Intel to unveil two major chip
lines
S.J. Developer Forum to hear details of new generation
of Pentiums
BY THERESE POLETTI
Mercury News
Chip behemoth Intel Corp. will unveil the details of two major new
microprocessors this week at its twice-annual developer conference,
including the first of a new generation of Pentium chips that will
outpace the best chips from its rival, Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
The two companies have been engaged in a fierce war over microprocessor speeds, leapfrogging
each other with faster and faster chips -- Intel with its Pentium III line and AMD with its Athlon
family. Both now have chips running at clock speeds in excess of one gigahertz, or 1,000 megahertz.
On Tuesday, after a keynote address from Intel Chief Executive Craig Barrett, the company will
disclose new technical details of its first Pentium 4 chip to an estimated 5,000 attendees at its 7th Intel
Developer Forum at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center.
The Pentium 4 was previously known by its code name Willamette. The Santa Clara-based company
said it will initially aim the new chip, due out in late 2000, at PCs for business power users and other
early adopters who want the latest and fastest technology for multimedia applications or computer
games.
The first Pentium 4 will run at a minimum of 1.4 gigahertz, Intel said.
Beyond sheer speed, however, the new chip offers an entirely new architecture, designed with the
Internet and some of its applications in mind.
``This is the micro-architecture that will drive Intel's performance leadership for the next few years,''
said Doug Carmean, principal architect of the Pentium 4.
Intel hasn't designed a new architecture for its 32-bit chips, the mainstream processors that are the
``brains'' of most personal computers, since 1995.
Intel said its new micro-architecture, called NetBurst, was designed to improve performance of
applications such as streaming audio and video over the Internet, imaging and 3-D graphics.
The chip also has several features that enable it to handle data more quickly, such as a
400-megahertz system bus, compared with the 133-megahertz bus on the Pentium III.
The bus is the main communications pathway of a chip, controlling how the processor communicates
with other parts of the system. As the processor speed increases, a slow bus can act as a bottleneck
between the processor and the rest of the system.
Sunnyvale-based AMD's Athlon chip has had a significant advantage over the Pentium III because its
bus is twice as fast.
Now Intel is retaking the lead. ``This is twice as fast as the Athlon bus, and it's three times faster than
the Pentium III bus,'' said Linley Gwennap, principal analyst at the Linley Group in Mountain View.
``They put this big engine in there, and they put this big bus in there to keep it fed.''
Intel also will demonstrate some pilot systems running its other new chip architecture, a 64-bit design
targeted at the workstation and high-end servers. The first versions of that chip, called the Itanium,
will be available in volume next year.
On Wednesday, the world's largest semiconductor maker will introduce a new generation of the
StrongArm processor, a chip that is known for its low power consumption and is used in devices like
set-top boxes. Intel purchased this chip technology from Digital Equipment Corp. but has not yet
really marketed the chip to the emerging area of handheld devices and appliances.
``I think this chip will have a lot of applications,'' said Gwennap. ``Everyone is looking for
`high-performance, low-power' for digital cameras, cell phones, MP3 players, and all these devices
are just multiplying like rabbits.''
Gwennap said the new StrongArm chip, which Intel will name on Wednesday, will enable the
company to enter the booming market for Internet-enabled devices, such as third-generation cell
phones. |
