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

To: Estephen who wrote (126974)	10/29/2000 9:05:32 PM
From: ajbrenner	Respond to of 1570320

Estephen, did we forget to take our medication again today?

To: Estephen who wrote (126974)	10/29/2000 9:49:23 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1570320

Advanced Micro Unveils a Chipset for New Memory Technology Sunnyvale, California, Oct. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Intel Corp.'s main rival in the market for computer processors, introduced a chipset based on a new memory standard that competes with the one being promoted by Intel. The 760 chipset, a group of chips that surround a processor and communicate with other parts of a personal computer, will operate with so-called double-data-rate, or DDR, memory that Advanced Micro says runs twice as fast current chips. Intel, Advanced Micro and others have focused on boosting the speed of processors -- the main chip in a computer -- to make PCs work faster. Their advances progressed so well that those chips now run 10 times faster than memory devices, creating a bottleneck in machines that limits performance enhancements. To fix that, chipmakers are endorsing new memory designs like DDR and another by Rambus Inc. ``You don't want the frequency on a processor to run away from the memory (speed),'' said Mark Bode, marketing manager for Advanced Micro's flagship Athlon and Duron processors. Memory chips run in cycles and traditionally read data just at the beginning of each move. DDR is a fledgling technology that reads data both at the front and the back end of each cycle, so it can operate twice as fast. Micron Electronics Inc., the direct seller of PCs majority owned by memory-chip maker Micron Technology Inc., is offering machines using Advanced Micro processors and DDR memory now, Bode said. Other systems hit retail shelves next month, with broad distribution in the first quarter of next year, he said. PCs with DDR will see a 3 percent to 8 percent jump in performance, slightly less than the typical 5 percent to 10 percent boost from increasing the processor speed, Bode said. Rambus Option While chipsets aren't a big driver for Advanced Micro's earnings, the choice of what memory to support helps and hurts different suppliers. DDR, available from traditional memory makers like Micron Tech and Infineon Technologies AG, is simply an evolution of current designs. Rambus, creator of the controversial standard Intel has been promoting, designed a whole new system. Sunnyvale, California-based Advanced Micro also licenses Rambus. Intel, the No. 1 semiconductor maker, has taken some flack from PC makers that complain the Rambus chips are too expensive. Intel has said it will offer rebates to companies that use Rambus as a way of offsetting the higher costs, and it's considering using cheaper DDR design in some cases. Santa Clara, California-based Intel hasn't shipped any chipsets for DDR yet, though it has said it would support DDR for server computers and workstations that handle hefty computing tasks. Intel is evaluating whether a chipset it's creating for the new Pentium 4 processors for desktop machines would also work with DDR, spokesman Michael Sullivan said. ``It's an emerging technology; it may have a place in the future,'' Sullivan said. International Business Machines Corp. in March introduced chips based on DDR for servers. Oct/29/2000 21:04 ET For more stories from Bloomberg News, click here. (C) Copyright 2000 Bloomberg L.P.