| October 2, 1998 |
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October 1, 1998
The Register
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An insider at IBM has responded to the
PowerPC 615 story we wrote yesterday with some hard facts
-- and corrections --that cannot be ignored. The
insider said that Motorola, although it knew of the
programme, was never involved and Somerset and IBM Austin
were not in the picture too.
The IBM Micro team at Burlington performed the 615
miracle, with 250 engineers involved. Even after the
programme finished, he said, 40 or so remained at that
site.
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Related
Stories 615
it still alive in a Transmeta way
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By Stephan Ohr
October 2, 1998
EE Times
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Texas Instruments Inc. will take the
wraps off a power-supply controller next week that will
support Intel Corp.'s upcoming Merced processor. The
TPS5210 breaks new ground in transient response and
current-handling capability, and is being released as
details emerge of Merced's power requirements and
architecture. No published information exists on the
power requirements of the IA-64 architecture, which will
be first implemented in the Merced processor scheduled to
appear in mid-2000. But discussions with industry sources
suggest a continuation of the trend toward lower core
voltages, higher output current and faster transient
response times exhibited with the advanced Pentium parts.
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Related
Stories Internal
layout of Intel's Merced comes to light
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| October 1, 1998 |
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By Mike Magee
October 1, 1998
The Register
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Chip giant Intel has denied that there
is any shortage of its CPUs. That follows a claim from US
company PC Connection yesterday that its results were
affected by changes in Intel's manufacturing schedule. But
a UK distributor has confirmed that Intel products are on
allocation until the end of the year.
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by Mike Magee
September 30, 1998
The Register
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We almost hesitate to write another
Transmeta story after the barrage of mails and hate mails
we got. But this one is too good to miss.
Some of our elder readers may well remember the
Motorola PowerPC 615 and if you do a search on our old
site you'll find what we thought about it three or so
years ago.
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Related
Stories Transmeta
to use IBM fabs after Cyrix loss
Transmeta
transmogrified by Linux founder
Transmeta
letters to the editors
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By Spam of Birmingham
September 30, 1998
The Register
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An unprecedented flood of emails arrived
after our Transmeta stories this week. Some of them were
hate mail which was interesting. Exactly why do people
get so wound up about this, we ask ourselves?
Anyway, the replies were so interesting that here's a
selection of the ones that didn't use obscene language!
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Related
Stories Transmeta
to use IBM fabs after Cyrix loss
Transmeta
transmogrified by Linux founder
615
it still alive in a Transmeta way
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| September 30 1998 |
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By Mike Magee
September 30, 1998
The Register
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Motorola is close to shipping its
additional instruction set for the G3 (PowerPC 750)
processor, codenamed AltiVec. The instructions will
ultimately be included in the G4, sources added. The
technology is likely to be unveiled at the Microprocessor
Forum and according to reports will give Katmai a run for
its money.
The AltiVec instructions were, according to the same
sources, the reasons IBM and Motorola fell out over the
PowerPC earlier this year.
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By Michael Kanellos
September 29, 1998
C/Net
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A relatively obscure, but annoying,
glitch has been discovered when the fastest versions of
the K6-2 processor from Advanced Micro Devices is used in
conjunction with Windows 95, but the company and
Microsoft have taken steps to eradicate it. The flaw
occurs when Windows 95 is run on 350-MHz K6-2 processors,
according to AMD. Essentially, when a user attempts to
boot up, the computer replies that a "Windows
Protection" error has occurred and that the computer
must be rebooted. Typically, the flaw does not repeat
itself on the reboot.
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By Richard Richtmyer
September 29, 1998
Electronic Buyers' News
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National Semiconductor told a group of
financial analysts Tuesday that its decision to integrate
its Cyrix subsidiary's microprocessor operations within
its South Portland, Maine fab will result in long-term
cost savings and put the company in a good position to
achieve its goal of providing system-on-a-chip products
by June 1999. "As we fill South Portland, we
expect to see about $15 million dropping through to the
company's earnings statement," said Don Macleod,
National's chief financial officer.
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| September 29 1998 |
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By Mike Magee
September 29, 1998
The Register
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NatSemi-Cyrix said that it was now
unlikely that it would produce a Slot One based solution.
That is despite the fact that it has a solution in its
labs and that the distribution channel has pressured it
to produce Slot One because of demand from dealers.
The change in heart, according to a senior source at
the Cyrix group at NatSemi Europe, was because of changes
in the market.
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By Alexander Wolfe
September 29, 1998
EE Times
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The first detailed block diagram of
Intel Corp.'s upcoming Merced microprocessor has been
obtained by EE Times. The floor plan of the chip
indicates a massive floating-point unit. This would be in
keeping with Intel's stated design goal of keeping
Merced's performance in step with anything its RISC
competitors can throw at it.
However, an initial inspection of the floor plan
appears to show that, rather than loading the chip down
with dozens of execution units in a bid to enable
numerous instructions to run at the same time, Intel's
designers may have taken a more elegant approach toward
parallel computing.
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By Michael Kanellos
September 28, 1998
C/Net
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A relatively obscure but annoying glitch
has been discovered in the fastest versions of the K6-2
processor from Advanced Micro Devices, but the company
and Microsoft have taken steps to eradicate it. The
flaw occurs when Windows 95 is run on 350-MHz K6-2
processors, according to AMD. Essentially, when a user
attempts to boot up, the computer replies that a
"Windows Protection" error has occurred and
that the computer must be rebooted. Typically, the flaw
does not repeat itself on the reboot.
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By Andreas Stiller
Issue 19, 1998
c't Magazine
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Relationship problems everywhere: Berti
Vogts, coach of the German soccer team, quits, the server
manufacturers IBM, HP and Compaq rebel against Intel,
National is thinking about a divorce and a government
decree forces Korean manufacturers to come to an
agreement about their DRAM-children. With a surprise
maneuver IBM, HP and Compaq pointed out a crisis. Even
though they have a big lead and hold place one to three
in the information technology business, they left the
competency for technological guidelines to one single
semiconductor manufacturer: Intel. In the past only
taking interest in the processors, Intel now plays a key
role in most PC standards, be it PCI, AGP, ACPI, IrDA,
Rambus and what-have-you. On top of that Intel is also
the leader in the chip market, that pours the standards
into Silicon so-to-speak: the chip sets.
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| September 28 1998 |
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By Lisa DiCarlo
September 25, 1998
PC Week Online
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The Federal Trade Commission is
investigating Intel Corp.'s activities in the graphics
chip market and may broaden its original antitrust
charges against the chip maker, according to several
sources. Since June, FTC lawyers have been interviewing
leading graphics companies to determine if Intel is
leveraging its overwhelming CPU market share to become a
dominant force in graphics as well, sources said.
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By Richard Barry
September 25, 1998
PC Week
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Craig Barrett reckons the proposed PCI-X
bus standard -- a potential successor to Intel's PCI
standard -- is not, as is widely believed, an attempt to
loosen Intel's grip on the computer industry. He believes
instead that Dell is the target of the PCI-X consortium,
made up of industry heavyweights, Compaq, IBM and HP. Dell,
which is challenging Compaq for No. 1 slot in the United
States, is being frozen out by the group in an attempt to
gain some competitive advantage over it in the server
arena, Barrett said.
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By Mike Magee
September 27, 1998
The Register
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No further production of x.86 clone
chips from IBM Micro is likely, following the severing of
ties between it and National Semiconductor/Cyrix, it has
emerged. And Cyrix will now try to switch existing
customers of 6x86 to its own products, according to
sources close to the firm.
The large sum of money paid by Cyrix to IBM, first
exclusively reported here, does not include any patent
cross licensing, the same sources said.
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By Mike Magee
September 28, 1998
The Register
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Reliable sources in Silicon Valley said
early today that IBM Microelectronics is to take up some
of the slack in its fabs caused by the loss of Cyrix
business by building chips for Transmeta. The fabless
valley start-up creates alternative VLSI chips for the
multimedia market. Perhaps more significantly, Linus
Torvalds, the designer of the now famous Linux OS, also
works for Transmeta.
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Related
Stories Transmeta
transmogrified by Linux founder
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By Mike Magee
September 28, 1998
The Register
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More details have emerged about a switch
in direction Transmeta made when it hired Linux inventor
Linus Torvalds earlier this year. (See story, Transmeta
to use IBM fabs) Reliable sources said that the
company has re-engineered itself and is now preparing a
Risc processor which will be optimised for Windows NT
5.0, and which will effectively abandon legacy support
for Dos and 16 bit Windows.
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Transmeta
to use IBM fabs after Cyrix loss |
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By John Lettice
September 28, 1998
The Register
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Intel has pulled in a PowerPC Somerset
Design Center veteran to head-up a new long-range R&D
centre in Austin, Texas. Mark McDermott comes from the
Motorola side of the old PowerPC alliance, and also ran
the system on a chip design group at Motorola's Advanced
Systems Technology Lab. It's not yet entirely clear
what he and his team will be designing - Intel is
reportedly saying that's going to depend on the staff he
hires, and if this is the case we can maybe think of him
and the company being on some kind of fishing expedition,
looking for star designers and star technologies.
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By Lisa DiCarlo and Carmen Nobel
September 28, 1998
PC Week Online
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The problems facing Intel Corp.'s
3-month-old Xeon chips continue to mount even as the
company prepares the October launch of the 450MHz
version. Earlier this month, the Santa Clara, Calif.,
company asked several top OEM customers to return about
1,000 unsold Xeon chips to be upgraded with new stepping,
the microcode that's built into the firmware around a CPU
to enable additional functionality, such as dual
processing and multiprocessing.
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By Michael Kanellos
September 25, 1998
C/Net
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Like two late-night TV pitchmen, Intel
and Advanced Micro Devices will both be vying for the
right to say they will not be undersold when it comes to
low-cost processors this fall. Intel is expected to
cut prices on its Pentium II and Celeron processors
October 25, a move that will be followed by price cuts on
AMD's K6-2 and K6 processors in the same week.
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By Michael Kanellos
September 25, 1998
C/Net
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The first casualty of the low-cost
processor market is paradoxically one of the largest
players in the computer industry: IBM. IBM will have
to discontinue its line of 6X86 MX processors as a result
of the termination of its foundry agreement with National
Semiconductor, according to sources at National. The chip
has been used in Aptiva consumer computers sold in Europe
and Canada as well as computers from regional domestic
dealers like Tiger Direct.
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By Jack Robertson
September 25, 1998
Electronic Buyers' News
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Intel is currently negotiating with
Micron Technology to take a minor equity stake in the
DRAM maker, a move that would give Intel a steady supply
of memory, and Micron capital to pursue its expansion
plans, Electronic Buyers' News has learned. Spokespeople
at both Intel (company profile) and Micron (company
profile) declined to comment.
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