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| Top Stories for July 20, 2000 (details below) | |
| TechWeb News | Is Via Baiting Intel Once Again? |
| Semiconductor Business News | Intel could collect royalties from Rambus if fees are 'excessive,' based on 1997 pact |
| eWEEK | Delayed Itanium isn't Intel's only challenge |
| Semiconductor Business News | Acer Laboratories resets launch of DDR chip set for Athlon in notebook PCs |
| Financial Times | Intel rival plans IPO |
| The Register Files | |
| The Register |
Caminogate failure finally explained At last the truth can be told |
| The Register | VIA 'to be number one chipset vendor by year end' |
| The Register | Cyrix stands up to Chipzilla with 1GHz Samuel |
| The Register | Transmeta signs IPO organisers |
| The Register | Cheap Rambus memory on the way |
| The Register | Rambus is wonderful, says VIA |
| Microprocessor
Headline News Collected By Robert R. Collins |
Week of July 16, 2000 |
Older News |
| July 20, 2000 | ||
Is Via Baiting Intel Once Again?By Mark Hachman July 19, 2000 |
Although the legal struggle between Intel and Via Technologies has ended peaceably, Via executives seem eager for a rematch.
The tangled legal knot surrounding the PC core logic market grew even more puzzling Tuesday, as sources told Electronic Buyers' News that Intel was legally prohibited from manufacturing chipsets using double-data-rate memory until 2003 through its license with Rambus. |
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Intel could collect royalties from Rambus if fees are 'excessive,' based on 1997 pactBy Jack Robertson July 19, 2000 |
Intel Corp. would earn royalty fees from Rambus Inc. if Direct RDRAMs ever takes off in the memory marketplace, according to a provision in the 1997 licensing agreement between the two copmpanies. However, sources said Intel insisted on the clause, not to get a royalty revenue stream but also to put a cap on the fees Rambus would demand from DRAM suppliers to make its memory chip design.
The 1997 agreement says Rambus would pay Intel all its royalties received from DRAM Manufacturers above a 2% level from each producer, if certain milestones are met. |
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Delayed Itanium isn't Intel's only challengeBy Ken Popovich July 19, 2000 |
While Intel Corp. reported Tuesday that it continues to sell as many processors as it can make, resulting in record revenues, the chip maker's outlook wasn't all rosy as it disclosed that it is still struggling to meet strong chip demand and has delayed the launch of the
Itanium, the company's first chip designed for the high-end server market.
In addition, officials with the Santa Clara, Calif., company appeared to hedge their support for the Rambus memory technology that will be featured on a new chip set designed for use with the upcoming Pentium 4, previously known by the code name Willamette. Specifically, Intel officials left open the possibility of offering another chip set with less-expensive non-Rambus memory "to take advantage of different price points." |
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Acer Laboratories resets launch of DDR chip set for Athlon in notebook PCsBy Jack Robertson July 19, 2000 |
The off-again, on-again double data rate (DDR) chip set from Acer Laboratories Inc. is back on schedule to be introduced next week for computers, based on Athlon processors from Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
Recently, Taiwan's Acer Laboratories canceled plans to introduce the DDR chip set at the Platform 2000 Conference here this week. ALI officials decided to hold back on the launch because the ICs had not finished testing. |
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Intel rival plans IPOBy Tom Foremski July 19, 2000 |
Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown, the investment bank, said it has been appointed joint lead manager along with Morgan Stanley Dean Witter for the initial public offering of Transmeta, a high-profile Silicon Valley chip design company.
"Transmeta chose us because we were joint lead manager on the IPO of German chip company Infineon, which was the largest ever tech IPO," said the bank. |
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The Register Files |
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Caminogate failure finally explained
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Samsung's Yong Joo Han, boss of RDRAM planning, said the Intel recall of its Vancouver mobos last year was caused by the RIMM connectors themselves.
Fans of the Caminogate saga will remember that before the SDRAM Cape Cod got the chop, the VC820 Vancouver (the board that Cape Cod users get in exchange for their dodgy mobos) was itself involved in an embarrassing recall of its own when it was discovered that it didn't work when all three of its RIMM slots were populated. |
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VIA 'to be number one chipset vendor by year end'By Andrew Thomas July 19, 2000 |
San Jose In the first half of next year, VIA will have an IA-32 chipset capable of supporting both Pentium 4 (Willamette) and Foster, Eric Chang, director of product marketing, claimed today.
Speaking at the Platform 2000 conference in San Jose, Chang explained that although VIA didn't currently have a licence for future IA32 architecture, he was confident that it soon would. |
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Cyrix stands up to Chipzilla with 1GHz SamuelBy Andrew Thomas July 20, 2000 |
VIA Cyrix, long derided by Intel as a mere imitator, plans to hit 1GHz with its Samuel 2 Celeron rival. Having dumped its plainly daft PR ratings (Certain Intel insiders really got hot under the collar over that one), it now plans to go head to head with Celery on performance.
VIA's director of marketing, Dean Hays, told The Reg that the Socket 370 Samuel 2 - already sampling - would launch at between 733 and 800MHz in Q4, with a 1GHz part to follow. The current Cyrix roadmap shows an 800MHz Samuel 2 due in Q2 2002, but Hays intimated that that plan was almost certain to change. |
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Transmeta signs IPO organisersBy Tony Smith July 19, 2000 |
Transmeta is pretty much on course for a late 2000 IPO, having chosen Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Deutsche Banc Alex Brown to set it all up, according to a source "familiar with the matter", cited by Bloomberg.
By the end of the year, Transmeta should have a series of big-name notebook PC producing customers to shout about, and hopefully a heap of lesser known companies buying its appliance-oriented chips. |
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Cheap Rambus memory on the wayBy Andrew Thomas July 19, 2000 |
Samsung revealed to The Reg today that it has set itself the target of bringing Rambus to within five percent of the cost of boring old SDRAM. A laudable aim, but unfortunately the date set for this wondrous event is sometime in 2002.
When asked at the Platform Conference in San Jose what the main problem OEMs came up against when using Rambus, Samsung's Yong Joo Han replied, with refreshing candour, "Cost." |
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Rambus is wonderful, says VIABy Andrew Thomas July 19, 2000 |
Eric Chang, VIA's director of product marketing, raised a few eyebrows when he described Rambus as a "wonderful technology", before hurriedly going on to qualify his remark by pointing out that it was so damn difficult to actually make it work that most manufacturers had simply given up the struggle and gone down the DDR route.
At the Platform Conference in San Jose, Chang extolled the virtues of DDR SDRAM, saying that it was 'low risk and cost effective'. He said the main growth area for memory in the next few years was in the server area, where 1GB memories were rapidly becoming commonplace. |
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| July 19, 2000 | ||
Intel pushes back schedule for Itanium chipBy Stephen Shankland and Michael Kanellos July 18, 2000 |
Intel's Itanium schedule slipped a notch today, as the company said the need for another revision to the chip will mean it can't begin selling its future flagship product as soon as expected.
Intel said it won't start receiving revenue from the Itanium chip, the company's first 64-bit processor, until the fourth quarter of this year. The company earlier expected revenue to begin in the third quarter. |
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Intel pact with Rambus prohibits DDR chip sets for three yearsBy Jack Robertson July 18, 2000 |
Intel Corp. is essentially barred from introducing its own double data rate (DDR) chip set for microprocessors in personal computers before 2003, under terms of its 1997 licensing agreement with Rambus Inc.
Industry sources said the virtually unknown restriction explains why Intel recently licensed patents for chip set support of DDR memories to Via Technologies Inc., Acer Laboratories Inc, and Silicon Integrated Systems Corp. (SiS) in Taiwan. The pacts allow these three companies to offer DDR chip sets for Intel's Pentium III and Celeron processors. |
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Transmeta Taps Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank Unit for IPOBy Hui-yong Yu July 18, 2000 |
Transmeta Corp., developer of a new chip for mobile Internet computing that could challenge Intel Corp., picked Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. and Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown to arrange an initial public offering later this year, a person familiar with the matter said.
Founded in 1995 and backed by investors such Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen, financier George Soros, and Sony Corp., Transmeta could raise several hundred million dollars in the sale, making it one of the largest technology IPOs this year. |
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Via plans DDR chip sets for Intel's Willamette--'with or without license'By Jack Robertson July 18, 2000 |
Via Technologies Inc. next year will introduce a double data rate (DDR) chip set to support Intel Corp.'s next-generation "Willamette" processor, according to a marketing manager with the Taiwan company during the Platform 2000 conference here today.
The introduction will be made with or without Intel licensing technology for DDR support of the Willamette processor, said Eric Chang, director of product marketing at Via Technologies. So far, Intel has refused to license technology and patents for chip sets supporting its next-generation bus line architecture, called IA-32 (for 32-bit) and IA-64 (for 64-bit) processors. |
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Chipset vendors eye DDR for Intel's WillametteBy Will Wade July 18, 2000 |
While Intel Corp. has said its forthcoming Willamette CPU will work only with Rambus memory, sources say at least two independent chipset vendors are developing parts to link the GHz processor with a Rambus alternative: double-data-rate (DDR) SDRAM components.
Both Via Technologies Inc. and Acer Laboratories Inc. (ALI) already produce chipsets for the current generation of Pentium chips that use standard SDRAM. Both companies, attending the Platform Conference here this week, gave advance looks at the new versions of those devices for DDR that they will roll out shortly. |
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PCI-X Challenges Intel's AGP In WorkstationsBy Mark Hachman July 18, 2000 |
An industry group is quietly beginning to lobby makers of workstations and graphics chips to reconsider the Accelerated Graphics Port, a standard designed by Intel.
The PCI Special Interest Group (PCI SIG) believes that PCI-X, the next-generation successor to the PCI bus found in virtually all desktop computing devices, should replace AGP for reasons of performance and ease of use. |
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The Register Files |
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Intel files suit against IntelnetBy Mike Magee July 18, 2000 |
The Intel Corporation has filed a trademark legal suit against Intelnet, Inc., a firm which specialises in er... intelligent networks and fingerprint verification.
The firm, whose Web site is www.intelgate.com, appears provides one-to-one fingerprint matching for law enforcement agencies across the world. |
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AMD's Corvette a funky little goerBy Mike Magee July 18, 2000 |
Roadmaps from AMD that The Register saw last week, and which indicate that the firm will hit 1GHz on the mobile front early next year with its Corvette chips, also show the firm is working on PowerNow II. [Surely that should be PowerThen I? - Ed.]
The second generation of PowerNow, formerly codenamed Gemini, will allow software control of CPU pipelines, with an expected maximum power of less than six watts when the Corvette mobile chips are released. |
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Intel CuMine drought nearly overBy Mike Magee July 18, 2000 |
Sources not a light year away from Tech Data, a large US component distributor, tell The Reg that Intel's long-standing problem with supplying Coppermine Pentium IIIs for the desktop appears to be nearly over.
Large quantities are available for most of the price ratings of the Pentium III apart from the 1GHz microprocessor, which, as we have previously reported, is a special case. |
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| July 18, 2000 | ||
Rambus ties strained as Intel, DRAM makers ponder FTC antitrust suitBy Jack Robertson July 17, 2000 |
Intel Corp. and several major DRAM makers held talks last week to consider whether to ask the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Rambus Inc. on antitrust grounds, according to industry sources.
Though its involvement most likely does not constitute a high-level break with Rambus, Intel's tacit participation in the discussions has cast a cloud of uncertainty over its relationship with the third-party intellectual-property developer and longtime Intel design partner. One industry executive who attended the meeting indicated that the once-unified Intel/Rambus duo has become disjointed as various factions within the microprocessor giant promote different agendas. |
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Intel reacts to Transmeta threatBy John Leyden July 14, 2000 |
Intel has warned that Transmeta's Crusoe processor suffers from compatibility problems with existing PC architectures.
Analysts said the criticism shows the startup is "playing a dangerous game" in targeting the chip giant's core business. Don MacDonald, director of marketing for Intel's mobile platform group, said there were doubts whether Transmeta's Crusoe chip is fully compatible with x86, a standard for microprocessor design and manufacture established by Intel and supported on its processors. |
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Intel, AMD face seesaw chip marketBy Larry Dignan, John G. Spooner July 17, 2000 |
Is the sky falling in the chip market?
With chip giants Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. preparing to report earnings this week, industry pundits are divided over whether a slowdown in the chip market is looming. Yes, the sky is falling, Salomon Brothers analyst Jonathan Joseph said two weeks ago, kicking off the debate by releasing a report predicting a slowdown coupled with potential supply glut. Stocks predictably fell. However, other industry and Wall Street analysts shouted the report down. |
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Acer Labs postpones DDR chipset for AthlonBy Jack Robertson July 17, 2000 |
Acer Laboratories Inc., San Jose, has delayed its public unveiling of a new double-data-rate-enabled chipset for Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s Athlon processor.
The company had planned to launch the chipset this week at the Platform 2000 Conference in San Jose, but said it will push out its announcement by a few weeks until first silicon is achieved. |
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Chip fabs eye increased productionBy Anne Knowles July 14, 2000 |
Semiconductor manufacturing took a 300-millimeter step forward this week. Makers of machines for fabricating semiconductors announced a range of equipment that can produce chips on silicon wafers that are 300 mm, or about 12 inches, round. Today, most chips are fabricated on 200 mm, or 8-inch, wafers.
The move to bigger wafers will let chip makers produce up to 2.5 times more chips per wafer at substantially lower cost. That's great news for Intel Corp. and other chip makers struggling to meet demand as well as for corporate IT buyers waiting for PCs delayed by component shortages. |
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The Register Files |
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Intel: benchmarks 'not good enough' for RambusBy Andrew Thomas July 14, 2000 |
In a remarkably audacious explanation of why Rambust continually fails to impress when compared with the much cheaper alternatives, an Intel spin paramedic today explained why we've all got it terribly, terribly wrong.
A couple of weeks back, Intel yet again demonstrated its dysfunctional left hand, right hand communication process by simultaneously publishing benchmarks for Rambus and SDRAM memory which showed the cheap stuff was miles better. Check out Intel 815e platform thrashes 820. |
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64-bit Intel Itanic still on courseBy Mike Magee July 17, 2000 |
A report on a Web site that Intel is having difficulty clocking its 64-bit microprocessor -- the Itanium -- at the speeds it would like, were rebutted by the chip company today.
According to a report, Intel's production of the Itanium has slipped from Q3 to Q4 this year. But that claim was denied by an Intel representative, who said: "There are 5,000 development systems out in the field, and the recent Microsoft-Intel announcement [about Win64] lends further weight to OS support and progress. |
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