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Technology Stocks : Rambus (RMBS) - Eagle or Penguin -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gary Wisdom who wrote (6843)	8/31/1998 9:46:00 PM
From: MileHigh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

No mention of RMBS but they could be involved... MileHigh ============== Sun sheds light on chip path By Michael Kanellos Staff Writer, CNET News.com August 31, 1998, 5:25 p.m. PT Sun Microsystems will provide a road map for its processor technology through 2002 tomorrow, a move that seems calculated to capitalize on delays that have hit high-end processor vendors in recent months. Sun will essentially reveal a general calendar and performance targets for future releases of the UltraSparc family of microprocessors, according to sources at Sun. Right now, Sun's premier commercially available chip, the 64-bit UltraSparc II, runs at a maximum of 360 MHz. QUOTE SNAPSHOT August 31, 1998, 1:01 p.m. PT Sun Microsystems Inc. SUNW 39.6250 -2.6250 -6.21% > more from CNET Investor > Investor message boards Quotes delayed 20+ minutes By 2002, Sun will be commercially producing the UltraSparc V, which will run at 1.5 GHz (1,500 MHz), or in terms of raw speed, about four times the rating of Sun's fastest chip now. It will be made, eventually, on an ultrafine manufacturing process, according to sources at the company. The manufacturing process for this superfast chip will be based on 0.10 micron technology. The micron measurements refer to the distance between circuits on a microprocessor. Generally, the smaller the number, the faster and the more powerful the chip is. Current UltraSparc IIs and Pentium II processors from Intel are made on a much less advanced and "fatter" 0.25-micron process. In the more immediate future, Sun will release a 400-MHz version of the UltraSparc II later this year, according to Anant Agrawal, vice president of engineering in Sun's microelectronics division. Besides the speed boost, the upcoming version of the UltraSparc II will be made on a relatively advanced 0.18-micron process. The company is expected to release a line of workstations concurrently with the faster UltraSparc II chips, said Harlan McGann, Sun's architectural evangelist. That release will be followed by a 440-MHz and 480-MHz UltraSparc II by the middle of 1999, said other sources at Sun. The details of Sun's road map follows a series of delays and bug reports on other high-end processors. Earlier this year, Intel delayed the release of its 64-bit Merced chip from late 1999 to mid-2000. The delay of Merced has prompted a number of analysts to say that Intel's main thrust into the 64-bit won't occur until the release of McKinley, Merced's successor, in 2001. More recently, Intel postponed the release of its fastest Xeon processor for four-processor servers. When used in four-processor configurations, the 450-MHz version of Xeon was disabling the error correcting cache function, a crucial function for servers. Intel is now currently working internally, and with its server vendors, to increase the thermal protection on four-way Xeon servers. On Friday, Compaq announced that it was delaying its first Alpha-based workstations from September until the fourth quarter of the year, and possibly the first quarter of next year. Sun, of course, hasn't been immune from development problems itself. The first samples of the UltraSparc III, which will run at 600 MHz, have been delayed from late summer until the end of the year or the beginning of 1999, several sources at Sun have said. As a result of the delay, servers and workstations based around the products won't be available until the fall of 1999.