Intel Investors - How do you announce an 18 month DELAY in a MAJOR MICROPROCESSOR introduction - and slip it by the entire Technology Media Press and CNBC ?
You do what Sun Microsystems just did - you bury the information in a RoadMap announcement concerning a million other chips !
If you read this article carefully, I think you will find that Sun is
announcing a ONE YEAR DELAY in the introduction of their UltraSParc III processor and that they will have to shift from a 0.25 micron process to a 0.18 micron process with BOTH Copper Metallization and Low K dielectrics to get the speed up to the "expected" 600 MHz range.
Note - last year at the MicroProcessor Forum, Sun announced that the
UltraSparc III would ship in mid 1998 (like, TODAY !) at 600 MHz built on a 0.25 micron process.
WRONG !
Sun is doing a great PR job in disguising this development by burying it in a RoadMap announcement.
Note that CNBC did not stop the presses to report this delay , nor did the author of this article even comment on it - in STARK CONTRAST to Intel's announcement of a mere 6 MONTH delay in the Merced project !
Paul
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ebnews.com
Roadmap Shows Sun's Commitment To Compete With Intel
(3:00 p.m. EDT, 9/1/98)
Click Here For The SPARC Processor Roadmap from Sun
Microsystems.
By Mark Hachman
By revealing a roadmap to a 1.5-gigahertz UltraSparc
microprocessor in early 2002, Sun Microsystems reassured
customers that its chips would remain an alternative to Intel Corp.'s
64-bit processor, Merced.
"The Sparc architecture is a strategic advantage for Sun," said
Anant Agrawal, vice-president of engineering for Mountain View,
Calif.-based Sun, in a conference call with reporters and analysts.
To date, Sun has invested about $1 billion to develop the
processor family, although Agrawal declined to comment on
whether current economic conditions would allow Sun to maintain
the same pace of investment.
Sun, like Alpha Processor Inc., has begun commenting on future
microprocessor products in a bid to lure OEMs away from Intel's
Merced, which has been delayed six months from its original
introduction date.
Even with a forecast so far into the future, however, Sun's forecast
should be believed, analysts said. "In the three years I've been
covering them, they've adhered to their product plans quite well,"
said Jerry Sheridan, client/server analyst at San Jose-based
Dataquest Inc.
Other observers said. Sun's comments were designed to reassure
those OEMs that Sun's chips would not suffer the same fate as
Hewlett-Packard Corp.'s PA-RISC family, which will be
discontinued as the company adopts Merced in its products.
Moving forward from the current UltraSparc IIs, Agrawal described
three more product generations, capped by a 1 GHz, 0.15-micron
UltraSparc IV at the end of 2000, followed by the 1.5 GHz
UltraSparc V, to be manufactured in a 0.07-micron process.
Even at such blazing speeds, OEMs of enterprise products are
likely to find software that will require such performance, analysts
said. "I think the market even now could use a product with that
performance," Sheridan said.
While Sun continues to introduce new designs into its chip lineup,
manufacturing will be the key to future speed enhancements.
To permit its chips to run faster, Sun could either lower their
resistance through copper interconnects or reduce the capacitance
through a low-k dielectric manufacturing process. Sun will pursue
both, Agrawal said, mixing copper and the low-k technique in the
0.18-micron manufacturing process that will produce the 600 MHz
UltraSparc III at the end of 1999.
In the odd-numbered product generations, such as the UltraSparc
III, Sun introduces a new manufacturing process; the company also
slightly improves the process in products that use a "+" designation,
such as the forthcoming 400 and 440 MHz UltraSparc IIi+ in 1999.
However, all Sun processors remain binary-compatible, allowing
the same software to run on all of its chips. The same cores used to
produce the UltraSparc "S" series of chips for multiprocessor
servers are used to create a midrange, integrated "I" series of
microprocessors, and finally an "E" series of embedded products
for set-top boxes and products like cable modems.
Sun has also licensed the Sparc core to Fujitsu Ltd. and LSI Logic
Corp., who produce the MicroSparc embedded processors. Sun,
however, has discontinued development on its MicroSparc
products, and will turn instead to the UltraSparc E-series of
embedded 64-bit chips in 1999. Sun continues to retain Texas
Instruments as a foundry for its UltraSparc S- and I-series products.
Sun has not announced a manufacturing partnership for the
E-series chips, nor has it formally announced a partnership
whereby it would be permitted to mix its processor cores with
third-party technology to create its own systems-on-a-chip. |
