Hi Paulie!
This one's for you!
Friday February 18 04:31 PM EST
It's all about the Pentiums, baby!
By John G. Spooner, ZDNet News
The processors were all the rage at the Intel Developer Forum this week in the desert.
The only thing missing? 'Weird Al' Yankovic belting out a melodic Pentium parody.
PALM SPRINGS, Calif. -- It was all about the Pentiums. Or at least it was this week at the Intel Developer Forum in this desert resort town.
I was disappointed that Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC - news) did not have Weird Al on hand to belt out his Intel-based song parody to developers. Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT - news), after all, had Carlos Santana at its Windows 2000 launch.
How come Intel couldn't come up with a little Weird Al Inside?
Not that I'm a big Weird Al fan or anything -- for that matter, who is?
-- but this would have livened up the IDF event.
Lively this chip-fest wasn't, but as long as you weren't on the MD-that skidded off the runway at Palm Springs International Airport on Wednesday, which I wasn't, it was worth making the trip.
Willamette steals the show
Reporters yawned their way through Andy Grove's eBusiness talk early on Tuesday morning.
The scribbling began only when Intel's Albert Yu and Pat Gelsinger took the stage. That's because Yu and Gelsinger showed off, for the first time publicly, the chip code-named Willamette.
Willamette -- also the name of a river in Oregon, where the chip is being designed -- has been chosen as the gigahertz-plus successor to Intel's Pentium III chip.
Intel spent hours going over the new chip's architecture, its instruction set and other new feature with developers at the forum. No one at Intel will say what the chip will be called officially, but I assure you Intel has spent too much money to call it anything other than a Pentium-something.
(Remember, it's all about the Pentiums.)
Intel demoed the chip running at 1.4GHz and later pressed a "gas pedal" to up it to 1.5GHz.
Gelsinger said later that the whole Tuesday keynote speech was running on Willamette. The chip must be fast, because the presentation kept jumping ahead a slide or two before Yu finished with each.
Intel isn't saying when the chip will be released or how fast it will be initially, but I would guess that we'll see it in the third quarter this year at about 1.4GHz.
The Pentium III will be at 1GHz and available in volume also at that time, the company said. That was the other big news at the show.
Is this 'vaporware'? Not really Anyone who follows the news knows that Intel has been adjusting the launch dates of its
processors.
The company did it last Dec. 20, when it announced the 800MHz Pentium III. Intel did it again this week, announcing that the 1GHz Pentium III is sampling now -- and to prove it, showed off systems from Dell Computer Corp. (Nasdaq: DELL - news), Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE:HWP - news) and IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM - news).
People grumped at ZDNet News for writing about the Willamette "vaporware," but it seems pretty clear that you'll be able to order a 1GHz Pentium III-based system next quarter.
Now when you will actually receive that PC is up in the air, but since we all have very short memories, let's give Gelsinger credit for stating well in advance that the 1GHz chip will be available in only "limited" quantities at first.
That means, if you don't want to wait, order a 933MHz. It won't be that much slower, anyway.
AMD invaded the desert, too
Of course, Intel won't be the only company shipping 1GHz desktop PC chips in Q3. Advanced Micro Devices Inc. has said that it won't ship 1GHz Athlons until the fourth quarter.
But I doubt AMD (NYSE: AMD - news) will stick to that plan now. I think AMD will revise that plan quickly and you'll see 1GHz Athlon at your local country store before or close to the same time that the first 1GHz Pentium III PC rolls out of Round Rock, Texas.
Also this week, when a burning smell (from the kitchen -- not a demo!) wafted through the press room here, one Intel PR guy joked that it was the second half of AMD's plan to sabotage the conference.
The first part must have been that AMD had set up camp just down the street at the Palm Springs Hilton, offering the media, analysts and I suppose Intel developers the update on the status of Athlon.
AMD, in true IDF-crashing style, made its own gigahertz-plus demo, showing off a 1.1GHz(1,116MHz to be exact) Athlon chip based on its forthcoming Thunderbird processor core. I visited the AMD suite for the update and a look at the 1.1GHz demo.
Timna of interest
Intel's Timna chip was more interesting than Willamette.
Integrated chips historically have not been hot-sellers. But if Timna works the way Intel says it will, it could lower the entry-level cost of PCs.
Right now, aside from eMachines Inc., there isn't much available below $599. More low-cost offerings, assuming they are well-designed and stable, would only benefit the consumer.
Granted, not everyone needs an integrated Timna chip. But then again, not everyone needs a 1GHz Pentium III or 1.5GHz Willamette chip, either.
A rock-bottom-priced, Timna-based PC with 64MB of memory soldered to its motherboard could potentially cost $300.
At that price, you could buy it outright, keep it for a year and then throw it away. Though, you'd more likely keep it, like your VCR, for a few years before upgrading to another model. Timna certainly blurs the line between a PC and an appliance.
Comment: Gelsinger was the guy who promised PWeeIII 733's back in October wasn't he Paul? Is this another yarn-spinner? |
