Unveil Speedier Chips In Swipe At Rival Advanced Micro
By Dean Takahashi, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
10/22/1999
Dow Jones Business News
(Copyright (c) 1999, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)
Intel Corp. on Monday is expected to introduce a battery of new chips that should allow the company to retake the speed crown from rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
People familiar with the matter said Intel, Santa Clara, Calif., will introduce a host of redesigned Pentium III microprocessors, which serve as the calculating engine for personal computers. The new chips, code-named Coppermine, are arriving several weeks later than expected. But they should still have an impact.
For one thing, these people said, the new chips operate at a speed of 733 megahertz, up from the 600 megahertz of Intel's current high-end chips. The new microprocessors also have a much larger data repository, known as secondary memory, or cache.
The combination of the two features will enable Intel, at least temporarily, to leapfrog AMD, the Sunnyvale, Calif., company that had only recently taken bragging rights from its larger rival. AMD's Athlon chip, at 700 megahertz, had boasted a higher clock speed than the Pentium III line as well as other performance-enhancing features.
A wide range of computer makers are expected to introduce computers based on Intel's new chips on Monday. But AMD is expected to counterattack soon; people familiar with the matter said it has already demonstrated models of Athlon running at 800 megahertz and may deliver them by the end of the year.
"Intel and AMD are neck and neck," said Linley Gwennap, an analyst at Cahners Micro Design Resources Inc., also in Sunnyvale.
Intel declined to comment in advance of its announcement. Scott Allen, a spokesman for AMD, would say only that his company will remain competitive with Intel's performance.
While Intel's new chips could help boost sales for PC makers, these companies were disappointed when Intel missed its original release date in September. The delay also was a factor in Intel missing Wall Street estimates for its third-quarter profit.
The new Intel chips are based on a manufacturing process that shrinks their lines of circuitry to 0.18 micron, increasing speed and lowering production cost. Intel had trouble shifting from the older 0.25micron process, but now the company said the 0.18-micron process is working well.
Intel is expected to introduce at least 15 new products Monday, including Pentium III chips for portable computers and faster versions of its high-end Xeon chips used in workstations and server computers. The Xeon chips will come with an accessory set of chips that route data more quickly to other components in a computer and allow workstations and servers to make use of technology from Rambus Inc. that lets memory chips work faster.
In one disappointment for computer makers, Intel isn't expected to launch a comparable chip set to allow PCs to use the faster Rambus memory. That 820-chip set was scheduled to be released Sept. 27, but Intel found a defect that it is still figuring out how to fix. Intel officials said only that the 820 chip set will be introduced later this year.
Copyright (c) 1999 Dow Jones & Company, Inc |
