleges that DDR chipsets account for less than 10 per cent of Via's chipset business, while the AMD Athlon chip "shows no significant performance benefit from the higher bandwidth DDR memory".

AMD Super Silicon: New secret deal

By Andrew Thomas

August 7, 2001
The Inquirer

The agreement calls for Isonics to supply silicon-28 raw materials and for the secret partner to produce silicon-28 epitaxial wafers and sample them to interested, unnamed, customers worldwide. The wafers 'will be manufactured in the partner's U.S. facility'.

Intel snatches server deal from Transmeta

By Matthew Broersma

August 2, 2001
C/Net

Amphus, based in San Jose, Calif., announced on Wednesday a new high-density server design called Virgo, based on low-power Intel processors. The company, among others, was originally touted as a win for Transmeta's Crusoe processor last winter.

Transmeta loses server design win to Intel

By Bruce Gain

August 1, 2001
EBN

Last winter, Transmeta announced its Crusoe chip would power servers made by Amphus, RLX Technologies Inc., and FiberCycle Technologies.

Transmeta touted the design wins, saying that a server using an Intel Pentium or Athlon processor from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. could consume 60W or more and dissipate commensurately more heat.

"Blades" shine in grim server market

By Stephen Shankland

August 2, 2001
C/Net

Blade computers are an outgrowth of the current trend in which those who run large computing centers need to pack their computers in ever more tightly. The superskinny servers dominated much of the discussion Wednesday at IDC's Enterprise Server Vision conference, a gathering where analysts and industry executives come together to gaze into one another's crystal balls.

Intel scores PC-redesign victory

By Stephen Shankland

August 3, 2001
C/Net

The proposed technology, called 3GIO, will now be overseen by the PCI-SIG, the standards body that supervises Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI), the long-dominant technique for plugging devices such as graphics cards and network cards into computers. PCI will be phased out and replaced by the Intel technology.

Intel Backed PCI Spec Anointed

By Alex Romanelli

August 3, 2001
Electronic News Online

The PCI Special Interest Group (PCI-SIG), which is responsible for governing the PCI standard, revealed its choice for a new PCI networking standard today. Arapahoe, formerly code-named 3GIO, was proposed to the PCI-SIG board by Intel (nasdaq: INTC) a week earlier.

PCI SIG votes to endorse Intel spec, renamed Arapahoe

By Jerry Ascierto

August 3, 2001
EE Times

Now dubbed Arapahoe, Intel's former 3GIO will be released in draft form for several key developers around the time of the fall Intel Developer Forum, with a public release slated for later in the year. Upon completion of the Arapahoe 1.0 spec, it will be transferred to the PCI SIG, which will own the spec and assume responsibility for the promotion and further development of the interconnect architecture.

Intel chief predicts completed 3GIO spec in near term

By K.C. Krishnadas

August 3, 2001
EE Times

Speaking here during a four-city Asian tour, Barrett said, "I'm very comfortable with it [3GIO]. It will be the protocol of the future." Asked about the competing Hypertransport technology backed by Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Barrett said 3GIO technology has "substantially more headway." Commenting on other technologies, Barrett said, "Ethernet is going to be the technology of the future. Ethernet seems to be the chosen technology."

Taiwanese Move Ahead with P4 DDR Chipsets

By Steven Fyffe

August 3, 2001
Electronic News

Eric Chen, one of SG’s Asian analysts, filed the news after SiS reported its first half results yesterday.

The SiS645 open architecture DDR333 chipset for the Intel P4 platform will feature a 400MHz system bus and support a maximum 3GB of system memory.

Via runs into resistance on its Pentium 4 chipset

By Faith Hung

August 1, 2001
EBN

Via's prospects are tied heavily to its double-data-rate chipsets configured for the Pentium 4 processors. Via said that it has shipped some DDR chipsets to about 10 second-tier motherboard companies beginning this month, even though it hasn't received a license from Intel.

Intel trying to 'shut Pandora's Box'

By Mike Magee

August 3, 2001
The Inquirer

Yesterday, share prices of chip stocks rose on reports that Barrett insists the market is turning round - the same thing happened when he visited London last June - but this article examines whether Intel is really in a position to make such predictions.

AMD's Sanders wins industry gong

By Mike Magee

August 2, 2001
The Inquirer

Jerry Sanders !!!, the CEO of AMD, will join Ross Perot, Gordon Moore, Andy Grove, and Messrs Hewlett and Packard and receive the AeA medal of achievement at an annual dinner this year, reports Electic.

Sanders already has one major Silicon Valley gong - the Robert Noyce Award in his possession.

Athlon battering P4 systems

By Mike Magee

August 2, 2001
The Inquirer

The feature, headed "Top 10 Power PCs", says the fastest system is Xi Computer's 1400MHz Athlon system, but even though its performance was higher than P4s, systems from Dell and Gateway beat it into third place.

Out of the ten machines reviewed, Athlon systems took six of the 10 places, with 1333MHz and even 1200MHz systems outpacing Pentium 4s at 1.7GHz.

VIA ready to sample second Pentium 4 chipset

By Tony Smith

August 3, 2001
The Register

The P4M266 extends the current P4X266 chipset with integrated Savage 4 graphics technology from VIA's S3 Graphics operation. Both support the P4's 400MHz bus, PC100 and PC133 SDRAM, and PC1600 and PC2100 DDR SDRAM.

ATI preps A3 alternative to Nvidia's nForce

By Tony Smith

August 2, 2001
The Register

So the company has told mobo makers, or so claims Web site Xbit Labs, citing information leaked to a second, Ukrainian site.

According to that data, A3 will support the Pentium III and AMD's Athlon. Maybe, but we reckon the Pentium 4 might be closer to the centre of ATI's sights. The company has a P4 licence, granted it by Intel earlier this year. Intel itself is now driving the P4 very hard, to the extend that it will introduce preferential pricing (over the PIII) later this month. In such circumstances, ATI would be daft not to factor the P4 into its plans, particularly while Nvidia still has no P4 licence of its own and won't be geared up for a P4 version of nForce until mid-2002.

Intel pushes for concerted i845 mobo launch

By Tony Smith

August 3, 2001
The Register

So says a "local industry source", according to the Taiwan Economic News.

The i845 - aka Brookdale - hooks the Pentium 4 up to PC133 SDRAM and is expected to ship in volume two weeks ahead of said 10 September deadline - on the 26 August (or thereabouts). The 26 August is also special because Intel will not only be introducing its 2GHz P4 on that date, but aggressively cutting the prices of lesser versions of the chip.

Intel's Pentium pricing plans change?

By Mike Magee

August 4, 2001
The Inquirer

But note well that the prices given below differ in some respects from those that Ingram Micro and Tech Data have up on their site, indicating that Intel may well have decided to make further price cuts in its Pentium 4 line.

We are trying to figure out the anomalies, particularly on the Pentium 4 platform. As the prices in our other article from yesterday are correlated from two of Intel's major distributors and come from a reliable source, it seems hard to see how there could be an error, and this may well be a further indication of Intel's determination to push hard on average selling prices by cutting them even more. The Tech Data and Ingram listings are, of course, for boxed motherboard parts. We will attempt to clarify this when office life starts again on Monday.