From www.news.com
Asian chip vendors offer Intel
alternative
By Brooke Crothers
January 21, 1997, 11 a.m. PT
Eleven major semiconductor chip makers
established a consortium Monday to develop a
high-performance microprocessor integrating both
memory and processing functions, in order to
compete in the microprocessor market with Intel
(INTC).
The list of chip makers includes Fujitsu, Toshiba,
and Matsushita Electric Industrial, according to a
report in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Japan's
largest business daily.
The members expect to publish specifications for
the parallel-processing microprocessor with
random-access memory (PPRAM) by the end of
the year, in order to have the new microprocessor
on the market by as soon as 1998.
The new chip will integrate a microprocessor with
memory on a single chip and will provide efficient
parallel processing, according to the report.
Members of the alliance will design and
manufacture processors for use in personal
computers and multimedia equipment.
"There's no doubt that the coalition can execute,
but getting the market to adopt [a new processor]
is a completely different issue," cautions Dean
McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research.
McCarron remembered a similar initiative by
Japanese chip makers in the late 1980s which
produced a chip and an operating system that
aimed to supplant Microsoft's DOS and Intel's
processors. The initiative failed to make any
impact.
The inclusion of semiconductor makers outside of
Japan such as Texas Instruments and SGS
Thompson may be a result of that earlier failure to
market the chips in the North American market,
according to McCarron.
Other members include Texas Instruments Japan,
NEC, and Hitachi.
Chip makers eye Intel
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