| April 29, 1999 |
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April 28, 1999
SiliconValley.com
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A judge has ordered a disgruntled former
Intel Corp. employee to stop bombarding his former
colleagues with company-bashing electronic mail. Ken
Hamidi, 51, was fired in 1995 from his engineering job
over unresolved claims of job-related injuries. He then
started a group called Former and Current
Employees-Intel, known as Face-Intel, devoted to proving
that Intel mistreats its workers.
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See
Today's Related Stories |
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By Robert Lemos
April 27, 1999
ZD Net News
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Intel Corp. on Monday announced its
latest products designed to help lower prices on PCs
based on the Celeron processor. A new chip set, called
the Intel 810, melds the silicon that controls the data
going to and from the processor, 2-D and 3-D graphics
chips including video memory, and several other
multimedia-specific functions.
Intel (INTC) estimates the chip set, which is expected
to show up in systems starting in June, could reduce the
cost of Celeron systems by as much as 20 percent.
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By Sandy Chen and Mark Hachman
April 28, 1999
Electronic Buyers' News
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Intel rolled out on Tuesday its i752
graphics chip, replacing its older i740 chip in the
mainstream PC market. According to Santa Clara,
Calif.-based Intel, the new chip is designed neither to
attack leading-edge competitors such as Nvidia nor sell
into ultra-low-cost niche markets.
"We will be competitive on the performance space.
Our intent is not to be the price leader," said Gary
Thomas, general manager of Intel's graphics components
division. "We can fit products into various spaces
to fulfill value needs, performance needs, and enthusiast
needs."
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By Jack Robertson
April 28, 1999
Semiconductor Business News
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The former SLDRAM Consortium is
rechartering itself as Advanced Memory International to
develop the chip infrastructure behind the projected
Double Data Rate-2 SDRAM, sources said today. As
previously reported, a JEDEC (Joint Electron Device
Engineering Council) working group is drafting an
industry standard for DDR-2, expected to be completed by
June. However, advanced DRAM specifications require a
large supporting infrastructure -- including chip sets,
socket interfaces, testing programs, clocks, and
motherboard specs -- to make the chip a reality.
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By Jack Robertson
April 28, 1999
Semiconductor Business News
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Standard Microsystems Corp. reported
revenue increases in its fourth quarter and fiscal year,
reflecting strength in the company's core IC products,
primarily MOS I/O devices for PCs and peripherals. However,
SMSC recorded a net loss for the year of $12.5 million,
or $0.79 per share, due primarily to the disposal of its
Foundry Business Unit, which it agreed combine with
Inertia Optical Technology Applications Inc. to form a
new company, Standard MEMS Inc. SMSC reported the
operating results and expected loss of the foundry unit
as a discontinued operation.
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| Today's
Related Stories |
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By Malcolm Maclahlan
April 28, 1999
TechWeb
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In a case that could have wide-reaching
implications on Web freedom of speech and spamming, Intel
has won a suit against a former employee who was using
the company's employee e-mail directory. The
defendant, Ken Hamadi is a former Intel engineer fired in
1996, following a dispute over a disability claim. Hamadi
took his gripes to the Web, founding a website called
FaceIntel.com to publicize what he said was Intel's
mistreatment of workers.
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| April 28, 1999 |
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By Brooke Crothers
April 27, 1999
C/Net
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ATI, the leading graphics chipmaker,
unveiled a program to bring out a graphics chip that
combines a key PC system chip, mirroring Intel's and
other chipmakers' strategies for low-cost PCs, and
leading to a likely resurgence of the system-chip market.
ATI Technologies, which supplies graphics chips to
many of the largest PC makers, said that it plans to
combine graphics with a key part of the PC chipset.
Analysts say this is more of a proclamation rather
than anything concrete but it presages fierce battles to
come in this new market. "This is the graphics guys
saying they're getting into [the chipset] space,"
said Dean McCarron, a principal at Mercury Research, a
marketing research firm. Because there are dozens of
graphics chipmakers, competition could intensify
overnight if many decide to start making key PC chips
too.
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By Sandy Chen and Mark Hachman
April 27, 1999
Electronic Buyers' News
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Intel Corp. today rolled out its i752
graphics chip, replacing its older i740 chip in the
mainstream PC market. According to Intel, the new chip
is designed neither to attack leading-edge competitors
like Nvidia Corp. nor sell into ultra-low-cost niche
markets.
"We will be competitive on the performance space.
Our intent is not to be the price leader," said Gary
Thomas, general manager, of Intel's graphics components
division. "We can fit products into various spaces
to fulfill value needs, performance needs, and enthusiast
needs."
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Intel
Pushes Multimedia Higher
Optimized for Pentium III, high-end
752 chip speeds video and 3D rendering.
By Christian McIntosh
April 27, 1999
PC World
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Are you wrried that the Pentium III
doesn't really offer enough horsepower for games and
video? Adding high-end multimedia support to its
performance PC chip line, Intel has announced its 752
graphics accelerator, optimized for the PIII. Among the
companies pledging to support Intel's new accelerator are
Adobe, Caligari, CyberMax, MetaStream, and Sierra
Studios. Intel is shipping the 752 to hardware suppliers
in June; the chip costs about $20 in volume.
"The Intel 752 offers PC users an all-terrain
graphics accelerator," says Gary Thomas, general
manager for Intel's Graphics Component Division.
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| The Register Files |
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By Mike Magee
April 27, 1999
The Register
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Intel's eagerly anticipated Willamette
IA-32 technology is taking shape as hard details have
emerged from highly authoritative sources. Few details
from Intel have been available, although at the Intel
Developer Forum in Palm Springs in February, senior VP
Paul Otellini said the technology was on time and was a
completely new IA-32 architecture.
Our source, based at Intel Germany, claimed that
Willamette could have as many as 450 pins in its socket
design, use dual channel Rambus memory and employ a
chipset called Tehama.
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By Mike Magee
April 27, 1999
The Register
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The latest roadmap from National
Semiconductor subsidiary Cyrix has demonstrated the
limits of its x.86 ambitions. The company is
determined not to be caught in the crossfire as Intel and
AMD battle it out during 1999 and next year, the roadmap
reveals.
Nevertheless, the modest position Cyrix is taking
shows it is determined to carry on chipping away at the
others. It will produce "entry level solutions that
match Intel's midrange characteristics", the roadmap
claims.
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By Mike Magee
April 27, 1999
The Register
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Insiders at Intel have told The Register
that while Merced remains living and breathing, McKinley,
the generation after Merced, also has its problems. One
Intel engineer told us today that Merced is now unlikely
to be taped out until August at the earliest, while
another hinted at problems with McKinley too.
So the pressure is on at Intel.
The McKinley problem demonstrates the the compaction
of job functions at Intel, an engineer explained. He said
that trying to pull in too many "babes in the
wood" had resulted in arguments between designers at
every level in the firm.
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By Mike Magee
April 27, 1999
The Register
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Sources only a cat's whisker away from
Intel's plans have told us that its future copper (Cu)
technology will arrive far sooner than anyone has
thought. The copper technology is included in the .13
micron P860 process, and Intel already has test
structures and test chips functioning with copper
interconnects and .13 micron lithography, the source
claimed.
Although not yet included in a processor product, the
logic and memory structures are, however, built and
tested electricity. "It works and it works damned
well," the source said. "P860 is much further
along than you might think and is being produced
alongside P858 (Coppermine) technology".
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By Peter Sherriff
April 27, 1999
The Register
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The Celeron is Intel's best processor
right now. The embarrassment of the original Covington's
lack of performance panicked Chipzilla into rushing out
the far-superior Mendocino version complete with on-die
L2 cache. This certainly did the trick as far as
addressing the performance shortcomings of the tragic
non-cached part, but also posed a serious threat to the
Celeron's big brother, Pentium II. Intel blindly threw
all its considerable marketing might behind Celeron in a
bid to stomp on upstarts AMD and Cyrix in the sub $1,000
market, and at the same time took its eye off the ball
with the cash cow Pentium II. The result is that despite
Intel's continued protestations that Celeron isn't making
much of an impact in corporate space, little Celeron is,
in fact, blowing PII into the weeds.
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By Mike Magee
April 27, 1999
The Register
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A close examination o the annual results
of Intel compared to its closest competitor Advanced
Micro Devices (AMD) has revealed a strange but true fact.
While Intel is seen as being a bit of a marketing
genius, somehow turning the world round into accepting
its microprocessors, mainly through its Intel Inside
programme, the actual facts differ from this picture.
In fact, AMD has spent more on marketing than Intel in
the last year, as a proportion of its spend.
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| April 27, 1999 |
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By Brooke Crothers
April 26, 1999
C/Net
|
ATI, the leading graphics chipmaker,
unveiled a program to bring out a graphics chip that
combines a key PC system chip, mirroring Intel's strategy
for low-cost PCs, and leading to a likely resurgence of
the system-chip market. ATI Technologies, which
supplies graphics chips to many of the largest PC makers,
said today that it plans to combine graphics with a key
part of the PC chipset.
Analysts say this is more of a proclamation rather
than anything concrete. "This is the graphics guys
saying they're getting into [the chipset] space,"
said Dean McCarron, a principal at Mercury Research, a
marketing research firm.
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By Reuters
April 26, 1999
SiliconValley.com
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Semiconductor maker Intel Corp.
introduced its fastest chip yet for the low end of the PC
market, a Celeron chip running at 466 megahertz, in an
ongoing drive to gain market share in the low-cost
consumer segment. Intel also launched a chipset to work
with the Celeron, adding more functions and reducing the
overall cost of a PC motherboard, the main board of a
personal computer.
``We are deadly serious about this segment,'' said
Paul Otellini, executive vice president and general
manager of Intel's architecture business group, at a
press briefing. ``We are very very cognisant that this is
where the growth is.''
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By Michael Kanellos
April 26, 1999
C/Net
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Intel is tanned, rested, and ready for
another assault on the graphics chip industry. Although
last year's foray into graphics chips floundered, Intel
is getting back into the highly competitive market with a
series of 3D PC processors that observers say could help
the company become a major force in graphics.
The company today announced the 810, a PC chipset with
integrated graphics, audio, and other functions for
budget PCs which will ship in June. Tomorrow, the company
will announce the i752, a standalone version of the
graphics engine that comes with the 810 for midrange PCs,
said sources.
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By Mark Hachman
April 26, 1999
Electronic Buyers' News
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Today, Intel Corp. formally introduced
the Intel 810 or "Whitney" integrated PC
graphics chipset, a product that offers a complex mix of
cost and feature tradeoffs. Intel has designed the
Intel 810 with an eye towards lowering cost by combining
discrete components onto individual chips. According to
Paul Otellini, executive vice-president and general
manager of Intel's Architecture Business Group, Intel
will begin to add these functions onto the microprocessor
next year.
"We continue to drive value while taking costs
out of the platform going forward," Otellini said.
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By Robert Lemos
April 26, 1999
ZD Net News
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PC chip giant Intel Corp. on Monday
announced its latest products to help lower prices for
PCs based on its Celeron processor. Called the Intel
810, the newest chip set melds together silicon that
controls the data that goes to and from the processor,
the 2-D and 3-D graphics chips including video memory,
and several other multimedia-specific functions.
Expected to show up in systems starting in June, Intel
(Nasdaq:INTC) estimates the chip set could reduce costs
of Celeron systems by as much as 20 percent.
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April 26, 1999
VNU News Service
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Intel's 810 Whitney chipset and its
Celeron 466MHz 66/100MHz front side bus (FSB) chip are
launched today, but the introduction of future graphics
and chipsets is problematical for Intel. Intel used its
own i740 chip in both its own Express3D and OEM AGP
cards, which offered acceptable graphics performance, but
Whitney performs much better than last year's products.
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By Sandy Chen
April 26, 1999
Electronic Buyers' News
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This week, Intel Corp. president and
chief executive Craig Barrett made his annual visit to
Taiwan to kick off the Asia-Pacific Intel Developers
Forum in Taipei. At the event, EBN conducted a one-on-one
interview with Barrett in order to find out more details
about the company's strategy with Rambus Inc., business
dealings in China and Taiwan, as well as the general
health of the PC industry. EBN: It's been well
documented that Rambus' licensees are having some
problems making the new Direct Rambus DRAM (RDRAM) parts.
Can you shed some light on that as well as the
"Direct Rambus DRAM versus PC133 DRAM" debate?
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| The Register Files |
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By Mike Magee
April 26, 1999
The Register
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Influential Silicon Valley newspaper the
San Jose Mercury News reported over the weekend that
AMD's CEO, Jerry Sanders III, is likely to pass day to
day operations at the company to Atiq Raza this week. Since
the story we posted at 0800:17 this morning, AMD has
declined to tell us what is happening, although one
insider said: "Haven't you heard about the
conference call?"
We hadn't and haven't.
According to Silicon Valley, Atiq Raza is likely to be
appointed as the firm's president and sole chief
operating officer by AMD's board of directors during the
course of the week.
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By Peter Sherriff
April 26, 1999
The Register
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As reported here earlier, Chipzilla is
always more than keen to get its mitts on some of what it
so charmingly refers to as "imitator" products.
The chip behemoth is also offering a reward, the size
of which indicates the perceived threat from each rival
part.
Following our earlier story, a source at Satan Clara
has kindly filled in some more details for us. Please
find below Intel’s top ten most wanted along with
their price tags.
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By Mike Magee
April 26, 1999
The Register
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Intel taped out Coppermine samples last
week, a very well informed source told The Register
today. Two megabyte of cache on die is the ultimate
aim, we understand.
Microsoft doubts that. The jury is out. So while it
considers its verdict, we'll let this story linger until
we consult with our three Intel engineers what we know...
Select OEMs have just received samples, we can
confirm. Yield, when it ramps up, is likely to start at
667MHz but move to 733MHz shortly after intro.
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By Mike Magee
April 26, 1999
The Register
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Chip giant Intel is now likely to face
fire from its distributors and dealers after senior
executives confirmed today Celeron Slot Ones are being
dumped. We still wait to see whether or not Intel will
move all of its Pentium IIIs to Socket 370, although the
giant is still denying that.
Pat Gelsinger, a senior VP at Intel US, told delegates
at its Developer Forum in Taipei, Taiwan today that there
will be a big move to 370 Socket Celerons starting very
soon.
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By Mike Magee
April 26, 1999
The Register
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A report in Taiwanese trade paper
Eurotrade has quoted senior Intel VP Pat Gelsinger as
saying that Socket 370 will be the form factor for
Celerons running at 500MHz on .18 micron technology. The
magazine is also reporting that the 810 chipset,
announced today, and aimed at the low-end market, will
support Microsoft's up and coming Windows 2000 platform.
Eurotrade was reporting Gelsinger's keynote speech at
the Asia Pacific Intel Developer Forum.
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By Mike Magee
April 26, 1999
The Register
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Our friends at Cyrix have sent us the
latest prices for their Cyrix MII family. The prices are
when you buy 1,000. You will note that this is the
first official mention of the MII-366. This really is
what you call keeping your head below the parapet...
M II-300 US-$40
M II-333 US-$42
M II-366 US-$62
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| April 26, 1999 |
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By Andrew MacLellan
April 23, 1999
Electronic Buyers' News
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OEM interest in PC133 SDRAM has
increased substantially in the weeks following Intel
Corp.'s delay of Direct Rambus DRAM, particularly among
desktop-PC makers, according to a number of industry
executives. With demand prompting Smart Modular
Technologies Inc., Unigen Corp., and other module makers
to ramp production of PC133 DIMMs, momentum for what
until recently had been the industry's fall-back
architecture is clearly on the rise.
“In general, you're getting a couple of segments
looking at it, especially consumer, because of the delay
to Rambus and a perceived price increase associated with
that,” said Dan Pleshko, director of memory and
microprocessor corporate procurement at Compaq Computer
Corp., Houston.
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By Reuters
April 23, 1999
PC World
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Intel executives on Thursday confirmed
the schedule for the rapid transition of the company's
core microprocessor line almost entirely to Pentium III
chips by year-end. Speaking to financial analysts in
New York, Paul Otellini, executive vice president of the
Intel Architecture Business Group, said the company
planned to rapidly phase out its older Pentium II
technology over the course of this year.
"It is about to hit 50 percent sometime in the
third quarter and about 90 percent converted as we exit
1999," Otellini said, referring to the transition to
Pentium III chips and the rapid reduction of the Pentium
II category.
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AMD
tries life by its own devices
The move to a chip design that isn't
an Intel clone comes amid money and manufacturing
troubles
By Tom Quinlan
April 24, 1999
San Jose Mercury News
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The success and reputation of Advanced
Micro Devices Inc. has rested since 1982 largely on how
well and how profitably it could copy the computer chip
designs of cross-town rival Intel Corp. Now in its 30th
year, AMD is embarking on an ambitious effort to reinvent
itself, establishing a new generation of management and
launching its own microprocessor designs that -- if AMD
can deliver -- will outperform Intel's current chip
offerings.
It's also likely to be the last major initiative
launched by AMD's flamboyant and oft-criticized CEO Jerry
Sanders, the only leader AMD has known.
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By Tom Quinlan
April 24, 1999
San Jose Mercury News
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In the mid 1980s, Advanced Micro Devices
and Intel Corp. were roughly equal in size. Today,
Intel's microprocessor empire dwarfs AMD. While Intel is
among the most profitable companies in the world, AMD has
lost money three years in a row - even though its popular
K6 chip has pushed AMD's microprocessor market share over
15 percent, its best showing in years. |
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By Loring Wirbel
April 23, 1999
EE Times
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With the large number of
network-processor startups preparing packet-parsing
architectures for summer sampling, Intel Corp.'s
network-products division and Texas Instruments Inc.'s
enterprise network business unit want to be sure they
have development environments in place for their own
network-processor offerings. Intel offered hints this
week on the functions it will seek to cover in a future
generation of network processors serving
aggregation-router and broadband switch markets.
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By Alexander Wolfe and Ron Wilson
April 23, 1999
EE Times
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Intel Corp. kicked off its annual
analysts' meeting on Thursday (April 22) with a pledge to
rapidly reshape itself from the microprocessor behemoth
largely linked to desktop computing into a broader-based
player with major thrusts in backbone servers, embedded
CPUs, communications and networking components, and
electronic commerce. Despite Intel's optimistic picture
of a vendor with a cutting-edge view of a millennium
that's tilting away from PCs, industry observers noted
two big challenges: Amid intense competition, the company
must promulgate its advanced StrongARM embedded
processors — acquired from Digital Semiconductor
— in everything from Web appliances to cellular
phones.
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By Stephanie Miles
April 23, 1999
C/Net
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One of the oldest semiconductor
companies is trying to teach its industry some new tricks
with a new Internet sales effort. Old-guard
semiconductor manufacturer National Semiconductor is now
selling its entire product line through its recently
launched Web site. The site, which will feature the Cyrix
family of microprocessors among other products, will
essentially allow do-it-yourself consumers as well as
computer dealers and manufacturers to buy chips directly
from the company or from identified wholesale
distributors.
But, as Compaq Computer learned the hard way, National
faces challenges as it attempts to navigate the dangerous
waters of placating chip dealers and distributors in the
name of offering customers convenience.
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| The Register Files |
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By Mike Magee
April 24, 1999
The Register
|
An engineer at AMD has leaked details of
internal FPU (floating point unit) Winmarks on the up and
coming K7 to The Register. But at the same time he has
said he is disappointed at the management and production
problems at the firm.
The engineer, who insists on strict anonymity, said
that the K7 running at 500MHz has an FPU Winmark of 2767.
That compares to a Pentium III/500 which, he says, has an
FPU Winmark of around 2562.
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By Mike Magee
April 24, 1999
The Register
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Japanese site PC Watch is reporting that
chipset company VIA is ready to ship its Apollo Pro Plus
693A family. And that will support not only the PC-133
memory standard but also AGP4x.
According to the site, there will be a version of the
Apollo Pro Plus supporting PC 266 DDR synchronous memory
later in the year.
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By Pete Sherriff
April 25, 1999
The Register
|
Those awfully clever folks at Intel have
managed to bump up processor power by around 200 times
since the introduction of the 486 ten years ago. Trouble
is, memory technology has only improved by a measly 20
times in the same period. Fancy caches can help a bit,
but something fundamental needs to change in order to get
the most system bang for your CPU buck.
DRAM vendors have increased memory densities by almost
1,000 fold – that’s faster than even
Microsoft’s bloatware demands – and this means
that fewer memory devices are needed to reach the RAM
requirements of a system, allowing new ways of enabling
the CPU and memory to talk to each other to be
investigated.
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By Pete Sherriff
April 25, 1999
The Register
|
With the lovely little 810 Whitney
chipset out this week, Intel is aiming to clean up at the
low end of the graphics market. But what about higher up
the scale? Chipzilla managed a small blip on the radar
screen with the i740 in both its own Express3D and OEM
AGP cards, offering acceptable but not earth-shattering
performance. And, as is always the case in the Wacky
World of Graphics, today’s Top of the Pops is
tomorrow’s Haircut 100.
Alongside graphics, even Intel’s CPU introduction
rate looks positively glacial - a month late to market
and your terrific new graphics accelerator is headed for
the bargain bin in PCs'R'Us.
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By Peter Sherriff
April 24, 1999
The Register
|
Intel will introduce its 810 chipset and
a 466MHz Celeron this coming Monday, as first revealed
here. The processor will be supported by a large
number of PC vendors.
The 810 rather mysteriously supports both 66MHz and
100MHz front side bus speeds – Celeron isn’t
due to move on up to 100MHz FSB until early 2000 and
there’s still a 100MHz/66MHz FSB Celeron due out
later in the year.
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By Mike Magee
April 23, 1999
The Register
|
Intel held its spring analysts' meeting
yesterday afternoon in New York and rolled out a gaggle
of senior execs to outline its plans ahead. Those
execs included chairman Andy Grove, CEO Craig Barrett and
VPs Sean Maloney, Mark Christensen, Paul Otellini, and
Gerry Parker.
Barrett said: "We're still looking at a billion
computers connected together...worth trillions of
dollars.
He said by the year 2002 the e-commerce market in the
US will be worth $800 billion. He said Intel will sell
half of its products through the Internet this year.
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