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To: DiViT who wrote (29287)	2/9/1998 7:25:00 PM
From: John Rieman	Respond to of 50808

Most of these guys must work with something other than laptops or cameras.............................................. techweb.cmp.com Posted: 6:00 p.m. EST, 2/09/98 Performance, not power issues, drive chip architects By Ron Wilson and Peter Clarke SAN FRANCISCO -- Will power consumption limit microprocessor performance? "Yes!" was the answer from a panel at last week's International Solid-State Circuits Conference. But despite the power limits, the panel agreed that maximizing performance remains the primary goal of microprocessor design teams. The panel's conclusion was encapsulated by a member of the audience who observed: "If you've ever watched a kid playing Quake for hours on end, you'll know it's true-performance is a drug. We've got to go on delivering two times performance at each generation or we won't be able to sell systems." The panel displayed a high-end microprocessor bias, however. Most members were drawn from workstation- and server-oriented design teams, and as such were not primarily concerned with issues of battery life. But the question posed to panel members provided a jumping off point for exploring how power consumption issues would manifest themselves-and what tricks design teams can deploy to ward off the power limit. The panelists concluded that power consumption need not yet be a limit, then admitted that it had already happened. Randy Allmon, consulting engineer at Digital Equipment's Hudson design center, said Digital Equipment's recently announced 21264 Alpha CPU has run into power issues. "The chip dissipates about 72 watts under normal conditions," Allmon said. "But under the worst-case conditions for which we have to design, it can theoretically peak at over 90 W-at the top end of the range where air cooling is effective. We had to turn down the supply voltage from the 2.5 V the process was designed for, to 2.2 V to keep the dissipation down to 90 W maximum. So, in effect, we are already power-limited." But a number of speakers, including Allmon, suggested techniques that could be used to reduce power consumption, delaying the day when the problem comes up again. Proposals ranged from more aggressive heat removal-with water or heat pipes, for example-to better overall budgeting of power in the design, as well as lower operating voltages and use of radically different circuit techniques. The panel agreed that architects were adding many transistors for minimal improvements in chip performance. But in the race for highest SPEC figures, that was what they were paid to do. Motorola designer David Beardon warned, "You have to manage power in the microarchitecture, or not at all." The closest the panel got to controversy was when panelist Kerry Bernstein, senior engineer at IBM Microelectronics said: "Circuit designers have done their homework," and then, with tongue in cheek, called on process technologists to "fix the technology." He was followed by the lone process engineer on the panel, Intel's Mark Bohr, who pointed out that designers can't keep looking to process engineers for help. Already, he said, switching energy per transition has been going down by a factor of two every generation. Power keeps increasing because architects keep using more transistors, and using them at higher switching factors. At a more detailed level, Bernstein stated that many of the non-cycle-limiting nets in a typical design were much faster than they need to be, and hence waste power. In addition, Bernstein pointed out, monotonic circuits avoid the duplication and excess power dissipation of static CMOS, and offer an alternative in some areas. Shashank Goel, founder of Simplex Solutions Inc., agreed that designers need to choose circuit techniques carefully, considering dynamic circuits instead of static, and even looking at such techniques as domino logic, adiabatic circuits and asynchronous design. In addition, Sun Microsystems team leader Ray Heald warned that simply reducing supply voltage wasn't going to be a solution much longer. "Reducing voltage is creating a noise margin problem," he said. "And I think we are getting close to the edge on signal integrity. We need to start looking at things like massive decoupling capacitors on the die, use of signal repeaters, and moving to pseudo-differential or fully differential signaling to combat this problem." But the panel was in general agreement that as long as the pressure to perform was paramount, architects would push the power consumption to the edge of what the package could carry away, leaving it to microarchitects, circuit designers and process designers to bring the power back down. They would not begin to architect power savings into the CPUs until that was the only way to increase performance further. The crux came when process technologist Bohr asked the other panelists how much additional gate delay they would be prepared to accept for a 10 percent reduction in power consumption. "None," was the answer that came back.

To: DiViT who wrote (29287)	2/10/1998 4:15:00 AM
From: Carnac	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 50808

DIAMOND ADOPTS MPACT 2 MEDIA PROCESSOR FOR NEW DIAMOND DVD KIT [ eat my shorts, cubicles... c-cube stock shorts that is! :-) ] Mpact 2 Goes Mainstream Through Diamond's High-Volume Sales To PC Manufacturers, Extensive Distribution Network, and Retail February 10, 1998 -- SUNNYVALE, CA. -- Media processors broke into the high-volume, mainstream PC market today with the announcement from Chromatic Research, Inc. and Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. NASDAQ:DIMD) that San Jose, CA-based Diamond has adopted Mpact(tm) 2 media processor technology for its new Diamond DVD Kit, Model MC20. Powered by the Mpact 2 media processor with "Mpact Mediaware for 3DVD" software -- the world's first single-chip 3D/2D graphics and DVD solution -the Diamond DVD Kit, Model MC20 delivers a new class of DVD upgrade kits for PCs. The new product provides unprecedented value and functionality for gaming and entertainment by combining arcade-quality 3D graphics; high-performance 2D graphics; hardware-accelerated, home theater-quality DVD video; and DVD surround-sound audio, all in a single, low-cost kit. Diamond will offer a complete graphics and DVD upgrade kit-- including a single Mpact 2-based board with 4 MB RambusT RDRAMr memory, second-generation DVD-ROM drive, and software titles--for an estimated retail price of $299.95, comparable or lower in cost than DVD-only kits without 3D/2D graphics. The Diamond DVD Kit, Model MC20 is expected to be shipping in the second quarter of 1998. Chromatic Research architects Mpact media processors and develops and sells Mpact Mediaware. LG Semicon, SGS-THOMSON and Toshiba co-develop, manufacture and sell Mpact media processors. "We chose Mpact 2 media processor technology because it offers a compelling combination of integration, performance and value," said David Watkins, Vice President and General Manager of Diamond's Multimedia Division. "As a result, the Diamond DVD Kit, Model MC20 is a new class of product: a no-compromise, single solution for 3D/2D graphics and DVD priced for mainstream use." "Quite frankly, this is the moment that everyone watching media processors has been waiting for, signaling that the second-generation Mpact 2 media processor is breaking into the mainstream," said John Monti, Vice President of Marketing, Chromatic Research. "Diamond has tremendous manufacturing, marketing, sales and support resources that will take Mpact 2 media processor technology into all areas of the PC business, from top-tier PC OEMs to VARs to retail upgrade kits." Moving DVD Into Mainstream Because the Mpact 2 media processor integrates complete, hardware-accelerated DVD video and audio and arcade-quality 3D/2D graphics acceleration in a single chip, the Diamond DVD Kit, Model MC20 enables DVD-ROM to move into the PC mainstream, including sub-$1,000 PCs, by eliminating the traditional cost of separate DVD accelerator chips, cards and drives. With the Diamond DVD Kit, Model MC20, PC manufacturers can now include a complete 3D/2D and DVD solution at little incremental cost on Windowsr 95 and Windows 98 PCs when launched later this year. PCs with DVD-ROM drives will be ready for a new wave of DVD-ROM based games, entertainment and edutainment titles expected in 1998, in addition to playing Hollywood DVD movies available today. 3D/2D Graphics Features The Mpact 2 media processor, available from LG Semicon, SGS-THOMSON and Toshiba, is a multitasking "supercomputer on a chip" capable of performing six billion operations per second and equipped with the features required for heavy-duty graphics processing: ú 500 MFLOPS (Millions of Floating Point Operations Per Second) set-up engine to define polygon points and their color spaces ú Dedicated texture cache that provides the 3D rendering engine with ultra-fast access to the most often-used textures. ú 1.3 GB/second memory bandwidth using concurrent Rambus RDRAM memory. As a result, the Diamond DVD Kit, Model MC20 offers advanced 3D and 2D graphics features, including: ú Complete support for all Microsoft Direct3D features, including bilinear and trilinear texture filtering, perspective texture correction, edge anti-aliasing, specular highlighting, and alpha blending, mip-mapping, double-buffering and Z-buffering; ú Up to 1600 x 1200 resolution; ú Up to 200 MHz refresh rate; ú and up to 16.7 million colors. DVD Features The Mpact 2 media processor with Mpact Mediaware for 3DVD also provides a complete, hardware-accelerated solution for DVD, enabling the Diamond DVD Kit, Model MC20 to provide: ú Full-screen, 30 frame-per-second, MPEG-2 video, even at maximum DVD bit rate; ú Six-channel Dolby DigitalT audio decoding using SRS TruSurroundT for virtual surround-sound playback from two ordinary PC speakers; ú Advanced post-processing for the crispest, brightest DVD video available on a PC ú Dynamic, high-quality scaling of video window; ú Hardware-accelerated MPEG-1 decoding with VideoCD 2.0 compatibility, and more. Mpact Media Processor Technology Mpact media processors are low-cost, supercomputer-like chips that work in conjunction with an X86/MMX CPU to provide virtually any combination of high-performance multimedia functions. Functionality is determined by specialized software, called Mpact Mediaware modules, that run simultaneously on the Mpact media processor and CPU. Chromatic Research Chromatic Research is the leader in media processing technology and the world's first "chipless" semiconductor company. Based on a unique business model, the company's semiconductor partners LG Semicon, SGS-THOMSON and Toshiba co-develop, manufacture and sell Chromatic-architected Mpact media processors while Chromatic Research develops and sells the enabling Mpact Mediaware software. Customers include Compaq, Gateway 2000, Micron Electronics, Diamond, STB and Leadtek. Founded in 1993, the company is privately held. For more information on Chromatic Research or Mpact, please visit www.chromatic.com or www.mpact.com. Diamond Multimedia Diamond Multimedia is driving the interactive multimedia market by providing advanced solutions for home, business and professional desktop computer users, enabling them to create, access and experience compelling new media content from their desktops and through the Internet. Diamond accelerates multimedia from the Internet to the hard drive with products that include the Stealth and Viperr series of media accelerators, the Monster series of entertainment 3D and sound accelerators, the Fire series of professional 3D and SCSI accelerators, and the Suprar series of modems. Diamond also markets DVD and video phone kits. Diamond's common stock is traded on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the symbol DIMD, and its web site address is www.diamondmm.com. LG Semicon LG Semicon can be reached at www.lgsemicon.co.kr/company. SGS-THOMSON SGS-THOMSON can be reached at www.st.com. Toshiba Toshiba America Electronic Components can be reached at www.toshiba.com/taec.