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Microprocessor
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| Top Stories for April 3, 2001 (details below) | |
| EBN | Rambus-Infineon court battle comes to a head |
| C/Net | I/O Chip furthers AMD's computer overhaul plan |
| EE Times | Rival plans stir rumors of post-PCI bus war |
| C/Net | Intel produces first chips on larger wafers |
| EE Times | National plans monolithic Geode, Trimedia combo |
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Truths...from the rumor mill |
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| The Inquirer | Via pulls Intel's chipset plonka |
| The Inquirer | Asus drops AMD chipset for ALi Magik |
| The Inquirer | Shortage hits DDR modules |
| The Inquirer | Intel delayed on .13u process |
| The Register | Dramurai duel over next-gen RAM winner |
| Microprocessor
Headline News Collected By Robert R. Collins |
Week of April 1, 2001 |
Older News |
| April 3, 2001 | |
Rambus-Infineon court battle comes to a headBy Jack Robertson April 2, 2001 |
It's been March Madness in the DRAM league, starting in Richmond, Va., where the Rambus Synchs have been pitted against the Infineon JEDECs in the opening round of the Final Eight patent tournament. Seven other court contests will be waged on two continents, following the Richmond shootout.
Supply chain spectators have a lot at stake. The winner could set the pace on pricing for workhorse DRAM chips. |
I/O Chip furthers AMD's computer overhaul planBy Stephen Shankland April 2, 2001 |
API NetWorks unveiled a chip Monday that bolsters a technology that Advanced Micro Devices hopes will give its products an edge over rival Intel.
The chip, AP1011, enables the use of HyperTransport, a communication technology co-developed by AMD and API NetWorks, formerly known as Alpha Processor. HyperTransport speeds communication between the CPU and computer components such as network cards, but it faces competition from a similar technology from Intel. |
Rival plans stir rumors of post-PCI bus warBy Jerry Ascierto April 2, 2001 |
Will a third-generation I/O technology now being developed by Intel Corp. spur a bus war in the PC industry? Opinions are divided as Intel quickly but quietly works on a spec it will unveil this fall, even as archrival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and its partners push the competing HyperTransport technology into the marketplace.
At least one major PC OEM, Compaq Computer Corp., confirmed its involvement in the Intel spec's development — and a hunger for I/O harmony. |
Intel produces first chips on larger wafersBy Michael Kanellos April 2, 2001 |
Intel announced Monday it has created its first preproduction chips on 300-millimeter wafers, a coming technology shift that will lead to cheaper processors by 2002.
The shift to 300-millimeter wafers will be one of many major changes for the semiconductor industry over the next two years. The 300-millimeter, or 12-inch, wafers feature a diameter that is 50 percent longer than that on the 200-millimeter wafers used to produce chips today. Increasing the diameter 50 percent leads to a 225 percent increase in the wafer's surface area. |
National plans monolithic Geode, Trimedia comboBy David Lammers April 2, 2001 |
National Semiconductor Corp. and Trimedia Technologies Inc. will ally to produce a single-chip solution for Internet appliances, the companies will announce at the Spring Comdex show starting Monday (April 2) in Chicago.
For the near term, National plans to sell its Geode X86-compatible processors with the standalone Trimedia 1300 media processor from Philips Semiconductors, the progenitor of the Trimedia very long-instruction word (VLIW) processor. |
Truths...from the rumor mill |
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Via pulls Intel's chipset plonkaBy Mike Magee March 31, 2001 |
YEAH ANOTHER VIA analysis, but really it's about Intel, OK?
We noticed that e-Week had a little conversation last week with our old marketing mate Shane Dennison, whose fluent Taiwanese puts our incompetent New Zealand patois completely to shame. The issue is Intel's Pentium 4 microprocessor, and whether Via will seek a licence like others have done so it can produce chipsets for it, or just produce chipsets on the grounds it didn't need a licence. |
Asus drops AMD chipset for ALi MagikBy Pete Sherriff March 31, 2001 |
WHEN WE WERE AT THE Computex tradeshow in Taiwan last year, some nice chap at Abit told us how AMD had said "hey guys, why don't you use Via chipsets instead of ours".
Abit interpreted this as a guarded hint that AMD was not particularly interested in staying in the chipset business as long as there was third party support. And now there is, and we see that Asus has shifted from using the 760 chipset to the Ali Magik A7A266. |
Shortage hits DDR modulesBy Paul Findley March 31, 2001 |
INSIDERS TELL tell The Inquirer that supplies of PC 1600 modules in 256MB are in very short supply.
Buyers of the parts found out that when they were available, they cost around $95 and when they sell out, which happens more often than dealers or integrators would like, they can bubble up to prices close to $170. But Crucial seems to be moving to remedy all of this, according to the most recent update on its Web page, which you can find here. The prices for mem are 256MB of PC2100 for $103, and $60 for 128MB. Thanks, dear readers, for that. |
Intel delayed on .13u processBy Mike Magee March 31, 2001 |
THE BIG CHIPZILLA MONSTER said today it has built processors using 12-inch (300 mm wafers) using a .13 micron process technology. But, using the PR techniques which have stood it in fine stead for years, it turned the story around by saying it was a breakthrough, when actually it is a delay.
The breakthrough, or delay if you look at the release in this different manner, happened or will happen at its Hillsboro, Oregon facility. |
Dramurai duel over next-gen RAM winnerBy Tony Smith April 2, 2001 |
DDR SDRAM will match SDR on price by the end of the year, be way cheaper than Rambus RDRAM and will become the standard for high-performance RAM, all thanks to a faster-than-expected ramp-up in sales, memory maker Hyundai happily announced last week.
The claim follows similarly enthusiastic predictions - this time favouring RDRAM - made by Rambus-backer Samsung at little while back just before it announced a big RDRAM supply deal with Dell. Hyundai's claim was made while announcing big DDR supply deals with Compaq and Hewlett-Packard. |
| April 2, 2001 | |
Via to offer new budget PC processorBy Bloomberg News March 30, 2001 |
Via Technologies, Taiwan's largest chip designer, said that by year-end it will introduce more powerful versions of its computer processors that compete with Intel in PCs selling for $500 and less.
The processor--code named Ezra--will compete with Intel's Celeron chips, the fastest of which currently operate at 800MHz. "Ezra will operate at 1GHz by the fourth quarter and will reach 1.2GHz by the first quarter of next year," Charlton Chen, Via's manager of investor relations, said at an investment conference in Hong Kong. Intel has shifted development efforts to the market for processors used in PCs selling for more than $1,000 to compete with rival Advanced Micro Devices, analysts said. |
Truths...from the rumor mill |
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Intel has secret .13 Pentium III weapon to support DDR
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Intel will not be left stranded in a DDR (double data rate) wilderness and is readying a .13 micron chipset for the last throw of the Pentium III dice which is likely to emerge towards the end of this year.
That is according to sources at Intel's fabrication plant in Ireland. He said that the firm had toyed with the idea of initially restricting the faster, cooler process to the notebook market place. Current thinking is that if the DDR horse looks like it's running well during the course of this year, it would be as well for Intel to put some money on its nose. |
Intel bananas over BaniasBy Tony Smith March 30, 2001 |
Some more details have emerged regarding Intel's new mobile-oriented CPU, now known by its codename,
Banias.
Banias is the chip being developed by the team behind Timna, the integrated system-on-a-chip part the company canned last year. An Chipzilla spokeslizard admitted to NewsFactor the existence of the processor - though the codename was not confirmed - and reiterated previous comments from the company that it's not based on the Pentium 4 core but has been developed from the ground up. |
Intel 1.7GHz P4 to launch mid-April, twiceBy Mike Magee March 31, 2001 |
Intel is to go ahead with the launch of its 1.7GHz Pentium 4 microprocessor and has chosen mid April as the date.
The price for the boxed/retails parts, which will come in two flavours, will be just short of $1,000 for the 256Mb bundle at $980, and around $850. One part, the # BX80528JK170GR comes with 128Mb of Rambus DRAM, while the other part, the BX80528JK170GR2, has 256Mb of the same memory type. |
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