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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: greenspirit who wrote (51576)	3/30/1998 9:48:00 AM
From: greenspirit	Respond to of 186894

All, Article...Barrett to continue "Intel Everywhere" push... March 30, 1998 InfoWorld Electric: Intel's "divide and conquer " strategy to target processors at specific applications will extend from high-end servers to equipment even less expensive than the lowest-cost " Basic PC" the Intel Architecture (IA) can satisfy, according to Craig Barrett, Intel's president and new chief executive officer. At the low end, Intel will develop products around the StrongARM architecture it recently licensed from Advanced RISC Machines. "That's one of the ideas," said Barrett in a recent interview. StrongARM offers reasonably high performance and low cost, Barrett said. That combination is required in handheld computers and other embedded processor applications, where IA has not had great success. Intel needs approval of its proposed acquisition of Digital's semiconductor production facilities before proceeding with StrongARM marketing, Barrett noted. StrongARM technology could also find its way into IA CPUs, according to Barrett. Especially valuable is the power-saving features of the architecture. "There is some interesting low-power technology there," Barrett said. Barrett added that there are other, subtle design techniques that can reduce power consumption on the semiconductor device level, though he would not elaborate. Lowering power consumption and thereby increasing battery life is the goal of the dual-frequency, dual-voltage design of the upcoming Katmai processor for mobiles. Katmai will also offer an extended instruction set aimed at 3-D graphics. Better graphics performance is a cornerstone of Intel processors and core-logic chips aimed at another application segment, high-end workstations, according to Barrett. The capability to address larger main memories, larger and faster Level 2 (L2) caches, fast input/output buses, and scaleable multiprocessing are among the technologies Intel will incorporate in workstation designs, he said. "There's a lot of stuff in the hardware other than the processor," Barrett said. For one, AGP Pro will extend the Accelerated Graphics Port specification beyond 4x mode to increase graphics performance in workstations. The technology will be incorporated into core-logic targeted at workstations, and will work with both IA-32 processors such as the Pentium II SVW, targeted at servers and workstations, and IA-64 Merced server chips. Merced will be introduced in the second half of 1999, and Intel already has "two or three" generations of the chip in design, Barrett said. Several software vendors announced they are porting their products to Merced, using software tools that emulate the Merced chip's architecture on existing Pentium II systems. Barrett pegged Merced's 3-D performance at three times that of IA-32 Katmai processors, which will appear in the first half of 1999. Intel also has " several" generations of IA-32 processors under design, Barrett said. One processor architecture Intel will not pursue is Alpha, according to Barrett. Alpha technology is also part of the pending Digital deal, and Intel will manufacture the Alpha chip for Digital and its customers, Barrett said. But Intel will not market Alpha as an alternative to its own CPU architectures, leaving that to other semiconductor suppliers -- Mitsubishi and Samsung -- that license the technology from Digital, Barrett said. "Alpha is their [Digital's] product," Barrett explained. At the low-priced end of the PC market, Intel in April will introduce Celeron, an L2 cacheless P6-generation CPU developed under the code name Covington. Although Barrett hopes the chip will meet the need for a low-cost CPU, he is not yet comfortable with the name. "I hate 'Celeron,'" said Barrett, who added he will probably become more comfortable with the name over time.