x86 Headline NewsFor the week of May 04, 1998 |
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Week of May 04, 1998 |
Older News |
May 8, 1998 | ||
Intel aims to head off the FTCBy Tom Quinlan May 8, 1998 |
Intel Corp., convinced that federal
regulators are nearing an action against it, is
considering softening some of its most aggressive
business practices in hopes of staving off legal trouble,
sources close to the company said. As part of a broader probe of the Santa Clara chip giant, the Federal Trade Commission has focused in recent months on Intel's efforts to retrieve or withhold engineering information regarding its chips from companies with which it has disputes. Losing this information could devastate a computer manufacturer, because there is no practical alternative to Intel microprocessors in many parts of the desktop computing market. |
Related Storiess |
Silicon Integrated Systems Moves Ahead With Chipset PlansBy: Sandy Chen May 7, 1998 |
Despite being threatened with suits from
Intel Corp., Taiwan's Silicon Integrated Systems (SIS)
Corp. is moving ahead by sampling its first chipsets to
support Intel Corp.'s low- and high-end Pentium II
processors. The chipsets from SIS are not pin-compatible with Intel's comparable core-logic devices. Still, SIS is bringing out what analysts believed are low-priced, competitive offerings. |
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Watch Out 440BX... Apollo Pro Is HereMay 7, 1998 |
Despite the dangers of angering the
behemoth known as Intel, it certainly didn't take VIA
Technologies very long to jump on the Pentium II chipset
bandwagon. And its new Apollo Pro AGPset is the first
available alternative Slot-1 core logic chipset. The Apollo Pro is a two-chip set supporting both desktop and mobile designs. Complimenting VIA's new Apollo Pro VT82C691 north bridge core logic chip is a new south bridge, the VT82C596, which also upgrades the Apollo MVP3 Socket-7 chipset. |
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Katmai prototypes out this summerBy Michael Kanellos May 7, 1998 |
Software developers will receive
prototypes of "Katmai" processors along with
related software tools this summer, as part of Intel's
effort to get the ball rolling on its next generation of
chip technology. Intel outlined the Katmai roadmap to approximately 50 application developers at the Computer Game Developers Conference this week in Long Beach, California. The chipmaker said that this summer they can expect to receive demonstration systems running the chips, as well as a host of tools to speed the writing of code. |
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K6: The SequelBy Jonathan Blackwood May 7, 1998 |
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announced
that it will roll out the next generation of its K6
processor at the E3 trade show on May 28. The processor,
which was previously called K6-3D, will debut as the
AMD-K6-2. The AMD-K6-2 will be the first processor on the market to incorporate the 21 new instructions for 3D operations; these instructions were jointly developed by AMD and its rivals in the not-Intel club, National Semiconductor's Cyrix Division and Integrated Device Technology's (IDT) Centaur Group. Dubbed 3DNow, the new 3D shorthand will be supported in Microsoft's upcoming DirectX 6.0 technology that is set to launch in tandem with Windows NT 5.0. |
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Hitachi to support Merced effortBy C/Net Staff Writer May 7, 1998 |
Hitachi will open a laboratory for
developing software applications based on Intel's
forthcoming 64-bit Merced processor, according to a
report in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, another sign that the
Japanese vendor is making a transition from mainframes to
high-end PC servers. In July, one of the world's largest computer manufacturers will begin assisting software vendors whose products will run on servers and workstations based on Intel's first 64-bit chip. The facility is intended to ease Hitachi's entry into the corporate "enterprise" server market, where it has not had a strong presence outside of Japan. |
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Grove: No Band-aid for Asia woesBy Reuters May 8, 1998 |
Intel chairman and chief executive
officer Andrew Grove said today that the effect of the
Asian financial crisis on the computer chip giant will
not disappear overnight. "My general expectation is that this is not an instantaneous problem--it's not something like a bad dream that you wake up from," Grove told a media briefing. |
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May 7, 1998 | ||
Intel finishes beta of Katmai instructionsBy Anthony Cataldo May 7, 1998 |
Intel Corp. has completed the beta version of its instruction set for the Katmai processor and is now working with more than 50 software-game developers to optimize their code for the some 70 Single Instruction, Multiple Data (SIMD) floating-point instructions, the company said. At the same time, both Intel and Microsoft are providing low-level compiler tools for the new instruction set. The tools are considered a critical ingredient that was missing from Intel's previous MMX development program. | |
AMD Seeks To Ease Cash CrunchBy: Ismini Scouras May 6, 1998 |
Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Sunnyvale, Calif. announced Wednesday that it began a public offering of $450 million of 6% convertible subordinated notes due 2005 convertible into the companys common stock. | |
Advanced Micro Devices Commences $450 Million OfferingBy Staff Writer May 6, 1998 |
Advanced Micro Devices said Wednesday that it has begun a $450 million public offering of 6 percent convertible subordinate notes, which are due in 2005 and convertible into AMD common stock. The Sunnyvale, Calif., chip maker announced its plans to make the offering last week to raise money for capital expenditures, working capital, and general corporate purposes. | |
Why Andy Grove gets ITBy Peter Coffee May 6, 1998 |
Bill Gates doesn't get it. Vice
President Al Gore doesn't get it. But Andy Grove does get
it, and we can learn by watching where Grove spends his
time. Yesterday, these men could have been sent by central casting to play their parts as symbols of different viewpoints. Microsoft Chairman Gates went to New York to rally support for Windows 98; he believes that IT follows the money. Gore was in Washington; he and others in government believe that IT's future needs to be ruled by laws, not by the freely chosen actions of buyers and sellers. |
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Intel opens $198 mln plant in ShanghaBy Bill Savadove May 7, 1998 Inter@ctive Week |
Intel Corp on Thursday officially opened
a $198 million flash memory chip plant in Shanghai in
what company officials said was a vote of confidence in
China despite the Asian financial crisis. The factory in Shanghai's premier Pudong development zone would assemble and test flash memory products -- an industry term for high-speed memory chips used widely in personal computers, mobile telephones and digital cameras. |
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May 6, 1998 | ||
Packard Bell considering switch to Cyrix chipsScripps-McClatchy Western Service May 5, 1998 |
In an effort to trim the cost of making
PCs, Packard Bell NEC may begin using Cyrix
microprocessors in some of its computers, sources say. In switching to Cyrix, the Sacramento-based computer maker would join Compaq Computer and IBM among the U.S. computer makers that have branched out beyond traditional supplier Intel Corp., whose microprocessors are used in nearly 90 percent of the world's personal computers. |
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Intel builds China research centerBy Reuters May 5, 1998 |
Intel chairman Andrew Grove today
announced plans to invest $50 million over the next five
years in the building of an information technology
research center in China. The Beijing-based Intel Research Center will do original and applied research on Internet-related topics and technology with relevance to Chinese-language applications, Grove told a news conference in the Chinese capital. |
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Everything you always wanted to know about predication and speculation, but were afraid to askBy Alexander Wolfe May 5, 1998 |
Wintel Watch recently talked with
Wen-Mei Hwu, professor of electrical and computer
engineering, and chairman of the computer-engineering
program at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign. Hwu was named Intel Associate Professor
at the University in 1992. He is also director of the
school's Impact advanced-compiler project. Hwu is an
expert in predication and speculation, two techniques at
the heart of Intel's IA-64 architecture, and we wanted to
get his take on the software forces affecting Merced. Wintel Watch: How important will software be to the success of Intel's IA-64 architecture, which exploits speculative and predicative execution? [Predication removes unnecessary branches from an application program, while speculation masks memory latency by executing load instructions as soon as possible.] 45 |
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AMD commences $450 million offeringBy Staff Writer May 5, 1998 |
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. here today said it has begun a $450 million public offering of 6% convertible subordinate notes, which are due in 2005 and convertible into AMD common stock. The chip maker announced its plans to make the offering last week to raise money for capital expenditures, working capital and general corporate puruposes. | |
May 5, 1998 | ||
Intel redraws Celeron road mapBy Lisa DiCarlo May 4, 1998 |
Intel Corp. (INTC), citing yield
improvements, has modified its 1998 Celeron road map. The Santa Clara, Calif., company will introduce a 300MHz cacheless Celeron next month and a 333MHz version with 128KB of integrated L2 cache in the fourth quarter, according to Intel spokeswoman Luanne Darbonne. |
See Today's Related Stories |
Digital pulls out the stops to win approval of semi dealBy Lisa DiCarlo May 4, 1998 |
Digital Equipment Corp. is doing all it
can to ensure that the Federal Trade Commission approves
the sale of its semiconductor business to Intel Corp. The Maynard, Mass., company has a memo of understanding with Advanced Micro Devices Inc., which would build the Alpha for Digital and, potentially, other OEMs. A deal may close as early as this quarter, according to sources. |
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Can Intel Duplicate Success In Other Markets?By Andrew MacLellan, Mark Hachman, and Mark May 5, 1998 |
With the possible exception of
Microsoft, no high-tech company is more feared in the
marketplace than Intel. Its dominance in microprocessors
is unquestioned, and its expansion into new markets has
triggered waves of panic among nervous competitors. So formidable has Intel's (company profile) reputation become that it has attracted the scrutiny of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which is investigating whether the chip manufacturer has used its clout to violate U.S. antitrust laws. And in some sectors, there is no doubt Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel has driven its rivals into the ground. |
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Sub-$1,000 Battle Looming Over 300-MHz PCsBy Roger C. Lanctot May 4, 1998 |
With Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) set to launch its K6-2, 300-MHz processors with 3DNow!, 3-D enhancements on May 28, the battle lines are being drawn over the next microprocessor bound to move through the sub-$1,000 price barrier. Although it is not yet clear where K6-2-based PCs will be priced at retail, a June 7, K6 price reduction from AMD (to coincide with reductions at Intel) will likely bring older-technology 300-MHz PCs to the retail market below the $1,000 price point. | |
Digital Unix Not Dead, Better on MercedBy Joe Wilcox May 04, 1998 |
Tuesday, chief executives from Digital Equipment Corp., Compaq Computer Corp. and Oracle Corp. will gather in New York to dispel rumors that Digital Unix is dead. But because of the quiet period surrounding the Compaq-Digital merger, which is slated to be completed in June, neither chief executive will be able to fully detail plans for the operating system. However, Jesse Lipcon, vice president of Digital's Unix and OpenVMS Systems Business Unit, recently spoke with CRN Section Editor Joe Wilcox about the future of Digital Unix in relation to the Digital's Alpha chip and Intel Corp.'s Merced processor. | |
Today's Related Stories | ||
New Intel Celeron chip plannedBy Michael Kanellos May 4, 1998 |
Intel has decided to speed up the
development plan on its Celeron processors and will
release two more versions of the chip rather than one
this year. During the third quarter, Intel will release a 300-MHz Celeron processor that does not include the extra "secondary cache" high-speed memory chip. Currently, the Celeron runs at 266 MHz. |
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Intel advances Celeron's shipping scheduleBy James Niccolai May 5, 1998 |
Intel has revised the delivery schedule
for its Celeron Pentium II processor, and now plans to
release two new versions of the chip before the year is
out, an Intel official said Monday. Celeron is Intel's processor aimed at the low-end PC market and was rolled out in April in a 266-MHz version. Intel in the third quarter will release a version of the processor that runs at 300 MHz. That chip will be followed in the fourth quarter with a 333-MHz version, which will have 128KB of Level 2 cache memory built into the same piece of silicon as the processor, Intel spokesman Seth Walker said. |
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May 4, 1998 | ||
Moody's lowers AMD debt ratingBy Will Wade May 1, 1998 |
Moody's Investors Services in New York
today issued a downgrade on all debt ratings of Advanced
Micro Devices Inc. because of concerns that AMD will not
be able to successfully push its K6 microprocessor into
the marketplace. The research firm noted that Sunnyvale-based AMD will face increasing competition in the low-end of the MPU segment with both Intel Corp. and National Semiconductor Corp.'s Cyrix division aggressively targeting processors at sub-$1,000 PC systems. |
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Clock
strikes 13 for Celeron
|
The Celeron processor which Intel
released in mid-April is giving surprising performance
results, an Intel representative has confirmed. The processor, which runs at an official speed of 266MHz, and comes without second level cache, is capable of being "overclocked" and in some benchmarks has shown speeds which put it in second or third place behind the high performance Intel PII 350MHz and 400MHz processors. |
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Huge US
pension fund calls for AMD's Sanders to be deposed
|
A US pension fund has called for the
head of AMD to be removed from his position as a
shareholders meeting looms on the 30th of this month. The California Public Employees Retirement System - the worlds biggest private pension fund - has posted a letter to AMD shareholders on the Web suggesting they vote Sanders off the board and appoint a third party chairman. The pension fund has half a million shares in AMD and have a beef against Sanders because its shares have not performed as well as it expected. According to the group, Sanders position as chairman and CEO has a bad effect on the companys business because of a lack of objectivity. It is calling for an independent to be appointed because she or he would represent the interests of the shareholders better. |
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AMD's
Sanders fights off pensioners
|
AMD's CEO Jerry Sanders III has fought
off attempts by shareholders to topple him from the
company he founded. See related story this week. At a meeting in New York yesterday, AMD shareholders ruled out proposals by a large Californian pension fund that he should be replaced by an independent chairman. Officials at the fund had complained that shares had not shown the results it expected. |
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AMD renames K6, may repriceBy Michael Kanellos May 1, 1998 |
Advanced Micro Devices has renamed the
K6 3D chip just before its launch and given some
indications that it may try to price its lead processor
against Pentium II chips for the first time. The K6 3D is now the K6-2, chief executive officer Jerry Sanders announced yesterday at meeting for AMD shareholders. |
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Centaur sports AMD's bus, 3-D in WinChip CPUBy Rick Boyd-Merritt May 1, 1998 |
Centaur Technology has started to sample
a new version of its WinChip C6 Pentium-clone processor.
The chip uses the floating-point instruction-set
enhancements for 3-D graphics as well as the 100-MHz
Super 7 processor bus, which is defined by and licensed
from Advanced Micro Devices, and geared to compete with
Intel's MMX instruction-set extensions and 100-MHz
processor bus of the Pentium II. Centaur plans to officially announce in late May its new version of the C6 as the WinChip 2. The chip should hit volume production by early July, just a few weeks after AMD's own processor using the new instructions and 100-MHz bus is slated to hit volume production. The 300-MHz AMD K6-2 will officially roll out on May 28. |
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Merced software is taking shapeBy Alexander Wolfe May 4, 1998 |
Intel Corp. is seeding the development of a new generation of 64-bit compilers and operating systems. Surprisingly, Java won't play a key role when the Merced MPU hits the streets in 1999. Rather, the stalwart C++ programming language will lead the Merced software parade, with compilers currently in the works at Intel, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft. Two lesser- known software companies Metaware Inc. (Santa Cruz, Calif.) and Edinburgh Portable Compilers Ltd. (Edinburgh, Scotland) are also developing heavy-duty, Merced-capable compilers. | Related Stories |
HP scores
three wins for IA-64 version of HP-UX
|
Hewlett-Packard's IA-64 implementation of Unix, HP-UX, has received a shot in the arm with the news that it is to be licensed by Hitachi, NEC and Stratus Computer, who will all implement HP-UX on their own IA-64 systems. Although it's still early days for Unix on Intel's next generation of processor, the licence announcements clearly put HP in the lead, and in the happy position of being a potential supplier of industry standard operating system software. | |
Prospect
of .gov action against Intel likely
|
The prospect of the US government taking
anti-trust action against Intel has edged closer after
officials from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) took
depositions from company officials. Reports are circulating that the FTC is set to attack Intel on two fronts, with the possibility of the action happening sooner rather than later. |
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Wintel under siege: Intel may face its own legal scrutiny from the FTCBy Lisa Dicarlo May 4, 1998 |
While federal and state governments
appear ready to rain down on Microsoft Corp., legal storm
clouds are also gathering over Intel Corp., Microsoft's
partner in the Wintel Duopoly. Despite the Federal Trade Commission's recent approvals of Intel's purchase of Chips and Technologies Inc. and of Digital Equipment Corp.'s semiconductor business, the FTC may still be preparing to launch a broad antitrust suit against the world's leading microprocessor maker. |
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Can Intel Have It All?By Andrew MacLellan, Mark Hachman and Mark LaPedus May 1, 1998 |
With the possible exception of
Microsoft, no high-tech company is more feared in the
marketplace than Intel. Its dominance in microprocessors
is unquestioned, and its expansion into new markets has
triggered waves of panic among nervous competitors. So formidable has Intel Corp.s reputation become that it has attracted the scrutiny of the Federal Trade Commission, which is investigating whether the chip manufacturer has used its clout to violate U.S. antitrust laws. And in some sectors, there is no doubt that Intel has driven its rivals into the ground. |
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Intergraph adds to line despite suitBy Michael Kanellos May 1, 1998 |
Although locked in a bitter legal battle
with Intel, workstation vendor Intergraph will add to its
product lines Monday by announcing a new workstation and
a PC based around Pentium II processors. In the workstation arena, Intergraph will introduce the TDZ 2000, a 400-MHz Pentium II workstation that comes with a choice of four different graphics subsystems. The base configuration comes with 32MB of memory, a 4.3GB hard drive, and the Matrox 2D Millennium II AGP graphics accelerator for $3,250. |
Related Stories |
Intel revs X86 auto pc effortBy Terry Costlow May 1, 1998 |
Intel has signed a slew of agreements designed to foster its X86 as the de facto architecture for the emerging automotive PC. At the Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference this week, Intel will disclose board and system pacts with RadiSys, Mitac, Kontron and Comroad. Also, Dearborn Group, Intelliworxx, Lernout & Hauspie, Magneti Marelli, On-Guard, Qualcomm, Research in Motion (RIM), SiRF Technology, Smart Route and Sumitomo Electric Systems have agreed to develop software or services for X86-based in-auto PCs. | |
America seeing Pentium II fakesBy Michael Kanellos May 1, 1998 |
Although the existence of counterfeit
300-MHz Pentium II chips was believed to be largely
confined to Europe, the majority of occurrences so far
have turned up in the United States. A software program created by the German publication c't to detect whether a computer contains one of the dubious chips has turned up more problems domestically than anywhere else. In the first three days of testing, c't has confirmed 72 instances of counterfeit--or "remarked"--300-MHz Pentium IIs worldwide. Of those, 42 were found in the United States. |
Related Stories
Acid Test |
FTC to
appoint guardian for Alpha
|
The Federal Trading Commission (FTC) is making an extraordinary condition on Digital's sale of its semiconductor operations to Intel - a trustee will have to be appointed to supervise the licensing of Alpha to other manufacturers, and if the FTC doesn't agree with decisions that are made, it will step in and look after the chip's future itself. This condition is included in the consent decree permitting the Intel-Digital deal to go ahead, and is an unprecedented piece of government intervention in the free market, in order to preserve it. |