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I added at 31 3/4. Look at this report out of CeBIT:
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Intel New chips to lead PC world
By Neal Boudette
HANOVER, Germany (Reuters) - Intel Corp. on Thursday put the PC world on notice that its dizzying gains in computing power will only accelerate -- even for home computers priced under $1,000.
At the CeBIT trade fair, Intel demonstrated a PC with a Pentium II chip running at 700 megaherz -- more than twice the rate of today's speed king, a 333-megaherz model.
The company said such leaps in processing power would help spark a boom in the Internet and a rise in the world's PC population to more than 1 billion in the next few years, from 200 million now.
''I can easily see it hitting one billion in five years,'' Intel Senior Vice President Albert Yu told Reuters. ''It is going to be a very different world.''
In its demonstration, Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel used a PC to show an animated underwater scene that undulated with the current of the sea. As Yu moved the computer mouse, it instantly wheeled the perspective of the animation skyward into a sun beaming into the depths, and down to where submarines drifted by -- all in a warping, watery image.
''You usually need a very powerful graphics workstation to do that,'' Yu said.
After the demonstration, a second program that measures processor speed showed the Pentium II was running at 702 megaherz.
At that speed, a Pentium II PC would have the performance of what was the world's fastest supercomputer only a few years ago.
Such huge processing power would enable PCs without extra equipment to talk to users and respond to spoken commands, said Gert Huegler, president of Vobis Microcomputer AG, one of Germany's top PC suppliers.
''The ease-of-use border will fall,'' he said.
Hans-Juergen Mammitzsch, head of Texas-based Dell Computer Corp.'s German unit, said the coming gains in processing power would boost Internet commerce. ''There will be huge opportunities when home PCs can run full-motion video off the Internet, and the Internet becomes truly multimedia,'' he said.
Intel, the world's dominant chip maker with about 85 percent of the market, said 700-megaherz chips should hit the market in the next few years.
''This is still a technology demonstration, but that is where we are going,'' spokesman Michael Sullivan said.
Intel has even faster chips in the works. Yu, in a news conference, showed a simulation of the Merced processor that is due next year and should run at even higher speeds.
Sullivan would not say how fast Merced chips would run. But he said they will be made on a more advanced process than Pentium II. ''Past history is that a new process gets you more speed,'' Sullivan said.
While working on high-end chips, Intel has also developed new processors for home PCs. Next month, it will launch a new Celeron brand that will hit 300-megaherz later this year and appear in PCs priced from $800 to $1,200, Yu said.
''This will bring Pentium II technology to basic PCs,'' he said.
This year's roster of chip releases would also include 400- and 450-megaherz Pentium II chips for high-powered desktops, 266- and 300-megaherz chips optimised for portable computers. Its fastest mobile chip is a Pentium multimedia chip running at 266 megaherz. |
