| October 30, 1998 |
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By Rex Farrance
October 29, 1998
PC World
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Second notebook we've seen with a
300-MHz AMD K6-2 desktop CPU doesn't match a Pentium
II-300--but it is a good deal for the money. In our
current November 1998 issue of PC World we looked at
UMax's ActionBook 330T, the company's new K6-2-300
Notebook, which was the first to use a 300-MHz Advanced
Micro Devices K6-2 processor (see "AMD Inside"
link at right). AMD is planning to release a mobile
version of its K6-2 in the first quarter of next year.
But meanwhile, some notebook vendors are trying to
leverage the existing AMD K6-2 desktop CPU to give Intel
some competition in the notebooks arena.
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By Mike Magee
October 29, 1998
The Register
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A senior Intel executive would tonight
neither confirm nor deny that his company was changing
its channel strategy and selling 370-pin Celerons
complete with motherboard and other integrated features. But
Intel has to do something to recover the situation, given
that AMD has wooed its distributor channel tactically and
strategically.
Mike Aymar, director of Intel US' platform operation
and who heads up the Katmai microprocessor family, did,
however, say that his company was actively wooing the
channel.
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By Mike Magee
October 29, 1998
The Register
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A senior executive from the Intel
Corporation said it will re-vamp its entire Celeron
roadmap in two week’s time. OEMs will be the
first to know full details of the changes, he said.
Mike Aymar, VP and director of Intel's Platform Launch
Operation, on a fleeting visit to the UK, said that Intel
had realised that competitors, such as Advanced Micro
Devices (AMD), had made inroads into its market share.
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| October 29, 1998 |
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By Michael Kanellos
October 28, 1998
C/Net
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Homer Simpson, doughnut-eating father
figure on the television show The Simpsons, will become a
spokesman for Intel. America's favorite beer-drinking
cartoon character will be at the center of a new
television ad that will tout the performance of the
Pentium II processor.
In the ad, titled "Homer's Smarter Brain,"
Homer's brain will be replaced by a Pentium II processor.
As a result of the transplant, Homer will become a
college professor. Currently, Homer works as a low-level
nuclear technician.
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By Craig Matsumoto
October 26, 1998
EE Times
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Nearly five years in the making, Rise
Technology Co.'s X86 architecture is expected to be in
full production within weeks. Chief executive officer
David T. Lin, in introducing the mP6 superscalar
processor, outlined how Rise plans to tackle the
relatively young "base PC" market for
sub-$1,000 desktops and notebooks.
That market didn't exist when Rise started work on its
processor in 1993. But the company's original plans-to
create a superscalar architecture tailored to multimedia
applications and low power consumption-haven't changed.
Fortunately for Rise, such features are coming in vogue
for cheaper PCs, said Joe Salvador, the company's senior
product manager.
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| October 28, 1998 |
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By Michael Slater
October 26, 1998
EE Times
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With Intel's recent disclosures about
IA-64, a clearer picture is emerging of just how
important IA-64 will be, to whom and when. Intel has
acknowledged that a chip code-named Foster, which is a
server version of the next-generation X86 core
(code-named Willamette), will debut about six months
after Merced and offer comparable performance on 32-bit
applications-even when the code running on Merced is
compiled for the native IA-64 architecture. Merced will
have a performance edge only for applications, such as
large databases, that benefit from 64-bit addressing.
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By Alexander Wolfe
October 26, 1998
EE Times
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Is Intel Corp.'s processor road map too
much of a good thing? From evidence presented at the
recent Microprocessor Forum, the company's battle plan
for the next decade entails fragmenting its architectures
into a dizzying array of niche CPUs. Indeed, the old
adage that you can't tell the players without a scorecard
is an apt description of the coming lineup.
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By Richard Richtmyer
October 27, 1998
Electronic Buyers' News
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Laying down a new industry threshold for
price and performance, STMicroelectronics Inc.,
Lexington, Mass., has locked in on the growing market for
embedded, integrated-system processors with its STPC
Industrial system-on-a-chip. Costing less than $40, the
133-MHz device shreds the $100 price tag of
system-on-a-chip rival National Semiconductor Corp.,
Santa Clara, Calif., which is pitching its faster MediaPC
processor as the engine for a sub-$500 consumer PC.
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By Michael Kanellos
October 27, 1998
C/Net
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Atiq Raza, who many believe will be the
next CEO at Advanced Micro Devices, was appointed to the
new post of co-chief operating officer at the company,
while Rich Previte, the current COO and president, has
been slated to take over as vice chairman. The
executive shift will likely be seen as good news among
investors and analysts. Raza, who is AMD's chief
technical officer, is widely regarded as one of the key
players who helped turn the company
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By Mark Carroll
October 27, 1998
EE Times
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Notebook-computer makers in Taiwan are
facing a broad range of design challenges as they
struggle to engineer machines for three different CPU
pinouts and to reign in heat and noise problems. The
situation will only get tougher next year, when
manufacturers will wrestle with an ever-expanding array
of processor housings and electrical interfaces while
facing down the sub-$1,000 notebook.
"Last year, Intel told us not bother too much
with the minicartridge format," said a marketing
manager for one midlevel Taiwanese notebook maker.
"Intel said the minicartridge wouldn't be that
popular. It turned out to be very popular, and we were
left behind scrambling."
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| October 27, 1998 |
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by James Niccolai and Terho Uimonen
IDG News Service
October 26, 1998
PC World
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Software vendors work away on the
next-generation CPU, which promises to make many
multimedia programs far handier. Intel has quietly
embarked on an ambitious campaign aimed at enticing
software vendors to unleash new compelling applications
in tandem with the Katmai processor launch early next
year.
For users, the campaign could help bring voice and 3D
software applications into the mainstream, take PC games
to a new level of realism, and transform the Internet
into a rich 3D experience with tantalizing commerce sites
where users can interact with goods before they buy them,
analysts and industry sources said.
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By Andy Patrizio
October 26, 1998
TechWeb
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Intel has finally fixed bugs in its
Pentium II Xeon line that delayed the appearance of
four-way servers using the 450-MHz Xeon, letting original
equipment manufacturers (OEMs) crank up their own
production plans. The bugs first surfaced shortly after
the Xeon line was introduced last June and occurred only
in the 450-MHz Xeon chip when used in a four-way server
configuration. The four chips were unable to communicate
properly, causing freeze-ups, and error-correction code
for memory didn't work properly.
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By Martin Veitch
October 27, 1998
ZD Net UK
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AMD believes it will be the engine for
the fastest X86-based PCs by the end of next year. The
Californian chip maker has an ambitious roadmap that it
believes will make it a clear performance leader and
differentiate its products from Intel. Particular targets
are putting graphics handling functionality on chip and
making chips for mobile PCs.
Moreover, it plans to achieve that lofty goal without
moving away from the tried and trusted Socket 7
architecture.
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By Stuart Glascock
October 26, 1998
Computer Reseller News
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IBM, along with an aggregation of
Unix-savvy partners, is building another flavor of the
Unix operating system with the goal of building the
leading Unix product for the Intel architecture. Hoping
to generate business for ISVs, OEMs, and VARs, IBM is
driving development of a Unix OS for Intel's IA-64 using
IBM's AIX OS with technology from SCO's UnixWare and
Sequent Computer Systems' PTX.
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By Nancy Weil
October 26, 1998
InfoWorld Electric
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IBM is undertaking a major project with
Intel, SCO, and Sequent that includes developing a
version of the Unix operating system for Intel's upcoming
64-bit processor architecture. The initiative, dubbed
Project Monterey, will lead to three new versions of
Unix, executives from the companies said at a press
conference Monday.
One version -- a flavor of SCO's UnixWare for 32-bit
processors from IBM and Intel -- incorporates IBM
middleware and is available now. Future releases of this
version will add IBM's AIX operating system technology.
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By John Geralds
October 26, 1998
VNU News
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Intel has invested in Absolute Software,
which owns tracking software to locate lost or stolen
PCs. Absolute also received equity investments of
undisclosed size from two venture capital firms.
In addition, it has shifted its corporate headquarters
from Vancouver, Canada to outside Seattle, Washington and
will expand its sales and customer support team by
establishing new regional offices in the US.
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By Bloomberg News
October 26, 1998
C/Net
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STMicroelectronics has unveiled a single
chip to operate network appliances, such as handheld
computers, game consoles, and Internet phones, to replace
the more expensive sets of up to six chips now needed. The
processor, called the STPC Industrial, will cost less
than $40, about a third cheaper than competing products
now being sold. It will help reduce the price of low-cost
PC and other products, boosting their market potential.
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By Reuters
October 26, 1998
C/Net
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Intel chief executive Craig Barrett said
today that he sees great potential for venture-capital
businesses in India. "We have been operating in
India now for ten years, and I think the best opportunity
for direct investment is perhaps not...manufacturing
plants or a designing facility," Barrett told
reporters here. "We intend to make investments in
small steps on a venture capital basis."
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| October 26, 1998 |
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By Mike Magee
October 26, 1998
The Register
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ST Microelectronics said it has produced
an integrated system on a chip which will allow
industrial PCs to be built for less than $100. But
that begs the question why end users should be denied the
benefits of such a system.
The announcement will put ST head to head with
NatSemi-Cyrix, which has vowed to be a leader in the
integrated chip market.
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Today's Related Stories |
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By Jack Robertson
October 26, 1998
Electronic Buyer's News
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Intel Corp.'s $500 million investment in
Micron Technology Inc. is prompting a fair amount of
armchair quarterbacking, as observers explore the range
of market dynamics that such a large cash infusion could
unleash. The investment, which grants Intel the rights
to 6% of Micron's stock, is overtly directed at winning
Micron's support of Direct Rambus DRAM, an emerging
architecture that Intel is positioning to serve the
high-end PC market next year.
A Rambus licensee for some time, Micron nevertheless
had kept its Direct RDRAM development program on a slow
track. Because the technology is
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October 26, 1998
PC Week Online
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No text available |
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By Mike Magee
October 23, 1998
The Register
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Supplies of the now obsolecent 286 part
are being snapped up by large companies eager to use it
in PCs, it has emerged. Earlier this week, a source
working for French memory company Dane-Elec told The
Register that high street company Marks & Spencer was
looking to upgrade 1,000 286 PCs.
Intel does not manufacture 286s, any more, even for
the embedded market but there is a company which will
sell the parts.
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By Andy Santoni
October 26, 1998
InfoWorld Electric
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At Comdex in Las Vegas in November,
Intel will let PC vendors show off systems, in public and
behind closed doors, that use more than a dozen
processors the company will introduce during the next six
months. With 11 new chips planned on being shown
privately to key customers, Intel is laying the
groundwork for an ever-increasing variety of systems that
PC vendors will roll out in the next year.
On the show floor at Comdex, server makers will offer
"technology demos" of systems that use the
Profusion core-logic chip set and eight 450-MHz Pentium
II Xeon processors, with 2MB of Level 2 (L2) cache
memory, one Intel executive said.
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By John Lettice
October 26, 1998
The Register
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As predicted here last week (Intel, AMD
and Cyrix to feature in price cut blizzard) the Intel
price cuts implemented today push higher performance
Pentium II chips further into the mass market, and
indicate a certain de-emphasis on Celeron. Several lower
speed chips are no more, and although there is still some
price advantage for Celeron, the gap between the 'Basic
PC' line and PII has narrowed. Intel, which has seen
PII-based machines obstinately succeed in price-sensitive
markets while Celeron's performance has been somewhat
less glorious, takes it on the chin by explaining:
"Continued strong acceptance of Pentium II
processors enables Intel to strongly ramp these products
into higher volume price points." Loosely
translated, this means the manufacturers and the market
have decided they want PII rather than Celeron, so Intel
has decided to give in a little.
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By Jennifer Sullivan
October 23, 1998
Wired
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Intel CEO Craig Barrett plans to sell as
much as a third of his stockholding in the computer
chipmaker, raising flags among some analysts. Barrett
filed plans on 16 October with the Securities and
Exchange Commission to sell as many as 700,000 shares,
according to documents released Monday. The shares would
be worth about US$61.08 million, based on Friday's
closing stock price of $87.25.
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| Today's Related Stories |
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October 26, 1998
Semiconductor Business News
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In the race to supply "single-chip
PCs," ST Microelectronics here today officially
rolled out an x86-based integrated circuit aimed at
industrial and embedded computing applications. The chip
integrates an enhanced 486 processor core with a number
of other PC functions, which will enable OEMs to build a
system for less than $100, according to ST. The STPC
Industrial replaces the need for up to six other ICs in
making a PC-compatible system. It is aimed at a range of
applications, such as information kiosks, point-of-sale
terminals, Internet-surfing boxes, "thin
client" terminals, security systems and industrial
PCs, said the company, which is also offering x86-based
chips targeted at other market niches.
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