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Microprocessor
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| Top Stories for February 18, 2000 (details below) | |
| PC Week Online | Intel confirms problem with chip sets |
| Electronic Buyers' News | AMD claims it will ship gigahertz Athlon only when ready in volume |
| ZD Net UK | Crusoe -- are you yearning or yawning? |
| EE Times | Pentium processors unveiled for embedded apps |
| The Register Files | |
| The Register | Reg pins down Rambus story |
| The Register | Micron DDR samples out and about |
| Microprocessor
Headline News Collected By Robert R. Collins |
Week of February 13, 2000 |
Older News |
| February 18, 2000 | ||
Intel confirms problem with chip setsBy Ken Popovich February 17, 2000 |
Intel Corp. has disclosed a problem involving its 820 and 840 chip sets that has spurred the company to scrap plans for three motherboards it had on its server road map.
But while an Intel representative stressed that the problem would likely affect only a few users, some analysts said the trouble may indicate a flaw in a crucial component used to configure the boards with SDRAM. |
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AMD claims it will ship gigahertz Athlon only when ready in volumeBy Mark Hachman February 17, 2000 |
Advanced Micro Devices Inc., declining to play the gigahertz marketing game, has declared it will ship gigahertz Athlon processors only when it can do so in volume.
At Intel Corp.'s Developer Forum (IDF) in Palm Springs, Calif., on Tuesday, Intel disclosed that "limited production quantities" of gigahertz Pentium IIIs were shipping to three OEMs: Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM. The company also demonstrated a 1.4-GHz next-generation Willamette processor. |
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Crusoe -- are you yearning or yawning?By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols February 17, 2000 |
Was it just me, or was transmeta's crusoe chip-family announcement one big yawn? Oh, from a techie-geek point of view, there are a lot of cool ideas here. A processor with virtually no onboard instructions.
Forget about reduced instruction set chips (RISC) like the Power and Sparc chips; with Crusoe, we get pretty darn close to the first zero instruction set chips (I hereby christen thee, ZISCs). |
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Pentium processors unveiled for embedded appsBy Charles J. Murray February 17, 2000 |
In a move that demonstrates the rising importance of embedded applications, Intel Corp. has announced the availability of Pentium III processors dedicated for systems such as smart network appliances, automated teller machines, and industrial PCs.
The announcement, made at the Intel Developer Forum, marks the first time Intel has developed versions of its leading processors for use in dedicated, connected applications. "In the past, we always adopted products off the desktop and rarely did any engineering," said Mike Carboni, application and development manager in the Computing Enhancement Group of Intel's Embedded Microprocessor Division (Chandler, Ariz.). "In this case, though, it's not just a matter of 'adopt.' Now we're engineering for embedded applications." |
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The Register Files |
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Reg pins down Rambus storyBy Mike Magee February 17, 2000 |
No-one was more shocked than Intel at how the shares of Rambus Ink soared the day it introduced its Willamette chip, we can reveal.
In fact, a source very close to Intel's plans, said yesterday that "Rambus was the surprise celebrity at this IDF". So what exactly happened? Apparently, Ted and Jane's CNN ran an interview with someone very early on Tuesday morning where the pundit was asked what the significance of the 1.5GHz announcement was. |
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Micron DDR samples out and aboutBy Mike Magee February 17, 2000 |
Chip manufacturer Micron was demonstrating two working systems of DDR (double data rate) memory using the Samurai chipset at its stand in the exhibition section of the Intel Developer Forum.
All during the week, senior Intel personnel have told us that Willamette, when it launches, will be positioned as a Rambus solution, while Foster, its server equivalent is likely to use DDR memory. |
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| February 17, 2000 | ||
Via sues Intel in London courtBy Jack Robertson February 16, 2000 |
Via Technologies Inc. fought back today against a patent infringement suit filed by Intel Corp. by filing its own suit in a London court seeking to invalidate Intel's patent on chip timing circuits.
The action was filed in the Patent Court of the Chancery Division of the High Court of Justice. The Intel patent being challenged by Via is No. EP (UK) 0-804763, involving snoop timing design. Richard Brown, Via's director of marketing, said the counter suit was brought to fight Intel's own patent infringement suits against the Taiwanese company and several of its customers and associates, filed in courts in London, Singapore, and San Jose, Calif., and also at the U.S. International Trade Commission. |
See Today's Related Stories |
A Paradigm Shift for Processors
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When Transmeta, a five-year-old Santa Clara, California-based start-up, revealed its new Crusoe line of processors last month, experts weren't surprised to learn that the chips are based on Very Long Instruction Word technology.
For one thing, Transmeta's patent disclosures had tipped the secretive firm's hand more than a year ago. But beyond that, VLIW has become the prevailing philosophy of microprocessor design, eclipsing older approaches such as RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) and CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computing). |
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Transmeta's New CPU Game
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For nearly five years, Transmeta has been a Silicon Valley enigma. But in January, the company lifted the veil on its product plans, and displayed two innovative, extremely low-power microprocessors intended for notebook computers and Web appliances.
Transmeta, which was previously best-known for its employee roster, including such names as Linux guru Linus Torvalds, may soon give you access to interesting machines without Intel or Microsoft inside, and notebook PCs that run all day on batteries. |
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Intel Offers Glimpse at McKinley
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While participants at the Intel Developer Forum here were still digesting the details of the company's new Itanium processor, Intel gave a preview into the inner workings of its next high-end processor, code-named McKinley.
This newest chip, still deep in the design phase, will be the next-generation processor for the Intel IA64 operating environment. |
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AMD crashes Intel's desert chipfestBy John Spooner February 16, 2000 |
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. brought its own ultra-gigahertz demo to this desert resort here this week.
The company -- which has crashed Intel's developer forum, going on simultaneously across town -- brought along a pair of future Athlon chips running at 1,100MHz, or 1.1GHz, each. The demos were made at room temperature. |
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Intel climbs up to 16-way system with 870 chip setBy Rick Merritt February 16, 2000 |
Intel will give a sneak peak at its Intel Developer Forum here today (Feb. 16) at its next step in climbing up the performance ladder to back-end big-iron systems. The company will give a preview of its 870 chip set which will allow OEMs to make symmetric multiprocessing systems with 16 or more processors. "We want to push our 32- and 64-bit microprocessor architectures deeper into enterprise business networks," said Justin Rattner, director of Intel's server architecture labs (Hillsboro, Ore.). | |
Faster chips needed to run Windows 2000By Michael Kanellos February 16, 2000 |
Longtime partners Microsoft and Intel appear at odds over a key question of processor power needed to run Windows 2000.
Despite assurances from Microsoft that the new business operating system will perform adequately on a wide variety of computers, chipmaker Intel maintains consumers are going to necessarily gravitate toward faster machines. Intel, in fact, underestimated the power required when planning its own, in-house Windows 2000 upgrades and ended up spending an additional $50 million to finish the job, an Intel executive said. |
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Intel Pushes Ahead With Rambus
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Despite difficulties, Intel Corp. is pushing ahead with Rambus memory.
At its developer forum held here, Intel executives Tuesday said bringing the new memory architecture to market has been a challenge but the company remains committed to Rambus for the desktop. "Clearly, we had technical issues to overcome, and we've done that," said Pat Gelsinger, vice president of Intel's Desktop Products Group. |
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The Register Files |
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Six Dramurai forgive Rambus: Seven Dramurai on cardsBy Mike Magee February 16, 2000 |
Senior Intel executives are, rather doggedly, in our humble opinion, sticking to the line that when Willamette launches this autumn, for the desktop at least, Rambus will be the way to go.
They are also saying, by the way, that if Willamette makes it to the server level (which it will), it will use DDR (double data rate) memory and that Foster, practically the same architecture as Willamette anyway, will use DDR memory too. |
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Itanium: the beat goes onBy Mike Magee February 16, 2000 |
Steve Smith, who heads up the Itanium-Merced programme for Intel, was in expansive mood about the future of the platform when we talked to him last night.
But he's not yet ready to give us a prototype Merced so we can use it as a paperweight, even the dummy one we photographed two IDF's back. Nor was he prepared to talk about the exact nature of the metal alloy which acts as a dispersal heatsink for the device, despite the close interest several metallurgists had in this question when we last raised it. He did, however, say that the sink, which spreads the heat straight from the die, uses a technology called vapour phase. That might give a clue to someone but boffins at The Reg are pretty thin on the ground. |
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Today's Related Stories |
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Via sues Intel to invalidate patent for chip-timing circuitFebruary 16, 2000 |
Taiwan's Via Technologies Inc. today announced it was suing Intel Corp. in a London court in an attempt to invalidate an Intel patent on chip-timing circuits.
Richard Brown, Via director of marketing, said the counter suit was brought to fight Intel's own patent infringement case against the Taiwan firm filed in U.S. District court in San Jose and with the U.S. International Trade Commission. "We strongly believe that the patent infringement claims they [Intel] have made against us are totally without merit," he said. |
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| February 16, 2000 | ||
Intel, Sun feuding over upcoming chipsBy Stephen Shankland and Michael Kanellos February 15, 2000 |
It used to be Microsoft vs. Sun Microsystems. Now it's turning into Intel vs. Sun.
A simmering feud between the two over an effort to bring Sun's Solaris operating system to servers running Intel's upcoming Itanium processor has now burst into the open. Intel said today that Sun hasn't been pulling its weight in the partnership and that Intel will drastically reduce the resources it's devoting to the effort. |
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Intel hits 1.5-GHz mark in chip demonstrationBy Michael Kanellos February 15, 2000 |
The microprocessor speed race moved forward again today as Intel demonstrated one of its upcoming Willamette processors running at 1.5 GHz.
The demonstration, made during a keynote address by chairman Andy Grove and senior vice president Albert Yu here at the company's developers' forum, came as part of a showcase of Intel technology coming this year. |
See Today's Related Stories |
Intel Details Chip Plans For 2000 Focus on Willamette, TimnaBy Marcia Savage February 15, 2000 |
Intel Corp. Tuesday kicked off its developer forum here by outlining its chip road map for 2000, which will push processor clock speeds beyond 1GHz.
Albert Yu, general manager of Intel's Microprocessor Group, showcased Intel's next-generation 32-bit chip, Willamette. First samples of the chip were produced last month, and volume production is scheduled by the end of the year. The processor will reach speeds above 1GHz. |
See Today's Related Stories |
Intel plans low-cost MPU after 'Timna' for Rambus memoriesBy Jack Robertson February 15, 2000 |
Intel Corp. today confirmed that its new "Timna" integrated low-end processor for sub-$500 PCs will only support SDRAMs when it's launched in the second half of 2000. But next year, Intel also plans to roll out a second low-end processor for Direct Rambus memories, which were the original target of Timna, said Pete McWilliams, Intel fellow and director of platform architecture.
In an interview prior to his memory roadmap presentation at the Intel Developers Forum here today, McWilliams said Intel decided to switch the Timna processor to SDRAMs when questions emerged about the availability of Direct Rambus DRAMs. McWilliams said he believes Direct Rambus memories will be available in sufficient volumes in 2001 to support the yet-to-be-named low-cost processor. |
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Intel passes on DDR, will stick to RDRAM, SDRAM insteadBy Peter Brown February 15, 2000 |
After months of hedging, Intel has finally decided to pass over double data rate
(DDR) DRAM technology and instead concentrate its memory efforts on direct Rambus DRAM
(RDRAM) and synchronous DRAM (SDRAM). The acknowledgement came here at the Intel Developer Forum.
"It really doesn’t suit our needs in the desktop space from a form factor perspective to a performance perspective," Pat Gelsinger, vice president and general manager for Intel’s Desktop Products group. |
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Intel leads effort to adopt Serial ATA storage interface in PCsBy Mark Hachman February 15, 2000 |
Intel Corp. and a collection of leading storage companies and OEMs will announce plans today to round out Intel's next-generation Willamette microprocessor platform with a 1.5-Gbit-per-second storage interface called Serial ATA.
The Serial ATA interface specification is being developed by Intel, as well as disk-drive makers IBM, Maxtor, Seagate Technology, and Quantum. Their customers, among them Dell Computer Corp. and DPT Technologies Inc., also are actively contributing to the specification. The consortium and preliminary specification will be announced later today at the Intel Developer Forum in Palm Springs, Calif. |
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Intel looks to plug into Internet revolutionBy Mark Hachman February 15, 2000 |
Intel Corp. chairman Andrew S. Grove kicked off the latest Intel Developer Forum here in Palm Springs, Calif., today, tailoring many of the company's more common themes to appeal to a crowd of high-growth Internet-based startups.
Grove's keynote address was less a speech than a fireside chat, as he explained to executives from EToys.com, Commerce One, and Google.com how Intel's chips can be combined in ever-increasing numbers within their servers. Grove couched his address in terms of what he called the "powers of 10 revolution," a reference to a need by customers in the Internet service sector to expand their infrastructure rapidly. |
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Rambus insists DRAM alliance needs its participationBy Jack Robertson February 15, 2000 |
Rambus Inc. has thrown down the gauntlet to the Advanced DRAM Technology (ADT) alliance, claiming that the group's efforts to develop a new PC main-memory architecture will not succeed without
Rambus' input.
Created earlier this year at the urging of Intel Corp., the alliance hopes to field a low-cost PC main memory for the 2003 market (see Dec. 22, 1999 story). While a number of leading DRAM vendors were asked to join the committee, Rambus, whose Direct Rambus DRAM architecture is now making its way into high-end PCs, did not receive an invitation. |
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Opti looks to license IP as it cuts product developmentFebruary 15, 2000 |
Opti Inc. has discontinued development activities in all but one product group, and it is now pursuing a strategy of licensing intellectual property (IP), said Bernard T. Marren, president and CEO of the multimedia chip company.
On Monday, Opti posted a net loss of $1.3 million on revenues of $2.9 million in the fourth quarter of 1999, compared to a net loss of $161,000 on sales of $10.8 million in the same period of 1998. For the entire year, Opti's net loss totaled $6.0 million on revenues of $22.3 million vs. a loss of $4.2 million on sales of $40.0 million in 1998. |
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The Register Files |
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Willamette won't launch at 1.5GHz this autumnBy Mike Magee February 15, 2000 |
We were privileged this afternoon to have a round table briefing from Dr Albert Yu, a senior VP at the Intel Corporation, and the man who unleashed a 1.5GHz on the world stage earlier today.
We had some of those pesky questions to ask him about the product, and in the process, unearthed some interesting anomalies. Dr Yu refused to say how much on-die cache was on the processor he introduced today, would not give a delivery date for the product and when we asked him about the die size and how many additional transistors were on the Willamette, he said the die size was "slightly bigger" than the Coppermine. |
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Will Intel's Timna be a graphics turnoff?By Mike Magee February 15, 2000 |
When Timna is introduced, it will be incorporated in sub-$600 devices but will include a subset of the 810 graphics capabilities.
And there's no way this solution, which hasn't appealed to many people because of its limited functionality, can be tweaked to switch the graphics function off, Intel confirmed today. The inclusion of 810 graphics capability is also unlikely to appeal wildly to a number of third party graphics chip firms, which already feel that their margins are super slim and their market is over competitive. |
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Intel: Memory strategy unchanged (cough)By Mike Magee February 14, 2000 |
Pat Gelsinger, vice president of Intel's desktop products group, said today that Rambus memory is still the company's top choice for the desktop and mobile markets.
But, at the same time, he acknowledged that Intel will use DDR (double data rate) memory for its server platform, and that unavailability and high pricing of Rambus RIMMs for the value market made it unacceptable. |
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Yu rips opens Willamette kimonoBy Mike Magee February 15, 2000 |
Senior Intel VP Albert Yu has outlined Intel's roadmap for the rest of the year and promised that by next year, millions of Willamette processors will ship.
By the end of the year, 100s of thousands of Willamettes will be available, said Yu. Earlier, during chairman Andy Grove's speech, Yu had demonstrated a system running at 1.5GHz, and showed a small chip which he said was a Willamette. |
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Intel's Grove: AMD, Via good for PC industryBy Mike Magee February 15, 2000 |
A relaxed Andy Grove, chairman of the Intel Corporation, said today that although competition from AMD and Via was "not always fun", it was, in general, good for the PC industry.
Responding to a question from The Register, Grove said that while every business was in business to compete, and therefore that in one sense competitors were enemies, the overall effect was to help the entire PC industry and brought benefits to consumers. |
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Developers urged to port apps to WillametteBy Mike Magee February 14, 2000 |
Intel will this week begin to outline to software developers the reasons why they should start to take advantage of the additional multimedia/internet extensions in the next generation of its IA-32 processor, Willamette.
At the same time, the company will provide software developers with a number of tools and algorithms to optimise existing applications for the chips, which some say will debut on the 1st of October this year. |
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AMD elaborates on MP plansBy Mike Magee February 15, 2000 |
The Register took time out this morning to wander down to AMD's suite at the Palm Springs Hilton and gaze at the Thunderbird systems on show.
But the system AMD was showing only clocked 1.1GHz, although we gained some interesting info about the chip company's strategy for multiprocessing. The Thunderbird has integrated cache, and although Mark Bode, division marketing manager of the Athlon product would not be drawn on the size, it is reasonable to suppose that the first iteration will arrive with 256K on die. |
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Today's Related Stories |
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Intel shows 1.5-GHz processor, new concepts to reshape PCsFebruary 15, 2000 |
At the start of its annual developers forum here today, Intel Corp. executives demonstrated a 1.5-GHz microprocessor--code-named "Willamette"--and new production-level Pentium III-based systems operating at 1-GHz speeds. The company also showed off a mixed bag of technologies and design innovations aimed at creating new generations of business and consumer PCs.
Intel chairman Andrew S. Grove told an audience of 2,000 developers that technology requirements are accelerating because of the Internet. He said demand on information technology is growing "by power of 10," requiring not only more powerful microprocessors but also an infrastructure that can be scaled out. |
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Intel rolls new processors, I/O at Developer ForumBy Charles J. Murray February 15, 2000 |
Intel Corp. announced two new microprocessors, a new I/O initiative and alliance with Sony Corp at its Intel Developer Forum Tuesday (Feb. 15), where Intel chairman Andrew Grove said his goal is to track the exponential growth of the Internet.
Aiming at high-end desktop systems, the company demonstrated Willamette, a next-generation Pentium III processor running at speeds up to 1 GHz, for use in high-end desktops with Direct Rambus memory, slated to ship at in the second half of the year. Albert Yu, general manager of Intel's processor group, said Intel expects to ship hundreds of thousands of 1-GHz Willamette microprocessors by the end of this year. The new microarchitecture will enable higher clock speeds and better floating-point operation for desktop PCs, Intel said. |
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Intel demos 1.5GHz Willamette chipBy Ken Popovich February 15, 2000 |
Intel Corp. Chairman Andrew Grove demonstrated the company's fastest processor to date today, a 1.5GHz processor, code-named Willamette, at the opening of the Intel Developers Forum here.
The preview of the new chip, which Intel said will be released in the second half of the year, capped Grove's keynote speech in which he stressed that the Internet-driven economy is undergoing unprecedented, rapid change - what Grove labels a "powers of 10 revolution." |
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| February 14, 2000 | ||
Intel selects DRDRAM for new MPUBy Jack Robertson February 11, 2000 |
Intel Corp. is making Direct Rambus DRAM the key memory for its next-generation Willamette processor, which will be spotlighted next week at the Intel Developers' Forum.
Although the Rambus architecture has faced stiff competition in recent months from rival memory interfaces, sources close to Intel, Santa Clara, Calif., say the company is removing any ambiguity about its commitment to Direct RDRAM by giving the controversial memory chip a prime role in the Willamette platform. The support for Rambus memory is significant, since Intel is counting on Willamette, the high-speed successor to the Pentium III, to subdue the rising challenge from Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s Athlon microprocessor. |
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AMD snags speed crown from IntelBy Michael Kanellos February 11, 2000 |
Advanced Micro Devices passed rival Intel today in the microprocessor speed race when it announced an 850-MHz version of its flagship chip.
Sunnyvale, Calif.-based AMD unveiled an 850-MHz Athlon, the company said. The move will give AMD the right to claim it has the fastest desktop chip in the market. Intel's Pentium III tops out at 800 MHz, although versions running at 850 and 866 MHz are expected in the near future. |
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AMD's Sanders says MPU demand stronger than expectedFebruary 11, 2000 |
Strong demand for low-end microprocessors has strengthen the outlook for first quarter sales at Advanced Micro Devices Inc. During a speech at the Goldman Sachs Technology Symposium here, AMD chairman and CEO W.J. Sanders III said he now expects the company to report flat to nominally higher sequential sales in the current quarter.
"Demand for low-end microprocessors has been stronger than expected," Sanders said. "Business across the board continues to be robust. With better than anticipated demand for low-end PC processors, we now expect that AMD's first-quarter revenues will be flat to nominally higher than the record sales reported in the seasonally strong fourth quarter. |
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If open-source software is so much cooler, why isn't Transmeta getting it?By Bob Metcalfe February 13, 2000 |
LINUS TORVALDS gave the keynote speech at LinuxWorld Expo last month, right after announcing Transmeta Corp. Am I the only one to see that Torvalds and other open-source software revolutionaries are acting out the finale of George Orwell's Animal Farm?
Orwell's farmhouse is full of open-source pigs, which are now almost indistinguishable from the proprietary humans they recently overthrew. |
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The Register Files |
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Three Intel mobos scrapped because of chipset probsBy Mike Magee February 11, 2000 |
Documents Intel has sent its system manufacturers are outlining its plans for the phasing in of the flip chip technology and the departure of the Slot One configuration (SECC2).
According to the documents, Intel will offer Slot One versions of its Coppermine processors within 30 days of offering equivalent processors in the FC-PGA (flip chip configuration). It will do so until the end of this year. The 1GHz frequency is likely to be the last in the Coppermine series. Intel has acknowledged it may not be able to provide wide availability of Slot One, however. |
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Via sets date for Joshua Celeron rivalBy John Lettice February 11, 2000 |
Via's Joshua chip is to be formally unveiled on 22nd February, according to company sources. The low-cost chip is aimed at Intel's Celeron, uses Socket 370, and will initially run at speeds of 433MHz and 466MHz.
Clock speeds of 500MHz and above are due later this year. With the launch of the chip Via will have the opportunity to prove that the low-cost Intel cloning market isn't automatically a bone-yard. Joshua is based on Cyrix's Cayenne core, Via having bought Cyrix from NatSemi last year. Cyrix had been relatively unsuccessful in making inroads into the market, as had Centaur, which Via also bought last year. |
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Dell to attack Intel on executionBy Mike Magee February 13, 2000 |
The Dell Corporation, in an attempt to show even-handedness in the processor market, is expected this week to give Intel a hard time for problems it caused the company when a shortfall of Coppermines dented its quarterly results.
That follows an attack made by Dell's chairman Michael Dell, on AMD ten days ago, when he told UK journalists that the platform was currently too fragile. |
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Big Q's Tsunami chipset comes of AMD ageBy Mike Magee February 13, 2000 |
Influential German magazine c't is reporting that AMD will unveil protypes of a copper-interconnect
Athlon, which will support multi-processing.
According to the report, written by Andreas Stiller, and which can be found here, AMD will also show a chip which clocks at over 1GHz and has integrated level two Thunderbird cache at massive German trade show CeBIT next week. |
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