Micron is down a tad but the market should look at the fact that SRAM prices have stabilized and, in some cases, actually headed up a bit while DRAM prices have continued to trend down after a brief pause. The prices in DRAMs is not dropping dramatically like is was last year but is still squeesing industry profits.
Henry, from Centaur, IDT's fully owned subsidiary for the C6, will be presenting at the Microprocessor Forum that is the "BIG" technical conference put on by MicroDesign Resources (MDR). The topic will be "An Enhanced C6-Family Microprocesor".
The conference is due to be one of the most interesting, if not the most interesting ever. One of the main topics will be the HP/Intel IA-64, 64-bit instruction set microprocessor. The upcoming HP/Intel product will be an attempt by two industry leaders to dramtically shift the industry away from the x86 instruction set to a new, more efficient, true RISK architecture. As the x86 architecture has run out of "head room" for further growth as a discreet MPU unit, more efficient, "true" rather than pseudo RISK operating envrionments make brilliant technical sense. The problem is that software rules. With the entrenced base of x86 software, development tools, VARs and support infrastructure behind it and cost points trending downward, the question is is the IA-64 going to be relagated to high-end workstations and servers. A lot depends on how well Microsoft and the other major software vendors (are there any?) support it for mainstream applications and how cost efectively will it be able to compete with x86 if they do. |
