National Semi to produce .18 chips by the end of 1999:
National Semiconductor (NYSE:NSM) readies new chip-WSJ
Reuters, Monday, April 06, 1998 at 04:45
NEW YORK, April 6 (Reuters) - National Semiconductor Corp.
is expected Monday to announce a new chip that could drive
personal-computer prices to less than $400 next year, the Wall
Street Journal reported.
The move would undercut rival Intel Corp. (NASDAQ:INTC) in a
market already roiled by sub-$1,000 machines, the paper said.
The Santa Clara, Calif., company is developing a chip that
combines a microprocessor with circuitry of more than a dozen
additional chips needed to make a PC, a leap in integration
that could substantially reduce manufacturing costs, the paper
said.
National isn't disclosing potential customers yet, but
predicts that what it calls a "PC on a chip" will be ready for
a mass-market audience by June 1999, the Journal said.
Many of today's chips have circuits that are about 0.35
microns wide, or 1/300th the width of a human hair. That is
enough to put about seven million transistors on a chip.
National and other companies are moving to 0.25-micron
chips this year, enough for roughly 30 million to 50 million
transistors, the paper said. By the end of next year, the
company expects to hit dimensions of 0.18 microns, allowing for
as many as 100 million transistors, more than enough to handle
most functions of a computer on one piece of silicon.
National last year bought Cyrix Corp., a microprocessor
maker whose integrated Media GX chip helped Compaq Computer
Corp. (NYSE:CPQ) spur the sub-$1,000 PC market in January 1997.
Within months, the sub-$1,000 market swelled to account for
30 percent of the U.S. retail market, the paper said.
National chief executive officer Brian Halla has vowed to
drive prices much lower, the paper said.
Copyright 1998, Reuters News Service |
