Fred and ALL, Article...Intel stakes a claim in business desktop PCs
December 9, 1997...
InfoWorld Electric via Individual Inc. : Intel will claim even more of the real estate inside the business desktop PC in February with the introduction of the i740 graphics accelerator, and some observers fear that Intel's move will allow it to dictate standards for graphics hardware and software.
If Intel's acquisition of Chips and Technologies is approved, the company will also add mainstream mobile graphics chips to its portfolio.
The i740, developed under the code name Auburn, is a "very solid performer," not a high-performance accelerator for applications such as animation, said Geoff Ballew, an industry analyst at Dataquest, in San Jose, Calif.
"Don't expect it to break any records," Ballew said.
In fact its performance aims the i740 at the heart of the enterprise market. Ballew said Intel could serve this kind of mainstream application with millions of the chips in 1998, and might be able to deliver tens of millions of i740s.
That would make Intel a major force in graphics chips, Ballew said. The firm's impact might be blunted if the company falters in supporting the chip with device drivers, for example, but the i740 will nonetheless find itself on millions of desktops.
Mainstream desktop systems in 1998 will also feature Intel's Pentium II processor, and these two chips will communicate via the Intel-developed Accelerated Graphics Port, noted Martin Marshall, an industry analyst at Zona Research, in Redwood City, Calif. This gives Intel total control of the graphics subsystem.
"Very interesting things can happen when you own both ends of the wire, " Marshall said.
For example, a computer's internal graphics transactions, which today consist of large amounts of data, could be improved if both ends of the link use a simpler, faster protocol, Marshall noted. However, that protocol could be proprietary, obsoleting systems using chips from other vendors.
To keep from having to tailor multiple versions of their products to different graphics chips, software developers will have to write to standard APIs such as Microsoft's DirectX, Marshall said.
Intel competitors are planning to support DirectX in hardware, which could lead to incompatibility for systems using different x86 CPUs in 3-D applications, noted Michael Slater, principal analyst at MicroDesign Resources, in Sebastopol, Calif.
Advanced Micro Devices, Cyrix, and Centaur have announced enhancements to the MMX instruction set, and Intel is said to be working on its own instructions, called MMX2, by some observers.
To compete with Intel, Dataquest's Ballew noted that some graphics-chip vendors, including Cirrus Logic, will shift their emphasis to lower cost PC systems, while others, including 3Dlabs, will begin to address higher-performance applications. As Intel increases its production of i740 chips in 1998, another revision of current products will mean higher performance from mainstream graphics chip vendors such as ATI Technologies, S3, and Trident Microsystems, he said.
These vendors will continue to double performance every six months, said Le Nguyen, director of graphics marketing at Trident, in Mountain View, Calif.
While Intel has vast design resources, its mindset is to double performance every 18 months, which will keep the specialist suppliers ahead, Nguyen said.
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Have a great day Fred, LOL at your last post. <gg>
Michael
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