Here's something about Centaur from the local paper, the
Austin American-Statesman:
y Omar L. Gallaga
American-Statesman Staff
Published: May 28, 1998
Last November, Glenn Henry, the head of Austin's Centaur Technology, introduced the Winchip, a low-cost alternative to the Pentium processor that was designed by 15 engineers for about $20 million.
Now, Henry is ready for battle again with a line of next-generation Winchips using 3DNow, a set of graphics, sound and network enhancements it licensed from AMD. He is joining AMD and Cyrix in an attempt to steal thunder from Intel in the bargain PC market.
"Intel has abandoned this part of the marketplace," Henry said. "We started off cloning Intel, but now we're cloning AMD."
Henry said AMD, in pushing its technology to the gaming industry and breathing life into a motherboard architecture to compete with Intel's Slot 2, is driving the industry. Henry said his company will compete with AMD but will sell processors in the 266 MHz to 300 MHz range at prices lower than any of the other processor companies. Cyrix, which will use the 3DNow technology in its MXi processors to be introduced this year, also finds itself in the position of forming an alliance with a direct competitor. "We have an interesting name for it -- cooperatition," said Stan Swearingen, senior director of the desktop division at Cyrix.
"(AMD, Centaur and Cyrix) were at the microprocessor forum last year, and each of us got up and introduced our own 3-D instruction sets," Swearingen said. "The industry said, 'This is kind of crazy -- you're not going to get adoption from the software vendors.' "
The companies agreed on the 3DNow standard, which would leverage strength on Socket 7, the motherboard platform that competes with Intel's Slot 2 architecture.
Swearingen said Intel is vulnerable at the low end, and it's important for the three companies to push forward on the new technology.
"We felt it was pretty powerful for us to align with AMD and IDT (Centaur's parent company) to offer a new technology for Intel," he said. "It's pretty much the first time that's happened in the industry."
All three companies have manufacturing muscle to back up their production. IDT and AMD have both signed foundry agreements with IBM to produce their 3DNow processors. And Cyrix has the production strength of its owner, National Semiconductor.
Whether or not the processors catch on with more PC makers or with consumers may not matter if the companies can at least keep pace with Intel, said Henry Voskoboynik, an analyst at Forum Capital Markets.
"This is a very good move for AMD, Cyrix and IDT. Those companies can survive very well eating crumbs from Intel's plate." |
