albert - concerning Intel falling Behind -
Maybe this will help them catch up.
monica
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\copyright Ziff Davis/PC Week
March 17, 1997 10:00 AM ET
Intel, Cyrix, AMD extend reach
of desktop chips
By Lisa DiCarlo in Hannover, Germany
Intel Corp., Cyrix Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices
Inc. are enhancing their respective microprocessor
architectures in an effort to yield new capabilities for
desktop PC users.
Intel will release by year's end a high-end AGP
(Accelerated Graphics Port)-based three-dimensional
graphics chip, called 740GT, sources familiar with the
plans said at the CeBIT trade show here last week.
Intel's 740GT will be among the first to support the
Santa Clara, Calif., company's AGP bus, which
improves performance by bypassing the main memory
bus to execute commands. The processor will support
800-by-600-pixel resolution, 64 million colors and
30-frame-per-second video, sources said.
Intel officials said the company will release a range of
graphics processors that exploit its AGP bus, but they
declined to comment on specific products.
Cyrix, meanwhile, showed its next-generation M2
processor, which is due in June, behind closed doors
at CeBIT. In the private demonstration, the Richardson,
Texas, company showed an alpha version of the chip
running at 166MHz. Officials said a higher clock speed
part is due this summer.
In addition to boosting performance of multimedia
applications, the M2 includes instructions that support
software modems to lower costs for OEMs using the
chip.
Cyrix also will add soft-modem support later this year to
its MediaGX processors. Other MediaGX
enhancements on tap for this year include a 75MHz
bus, synchronous dynamic RAM support in the chip set
and USB (Universal Serial Bus), with 3-D support
planned for 1998, said Steve Tobak, Cyrix's vice
president of corporate and channel marketing.
For its part, AMD last week announced plans to
develop chip sets and motherboards to prolong use of
Socket 7. The move is in response to Intel's decision to
use a new cartridge design with its forthcoming
Pentium II processor.
"Socket 7 support is not a problem today, but it will be
in the future," said Jerry Sanders, president of AMD, in
Sunnyvale, Calif. "We will not be held hostage to
someone else's vision of the marketplace."
AMD's first chip set, the 640, is due by midyear. It
features Advanced Configuration and Power Interface
power management, USB, and plug-and-play support.
Future versions will support AGP and the 1394 serial
bus interface.
Separately, AMD plans to incorporate a 100MHz
memory bus in its K6 late this year. |
