zdnet.com Tuesday August 31, 5:50 pm Eastern Time
Intel shipping first engineering samples of Merced
PALM SPRINGS, Calif., Aug 31 (Reuters) - Intel Corp. said Tuesday it had reached a
major milestone in the development of its next generation processor, code-named Merced
and it was shipping engineering samples to computer makers for testing.
Merced is the first chip in a family designed around a new 64-bit architecture, which Intel
(Nasdaq:INTC - news) has been developing with Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE:HWP -
news) since 1994. A 64-bit chip architecture will process data in chunks of 64 bits, versus
the current standard 32-bit architecture.
''This is the very first Merced coming out of the manufacturing line,'' said Gadi Singer, vice president and general manager of
Intel's IA-64 processor division, as he conducted the first public demonstration of the chip at the Intel Developer Forum here.
The demonstration represents a key manufacturing step, or ''first silicon'' for the chip.
Singer, who joined Intel president and chief executive Craig Barrett on the stage, demonstrated Merced running on an early
version of Microsoft Corp.'s (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) Windows 2000 and on a next-generation version of the free Linux
operating system, both of which are currently in development.
''We are looking at Merced as the new engine for e- business,'' Barrett said.
He showed data indicating that, as the Internet becomes more pervasive for high bandwidth intensive applications, such as
video and audio, more and more network servers would be required.
''Ninety-six percent (of the servers needed are) yet to be deployed...The growth of the Internet is in our hands,'' he added.
Merced and its follow-on chips were initially designed to run in high performance systems such as engineering workstations and
servers and were not expected to be used in PCs until after 2005, analysts said.
Barrett said the company was still on track for volume production for Merced in mid-2000. Company executives declined to
say how many prototypes of the chip they were shipping to computer makers, or to identify which computer makers were
receiving the samples. The companies were helping Intel with its testing and validation of the chip, which would take about nine
to 12 months.
''It's good news,'' said Rick Doherty, director of Envisioneering, a consulting firm in Seaford, N.Y. ''The updated timetable will
ease a lot of developers's concerns.''
Merced has already experienced one delay due to its massive engineering effort. Originally, Intel had said Merced would ship in
volume at the end of 1999.
''It's a very significant milestone,'' said Stephen Smith, vice president and general manager of Intel's Santa Clara processor
division.
Intel engineers said they orchestrated a major engineering feat in demonstrating Merced in front of a live audience of 2,500,
mostly made up of their engineers peers from other companies. Previously, the operating systems had only been running on a
software simulation of the chip.
In the past two weeks, since the first chips came off the manufacturing line, a team of about 50 engineers had huddled together
at an Intel facility in Dupont, Wash., where they typically worked 19-20 hour days, to get the software to run on the actual
chip. Intel transported the big systems used in the laboratory, without the chassis covers, to Palm Springs, on a chartered
aircraft.
''This is all lab equipment. It's not designed to move from the lab,'' said Art Webb, a senior hardware engineer at Intel.
The engineers took to calling their project 'The Merced Roadshow' and during the keynote, Intel showed a home-style video
on 'The Merced Project', spoofing the hit horror movie, 'The Blair Witch Projet.'
Five other operating systems, including both H-P's and Sun Microsystems Inc.'s (Nasdaq:SUNW - news) versions of the
UNIX operating system, are also being developed to run on Merced.
''I really think that Merced is a huge deal, because it introduces a new price point for very high performance computing,'' said
Janet Ramkissoon, president of Quadra Capital, an investment fund, in New York. ''The symmetric multiprocessing capability
of Merced will drive the Internet forward,'' she added, referring to its ability to run multi-processors at the same time.
Barrett also told the audience (and instructed his managers during the keynote) that he was moving up the release date of the
company's next version of the Pentium III, code-named Coppermine, to October from the end of the year and said it would be
running at speeds of 700 megahertz. At that speed, Intel would surpass Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s (NYSE:AMD - news)
new Athlon chips, which were introduced just last month at 600 and 650 megahertz.
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