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To: gnuman who wrote (35611)	12/7/1999 1:54:00 PM
From: Don Green	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Samsung races IBM over next-generation Alpha processor By Jack Robertson Semiconductor Business News (12/07/99, 11:09:32 AM EDT) KIHEUNG, South Korea -- Two semiconductor industry giants are locked in a race to capture a key design win with Compaq Computer Corp. for the next-generation Alpha microprocessor, a trophy device that is expected to feature a number of innovative design and manufacturing techniques. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. here said it will try to edge out IBM Microelectronics by bringing the EV7 Alpha processor to market in volume by the third quarter of 2000. Samsung is expected to begin sampling devices sometime in the first half of next year in the hope it can beat its U.S. rival to market. Samsung is now supplying Compaq Computer with an earlier version of the Alpha processor, the EV6, but its future supply relationship is uncertain, according to Daeje Chin, executive vice president of Samsung's System LSI group and president of the company's subsidiary, Alpha Processor Inc. (API), of Worcester, Mass. IBM is in talks with Compaq, which designed the original Alpha architecture, and could land a contract to supply the computer maker with the processor on a foundry basis. Although the company refused to comment on the status of the negotiations or disclose a possible release date for its EV7 Alpha design, industry sources said IBM has provided Compaq with a prototype device that is being evaluated. "There is nothing new to report," said a spokesman for IBM Microelectronics in Fishkill, N.Y. "We and Compaq have been in talks about the possibility of us manufacturing the next-generation Alpha chips using our copper technology." Given IBM's manufacturing might, Samsung's Chin said that his company will be forced to battle to keep Compaq's business. Samsung is eager to bring out the next-generation Alpha to demonstrate its ability to incorporate copper interconnects within the chip's architecture and to integrate the processor's corelogic, memory controller and cache memory. Manufactured using a 0.18-micron design rule, the EV7 will run at 1-gigahertz speeds, according to Chin. One of the few volume suppliers to champion the Alpha architecture, Samsung said it will migrate to a 0.13-micron process in 2001, at which point it will incorporate silicon-on-insulator (SOI) technology into the design -- a technique IBM and other chip companies also are developing. The current market for Alpha chips stands at $100 million, and is projected to grow to $140 million next year, Chin said. Through designs provided by its Alpha Processor subsidiary, Samsung will also enter the markets for Alpha EV6 chip sets and motherboards next year, Chin said. Samsung will sample an EV6 single-processor chip set called Caspian in March and enter production in the third quarter, while a higher performance four- to eight-way server chip set called Tasman will be launched in 2001. Chin said Alpha Processor has also designed motherboards using the upcoming Caspian chip set. The chip sets and motherboards all will be manufactured by Samsung in South Korea. In addition to serving the Alpha market, the new devices will allow Samsung to address the chip set market spurred by Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s Athlon CPU, which uses the same EV6 bus line as the Alpha, according to Chin. "Building chip sets for both [Alpha and Athlon] microprocessors will create larger production economies of scale for lower cost," he said. The new Alpha/Athlon chip sets will support PC133 and DDR SDRAM memory chips, but not Direct Rambus DRAM. Despite the dedication of Samsung's semiconductor subsidiary to the Rambus interface, Chin said the OEMs targeted as customers for the new chip sets haven't yet selected Direct RDRAM as a memory option.