"they would lose their hair, have bad sex, and get fat. And the world believed it."
Intel's Heralded 3-D Graphics Chip Finally Arrives
Craig Menefee, Newsbytes
02/12/98
Newsbytes News Network
(c) Copyright 1998 Newsbytes News Network, LLC. All rights reserved.
SANTA CLARA, CALIFORNIA, U.S.A., 1998 FEB 12 (NB). After a month or so of leaks, casual mentions to journalists, and other not-quite-announcements, Intel Corp. [NASDAQ:INTC] has announced the Intel740 three-dimensional (3-D) graphics chip, its first entry into the graphics market. Many industry pundits predicted gloomy days ahead for competing 3-D chip vendors, but some analysts considered the excitement more Intel marketing hype than real.
Intel describes the I-740 as optimized for Pentium-II PCs, using a "HyperPipelined 3-D architecture" with additional two-dimensional (2-D) acceleration "to heighten the visual experience for PC users."
The description basically fits an accelerated graphics port (AGP) compliant graphics chip. But it will have the considerable weight of Intel engineering and marketing behind it.
Avtar Saini, vice president and general manager of Intel's Platform Components Division, said the chip will bring "unique graphics quality and performance" to mainstream users. However, like most 3-D graphics chips, the I-740 will be marketed in the performance, not the mainstream, category. It will go mostly for such heavy multimedia uses as games and digital versatile disk ( DVD ) video and movies.
Jon Peddie, chief of the respected technology market watch firm Jon Peddie Associates of Tiburon, California, says much of the media excitement over Intel's new graphics chip can be tracked right to Intel's legendary marketing department.
"The business about being optimized for P-II is pure Intel marketing at work," Peddie told Newsbytes. "It's an AGP part just like all the others are AGP parts. But that's what Intel will do -- they are sensing the market now to see how they can play it."
He continued: "Remember what Intel did when they introduced MMX --the entire world was taught if they didn't get MMX they would lose their hair, have bad sex, and get fat. And the world believed it. I'd almost rather come up against Intel's engineering department than their marketing department, and Intel has the best engineers in the world."
On the "trouble ahead" front, analysts and pundits have waxed glum about the prospects for troubled S3 Inc. in particular. S3 must now add Intel to a list of problems that includes a down-tick stockholder class action suit and a stock price now running at less than a third of its $18 September high.
Newcomer Nvida Corp., a venture-financed company that announced in January it had shipped a million of its Riva 128 3-D accelerator chips after only four months on the market, also has been mentioned as a possible victim of Intel's new chip. Nvida's shipment levels represent a 21 percent market share of the six million unit "performance" segment during that four-month period, according to Peddie -- quite a marketing achievement in its own right.
But Peddie believes neither S3, which markets to the mainstream and hasn't even introduced a 3-D chip yet, nor Nvida, which has made a splash in the same market pool that Intel is now diving into, will feel any real heat.
In 1997, he explained, the mainstream or business category had a larger market share than 3-D performance chips aimed at multimedia applications, but the relative share is changing. When final figures are in, said Peddie, he expects 1976's 14 million 3-D controller chip market size will have grown to 41 million in 1997, to 71 million this year and, by 1999, when 3-D performance chips have finished taking a majority of the market, will stand at around 94 million chips.
Of these, 70-80 percent will be made by 3-D accelerator "experts," said Peddie, meaning companies such as Nvidia, 3Dfx, Rendition, and ATI. He said these firms are smaller and more nimble, and will make chips that are less expensive, faster, and somewhat better in features than anything Intel can make.
Then there's NEC, which can match Intel dollar-for-dollar in marketing and has its own quarter-micron fabrication plant. NEC is expected to join Intel in the 3-D graphics marketing pool sometime during the next month or two.
"Don't get me wrong," Peddie added. "We expect Intel will do very well, maybe taking as much as 20-30 percent of the market. The smaller firms will definitely know Intel is there and they may not like it. But they'll be splitting up the other 70-80 percent of a 94 million chip market. You do the arithmetic. That share would be, what, five times the total number they sold in 1996?"
"It's not a bad scenario for anybody," Peddie forecast. "Intel will spend more on marketing than anybody, but it's an exploding market and nobody in it is going to hurt very much over the next few years."
The Intel740 will be available in production quantities this month to third-party graphics vendors and OEMs (original equipment manufacturers). It will be priced at $34.75 in 10,000 unit quantities.
Reported by Newsbytes News Network: newsbytes.com .
Press & Reader Contact: Caroline De Bie, Intel, 916-356-8956, E-mail caroline_de_bie@ccm.fm.intel.com; or Diana Wilson, Intel, 916-356-8064, E-mail diana_t_wilson@ccm.fm.intel.com /INTEL740/PHOTO |
