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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: fyo who wrote (65822)	7/16/1999 10:46:00 PM
From: Cirruslvr	Respond to of 1585956

Fyo - RE: "As you wish, Sir." Oooh, "sir". "I have heard claims (from reliable sources) that several other major tools are being SSE optimized at the moment (yes, by Intel employees)." We'll see. If Intel gets the whole industry behind SSE AND not a lot of people want to mess with 3D Now!, the Athlon will have a tougher time demanding a high price.

To: fyo who wrote (65822)	7/17/1999 3:28:00 PM
From: Ali Chen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1585956

Fyo, <Naturally Speaking, Netshow Encoder, Photoshop,...> Of course the things with SSE are different just because the extended instructions are much more useful, and AMD's 3Dnow! has had this proven, to Intel's benefits. However, the benchmarks you mentioned are largely meaningless. Why? 1. Speech recognition is the utter nonsense by itself for PC users. At least in current form it is a joke. Therefore there is nothing to compare yet. 2. Netshow Encoder. How frequently a home PC user sends "streaming video" clips to the world (except teen girls doing net striptease)? 3. Photoshop filtering: the filtering takes so long time anyway, so 2 minutes vs 3 minutes makes no difference for home photo processing. For professional processing you better get some A21264 machine with a $5000 video processor. Same for sound editing. On the other note: we might see some feedback cycle here: First, 3Dnow proved the concept. Then, SSE technology gets adopted by software designers. Next, since algorithms are now in place, SSE and 3Dnow are structurally identical, experience has gained, so it will take much less effort to incorporate 3Dnow into the same software.

To: fyo who wrote (65822)	7/17/1999 3:45:00 PM
From: fyo	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1585956

Thread - Re: Yet Another Rambus Delay? Story posted 8:30 p.m. EST/5:30 p.m., PST, 7/15/99 seminews.com ------------------ SAN JOSE -- High throughput Direct Rambus DRAM testers are promised to be available in the first quarter of 2000 -- casting a cloud on the possibility of volume production this year for the next-generation memory chip. Sources at Semicon West '99 here said that Advantest Corp. will introduce a parallel 64-station Direct RDRAM tester at Semicon Japan in December. Hewlett-Packard Co.'s Automated Test Group said a parallel 32-station version of its HP95000 high-speed memory tester will be available as early as the first quarter of 2000. Both firms have 1-gigahertz speed testers now for Direct Rambus, but limited to 8-to-16 parallel stations. That throughput is adequate for initial low-volume production runs of Direct RDRAM, but memory chip makers want more parallelism to cut costs with shorter testing cycles. Schlumberger Automated Test Equipment will have a higher parallel test station Direct RDRAM tester at the first of next year, said Jackie Tubis, president of Schlumberger ATE in San Jose. The firm already has a family of different Direct RDRAM testers -- from a unit for development characterization to thermal testing to final package testing. She agreed with some analysts that the high heat dissipation of Direct RDRAM requires special handling, but said Schlumberger is using thermal techniques adapted from testing high-heat advanced microprocessors. Less sanguine was George Chamillard, president of Teradyne Inc., who said parallel testing at 800-MHz speed of both Direct RDRAM memory and logic in 64 parallel stations is going to be more of a challenge than expected. "It may be late next year before parallel 64-station (Direct Rambus) testers come to market," the Boston-based executive cautioned. Intel Corp., which is trying to establish Direct RDRAM as the industry's standard next generation memory, has predicted a fast production ramp after the new chip's debt, set for September. A major roadblock for high mass production is the lack of high throughput Direct RDRAM testers. All test firms, however, said major memory producers have enough 8-and-16-station Direct RDRAM testers to meet initial production needs. But Gary Fleeman, Advantest America memory product manager, said many large DRAM makers are holding back on big-volume Direct RDRAM tester orders waiting to see how the market develops. But chip makers are also closely watching the emerging Double Data Rate (DDR) SDRAM rival to Direct RDRAM. They can test development DDR chips by stretching their current 250-MHz testers. However, Gayn Erickson, semiconductor test product marketing manager for Hewlett-Packard ATG in Santa Clara, Calif., said production level quantities of DDR will also require new test equipment to handle higher speed protocols and new control protocols. He claimed the HP95000 memory tester using flexible pattern generation programs can handle both Direct Rambus and DDR. Advantest's Fleeman said his firm is developing a new DDR tester, but no introduction date has yet been set. --------------------------