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To: Yaacov who wrote (159862)	8/20/2000 9:52:02 PM
From: D. Swiss	Respond to of 176387

Yaacov, I was referring to ATML, follow the bouncing ball. :o) Drew

To: Yaacov who wrote (159862)	8/21/2000 10:18:35 AM
From: D.J.Smyth	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 176387

Monday August 21, 9:48 am Eastern Time Forbes.com Intel Takes Wraps Off Pentium 4 By David Einstein Intel has lifted the hood on its upcoming Pentium 4 processor, revealing an overhauled 32-bit architecture that the chipmaker says will power the fastest desktop computers for the next seven to ten years. In a briefing on Aug. 18 at company headquarters in Santa Clara, Intel (Nasdaq: INTC - news) chipmeister Albert Yu described for reporters some of the innovative features of the new processor, which has been in development since 1995, when the first Pentiums hit the market. The current flagship of the fleet, Pentium III, is running out of steam after cracking the 1-gigahertz speed barrier earlier this year. The Pentium 4 will debut at 1.4 GHz, prompting the question: Who needs that kind of speed, especially when today's fastest 32-bit chips already provide far more firepower than most PC software demands? A Pentium running at 500 megahertz is more than adequate to run word processors and personal finance programs, play most games and surf the Web. Don't worry, says Intel. The Pentium 4 will facilitate a new era of the ``visual Internet,'' letting users get the most out of full-motion video, 3D graphics, online gaming and speech recognition. ``When you get out on the Web, this product gives a much, much better experience,'' says Yu, who is senior vice president and general manager of Intel's architecture group. It also should ensure a good experience for Intel, which is counting on the Pentium 4 to keep filling its coffers. With Pentium III sales leading the way, the company earned $9.4 billion in the past 12 months on sales of $31.8 billion. Yu attempted to explain the Pentium 4's ``NetBurst'' architecture--at least in a cursory fashion--with an enlarged view of the dime-sized chip showing where each new feature is located. To most people, however (and that includes reporters), such an image looks like either a Piet Mondrian painting or a satellite photo of New York, with intersecting lines defining city blocks and dark areas for public parks. Some aspects of the technology are easy to grasp. The Pentium 4 routes information around the computer at three times the speed of the Pentium III. It includes a ``Rapid Execution Engine,'' which crunches numbers like an abacus operator on caffeine. And its multimedia capabilities would make George Lucas drool. In short, the Pentium 4 works like a Pentium III that's spent the summer at Gold's Gym. On a more basic level, consider that the Pentium 4 has 42 million transistors. That's 14 million more than the Pentium III. It's also enough to make 42,000 transistor radios of the kind that were attached to teenagers' ears in the late 1950s. Intel will introduce the Pentium 4 for desktop PCs in the fourth quarter of this year. Expect versions for notebooks computers to start showing up sometime late next year, after Intel begins making chips using 0.13 micron technology (a micron is about 1/100th the width of a human hair). That will reduce the power needed to run the chips, making them efficient enough for battery-powered portables. Intel officials say the Pentium 4 will help fend off the tenacious attack that Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD - news) has mounted in the past year and a half with its Athlon--a chip that for the first time lets the perennial No. 2 in the market claim technological parity with its larger rival. AMD, with $3.9 billion in revenue in the past year, rejiggered its 32-bit technology for the Athlon, giving it the ability to run at 1 GHz and then some. But the Pentium 4 may have even more headroom. Although Yu declined to estimate the speeds achievable with the new architecture, he implied that we could see increases comparable to the sevenfold gains made by the Pentium III and its predecessors. That could eventually bring the Pentium 4 to nearly 10 GHz. Imagine the games you can play with that!