Intel Katmai. They are adding hardware so they can do it in software. MPEG-2 encoding. Click on the link for a diagram.
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Katmai details lead Intel's push to high-end PCs
By Rick Boyd-Merritt and David Lammers
PALM SPRINGS, Calif. - In an effort to drive PCs forward, Intel Corp.
rolled out new details about multimedia instruction-set extensions for its
upcoming Katmai processor as the vanguard of a small army of new
technologies, products and specifications it marshaled at the company's
developer's forum here.
Despite the well-orchestrated barrage, debate was still sharp on the
question of whether sluggish PC demand - especially at the high end -
will rebound in the near future.
The Katmai New Instructions (KNI) consist of 70 instructions and eight
new 128-bit registers Intel has added to its X86 architecture. The registers
open the way to executing four, 32-bit single-precision SIMD floating-point
operations simultaneously with Intel's existing MMX integer instructions
extensions.
While Intel has provided some details of KNI before, the enhancements
were initially couched as ways to accelerate 3-D graphics processing.
Enhancements disclosed this week, however, indicate KNI should be able
to serve a broad range of applications.
At the Intel Developer Forum, Intel detailed enhancements to the Pentium II
processor bus that will be able to handle as many as eight outstanding
transaction requests or responses at a time. A new multimedia streaming
architecture will further enhance the processor's bandwidth and reduce
latency by eliminating the need for caching in streaming operations, opening
the door to overlapping fetch, execute and store operations. "The
streaming-data capabilities could be more important than KNI itself," said
Martin Reynolds, a vice president at market-research company Dataquest
Inc. (San Jose, Calif.).
In addition, KNI includes specific instructions aimed at improving
continuous-voice recognition and MPEG-2 encoding. Voice-recognition
applications could see improvements of greater than 20 percent in accuracy
or response time, thanks to some of the new instructions, said Shreekant
(Ticky) Thakkar, principal processor architect on Katmai. New instructions
for MPEG-2 encoding could collapse 24 tasks into 10, providing a 40
percent improvement in speed, he said.
"We would hope to get a broad spectrum of applications taking advantage
of this by early next year, when we launch Katmai," said Albert Yu, general
manager of Intel's microprocessor products group. "That's the biggest
challenge - getting the apps out there."
Indeed, at least one senior PC engineer said he feared Intel will not deliver
enough compelling applications for the Katmai systems that he will ship next
spring at prices around $2,500. "The high-end market is shrinking and users
need new apps to see the benefits," he said.
Peter Glaskowsky, a senior analyst with the Microprocessor Report
(Sunnyvale, Calif.), expressed similar concerns, noting that Intel's KNI
demos at the Developer Forum were unimpressive and failed to show
MPEG-2 capabilities. "The digital video stuff will be there, but whether the
3-D stuff will be ready is unclear to me," he added.
Graphics-market researcher Jon Peddie of Jon Peddie Associates (Tiburon,
Calif.) said Intel has spent tens of millions of dollars assisting software
developers who plan to write applications that make use of KNI.
Nevertheless, he said "in the home market it will be all Intel can do to hold
even next year."
"There's a segment of the market that does buy up, but it's more difficult to
keep them doing that each year," echoed Reynolds of Dataquest, noting that
the United States is increasingly becoming a saturated market for PCs.
"We are seeing the average selling prices of PCs drop dramatically. The
story isn't in the growth of the sub-$1,000 PC, but it's in the fact that the
high-end systems' prices have collapsed to about $2,000," he added.
In a bow to that trend, Intel cut prices of some top-end processors 29
percent the day before the conference opened.
In an effort to fight collapsing PC prices, Craig Barrett, Intel president and
chief executive officer, in his keynote address sketched out plans for as
many as 10 new processors the company will launch next year to fit niches
from high-end servers to set-top boxes. "This will be the most intense new
product rollout we've had in some time," Barrett said.
The new chips include as many as eight varieties of the Pentium II, including
Intel's first processors made in 0.18-micron technology and slated to ship in
the second half with speeds well above 500 MHz and integrated L2 caches
of up to 2 Mbytes in some cases. At the low end Intel plans to roll out in the
second half of next year its first updates of the StrongARM 1100 and 1500
chips acquired from Digital Equipment Corp., aimed at embedded
applications in network peripherals, set-top boxes and handheld PCs. "We
don't consider the StrongARM a competitor to the Intel architecture, but a
complement to it," Barrett said.
In addition to the new products, Barrett detailed initiatives to make PCs
more secure and easier to use. They include plans to ship flash BIOS chips
with embedded security primitives, such as random-number generators,
working under a new Common Data Security Architecture. Barrett also
reiterated Intel's work in areas such as removing legacy PC technologies
such as the ISA bus and enhancing new high-bandwidth PC connections via
satellite, digital subscriber lines and digital TV.
In separate presentations, Intel managers ran out a laundry list of agendas
that spanned everything from specifications for new distributed 48-V
power-supply subsystems for servers to incorporating new interfaces like
1394 in desktop and notebook computers.
"The biggest challenge is just coping with all the specifications and changes,"
said one senior engineer with a large PC maker. "If I can bring my EEs up
to speed one month before Hewlett-Packard, I have a huge advantage. The
challenge is how to manage all this information." |
