Intel expected to unveil new networking chip
news.com
By Wylie Wong
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
August 26, 1999, 12:45 p.m. PT
Intel is expected next week to announce a new networking chip aimed at the booming communications market.
Intel's new chip--called the Internet Exchange Processor, or IXP 1200--would serve as the nerve center for routers, switches, and other communications hardware built by companies such as Cisco Systems and Nortel Networks, industry sources said.
The company also will announce a new chip architecture that defines how Intel will design future networking processors and describes how to write software for the chips, the sources said.
The new processor incorporates technology Intel acquired from two recent acquisitions totaling about $2.3 billion. The chip is expected to ship later this year or in early 2000, sources added.
Faced with declining profits from PC chips, Intel this year has set its sights on the more lucrative communications market, now the hottest area of the semiconductor industry as consumers and businesses demand more bandwidth, and Internet traffic grows. It is only the latest of many iterations for the company, which has recently decided to retreat from the hypercompetitive graphics chip market.
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