x86 Headline News
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Intel
Secrets Home Page x86 Headline News Dr. Dobb's
Journal Intel
Inside -- Productivity
Enhancements Intel
Secrets, Bugs and Intel Data
Sheets and |
|
x86 Weekly News Collected By Robert R. Collins |
Week of December 7, 1998 |
Older News |
December 11, 1998 | ||
Cyrix claims Intel dumping Slot One CeleronsBy Mike Magee December 10, 1998 |
Clone manufacturer Cyrix claimed today
that Intel was engaged in a cynical exercise to dump Slot
One Celerons in the run-up to the introduction of its 370
pin platform next month. Alain Tiquet, European strategic sales manager at NatSemi-Cyrix, said: "The [Slot One] Celeron has not been successful and Intel is having to dump parts. It doesn't have any strategy at the lower end. Intel has to find a way to dump this product before it's really too late." |
|
Intel slashes Slot One Celeron prices againBy Mike Magee December 11, 1998 |
Intel cut the cost of Slot One
Celerons last Sunday to $97 for the 333MHz part
with 128K cache and $80 for the 300A in a bid to move the
market fast to the 370-pin part it will announce in
January. Before last weekend, these parts cost $159 and $138 respectively, when bought in large quantities. But the chip giant is still denying that it is dumping Celerons onto the market, despite yesterdays claims from a senior Cyrix Europe executive. |
|
Low-cost market using Intel lessBy Jim Davis and Stephanie Miles December 10, 1998 |
Intel continues to be conspicuously
absent from some of the latest low-cost computers hitting
the market in the holiday season. As Compaq Computer prepares new low-cost consumer PCs and NEC rolls out a sub-$1,000 notebook, new research from International Data Corporation shows that Intel continues to be challenged at the low end of the PC market. Compaq is getting ready to introduce five new consumer PCs in January, with three of the computers expected to be priced between $699 and $999, according to sources. Of all the new systems being readied, only the priciest--a system estimated by industry sources to cost $2,100--will offer an Intel chip. |
|
Rise, Taylor and Byrne team up x.86 wiseBy Mike Magee December 10, 1998 |
Roy Taylor and John Byrne, joint
managing directors of VML UK, have signed up x.86 clone
manufacturer Rise as their client. The x.86 cloner, emanating from Taiwan, makes cheap chips which work perfectly with Windows 95 and other operating systems belonging to Microsoft. Taylor refused to comment on details of the deal, but confirmed that he would be the representative of the Rise x.86 clones in January 1999. |
|
First fisticuffs fly in Intel-Intergraph actionBy Mike Magee December 10, 1998 |
The first real sign of action in an
anti-trust suit against Intel took place in the US
yesterday when Intergraph lawyers crossed swords with
their counterparts at the chip giant. According to US reports, Intel lawyers asked a circuit court judge in Washington to overturn a decision by a district court judge Edwin Nelson that it supply Intergraph with technical information. |
See Related Articles |
National Semiconductor posts another lossBy Bloomberg News and Reuters December 10, 1998 |
National Semiconductor, a rival of top
computer-chip maker Intel, reported a
smaller-than-expected fiscal second-quarter loss, helped
by sales of its microprocessors for low-cost PCs. National said the loss amounted to 57 cents per share and came on sales of $510 million. A year earlier, the company earned $28.9 million, or 17 cents per share, on sales of $720 million. The period, the second quarter of the company's fiscal year, ended November 29. |
See Today's Related Stories |
Today's Related News | ||
National Semi posts smaller-than-expected lossBy Larry Dignan December 11, 1998 |
National Semiconductor Corp.'s
second-quarter results were bad, but not that bad. The
company on Thursday reported a quarterly operating loss
of $48.6 million, or 29 cents a share, on revenue of
$510.1 million. So what's so good about that? Wall Street was expecting a loss of 49 cents a share. Including charges related to a manufacturing restructuring the end of a foundry agreement with IBM, National Semi (NSM) lost $94.4 million, or 57 cents a share, for the quarter. |
|
National Semi Posts 2Q LossBy Sergio G. Non December 10, 1998 |
National Semiconductor continued to lose
money in the second quarter. According to results released Thursday afternoon, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip maker lost $48.6 million, or 29 cents a share, excluding one-time expenses. Second quarter sales were $510 million, down from $720 million a year earlier. |
|
National reports big loss but sees improvementsDecember 10, 1998 |
National Semiconductor Corp. here today
reported a net loss of $94.4 million, including one-time
charges, on sales of $510.1 million in the fiscal
quarter, ended Nov. 29. Without the charges related to
the termination of a foundry agreement with IBM Corp. and
restructuring of operations, National's net loss would
have been $48.6 million. The loss was seen as an improvement over the previous quarter when National reported a net loss of $104.8 million on revenues of $469.9 million. The termination of National's Cyrix microprocessor foundry agreement with IBM has help the company increase the use of its wafer fab in South Portland, Maine. |
|
Nationals Halla says co. is on road to profit recovery, despite 2Q lossBy News Staff December 10, 1998 |
Despite suffering an operating loss for
the second time this fiscal year, National Semiconductor
Corp. remains upbeat about its performance. National today reported a net loss of $48.6 million, or 29 cents per share, on revenues of $510.1 million. Including one-time charges associated with the termination of a foundry agreement with IBM Corp., National's total loss for its second fiscal quarter was $94.4 million, or 57 cents per share. |
|
National Semiconductor posts $48.6 million lossBy Rebecca Sykes December 10, 1998 |
National Semiconductor on Thursday
reported a net loss of $48.6 million, or $0.29 cents per
share, on revenues of $51 million for the second quarter
that ended Nov. 29. The results do not include the effect of one-time charges related to manufacturing restructuring and termination of a foundry agreement with IBM, according to a statement from National Semiconductor. |
|
NatSemi makes loss and IBM didn't helpBy Mike Magee December 11, 1998 |
National Semiconductor made a net loss
of $48.6 million on revenues of $510.1 million for Q2 of
its 1999 financial year but said that it was encouraged
by some buoyancy in the market. In the equivalent period last year, it made a net profit of $28.9 million on turnover of $719.9 million. In the period, it had to pay IBM nearly $50 million to terminate its Cyrix foundry agreement, as exclusively revealed here which had a big effect on the results. |
|
December 10, 1998 | ||
Intel sticks with aluminum at 0.18 micronsBy David Lammers December 10, 1998 |
Intel Corp. came to the 44th
International Electron Devices Meeting with a description
of the 0.18-micron process it will take into volume
production next year with its Katmai processor. The delay
per stage was reported to be less than 11 picoseconds at
1.5 V, which Intel claims is the best reported in the
literature to date for a 0.18-micron process. The process
was designed for operating voltages of 1.3 to 1.5 volts.
And instead of using copper, the company is sticking wiht
aluminum wiring, for now. Eschewing copper, Intel chose to stick with aluminum wiring, but adopted a fluorided silicon oxide (SiO2F) material for the inter-level-dielectric. By adding 5.5 percent fluoride to silicon dioxide, the ILD has a k value of 3.55, compared with 4.1 for Intel's previous SiO2-based ILD. |
|
Intel, Intergraph argue over injunctionBy James Niccolai December 10, 1998 |
Intel and Intergraph each presented oral
arguments before a U.S. federal appeals court Wednesday
in Intergraph's patent infringement lawsuit against the
chip maker, spokesmen from both companies said. In a brief hearing before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, lawyers for each side tied together arguments made in briefs and motions submitted to the court since Intergraph was awarded an injunction against Intel by a lower court in April, said Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy. |
|
Intel Readies Three Laptop ChipsBy Andy Patrizio December 9, 1998 |
Intel is taking its multiple CPU
strategy to the laptop market, introducing three
individual chips in an attempt to stratify the market,
just as it did for desktop and server machines. Instead of offering chips for the high end and low end, like it did with the Xeon and Celeron, Intel is aiming its laptop chips down. The Pentium II chip will remain the top end of the mobile-computing product line, and Intel will boost performance to 366 MHz in the first quarter of 1999. Now, top of the line laptops run only as high as 300 MHz. |
|
Intel reaches for new Pentium galaxiesBy Margaret Quan December 9, 1998 |
In a display of good corporate
citizenship that may also reflect a desire to crack the
defense market, Intel Corp. has granted a royalty-free
Pentium license to the U.S. Department of Energy's Sandia
National Laboratories for development of a
radiation-hardened version of the processor for use in
satellites, space vehicles and defense systems. At a
press conference at Intel's Santa Clara headquarters,
Intel president and chief executive officer Craig Barrett
quipped that it is part of Intel's plan for
"intergalactic expansion." Barrett said Intel had three primary motives for granting Sandia a free license to the Pentium: a patriotic allegiance to U.S. interests, a long working relationship with the DOE on similar projects and a desire to move technology forward in the low-volume markets for space, satellite and defense systems. |
|
December 9, 1998 | ||
A chip market is bornBy Brooke Crothers December 9, 1998 |
One of the world's largest makers of
Intel-compatible chips may be close to cutting a deal
with the chip giant, indicating that the Pentium II
chipset market may finally be open for competition. But
the price of admission is high. SiS, which makes Intel-compatible chipsets, is close to signing an agreement with Intel regarding the rights to make Pentium II chipsets, according to sources at the Taiwanese company. The chipset, together with the main Pentium II processor, forms the core of a personal computer. |
|
Intel licenses Pentium design to DOEBy John Spooner December 8, 1998 |
Thanks to a licensing agreement inked by
Intel Corp. today, smart bombs and space shuttles may
soon have "Intel inside." The Santa Clara, Calif., company announced it has licensed its Pentium processor design to the U.S. government for use in space travel and national defense. Under the royalty-free agreement, the Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories, which handles microelectronics research and development, will create Pentium-based processors that are "hardened" to resist the effects of radiation, such as cosmic rays. Radiation can negatively affect the reliability of conventional microprocessors, Intel officials said. |
See Today's Related Stories |
The Socket
Wars
|
Years ago, most "research and
development" spending went into the lab, giving us
everything from light bulbs to integrated circuits to
pacemakers. By focusing on the "Really Big
Questions," R&D often led to incredible, not
just incremental, leaps. Wall Street analysts began evaluating companies by measuring the proportion of corporate revenues devoted to R&D. And politicians enacted corporate tax credits to subsidize R&D. Lionized by the press, R&D became technology's most sacred cow. |
|
Motherboard manufacturers, channel angry at lack of 370-pin partsBy Mike Magee December 7, 1998 |
Sources close to Intel said today that
the company has already started shipping volumes of its
370-pin Celerons at speeds of 333Mhz and 300MHz. And Intel has also started shipping 366MHz 370-pin ships in engineering quantities, the same source said. That follows reports from a number of motherboard manufacturers and distributors that they are having difficulty sourcing silicon. |
|
Today's Related Stories | ||
Intel Donates Pentium DesignDecember 9, 1998 By Aaron Baca |
The firm will turn over the blueprint to Sandia labs, which will develop radiation-hardened chips Intel Corp., which makes billions of dollars a year from its Pentium microprocessors, is giving away the design for the prized money-making computer chip. The company announced Tuesday at its California headquarters that it will donate the design for the original Pentium processor to Sandia National Laboratories for a $64 million, four-year project to develop new chips for the nation's space and defense industries. |
|
Intel licenses Pentium to government for freeBy Mark Hachman December 8, 1998 |
Intel Corp. Tuesday licensed its
classic Pentium microprocessor, free of
charge, to Sandia National Laboratories, which will
develop versions of the Pentium for use in outer space
together with other U.S. government and military
agencies. The new radiation-hardened Pentiums, plus an undisclosed number of supporting core logic chipsets, will be designed by Sandia at its facility in Livermore, Calif. Development costs will be jointly underwritten by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory; the National Reconnaissance Office, which designs the nation's spy satellites; and the Air Force Research Laboratory. |
|
Intel in deal for radiation-proof chipsBy Stephen Shankland December 8, 1998 |
Intel has licensed its Pentium chip
technology to the federal government for free to make a
radiation-proof Pentium chip that will bring greater
processing power to spy satellites and other spacecraft. Intel will provide the Energy Department's Sandia National Laboratories with a royalty-free license to the Pentium chip design, and Sandia personnel will make a new version of the chip that can survive the harsh radiation that afflicts electronic equipment in satellites and other spacecraft. |
|
Intel Will License Pentium Design To DOEBy Reuters December 8, 1998 |
Computer-chip giant Intel said it will
license its Pentium-processor design to the U.S.
Department of Energy in a royalty-free deal for the
development of custom-made, radiation-proof processors
for space and defense purposes. The agreement will save U.S. taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in microprocessor-design costs and provide the government with a nearly tenfold increase in processing power over the highest-performing technology in use today, Intel said. Intel is the largest maker of computer chips, and its microprocessors are the "brains" of most of the world's PCs. |
|
December 8, 1998 | ||
Rambus Loses High-End Designs To Memory RivalBy Peter Brown December 7, 1998 |
IBM and Silicon Graphics last week said
they would design double data rate (DDR) dynamic RAM
chips into their servers and workstations, giving the
technology a big boost in its battle with Rambus DRAM.
Hewlett-Packard is also expected to soon announce
adoption of DDR in high-end systems. The developments indicate that although Intel might be able to anoint direct Rambus (D-RDRAM) as the memory technology of choice for personal computers, it has less control over OEMs of higher-end systems. Manufacturers of DRAMs, meanwhile, are hoping to establish DDR as an alternative memory technology because Rambus requires them to make an extra investment in infrastructure and pay royalties to Rambus. If DDR secures a beachhead in servers and workstations, it could advance into the PC arena as well, some believe. |
|
Intel 'Anoints' VIA Technologies ChipsetsBy Jim DeTar December 7, 1998 |
The licensing agreement struck between
VIA Technologies and Intel Corp last week represents more
than a technology exchange; it provides insight into
Intel's long-term strategy to guide the market in the
direction of its proprietary architectures, industry
watchers said. Under terms of the agreement, Intel granted VIA a so-called Slot 1 license to manufacture and sell certain members of VIA's Apollo Pro family of chipsets designed to operate with Intel's bus micro-architecture used in its Pentium II microprocessors. |
|
December 7, 1998 | ||
US court measure against Intel critic causes freedom of speech outcryBy Dominique Deckmyn December 7, 1998 |
A controversial ruling by a Californian
judge on behalf of Intel is causing an outcry among civil
rights activists. A preliminary injunction issued by the Sacramento County Superior Court is prohibiting Ken Hamidi, a former Intel-employee, from flooding ex-colleagues with e-mail that criticises the company. According to US reports, Ken Hamidi and the Face Intel organisation he founded, accuse the chip maker of discrimination on the basis of age and race - complaints he made in a series of e-mail messages that were sent to about 30,000 Intel employees. |
See
Today's Related Stories See Related Stories |
Intel simplifies transition to new MPUs, chipsetsBy Mark Hachman and Sandy Chen December 4, 1998 |
Intel Corp. has backed up its pledge to
simplify its chipset schedule while speeding new product
introductions through manufacturing improvements,
according to customers. Intel's transition management program is designed to reduce the testing and other qualifications necessary to convert to a new product, especially a chipset. That strategy, as well as a hurried pace of processor introductions, was spelled out in confidential Intel product roadmaps obtained by EBN. |
|
Katmai pricing will mean PII dominoes fallBy Mike Magee December 7, 1998 |
Intel will release its 450MHz and 500MHz
Slot One Katmai chips at the end of February next year
and is pricing them at $528 and $760 respectively. But those prices are set to drop to $445 and $675 respectively on the 11 April 1999. The processors, which use a 100MHz bus and come with 512K of L2 cache, include additional MMX instruction sets designed to appeal to workstation and high end desktops. |
|
Cyrix takes axe to high-end MII pricesBy Mike Magee December 7, 1998 |
Cyrix has slashed prices on its two
high-end MII processors today as a battle-royal begins
between it, AMD and Intel. Prices on its MII-333MHz part drops to $80/1000 from $90/1000, and on its MII-300MHz processor to $59/1000 from $67/1000. Its other two processors, the MII-233 and the MII-266 remain stable at $48 and $55 respectively. |
|
Shift
to On-Chip Cache Pays Off
|
Intel's decision to release its
Mendocino processor without a module in 1Q99 is just the
tip of the iceberg. By the end of next year, we expect
Intel to be shipping moduleless processors into all of
its market segments, and by the end of 2000, virtually
all of its chips will plug into sockets instead of slots.
This trend will be enabled by a shift to on-die level-two
(L2) cache, which makes today's module structure
superfluous. The initial purpose of the Slot 1 module was to hold the external L2 cache chips required by the Klamath and Deschutes CPUs. Mendocino (see MPR 8/24/98, p. 1) doesn't need external cache chips, as it is Intel's first processor to incorporate the entire cache subsystem. To maintain compatibility with these earlier processors, Mendocino is currently shipping in a Slot 1 module, despite the fact that, other than the CPU, the module contains no active components and is |
|
Evolution
of the x86 Architecture
|
For nearly 20 years, derivatives of the
instruction-set architecture Intel created for the 8086
have dominated the world of general-purpose computing.
Thanks to the spectacular success of the IBM PC and the
standard it spawned, the x86 architecture has achieved a
level of success that no one would have dared hope for. For years, the architecture evolved slowly, and often ineptly. The 80186 was incompatible with existing PC software, because Intel didn't fully anticipate the rigors of DOS compatibility. The 286 inflicted on the industry a memory-management scheme that wasted thousands of man-years of programmer effort and held back OS and application technology for years. With the 386 and its paged memory management and 32-bit extensions, the x86 architecture finally achieved a level good enough for its remaining weaknesses--plentiful as they are--to be relatively insignificant. |
|
IBM, AMD acquisition rumours take wing -- againBy Mike Magee December 7, 1998 |
Rumours that IBM and AMD are in
negotiations over a merger have re-surfaced again
following frantic share movements on Wall Street. For some weeks, investors have questioned whether IBM should split its shares which closed on Wall Street last Friday at $164 1/4, up three quarters on the day. Meanwhile, AMD's share price rose by nearly two dollars on Friday on rumours of the acquisition and stood at $31 3/8. Over four million AMD shares were traded that day. |
|
No consensus on future of I/OBy Carmen Nobel December 4, 1998 |
Several weeks after introducing an
initiative to build a fast, switched-fabric I/O
architecture, Intel Corp. (INTC) not only has failed to
get support from several large server makers, but some independent hardware vendors are balking, too. A handful of networking and component makers say they're not ready to fall in step with Intel's NGIO (Next Generation I/O) project because they aren't sure what intellectual property rights they will have to give up and they want to see if a competing architecture emerges. |
|
Rambus rival DDR SDRAM will broaden memory IC optionsBy Andrew MacLellan December 4, 1998 |
Despite Intel Corp.'s well-orchestrated
campaign to guide OEMs toward a single next-generation
memory architecture, a group of component suppliers this
week made it clear that Direct Rambus DRAM won't be the
only debutante at next year's coming-out party. Forging a path parallel to the one blazed by Intel and its architectural partner, Rambus Inc., nearly a dozen DRAM vendors said they will ramp double-data-rate SDRAM into volume production in 1999, giving OEMs a competitive high-bandwidth memory alternative |
|
Intel builds chip to beat the BombBy John Lettice December 7, 1998 |
Intel is to announce the first nuclear
holocaust proof chip tomorrow, according to US reports.
The breakthrough, reported in today's issue of Defence
Week, could ensure the Great Satan's final triumph over
its rivals - albeit at some considerable cost in
collateral damage to chip customers. The new chip has reportedly been developed in conjunction with the US government's Sandia National Labs in New Mexico, and will provide the basis for radiation-hardened computers. |
|
Today's Related Stories | ||
Intel scores in email suitBy Jim Hu December 4, 1998 |
In what could prove to be an influential
ruling, Intel has won a court order to halt mass email
messages email messages to its employees criticizing the
firm. The issue at hand is whether one man's tactic to express his public outrage toward his former employer constitutes an expression of free speech or "spam." Last week, Judge John R. Lewis of the Sacramento County Superior Court issued a preliminary injunction against Ken Hamidi, an embittered former Intel employee, mandating that he stop sending email messages to active Intel employees. |
See Related
Stories Intel gets restraining order against email spammer US court measure against Intel critic causes freedom of speech outcry |