| April 23, 1999 |
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By Michael Kanellos
April 22, 1999
C/Net
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Intel as an ISP? It's happening. Intel
today rolled out an ambitious plan under which the chip
giant will begin to provide data hosting, Internet
connectivity, application delivery, and Web consulting
services to customers. In other words, the Santa Clara,
California, company will offer the sort of higher-end
consulting services that many Internet service providers
now market to customers, through "bit
factories" consisting of thousands of servers all
over the world.
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| The Register Files |
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By Mike Magee
April 22, 1999
The Register
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Reports that Merced is dead are highly
premature, sources close to Intel's plans said today. Instead,
the Merced is to future IA-64 architecture as the Celeron
is to the Pentium II, the source added.
Of course, the Celeron was a cut-down Pentium II. The
source said that there are similarities between Merced
and McKinley.
Intel is on track to produce the Merced within its
time scale, as faithfully reported here, but systems will
likely only be used as evaluation platforms.
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By Mike Magee
April 22, 1999
The Register
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An aggrieved US company has filed an
assault, libel and slander suit against chip giant Intel.
Techsearch LLC filed suit against Intel earlier this
week. The case is connected to allegations that Intel,
under the guise of a shell company set up in the Cayman
Islands, blocked the acquisition of a patent Techsearch
was attempting to acquire.
See our story last week: Intel bang to rights on
questionable business ethics
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By John Lettice
April, 1998
The Register
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Dell licensing technology from
Intergraph is definitely one for the department of weird
coincidences. According to Intergraph, Dell is
kicking-off a new line of Intel-based workstations
tomorrow, and will be using Intergraph's AGP-based
Intense 3D Pro graphics subsystems in them. The
announcement has added piquancy in that advance details
of Intel's AGP graphics bus and of future Intel products
in the workstation arena are most certainly the kind of
stuff the Alabama courts have just told Intel to give to
Intergraph. |
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By Mike Magee
April 22, 1999
The Register
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A Cyrix engineer, who wishes to remain
anonymous, has sent his thoughts on the story we carried
yesterday about IBM buying the business. He said:
"As of now the rumor that has causied the stock to
inflate three points is.... well... in my humble opinion
a complete and utter mis-truth."
He claimed that Cyrix would only be sold to IBM in a
linked deal with selling the fab to them too.
"Hence, Cyrix parts are the only thing that is
filling the fab and IBM is seriously NOT in the market to
buy a fab... thus making this a non possibility.
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By Mike Magee
April 22, 1999
The Register
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Cunning marketing plans are behind
Intel's decision to label its upcoming technology
Coppermine, sources close to the company can reveal. Although
Intel has committed itself to producing copper technology
in future iterations of its IA-64 technology, it was
determined that IBM, Motorola and others should not steal
its thunder, we can reveal.
After the IBM propaganda coup that it would be able to
produce chips with copper-interconnect technology, Intel
found itself wrong-footed.
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By Mike Magee
April 22, 1999
The Register
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At launch, the K7 will be released at a
clock speed of 550MHz and Intel will face pressure at the
high end. That information is available at JC's pages
and is a translation of an interview with Kazuo Sakai,
president of AMD Japan.
According to Sakai, the introduction of the 550MHz K7
will precipitate a gladiatoral battle between AMD and
Chipzilla.
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| April 22, 1999 |
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April 21, 1999
Electronic Buyers' News
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Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. said its
Rambus DRAMs have passed validation testing by Intel
Corp. The Korean memory maker claimed that the tests
validated its RDRAMs as being the first devices available
as mass-produced samples to meet performance
specifications for operation environments. According to
Samsung, Intel plans to announce the results of the RDRAM
validation tests this week.
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By Martin Allen and John Dunn
April 21, 1999
Network Week
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Hewlett-Packard, co-developer of Intel's
IA-64 architecture, has hinted the company may not use
the Merced chip in its first IA-64 ready server, the
N-4000. The Palo Alto, Calif., company suggested it
might wait instead for Intel's McKinley chip, a later
increment of the IA-64, and continue using its own
PA-RISC design in the interim.
"The original idea was to target on Merced. Now
they [the Unix division] are looking at whether McKinley
would make better sense. It would offer better
price/performance," said Hugh Jenkins, HP's
enterprise product marketing manager.
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PCVelocity.com
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Over at The Register and other places
around the web they keep talking about the Merced being
dead. I don't think its dead, I think it has two wicked
problems in front of it that Intel is having a hard time
dealing with: -The compiler.
More than any chip ever made, the Merced is ultra heavily
dependent on the compiler for performance. The compiler
has to scour the HELL out of the code to look for
parallelisms that will keep the Merced's nine execution
streams busy the maximum amount of time. Can you remotely
imagine how long its going to take them in man hours to
get that compiler up to snuff? Personally, if I was Intel
I would go pay Carmack any amount of money he wanted to
help out with development.
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By Kristen Kenedy
April 21, 1999
Computer Retail Week
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Intel plans to release a 600-MHz Pentium
III processor in September with a 133-MHz system bus and
256 kilobytes of integrated Level 2 cache, according to
an Intel price sheet examined by Computer Retail Week. The
600-MHz Pentium III, the first high-end Intel chip to be
united with its secondary cache, will be priced at $761
in quantities of 10,000. Integrating the L2 cache onto
the processor die tends to significantly increase
processing power. Current Celeron processors with 128 KB
of integrated L2 cache can closely match performance of a
Pentium II with 512 KB of L2 cache on the Slot 1 module,
for example.
The new processor also bumps up clock speeds
significantly, helping Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel
distance its processors from rival Advanced Micro
Devices' CPUs.
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April 21, 1999
Semiconductor Business News
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Cyrix Corp. has teamed up with Internet
software developer WebSurfer Inc. to develop and market
Internet-access appliance technologies, the two companies
announced here at the National Association of
Broadcasters trade event. They also made the
announcement, and are jointly displaying products,
simultaneously at Comdex Spring in Chicago. The two
companies will cooperatively develop Internet appliance
solutions that integrate Cyrix x86-based processors with
WebSurfer Internet appliance software. Last November,
WebSurfer released WebSurfer Pro, a set-top box reference
design featuring a180-MHz Cyrix MediaGX processor.
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| The Register Files |
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By Mike Magee
April 21, 1999
The Register
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Early today we heard from a reliable
source that IBM is to buy the Cyrix division of National
Semiconductor. No confirmation from either company was
available at press time but we will update this story
today as more information becomes available.
IBM formerly manufactured processors for Cyrix as part
of a fabbing deal set up before National Semiconductor
bought the chip company.
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By Mike Magee
April 21, 1999
The Register
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Plans by Intel to prevent overclocking
of its processors are nearly complete, according to
sources close to the company. At the end of last year,
we reported that Intel would introduce locks on
microprocessor speeds which would prevent end users from
increasing the clock rate on chips.
But now, its manufacturing methods mean that Intel
chips cannot be overclocked, the source said.
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| April 21, 1999 |
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By Linley Gwennap
April 19, 1999
Microprocessor Report
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Intel has long been concerned about
people who try to run their chips faster than the rated
clock speed. If someone overclocks a 333-MHz Celeron
instead of buying a 450-MHz Pentium II, Intel loses about
$300. Intel has just developed the ultimate weapon to
stop these overclockers dead in their tracks--but has
chosen not to deploy it. Overclocking exists for two
reasons. First, a processor is designed to run at its
rated clock speed for its entire expected lifetime, even
in worst-case temperature and voltage conditions. As a
result, a brand-new processor has frequency headroom at
nominal voltage and temperature. In the past, Intel built
plenty of headroom into its chips to improve yield, but
more recently the company has tried to wring every last
bit of clock speed from its chips.
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By Kristen Kenedy
April 20, 1999
Computer Retail Week
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Intel plans to release a 600-MHz Pentium
III processor in September with a 133-MHz system bus and
256 kilobytes of integrated Level 2 cache, according to
an Intel price sheet examined by Computer Retail Week. The
600-MHZ Pentium III, the first high-end Intel chip to be
united with its secondary cache, will be priced at $761
in quantities of 10,000. Integrating the L2 cache onto
the processor die tends to significantly increase
processing power. Current Celeron processors with 128 KB
of integrated L2 cache can closely match performance of a
Pentium II with 512 KB of L2 cache on the Slot 1 module,
for example.
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| The Register Files |
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By Peter Sherriff
April 20, 1999
The Register
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A proven, (old) chipset has managed to
live to fight another day. The Venerable 440 BX will now
run up to 700MHz, according to sources close to Intel's
plans. The ageing Intel 440BX chipset has earned a
reprieve from the chip gulag.
Chipzilla's problems in getting the replacement i820
(aka Camino) to market means that the BX is now set to be
validated to support Pentium IIIs running at up to
700MHz.
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| April 20, 1999 |
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By Duncan Martell
April 19, 1999
SiliconValley.com
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Intel Corp. is again turning up the heat
at its nascent data-networking business. In its latest
move into the new market, the world's largest chipmaker
announced plans Monday to develop a microprocessor
designed for the gear that shunts data back and forth on
computer networks.
The so-called network microprocessor -- typically
thought of as the brains of personal computers -- could
let companies such as Cisco Systems Inc., Northern
Telecom Ltd. and Lucent Technologies Inc. introduce
products far faster than before.
It also would let them upgrade the equipment that
directs network and Internet traffic easier and cheaper.
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By Ben Heskett
April 19, 1999
C/Net
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Chip giant Intel today made a new move
to address the market for programmable processors used in
high-end switching and routing devices offered by giants
Cisco Systems and Lucent Technologies. Intel's entry
into the networking processor market today follows last
month's $2 billion acquisition of Level One
Communications.
Intel already offers several chip components to
third-party networking firms, but now the firm has set
its sights on a market niche dominated by in-house
development.
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By Mike Magee
April 19, 1999
VNU Wire Service
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The first daughterboard supporting both
Intel and Cyrix 370 socket processors has been released. The
board, called 370 Socket Inside, is manufactured by a
Taiwanese firm and allows either an Intel 370 pin Celeron
processor or a Cyrix 370 pin processor to run on existing
Slot One motherboards.
Cyrix, part of National Semiconductor, has a cross
licensing agreement with Intel that allows it use the
Socket 370 technology and support logic.
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| The Register Files |
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By Mike Magee
April 19, 1999
The register
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A Sacramento judge has the final say
today whether or not, Ken Hamidi, organiser of a group
complaining against Intel employment practices, and a
former employee of the corporation, was guilty of
delivering spammed emails to the behemoth's 65,000
employees. According to a report on the FaceIntel
site, a reversal of the judgement made last Friday is
highly unlikely.
Intel, showing egregious confidence, had moved for a
summary judgement to prevent Hamidi, a long-standing
anti-Intel litigant, from going to trial on the issue.
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By Peter Sherriff
April 19, 1999
The Register
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If you were planning on treating
yourself to a new notebook this Summer so you could 'work
from home' while sipping a cold beer in the garden, think
again. Intel is set to launch some really cool mobile
processors during the Summer months but will replace them
with even cooler products less than three months later.
The mobile Pentium II 400MHz is set for launch in June
at an expected price of around $475 in 0.25 micron guise
and $525 in the slinky new 0.18 variant. But by September
that price will have dropped to just $310 for the 0.25
and $350 for the 0.18.
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By Mike Magee
April 19, 1999
The register
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A senior executive at AMD has hit back
at internal Intel fabrication plant figures and said his
company will have 30 per cent PC market share in the year
2001. Rana Mainee, market analyst at AMD Europe, also
responded to Intel figures saying that its Willamette
processor would be double the performance of a K7 666MHz
part. He said it was highly unlikely Intel's Willamette
would out-perform K7s by 18 months. "As we've said
we will launch K7 500MHz parts in June and faster parts
during the course of this year, that's hardly
likely," he said.
Mainee was responding to these stories: How Intel's
geese lay golden eggs and Willamette will outperform K7
by 2X.
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By Mike Magee
April 19, 1999
The register
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The Great Satan of Chips has decided,
after its aggressive burst of anti-AMD, Cyrix, Rise and
IDT price bombing to re-adjust its sights. The company
will now slash prices of Pentium IIIs between now and
September, introduce new product offerings and attack its
competitors on all pricing fronts, according to prices we
revealed last Saturday.
The move is part of an egregious plan by Intel to own
the entire market, in the face of threats from clone x.86
manufacturers. It has used every means at its disposal,
including dedicated spin doctors, to push its case.
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By Peter Sherriff
April 19, 1999
The Register
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Stealth launches at Intel seem to be the
order of the day. Not usually famed for its modesty,
Intel has a strange way of launching some of its
products. Motherboards are obviously judged not worthy of
bothering the massive Intel PR machine about - in fact we
can't remember the last time Chipzilla issued a press
release about the things.
Chipsets, yes. Graphics, yes. Motherboards, no. In
fact Intel launches new motherboards all the time.
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| April 19, 1999 |
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By Dean Takahashi
April 16, 1999
Wall Street Joural
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Intel Corp. has used many tactics to
protect its patents. But the chip maker recently
countered a rival patent claim with a maneuver unusual
enough to anger a Texas bankruptcy judge and surprise
some experts in legal ethics. The giant semiconductor
maker secretly used a shell company in the Cayman Islands
to argue on its behalf in the federal bankruptcy case of
International Meta Systems Inc., a tiny El Segundo,
Calif., computer-chip-design company. As part of the
Chapter 11 proceedings, now under way in Austin, the
Cayman company challenged IMS's sale last year of a
patent to a Northbrook, Ill., law firm called TechSearch
LLC. The law firm is using the patent as the basis of a
separate patent-infringement suit against Intel, now
pending in federal court in San Francisco.
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By John G. Spooner
April 16, 1999
PC Week Online
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Intel Corp. is gearing up for its next
Celeron processor, slated to hit the street late this
month. Accompanying the new 466MHz chip will be a new
chip set, called the 810 (formerly code-named Whitney),
which integrates such features as graphics and audio to
lower costs.
While the new Celeron will be available almost
immediately from OEMs, the chip set won't ship until
June, sources said. Intel (Nasdaq:INTC) is announcing the
two at the same time because they are designed to work
together, the sources said. It's also no secret that
Advanced Micro Devices Inc.(NYSE:AMD) will ship its first
AMD K-7 chips in June.
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By Richard Richtmyer
April 16, 1999
Electronic Buyers' News
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Analog Devices Inc. and Intel Corp.'s
joint effort to develop a next-generation DSP-core
architecture is on track, and products based on the new
architecture should be available in about one year,
according to Maria Tagliaferro, marketing manager for
ADI's DSP programs. The two companies forged their
partnership in early February, promising to deliver a new
design that uses ADI's 16-bit DSP core as a
“starting place” to create a fixed-point,
low-power, cost-competitive core.
The effort is being spearheaded by a combined
ADI/Intel design team that has been formed in Austin,
Tex. The new core will be used within integrated ICs
targeted at embedded communications and computing
applications, such as Internet-enabled cellular
telephones. Each company will separately market and sell
the products.
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April 16, 1999
ZD Net News
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The Federal Trade Commission will have a
difficult time enforcing its proposed antitrust
settlement with microchip giant Intel Corp., says the
sole agency commissioner who opposed the government's
original complaint against the company. FTC
Commissioner Orson Swindle, the dissenter in the 3-1 vote
last summer, also expressed doubt on whether the
government would have won its lawsuit had it not settled
with the company in March.
"Given my reservations about the merits of the
complaint, I would be more concerned about the order,
comprising a difficult-to-enforce mandate to 'sin no
more,' with a major proviso and some significant
exceptions, if it seemed likely to impose real and
significant restrictions on Intel," Swindle said in
a written statement released Thursday.
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| The Register Files |
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April 16, 1999
The Register
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Sometimes, we think that local New York
paper The Wall Street Journal is too worthy by half. But,
on occasions they write really good stuff. Credit where
credit's due.
The newspaper has just published a fab story showing
that Intel set up a shell Cayman Island company in order
to get hold of some patents it wanted.
In the course of so doing, it really cheesed off a
Texan judge trying to wind up the affairs of a company
called International Meta.
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By Mike Magee
April 16, 1999
The Register
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We promised yesterday that we'd post the
URLs we discovered on the World Wide Web that seem to
give benchmarks for Intel's Coppermine and AMD's K7
chips. The data is at Stanford University but quite
frankly we find it quite bewildering.
However, a kindly reader has pointed us to this Ars
Technica article which is helpful. The benchmarks are
SPEC benchmarks, he said.
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By Tony Smith
April 16, 1999
The Register
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Intel is to introduce what it's calling
a "memory hub" to allow PC vendors using its
upcoming Camino chipset to use PC100 SDRAM in place of
next-generation Rambus Direct DRAM while RDRAM parts
remain thin on the ground. According to News.com, the
memory hub technology will allow a Pentium III to operate
a system bus clock speed of 133MHz but access the memory
at slower speeds to retain compatibility with the current
memory spec.
However, Intel is also known to be working on a
'S-RIMM' technology, which allows PC100 SDRAM chips to be
placed on a RAMBUS Inline Memory Module, as reported by
The Register earlier this year.
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By Mike Magee
April 16, 1999
The Register
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FTC commissioners involved in the
accusation that Intel holds a monopoly in the chip market
have given some of their reasons for settling with the
chip giant. In a statement on the FTC Web site, Robert
Pitofsky, Sheila Anthony and Mozelle Thompson review the
decision while commissioner Orson Swindle, who dissented
against issuing the complaint last year, claimed the case
was hard to prove and will be difficult to enforce.
Swindle claims in his statement that while "Intel
has long bestrode the market" for microprocessors,
there is doubt whether the market "is as
unassailable" as the complaint suggested.
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By Mike Magee
April 18, 1999
The Register
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The good ship Intel is developing leaks
across the world and the latest holes in its hull are the
AGP Pro specification and the 810, 810e and 820 chips
specifications. If you go to Kbench, you'll see all
sorts of delicious details about the AGP Pro slot
specification. The information is in Korean but the
diagrams are in English.
And if that's not enough for you, try the same site,
but this time go to Kbench again, where this time you'll
find some juicy info about the 810, 810E and 820
chipsets.
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By Mike Magee
April 18, 1999
The Register
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Just after last Christmas, adverts
started appearing in the UK press for Celeron processors,
with an egg-related theme. The ads may have run
elsewhere than in the UK, and showed eggs in an eggbox,
each branded with the Intel Inside logo.
At the time, we dismissed this as just another bit of
Intel tomfoolery but it has occurred to us since Easter
that we were deeply mistaken.
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By Mike Magee
April 18, 1999
The Register
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One swallow does not make a Spring here
in the UK, nor does one picture of a daughterboard make a
Cyrix 370 pin CPU. We said this would happen at the
beginning of this year. (Stories: Cyrix decides to socket
and see and Cyrix to go 370 pin in April)
But over at Akiba, we do have a very nice and clear
picture of a 370-pin socket on a daughterboard with
wording on it which indicates support for both Intel and
Cyrix chips.
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