Intel aims to break 1-GHz mobile MPU barrier
in 2001
By Mark Hachman
TechWeb News
(10/10/00, 07:12:34 PM EDT)
SAN JOSE -- Intel Corp. plans to break the 1-GHz barrier in the mobile space in
the first half of 2001, the company said Tuesday, while rival Advanced Micro
Devices Inc. disclosed its first multiprocessor implementation.
While the presentations at the Microprocessor Forum here have been geared
towards a technical audience of engineers and system designers,
stock-conscious manufacturers have also disclosed product milestones to attract
additional investment.
"The mobile market isn't what it used to be in the following sense," said Bob
Jackson, principal engineer at Intel's Mobile Products Group in Santa Clara, Calif.
"It's grown enormously, and in the other sense it's segmented as it hasn't done
before."
About 60% of the notebooks shipped this year will be in the "thin and light"
category, which combines high performance and low power, according to Intel.
Santa Clara-based Intel plans to break the 1-GHz barrier with its mobile
microprocessor about a year after it first sampled its desktop processors at 1
GHz, according to company presentation materials provided to Forum attendees.
"The device will not be a "brand-new processor," Jackson said. Executives said
the 1-GHz chip will be a standard Pentium III. The device should be available in the
first half of 2001, aswell as a second device optimized for the lowest-power
segments of the industry.
Two new processors will be introduced in 2002, one for the high end of the market
and the other addressing the thin-and-light, mini-notebook, and sub-notebook
sector.
Jackson said Intel is trying to provide the best performance in each of the
notebook segments, through a single platform design extended across all of those
segments to maximize stability.
Chip rival AMD of Sunnyvale, Calif., also demonstrated two of its Athlon
microprocessors working together in its first multiprocessor implementation.
The demonstration consisted of a computer powered by dual AMD Athlon
processors, the AMD-760MP chip set, and next-generation double data rate (DDR)
memory.
"Today's demonstration brings AMD one step closer to enable our customers to
offer next-generation dual processor workstations and servers powered by AMD
processors," said Rich Heye, vice president and general manager of AMD's Texas
Microprocessor Division, in a statement.
"AMD's dual processor platform is designed to take the extremely successful
AMD Athlon processor into the enterprise markets that require multiprocessing
workstation and server solutions." |
