x86 Headline NewsFor the week of July 27, 1998 |
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x86 Weekly News Collected By Robert R. Collins |
Week of July 27, 1998 |
Older News |
July 31, 1998 | ||
National Semiconductor to furlough entire workforceBy Elinor Mills July 31, 1998 |
National Semiconductor will furlough all
of its workers in the coming months to help cut costs
during a "tight" financial period, a company
spokesman said Thursday. All of the company's 13,000 employees worldwide have been asked to take 10 days off, as vacation or unpaid leave, between Sept. 1 and Dec. 1, said spokesman Bill Callahan. "It's kind of a bad market right now. The economy is still suffering the after-effects of the Asian situation," or financial crisis, he said. This furlough plan "lets the company get expenses out of the way, get vacations off the books during the second quarter. And it improves the bottom line." |
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Intel developing Merced softwareBy Kurt Oeler July 30, 1998 |
Although its first 64-bit processor has
been delayed, Intel has been diligently assisting
hardware and software vendors to optimize their products
for its future chip architecture. The effort seeks to advance the Xeon and especially the Merced chip as a platform for high-end corporate, or "enterprise," computing. Now in its third year, Intel's Server Software Initiative taps specially chosen companies for two- to three-month projects that culminate in two weeks' of laboratory testing at one of four Intel sites. The chipmaker picks up the cost of participating in the program, whose price tag is undisclosed. |
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Motorola ready to make AMD chipsBy Michael Kanellos July 30, 1998 |
The alliance between Motorola and
Advanced Micro Devices appears to be getting stronger by
the day. AMD now says that Motorola is getting ready to manufacture its upcoming K7 processors, while the Intel rival will likely become a stand-in manufacturer for the diversified communications giant. |
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Cyrix
accuses IBM of undercutting its prices
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National-Cyrix said today that IBM
Microelectronics was undercutting it on price, even
though the chip both companies are selling is the same. Thomas Rothhaupt, marketing manager of Cyrix Europe, said: "IBM has always tried to sell below our price. Our agreement lasts until the end of 1999." IBM had even recruited the same distributors as National-Cyrix, said Rothhaupt, but there was little that his company could do to stop that. |
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National Semiconductor Will Idle WorkforceBy Andrew Maclellan July 30, 1998 |
Responding to weak earnings and an
unsettled outlook for the remainder of the year, Silicon
Valley companies are coming up with various ways to trim
costs without triggering further layoffs. In an effort not to add to the semiconductor industry's mounting body count, National Semiconductor Corp., is asking its employees to take a voluntary furlough this fall in that company's latest cost cutting move. National, Santa Clara, Calif., laid off 1,400 staff earlier this year, but found that its workforce reduction had not gone deep enough. |
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Stock Soars On News That All Future Intel Chipsets Will Use RambusBy Jennifer L. Baljko July 30, 1998 |
Shortly after laying out its marketing
objectives and financial goals to investors attending the
BancAmerica Robertson Stephens conference here,
Rambus Incs stock price climbed $9, or about 17%,
from its opening price of $52.13 to $62.13 in
mid-day trading Thursday. The companys president and chief executive Geoff Tate told investors that all future Intel memory chipsets will use Rambus, and that three OEMs are shipping Direct Rambus DRAM, with a fourth one expected to do so next week. Tate declined to name the latest company. |
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July 30, 1998 | ||
Bullish Sanders predicts AMD's return to profit in fourth quarterBy James Niccolai July 30, 1998 |
Jerry Sanders, chairman and CEO of
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), made the bullish prediction
here Wednesday that his company will return to
profitability in the fourth quarter of fiscal 1998,
helped by strong sales of AMD's K6-2 desktop processor. Along with the rest of the semiconductor industry, AMD has been feeling the heat from the ongoing financial turmoil in Asia and fierce price competition in the desktop PC market which has driven down prices for microprocessors and other chips. Earlier this month, AMD reported a much larger than expected loss of $64.6 million for its second financial quarter of fiscal 1998 -- the company's fourth consecutive quarter in the red. |
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Profits, 450-MHz chips to come from AMDBy Michael Kanellos July 29, 1998 |
Advanced Micro Devices will release a
450-MHz version of the K6-2 and the first K6-3 chips
toward the first part of 1999, and will turn a profit by
this year's end, according to CEO Jerry Sanders. The catch is that a return to black will require AMD to nearly double its market share in the next five months--an ambitious goal to say the least. But AMD's technical and marketing plans stem from market realities, Sanders told an audience of investors and analysts at the BancAmerica Robertson Stephens in San Francisco today. |
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Fastest AMD chip in notebookBy Stephanie Miles July 29, 1998 |
Next month, Micro Express will introduce
a new notebook featuring an AMD K6-2 processor and a
large display for under $2,300. The new notebook will come with a 300-MHz K6-2 (a Pentium II-class chip) and a 13.1-inch active-matrix display for $2,299, according to sources close to the Irvine, California, PC vendor. Similarly configured notebooks with a Pentium II sell for at least several hundred dollars more. |
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New Microsoft-Intel Spec Buries ISA, CD-ROMBy Andy Patrizio July 28, 1998 |
Microsoft and Intel have finalized the
PC 99 specification -- a baseline definition for design
recommendations for PCs that will begin shipping next
year. PC 99 spells the end of two familiar technologies -- CD-ROM and the Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) bus. The spec is co-authored by Microsoft and Intel, but has been reviewed by more than 200 independent hardware vendors. |
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July 29, 1998 | ||
AMD
completes K7 plan
|
A reliable source close to chip company
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) said today that it has
completed testing of its future K7 product. The processor, which will be produced in its Dresden, Germany fabrication plant, is on target for early release in 1999, the source said. And other processors will be introduced by AMD in the build up to the K7, which uses Slot A architecture, licensed from Digital. |
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Chip market buzzingJuly 28, 1998 |
As it's done for a year and half, Advanced Micro Devices matched Intel price drops by lowering processors to undercut its rival by 25 percent. Meanwhile, Motorola introduced speedier PowerPCs for the Macintosh, while Intel indicated it will move aggressively on the intelligent device market with its low-cost StrongARM line. | |
AMD keeps its distanceBy Michael Kanellos July 28, 1998 |
Just has it has done for over a year and
half, Advanced Micro Devices has adjusted its processor
prices to undercut Intel's by 25 percent. Although the reductions siphon profits, maintaining pace with Intel has paid off for AMD in terms of visibility. Since the beginning of the year, the K6 has been appearing in a wide range of new PCs from top-tier vendors such as Compaq and Hewlett-Packard, thereby gaining market share on Intel in consumer computers. Research firm PC Data recently reported that AMD held more than 50 percent of the market for sub-$1,000 systems in retail for June. |
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Intel dives into new chip lineBy Michael Kanellos July 28, 1998 |
After months of speculation, Intel is
moving full speed toward selling and developing
processors for consumer-oriented electronic devices based
on the StrongARM chip, an architecture that's completely
different from its long-established PC chip standard. Even
as it launches plans to more aggressively market the
current line of StrongARM |
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Intel in
talks with SCO
|
Rumours are mounting that Intel is set
to take over the Santa Cruz Organization, although the
chip giant maintains it is "agnostic" about
operating systems that run on its chips. Both Intel and SCO today refused to comment on the speculation, but a senior source at the Santa-Clara based organisation said that if did happen, it would be a matter of months, rather than days. The logic behind the talks is that Intel does not want its platforms to only use the Microsoft NT operating system. It has promoted SCO as the integrator of different Unix platforms. |
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Intel Rises On UpgradeBy Gabrielle Jonas July 28, 1998 |
Shares of Intel gained early Tuesday on
a morning upgrade by Gruntal & Co., that raised the
shares to buy from hold. The analyst upping the stock was Mona Eraiba, a senior vice president at the New York City-based Gruntal & Co. Eraiba said in her research spot report that Intel's prices cuts of Monday convinced her "the company is escalating its drive to stimulate market demand for PCs, as well as reclaiming its market share at the low-end." |
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Intel
pan-Europe franchises up for grabs
|
Karma UK has emerged as a hot favourite
to win a highly-prized Intel franchise, according to
informed channel sources. But Intel may make room for the company, a CHS subsidiary and Europe's biggest computer components distributor, by sacking one of its four existing UK distributors. Franchises for broadband distribution of Intel processors are up for grabs, according to channel insiders. |
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Intel To Introduce Cheaper, Faster ChipsBy Mitch Wagner July 29, 1998 |
Intel said it plans next month to
introduce a 450-MHz Pentium II chip for desktop
computers, overtaking the existing top-of-the-line
400-MHz PII microprocessor. Although the new chip is
expected to appear in business computers, Intel timed its
introduction so the chips can get into consumer PCs for
the back-to-school and holiday shopping seasons, sources
said. The new chips are part of the Santa Clara, Calif., company's ( company profile) strategy for carrying the Intel line forward through 1999. Intel said it also plans this month to ship more powerful Celeron chips for low-cost PCs and new high-end server and workstation processors in the Xeon line. |
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July 28, 1998 | ||
StrongARM will extend Intel's segmentation strategyBy Andy Santoni July 27, 1998 |
Intel plans to expand its segmentation
strategy beyond PCs with the StrongARM microprocessor
architecture acquired from Digital. "The StrongARM architecture is a complementary extension to our existing microprocessor product lines," said Ron Smith, vice president and general manager at Intel's Computing Enhancement Group. Intel will focus the StrongARM product line into markets that require low power and high performance. Key segments include PC companions, smart mobile telephones, and mobile point-of-sale devices, as well as digital TV set-top products and Web-enabled desktop screen phones. The StrongARM product line will also target embedded control segments such as soft modem banks, high-performance storage and RAID, adapter cards, and switches and routers. |
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Cyrix
claims Intel forced to cut prices
|
The marketing director of Cyrix Europe
said today that chip giant Intel was in a position where
it was being forced to sell Celeron processors at or
below cost. Intel yesterday cut prices of its entry level Celeron 266MHz part to $80 when bought in units of one thousand. Thomas Rotthaupt, at Cyrix-NatSemi Germany, said: "We consider this to be a reaction to the market situation. Celeron is not selling very well. We have products at a better price and a better speed than Intel and we will take action against its pricing when we see fit." |
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Intel cuts Celeron price by more than expectedBy Mark Hachman July 27, 1998 |
Intel Corp.'s regularly scheduled price
cuts contained an unexpected surprise, as tags on its
Celeron microprocessors fell by larger amounts than
expected. Effective on Sunday (July 26), the price of a 266-MHz "Covington" Celeron without Level 2 cache is $86, which is believed to be Intel's lowest published price for a microprocessor. A 300-MHz version of the same Celeron chip will cost OEMs $112. Intel's previous road maps predicted that those chips in August would cost approximately $106 and $159, respectively. These prices, as well as all of Intel's other recent price changes, are based on quantities of 1,000 units. |
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July 27, 1998 | ||
IDT-Centaur
makes loss, cuts 400 jobs
|
Semiconductor manufacturer IDT, which
owns the Centaur WinChip family, has released details of
its first quarter and has posted a loss of $50 million on
turnover of $134.5 million. Over four hundred jobs will
go over the next six months. The company blamed operating costs and sales and marketing programmes associated with the development of the WinChip x.86 family, and said it was taking steps to adjust its business models. |
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IDT Posts Disappointing First Quarter ResultsBy Amber Howle July 24, 1998 |
Integrated Device Technology (IDT)
posted what president and CEO Len Perham called in a
prepared statement disappointing first quarter results. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based semiconductor company announced Wednesday a net loss of $50 million, or 61 cents per share, for its first quarter ended June 28. Earnings were 2 cents per share in both the immediately prior quarter and year-ago quarter. |
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Intel to reveal details on StrongARM chipBy Rick Boyd-Merritt and Peter Clarke July 24, 1998 |
At next month's Hot Chips conference
that will convene here the paper on the StrongARM 1500
microprocessor will mark a significant new direction for
Intel Corp. Intel will for the first time discuss a
specific product it apparently backs. Prashant P. Gandhi,
a senior engineer in the StrongARM and Bridges division
of Intel's Computer Enhancement Group (Chandler, Ariz.),
will detail the StrongARM 1500 as a part aimed at
everything from set-top boxes and digital TVs to modem
banks and video games. The chip combines a 32-bit StrongARM 110 core with a DSP-like, dual-issue media processor in a single 60 mm2 die that draws less than 2.5 W at 2 V and runs at 300 MHz. Designers say the chip, which incorporates 3.3 million transistors and is built in a 0.28-micron process, can run MPEG-2 MP@ML video decoding and a software modem in parallel. |
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Pentium
Pro on death row
|
Intel said today that it has formally
decided to kill the Pentium Pro in favour of the Pentium
II platform. It will honour existing orders and give its
OEM customers six months to make new orders. See earlier
story and Pentium Pro to meet early doom. The processor will finally disappear in 1999. It is suffering a cruel and unnatural type of punishment, and will linger on death row for a little while yet, as Intel makes sure that vendors existing SMP systems are supported. There is no chance of a successful appeal against death sentence. |
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Chip Makers Shocked By Copper CostsBy Stephan Ohr July 24, 1998 |
Lucent is among the growing list of
semiconductor makers considering how rapidly to use
copper-interconnect materials on high-speed digital
integrated circuits. While Lucent will inevitably turn to
copper, it doesn't see the technology as cost-effective
for the next generation of circuits, said Emelio
Martinez, who heads interconnect research at Lucent's
Bell Laboratories. Martinez' disclosure came on the heels of dazzling introductions at the annual Semicon exhibition here in San Francisco, where expensive new equipment for copper took center stage. The price tags caught many by surprise. |
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Bugs, Debugs and DebutsBy Andreas Stiller Volume 14, 1998 |
Bugs rained on Intels Xeon parade, Acer
enters the processor business, IBM is considering to
license Alpha and Gary Boone is entitled to more
microprocessor-inventor-laurels. A few days before the official introduction of Intels new Xeon processor a rumor kept going around: Xeon has a huge bug. Intel confirmed this rumor eventually, but blamed the server chipset NX. Later they admitted however, that the crash causing bug did indeed affect the processor (Xeon-Erratum No. 37: DBSY). It supposedly comes into play when using the NX chipset in a four-processor configuration - and even then only in 'very configuration dependent environments'. |
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Intel and Microsoft push the 3-D software envelopeBy Alexander Wolfe July 24, 1998 |
Foreseeing Hollywood-class computer
graphics as the potential killer app that could
reenergize the flagging mainstream PC market, Intel Corp.
and Microsoft Corp. used the recent Siggraph '98 to
disclose separate, ambitious research efforts dedicated
to pushing the envelope in 3-D animation and rendering
software. The goal: to make 3-D graphics on systems with Intel CPUs and Windows NT a competitive threat to the Unix workstations that now dominate the high-end market. |
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Chips
chopped as Intel prices drop
|
Intel has chosen today, Sunday, to
release details of its price cuts on its range of
processors and has slashed the price of its entry level
266MHz Celeron processor to $80/1000, while releasing
details of its 450MHz Pentium II processor, available in
a few days, which is now expected to cost $630/1000. The
300MHz Celeron drops in price from $130/1000 to
$104/1000. Rival AMD can be expected to cut its pricing in the next day or so to maintain its 25 per cent differential below Intel pricing, while NatSemi-Cyrix is also likely to follow suit in the next week, according to sources. On Friday, Intel announced it would kill off the Pentium Pro. |
See Today's Related Stories |
Today's Related Stories | ||
Intel to cut Pentium II pricesBy Michael Kanellos July 24, 1998 |
A new round of price cuts from Intel is
expected this Sunday, while a 450-MHz chip--the fastest
Pentium II yet--should hit the streets next month. The reductions will be the latest in this year's flurry of pricing activity by the industry's leading chipmaker. The July round would be the fourth desktop processor price cut in 1998, and at least two more are scheduled for September and October. In past years Intel has cut prices four times in the whole year. |