C/Net

Transmeta CEO to step down

C/Net

Intel draws out Itanium arrival

C/Net

Pentium III to fade from desktops

EE Times

Intel looks to move past false starts with Rambus

EE Times

ServerWorks chip set beats Intel to the DDR punch

The Register Files

Collected By Robert R. Collins

Week of February 25, 2001

Older News

Transmeta CEO to step down

By Michael Kanellos

March 1, 2001
C/Net

Mark Allen, the company's president and chief operating officer, will become the new CEO. Both Allen and Ditzel will serve on the board.

Executives who help create a company often give up lofty managerial titles during periods of growth and maturation. For example, Red Hat Chairman Robert Young and founder Marc Ewing gave up the titles of CEO and CTO, respectively. Ditzel is largely known for his technical abilities.

Intel draws out Itanium arrival

By Stephen Shankland

March 1, 2001
C/Net

Though Intel will meet its most recent schedule set after a series of Itanium delays, servers incorporating the chip design may hit the market at a more gradual pace than earlier anticipated.

In a keynote address Thursday at the Intel Developer Forum here, Mike Fister, general manager of the enterprise platforms group, said manufacturers would begin shipments of Itanium-based computers in the second quarter--but that "broader deployment" will happen in the second half of 2001.

Intergraph: Ruling will prompt royalties from Intel

By Reuters

March 1, 2001
eWeek

In its ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said that Intergraph received "the full and exclusive right, title and interest" to its Clipper patents, Intergraph said in a statement.

Pentium III to fade from desktops

By Michael Kanellos

March 1, 2001
C/Net

Although the chip will continue to appear in notebooks and low-end servers, the Pentium III will essentially be phased out of the desktop market by the end of the year, said Anand Chandrasekher, vice president of microprocessor marketing at Intel.

Intel looks to move past false starts with Rambus

By David Lammers

March 1, 2001
EE Times

The stakes could hardly be higher.

Intel's corporate health depends on quickly ramping the Pentium 4 processor and on seeing the memory vendors sharply increase RDRAM shipments. For now, Intel's 850 is the only chip set to support the Pentium 4, and the 850 only supports RDRAMs.

ServerWorks chip set beats Intel to the DDR punch

By Anthony Cataldo

March 1, 2001
EE Times

Designed for two- or four-way Xeon-based systems, the chip set is set to go into volume production starting in the third quarter. That should put ServerWorks a step ahead of Intel's chip set group, which won't have its DDR-based chip set for servers ready until early 2002.

Intel promises third-generation I/O spec

By Jerry Ascierto

March 1, 2001
EE Times

As processor performance continues to increase, Burns said, no technology available today will be able to meet the needs of next-generation systems. Specifically, Burns said, an I/O architecture with legs that will march confidently for the next ten years is needed.

Transmeta CEO eyes chips for handhelds

By Bloomberg News

March 1, 2001
C/Net

Transmeta, which is challenging Intel with power-saving chips, will introduce the semiconductors as early as the second half of this year, Transmeta Chief Executive David Ditzel said.

Transmeta's Crusoe processor is already winning market share in laptop computers and Internet appliances . The company is targeting Japan, where the number of people who use mobile devices is expected to increase to 65 million in 2005 from 7 million in 1999, according to Morgan Stanley.

PC "overclockers" risk danger for faster machines

By David Becker

March 1, 2001
C/Net

All this for a little more speed on the computer.

Leufkens is one of a growing number of people known as "overclockers"--hobbyists who push microprocessors and other PC components way past their intended limits. Although their tinkering nullifies warranties and can even do physical harm to a machine, overclockers are willing to take such risks to get a computer that runs at twice the speed it did the day it came from the store.

The Register Files

ServerWorks blockbuster trumps Rambus, adds PCI-X

By Andrew Orlowski

March 1, 2001
The Register

Intel has become increasingly reliant on ServerWorks technology, and the latest 2way/4way chipset adds support for the PCI-X bus and, with memory throughput at 5Gbytes/s, offers double the throughput of dual channel RDRAM Rambus chipsets such as the i840.

Immodestly named "Grand Champion" (that's a trademark too) it also boasts about a number of HA features, such as error correction and the ability to autodetect a failed DIMM. Grand Champion can accommodate 32GB of RAM (PC1600).

Intel to integrate USB, wireless into P4 chipsets

By Tony Smith

March 1, 2001
The Register

And wireless 802.11 support will follow around a year later, he pledged.

Intel's roadmap highlights the release during Q1 2002 of a version of its Brookdale chipset, which will debut early this summer, designed to support DDR SDRAM. Certainly, there's nothing to suggest Brookdale will offer native USB 2.0 support, so we suspect that it will come in with the successor to today's RDRAM-based P4 chipset, the 850.

Intel to support new lower-cost Rambus DRAM due next year

By Jack Robertson

February 28, 2001
EBN

The four-memory-bank chip can cut the Direct RDRAM cost by 20% to come close to parity with SDRAM in full production, said Jon Kang, senior vice president for memory product planning and applications engineering at Samsung Electronics Corp. Samsung expects to sample the four-bank RDRAM version later this year, and be ready to ramp up production as soon as the new Intel chipset is available.

Intel to ease into DDR memory in 2001

By Mark Hachman

February 28, 2001
TechWeb News

In an interview at the Intel Developer Forum, Peter MacWilliams, an Intel fellow and director of platform architecture, confirmed previous statements that Brookdale, the company's Pentium 4 chipset, will be released in the second half of 2001.

Intel's Future Mobile MPUs May Add Communications

By Mark Hachman

February 28, 2001
TechWeb News

The new chip architecture, which does not have a formal name, will likely be closely tied to the mobile communications standards used around the world, said Donald MacDonald, director of marketing for Intel's mobile products group, Santa Clara, Calif.

Via Plans to Sell $500 Mln of Shares for Acquisition

By Brett Cole

March 1, 2001
Bloomberg.com

Via President Chen Wen-chi said the company hopes to sell between $300 million and $500 million of American depositary receipts by June 30. Chen said the company hasn't yet appointed a bank to manage the share sale and he wouldn't name the company Via may buy.

The Register Files

Do not feed, poke or disturb the Itanic user

By Andrew Orlowski

February 28, 2001
The Register

"I can't ask that one!" said Meta Group moderator Phil Dawson at one stage, "that's too controversial!", so confirming the exquisite control-freakery of the occasion.

P4 sold out in retail last December - Intel

By Tony Smith

February 28, 2001
The Register

Despite the downturn, Intel OEMs were able to sell all the Pentium 4 machines they pumped into the US retail channel in December, so the company's architecture marketing chief, Anand Chandrasekher, tells us.

Of course, since the P4 was only launched at the rear end of November 2000, we're not entirely sure how many P4 boxes made into retail during the following month, but whatever the figure, they were all sold.

Intel thumbs its nose at economy's downturn

By Michael Kanellos

February 27, 2001
C/Net

"You never save your way out of a recession," Barrett told the audience at the Intel Developer Forum here. "The slowdowns are going to end, and you need to prepare for the upswing...the build-out of the Internet, the build-out of this digital world is still in its infancy."

Intel will slash capital spending, analyst asserts

By Bloomberg News

February 26, 2001
C/Net

"We are hearing out of Intel at the highest levels of the company that they have decided to cut back on that $7.5 billion capital-spending plan," Jonathan Joseph said in a voice mail to clients and reporters. "They just haven't decided when to announce it and when to implement it."

Intel gears up to deflect mounting criticism

By Ken Popovich

February 23, 2001
eWEEK

The tone of this year's conference, in San Jose, Calif., is expected to be more subdued than last spring's session, when executives touted three new chips set for release in 2000. Ultimately, only one chip, the Pentium 4, made it to market. Another, code-named Timna, was scrapped, and the third, Itanium, has yet to be released.

Intel: We're sticking with Rambus

By John G. Spooner

February 27, 2001
C/Net

In a panel discussion Tuesday at the Intel Developer Forum in San Jose, Calif., the chip giant announced that it plans to stick with its stated strategy for pairing Rambus DRAM, or RDRAM, with its high-end products such as Pentium 4.

Although Intel plans to keep the often-criticized RDRAM technology at the top of its product lineup for PCs, it will look to a pair of memory alternatives to help reduce the price of Pentium 4-based PCs and reach its goal of driving that chip into the mainstream PC market.

'Submarine patents' could torpedo Rambus

By Jack Robertson

February 23, 2001
EBN

The release of internal company documents by a San Jose U.S. District Court magistrate earlier this month has raised the issue of whether Rambus used so-called "submarine" tactics to secure rights to the contested DRAM technology. Such claims are commonly used by opponents to support their charges of antitrust violations, according to attorneys polled recently by EBN.

Intel quitely lobbies for 400MHz DDR SDRAM

By Jack Robertson

February 26, 2001
EBN

Sources said Intel, Santa Clara, Calif., is calling on the industry to develop the higher-speed chips, which would be approximately 66% faster than emerging PC266 DDR SDRAM, to match memory clock speeds to the company's 400MHz IA-32 quad-pumped processor bus. Intel is hoping prototypes of the 1.8V chips could be available as early as next year, sources said.

Samsung receives Intel funding for ramping Rambus DRAM output

February 27, 2001
Semiconductor Business News

Details about Intel's investment were not released. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip giant is funding Samsung's capacity expansion to help boost availability of DRAMs based a wideband architecture from Rambus Inc. RDRAMs are primarily used by Intel's Pentium 4 processors in computer systems.

Via Technologies uses rebate to spur DDR demand

By Faith Hung

February 26, 2001
EBN

Via, a leader of a DDR group that includes Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Micron Technology Inc., is bundling DDR chipsets and 128 MB DDR SDRAM modules, said William Lee, a spokesman of Taipei-based VIA.

Intel to use Itanium name with all 64-bit MPUs

By Jack Robertson

February 23, 2001
EBN

Although the Itanium moniker has become associated with the architecture's initial two-year delay, Intel said it is planning to retain the Itanium family name for all of its 64-bit chips. The 0.13-micron 64-bit server chip, code-named Madison, will also carry some variant of the Itanium name.

Intel probably needs EUV by 2004 but won't have tools until 2005

By Mark LaPedus

February 27, 2001
Semiconductor Business News

But when will Intel install and put EUV lithography into production? Not soon enough, said Peter J. Silverman, director of lithography capital equipment at Intel.

"When will we need EUV?" he asked during his presentation at the SPIE Microlithography Conference here today (Feb. 27). "I believe in 2004, but we don't expect to have an EUV system until 2005."

The Register Files

Itanic locked Inattic for IDF

By Andrew Orlowski

February 23, 2001
The Register

We were surprised to read reports yesterday that IDF would be a kind of coming-out party for IA-64. A month ago Intel told us there was nothing special planned for Itanium at this coming IDF, and a glance at the schedule reveals as much. Although the agenda looks like a Whistler gala, with over a dozen technical sessions devoted to WinXP, there's a drought of talks on IA-64 itself. The only one we could find directly relevant, was this one, by HP staff talking about porting PA-RISC apps to Itanic.

New McKinley IO goodies leave Itanic stranded

By Andrew Orlowski

February 27, 2001
The Register

CEO Craig Barrett showed McKinley live today for the first time, running on prototype 64bit Whistler, Linux IA-64 and HP-UX. There weren't many technical details we didn't already know: the Level3 cache has been integrated onto the die, there are 3x bandwidth improvements over Mercedium, claimed Intel executive VP Paul Otellini.

Intel ships second anti-Transmeta Mobile PIII

By Tony Smith

February 27, 2001
The Register

The new part is aimed at what Intel calls the 'mini-notebook' segment, which essentially covers machines weighing less than 3lbs, but aren't small enough to be classed as sub-notebooks. The 500MHz Ultra-low Voltage PIII Intel launched late January is aimed at that part of market. Both essentially target markets Transmeta is hoping to with with its Crusoe TM5x00 family.

Project Jackson - why SMT is the joker in the the chip pack

By Andrew Orlowski

February 25, 2001
The Register

Intel cash to smooth Rambus production, take-up

By Tony Smith

February 28, 2001
The Register

It's certainly no coincidence that memory maker Kingston today said it intends to spend $15 million, boosting RDRAM RIMM production specifically to match the demand for P4-based systems.

And so is Samsung, which today announced it plans to co-operate with Intel to increase its RDRAM output. For 'co-operate' read 'paid for by'. It didn't say how much money will change hands, but it's clear from Samsung's statement that Intel is, at least in part, funding the Korean giant's RDRAM push.

Micron preps Copperhead Intel DDR chipset

By Drew Cullen

February 26, 2001
The Register

Copperhead is positioned for use with entry-level servers. The chipset supports up to 8GB of DDR 200 or 266 SDRAM memory and features a PCI-X bus and a a 64-bit PCI 2.2 bus.

Double DDR technology gets shown off

By Lucy Sherriff

February 27, 2001
The Register

The company says that any application that suffers from a memory bottleneck would benefit from its technology, from network servers to consumer wireless applications.

P4 Northwood has its picture taken

By Robert Blincoe

February 27, 2001
The Register

Northwood will be rolled out from Q3 2001 onward at the entry-level alongside the P4, initially at 2GHz the rising beyond that sometime in Q4. Come Q2 2002, the P4 (chipset: 850) will be phased out of this market by Northwood.