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Micron aims to catch up in graphics with one-chip solution by early 2000
A service of Semiconductor Business News, CMP Media Inc.
Story posted 8 a.m. EST/5 a.m., PST, 4/8/99
By Mark Hachman
BOISE, Idaho (ChipWire/EBN) --Micron Technology Inc. will incorporate the graphics technology it acquired with Rendition Inc. into its first integrated core logic chip, slated for production in early 2000.
Micron will follow Intel, S3, Trident Microsystems, and Via Technologies into the integrated core logic market, with one exception: Micron's core logic will actually be a single chip, instead of the two-chip set from the other suppliers.
Micron will attempt to differentiate itself by playing on its core strengths, according to Dean Klein, vice-president of the newly created Integrated Products Group (IPG) at the Boise company. Klein's responsibilities include tying Micron's core logic, motherboard, embedded DRAM, and graphics teams closer together.
However, Micron's logic efforts have struggled to produce products, let alone profits. Rendition has not shipped a graphics chip within a year; Micron's Platform Architecture motherboard group has yet to ship a product in twice that time, Klein said. Instead, Micron is primarily known as a DRAM house.
Micron's saving grace to date has been the activities of its core logic group, once a part of Micron Electronics Inc., the PC arm of the company. Six years ago, Micron licensed a PCI-IDE accelerator to Intel, and has developed core logic for the past four years. On the other hand, Intel and Micron have yet to strike a deal to license Intel's P6 bus technology, an issue Klein said was laboriously explored by Intel's lawyers in depositions taken before the Federal Trade Commission halted its antitrust investigation of the microprocessor giant.
"IPG has the potential to be a billion-dollar group," Klein said. The group is charged with producing revenues, and generates its own profit-and-loss statements. But for the short term, perhaps as long as a year, Klein said the group will generate losses.
When Micron begins to ship its first integrated graphics chip in early next year, the company will still lag its competitors by about a year or more. The feature set of its first product is also as undefined.
"The chip is intended to serve 90% of the market, the volume mainstream [PC]," Klein said.
On the other hand, the proposed features go far beyond other competitive efforts, Klein said. Crammed into a single chip, Micron will combine Rendition's V4400 graphics core; a 32-bit, 66-MHz PCI interface; a USB host controller; a ATA-66 storage interface, an AC'98 digital audio controller, plus a IEEE 1394 interface. Most importantly, the chip will embed at least 4 megabytes of DRAM, the first core logic chip to do so.
If graphics data overflows the embedded DRAM, the chip will include an estimated 2-gigabytes-per-second interface to double-data-rate SDRAM. As might be expected, the high level of integration will demand a 0.18-micron embedded DRAM process.
But because DRAM is embedded into the core of Micron's business model, Klein said the company could also potentially give away or license its core logic patents to help promote its memory technology. That strategy was key to Micron's development of SocketX, a technology to embed DRAM within desktop graphics chips that was derided by most graphics vendors except Rendition, then a separate company.
"People pooh-poohed it then, but look at the specs for the new Sony Playstation," Klein said, comparing the PC's ability to process 350 million pixels and 10 million triangles per second with Sony's stated ability to render 2.4 billion pixels and 75 million triangles in the same time using dedicated chips that embed DRAM. "That's what we were saying a year ago!"
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