K6-2's FP quadruples that of PII, part II
But there's a catch, Krelle said. Not every K6-2 uses a 100-MHz bus, and not all at the
same time. The 266-MHz version uses a 66-MHz bus; the 300-MHz version a 100-MHz
bus; and the 333-MHz version a nonstandard 95-MHz bus.
While a 100-MHz bus specification known as Super 7 permits the use of a 95-MHz system
clock, it requires a special clock chip. For that reason, the 100-MHz motherboards for use
with the 333-MHz K6-2 will be delayed until July, according to Krelle. Until then, buyers
will be forced to design 333-MHz boards and systems around a 66-MHz bus.
Earlier this year, the PC industry questioned whether Socket 7 chipsets supporting the Super
7 platform would work reliably in volume production. But executives at both Via Technologies
Inc. and Acer Labs Inc. declared their products stable, reliable, and fully backed by the K6-2.
"We are shipping production on the Aladdin V [chipset] now, which is being taken to market
by our customers as high-performance 100-MHz motherboards," said Nancy Hartsoch, vice
president of marketing and sales at Acer Labs Inc., San Jose.
In addition, the general performance of the K6 architecture has been improved by the
inclusion of two pipelined floating-point/MMX units. With two units capable of decoding two
floating-point instructions per clock, general floating-point performance has been increased
fourfold over the K6 and the Pentium II, Krelle said.
FMI, Rendition Corp., and IBM Microelectronics have announced they are proposing an
alternative means to process the same graphics pipeline.
Rendition's V2200 should be paired with FMI's Pinolite geometry processor, the FGX-1,
said Rick Humphrey, director of graphics marketing at FMI, San Jose. The FGX-1 is
shipping for $19.75, with discounts below $18 in 10,000-unit lots or greater.
"Before, production of geometry processors was stopped because Microsoft was not going to
include it in the DirectX API," Humphrey said. Microsoft has indicated these parts will be
supported in DirectX 7 later this year.
The choice to process geometry and lighting in software versus hardware is also not mutually
exclusive, Humphrey said. "There will be a lot of talking needed about how best to optimize
[this]." |
