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x86 Weekly News Collected By Robert R. Collins |
Week of December 21, 1998 |
Older News |
December 23, 1998 | ||
Intel
will challenge AMD with new chips, lower prices
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Intel Corp.'s introduction on Jan. 4 of
its most powerful Celeron microprocessors will be coupled
with a series of aggressive price cuts designed to
undercut rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s current
pricing for its K6 line, sources familiar with Intel's
plans said. Intel declined to comment on specific product or pricing plans, but spokesman Robert Manetta said the Santa Clara-based chip maker would be introducing the faster Celeron processors early in January. Manetta also indicated Intel would be targeting the low end of the chip market in a more aggressive fashion in 1999. |
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Katmai is Pentium IIIBy Mike Magee December 23, 1998 |
Intel will use the Superbowl game in
mid-January to introduce its Katmai chip to a waiting
universe and will call it Pentium III, it has emerged. One year ago, The Register said that Katmai would be called the Pentium III. US magazine Advertising Age leaked the details earlier this week. |
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AMD K6-3 to achieve volume in FebruaryBy Mike Magee December 23, 1998 |
First details of the performance of the
AMD K6-3 (Sharptooth) have emerged with a review
appearing on the World Wide Web. A review on Sharky Extreme claimed that the 400MHz part, which ships in February of 1998, only needed a BIOS update to run successfully on K6-2 motherboards. The review added that the product now shines as a chip for the gaming market. |
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Cyrix clarifies its roadmap to the heightsBy Mike Magee December 22, 1998 |
NatSemi subsidiary Cyrix has clarified
its roadmap for next year, in the buildup to multimedia
extensions it has. A source told The Register today that it will release MIIs in 333, 350 and 366MHz flavours throughout Q1 of 1999. It will also release a 400MHz flavour in Q2. MXi samples will come in Q1 and be produced in Q2, according to National Semiconductor. |
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December 22, 1998 | ||
Acer to support Rise's MPU with notebook PC chip setBy Will Wade December 21, 1998 |
Microprocessor newcomer Rise Technology
Co. here today announced its first partnership agreement,
saying its mP6 processors will be supported by chip sets
from Acer Laboratories Inc. in Taiwan. The company has
previously announced that it has deals to place its mP6
processor chips in PCs, but will not reveal those firms
until sometime early next year. Acer's Aladdin V Mobile chip set is designed for notebook PCs, and emphasizes low power consumption. Rise's processors have also been designed to target the portable PC market. "Both the mP6 and the Aladdin V Mobile are designed to keep power consumption to an absolute minimum while providing enough computing power to run multimedia and other high-performance applications," noted David Lin, chairman and CEO of Rise. |
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Intel Will Release New Four-Way XeonBy Marcia Savage December 21, 1998 |
Intel will make a big push into the
server market when it launches its new 450-MHz Pentium II
Xeon processor for four-way servers, which sources said
is scheduled for Jan. 5. The new high-end Xeon chip follows the October release of Intel's 450-MHz Xeon for dual-processor workstations. Intel, based in Santa Clara, Calif., will offer the new chip with either 1 megabyte or 2 MBs of cache, sources said. Previous processors in the Xeon line contained either 512 kilobytes or 1 MB of cache. |
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December 21, 1998 | ||
Rise to announce Socket 370 breakthroughBy Mike Magee December 21, 1998 |
Chip clone company Rise is expected to
announce this week that it has signed a deal with a third
party to provide fab facilities which will allow it make
Socket 370 parts next year. Rise, which has its HQ in Santa Clara, is one of around 150 or so "fabless" companies and the deal will represent something of a breakthrough for the firm, which currently employs 100 people. Although no one from the company will yet say who the partner is, Rise believes that the growth of the Basic PC notebook and desktop markets will allow it to compete with larger players. |
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AMD says it will take on Intel on notebook frontBy Mike Magee December 21, 1998 |
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), which
manufactures clone x.86 processors, said today it will
take on chip mammoth Intel in the notebook market next
year. Rana Mainee, European market research analyst, responding to the introduction of a whole clutch of Celeron PII/mobiles next year -- as previously revealed here -- said Intel's pricetechniques did not frighten him. cutting |
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Digital attacks, Compaq adopts Intel's MercedBy Anthony Cataldo and Rick Boyd-Merritt December 17, 1998 |
Digital Equipment Corp.'s Alpha microprocessor division is preparing to come out with its answer to Intel's Merced at a time when Alpha's fate is clouded in the wake of Compaq Computer Corp.'s announced plan to acquire Digital. The company is expected to detail significant new Alpha products on Monday, possibly including plans to take the processor to speeds of 1 GHz. However, Compaq publicly sketched a road map last week which shows no role for RISC processors in its future high-end systems. The Houston PC maker separately disclosed that it is already working with a new design group at Intel Corp. to build Merced-based servers. | |
Chip cavalcade coming from IntelBy Michael Kanellos December 18, 1998 |
January will be a big month for Intel as
the chip giant plans to roll out a new high-end version
of its Xeon processor, a Pentium II processor with
integrated memory for mobile computers, and a series of
Celeron chips for notebooks and desktops. The new chips, which will also prompt price cuts on existing Intel processors, will help Intel shore up gaps in its product lineup as well as open up new markets. The 450-MHz version of Xeon with 2MB of secondary cache memory, for instance, will come out during the week of January 4, according to sources. This chip, which will be incorporated into servers running four processors, was originally due in the fall of 1998, but was delayed for further testing. This in turn delayed many server rollouts. |
See Today's Related Stories |
Intel To Debut 400-MHz CeleronBy Mark Harrington December 18, 1998 |
Intel has accelerated the introduction
of the 400-MHz Celeron by several months and plans to
release the chip in January, sources said. The 400-MHz Celeron will join the previously planned launch of the 366-MHz Celeron, sources said. Both CPUs are expected to be formally introduced on Jan. 4. Intel declined to comment. |
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Intel poo-poos 100MHz Front Side Bus CeleronBy Mike Magee December 21, 1998 |
Intel said today that reports it was
producing 366MHz and 400MHz Celerons with Front Side Bus
speeds of 100MHz were spurious. As reported here last week, that doesn't mean that Intel will not produce 100MHz FSB Celerons. It's just that Intel has not made its mind up yet. |
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Intel opens door to chip secretsBy Kurt Oeler December 19, 1998 |
Intel again struck an agreement to
license technology critical to making components that are
compatible with its market-leading Pentium II processor
architecture. The deal between the chipmaking giant and graphics chipmaker S3 is in fact a 10-year cross-licensing agreement--a technology swap--that also gives Intel the right to buy shares of S3. But following a similar pact with Via Technologies two weeks ago, the upshot is that Intel-based parts will now be made by more and more different companies. |
See More Intel / S3 News |
S3-Intel deal heralds more consolidationBy Michael Kanellos December 18, 1998 |
With S3 teaming up with Intel, life just
got tougher for other graphics chip companies. The long-predicted consolidation in the crowded graphics field took another big step forward yesterday when S3 said it will make "integrated " chipsets in 1999 that combine 3D capabilities with some of the input-output functions required by Intel's Pentium II processors. There are more than 40 graphics chip companies now, "and I certainly would hope that graphics companies recognize that there are way too many of them," said Peter Glaskowsky, graphics analyst at MicroDesign Resources. |
See More Intel / S3 News |
Acer attempting to sell semi divisionDecember 21, 1998 |
Sources close to Acer have indicated
that more troubles are ahead for the Taiwanese company,
following a profit warning the company made two weeks
ago. The 44 per cent profit target for 1998 conceals further problems at Acer, the source said. Earlier this year, Stan Shih, CEO of the company, said that he was taking over the running of Acer Semicon (which includes the former TI investment), while two presidents of Acer America lost their jobs because that division failed to make money. |
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Micron PC133 chips may help rivals to IntelBy Jack Robertson December 17, 1998 |
Micron Technology Inc. has introduced
samples of several 133-MHz 64-Mbit SDRAM that could boost
the performance of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. processors
that compete with Intel Corp., a half-billion dollar
investor in Micron, sources said. Micron's 133-MHz SDRAM family works with the high-speed bus used by the new AMD processors, which is faster than the 100-MHz bus used by Intel processors which rely on the present workhorse PC100 64-Mbit memory chips. Even Micron's name for the new devices, PC133 SDRAMs, sets them apart from PC100 devices used in PCs based on Intel processors. |
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Rambus gives licensees incentive for successBy Jennifer Baljko December 18, 1998 |
DRAM suppliers aggressively developing
and marketing Direct Rambus devices will have a stake in
the success of the architecture-literally. Rambus Inc. has put together a warrants-based incentive program that could give a boost to financially troubled licensing partners. Rambus' board in October authorized the incentive program for 400,000 shares of common stock, according to the company's annual report, which the Mountain View, Calif., company filed Dec. 9 with the Securities and Exchange Commission. |
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Intel Legal News | ||
Judge delays start of Intel antitrust trialDecember 18, 1998 |
An administrative judge has delayed for
six weeks a hearing on antitrust allegations that
government has brought against computer chip-maker Intel
Corp. James P. Timony, an administrative law judge for the Federal Trade Commission, rescheduled the hearing for Feb. 23 after both agency officials and Intel said they need more time to review evidence and prepare their cases. |
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Alabama-based Intergraph at center of Intel's troublesDecember 18, 1998 |
With a $1 billion computer business at
stake, Intergraph Corp. chairman Jim Meadlock needed some
assurances from Andy Grove, chief executive of Intel
Corp. Meeting at a trade show, Meadlock told Grove he was worried about Intel being the sole supplier of computer chips for Intergraph's high-powered workstations. A disruption could kill Meadlock's company. |
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Intel, Microsoft face differing antitrust pathsBy Joel Brinkley December 18, 1998 |
Lawyers for Intel Corp. should be well
acquainted with antitrust inquiries by the Federal Trade
Commission -- a process different from the one followed
in Justice Department antitrust cases -- because the
commission has been investigating the microprocessor
giant off and on throughout this decade. In 1991, the agency began an antitrust investigation of Intel based on complaints that the company was illegally trying to squeeze smaller chip makers out of business. |
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Microsoft uses Intel exec's notes against himDecember 18, 1998 |
Trying to counter claims it wielded
undue influence, Microsoft sought to portray an Intel
executive today as a disgruntled employee reprimanded for
shoddy work. Microsoft tried to assail Steven McGeady's credibility through notes the Intel vice president scribbled to himself during a mid-1995 meeting with his supervisor, Frank Gill. |
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Microsoft may have deterred Intel from new Net technologyBy Steve Lohr and John Markoff December 18, 1998 |
Microsoft Corp. and Intel Corp. are so
intertwined, so seemingly dependent on each other for
their success, that they are often referred to as a
single entity -- ``Wintel'' -- in recognition of the
degree to which Microsoft's Windows operating system and
Intel's microprocessors dominate the technology of
personal computing. But the government is investigating whether Microsoft has used its market muscle to force even Intel, its only real peer, to shelve new technology efforts that conflicted with Microsoft's ambitions. |
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Intel patent lawsuit dismissedDecember 18, 1998 |
Silicon Storage Technology Inc. said a
patent infringement lawsuit filed against it by
semiconductor maker Intel Corp. was dismissed by a U.S.
District Court in Delaware, on the basis of jurisdiction. Silicon Storage Technology said U.S. District Court Judge McKelvie said in a 21-page ruling that Intel failed to establish a basis for the Delaware court to take up the dispute, which involved two companies in Silicon Valley. |
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More Intel / S3 News | ||
S3, Intel swap patentsBy Craig Matsumoto December 18, 1998 |
Intel Corp. and S3 Inc. have announced a
10-year patent cross-licensing agreement, a move that
clears the path for S3 to integrate core logic into its
graphics-controller products. "Virtually every desktop graphics manufacturer has a program in place to do an integrated chip set-graphics solution," said Dean McCarron, a principal of the research firm Mercury Research (Scottsdale, Ariz.). "If you're interested in the bottom of the mid-range [PC market] and below, it makes sense." |
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Today's Related Stories | ||
Intel to grow chip familyBy John G. Spooner December 18, 1998 |
Intel Corp. (INTC) is preparing to
release a flurry of new CPUs next month in a move that
could further muddy the waters for low-cost notebook and
desktop processors. The introductions will expand the Santa Clara, Calif., company's mobile and desktop processor lines to four families--Pentium Processor with MMX Technology, Celeron, Pentium II and Pentium II Enhanced--many of which have overlapping functions and processor speeds. For example, Intel will offer four mobile processors with clock speeds of 266MHz and 300MHz. |