Rishi,
Even Intel is feeling the pressure. Five years from now, there shall be a lot of consumer products based on embedded, integrated systems on a chip(SOC). According to one engineer who works on such projects, ESS invests quite some money in R&D along these directions. The announcement of Internet chipset ES4828 is just the starting of a series of product development. ESS has another development, which can use x86 as its CPU, worked on for two years now. However, I have not seen anything mentioned in any press release yet. DO you or anyone know anything about it?
Steve
********
Intel gives in to chip integration
By Michael Kanellos
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
November 17, 1998, 12:05 p.m. PT
LAS VEGAS--The low-cost PC phenomenon will drive Intel to put more of the PC
inside its chips.
Integrated processors--a move that Intel has criticized and avoided in the past--will be
coming out of the company in 2000, said a company executive here at Comdex, escalating
a push to make its chips more competitive.
The integrated chips will be for low-end computers, said Paul Otellini, vice president of
server architecture at the company, a segment where Intel has recently lost market share.
Do you want to know more?
Read related news
View story in The Big Picture
Go to Message Boards
Search News.com
The company is now facing unsettling market share incursions as AMD and National
Semiconductor's Cyrix arm capture more and more this crucial turf. For instance, more
than half of the sub-$1,000 desktop retail PC market has gone to AMD in recent months,
according to market research houses.
More evidence of this was provided yesterday when Compaq rolled out new consumer PCs
with high-speed Internet connection technologies such as DSL (digital subscriber line)
modems. Three of the four new models came with AMD processors. The one high-end
system used an Intel processor.
Intel's plan is to take features typically found in other chips in a PC and combine them with
the main processor, said Otellini.
"In 1999 you well see integration of a lot of functions on the chipset, and in 2000 you will
see integration between the processor and the chipset to take advantage of the transistor
budget," Otellini said.
"We are not willing to live with the [market] share we have," he said. "We will win the
business back [model] by [model], company by company."
The move is interesting in the fact that Intel has said several times in the past that it was
not interested in integrating additional functions onto the processor itself, a concept that
has been touted by National Semiconductor for the past few years.
Intel has hesitated to do this in the past because different chip technologies move at
different speeds. Graphics chips, for instance, have been increasing in performance faster
than microprocessors in recent years. So, integration of a graphics chip into the more
slowly evolving main processor, for example, could hamstring computer vendors seeking
the best in available technology, although integrated chips as a whole are cheaper.
But in the low-end PC market this is a realistic option because consumers buying these
machines tend to be less fussy about having the absolutely latest and greatest
technologies in their systems.
"The K6-2 is the highest price-performance processor for the consumer," said Rod
Schrock, a senior vice president in charge of the consumer products group at Compaq, who
spoke glowingly of the performance of this low-cost chip. Intel also has a new low-cost
Celeron chip on the market which Compaq has used on other systems in the past.
So far, the Media GX processor from National's subsidiary Cyrix is the only integrated
microprocessor on the market. The Media GX, among other functions, combines graphics
and communications functions onto the processor.
Intel sources in the past have said the company will integrate
functions, such as 3D graphics, into companion chips--called
chipsets--but have generally stood against integrating
functions into the main processor itself. Otellini's statements,
however, indicate that Intel has decided to go down the
integration path with processors as well.
Part of the move to integrated chips comes from the fact that
Intel will be using the more advanced 0.18-micron
manufacturing process by then, which can squeeze more
transistors onto each chip.
Integration will likely help shave costs for PC makers because
they will no longer have to include a separate graphics or
modem chip. And, in this market, every dollar counts. The difference in cost between a
complete motherboard and chip solution based around AMD technology and a solution
based around Intel is around $2 in AMD's favor. If cache memory is counted, Intel is
cheaper by around $7 to $10, he said.
Despite losing market share, Otellini said that sales of Celeron processors are doing well.
Sales quadrupled from the second quarter to the third quarter, and will double again in the
fourth quarter. |
