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To: Paul Engel who wrote (65212)	9/22/1998 1:53:00 AM
From: denni	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Intel looks past PCI-X zdnet.com By Lisa DiCarlo, PC Week Online September 18, 1998 5:16 pm ET PALM SPRINGS, Calif. --- While grudgingly accepting the PCI-X specification put forth by IBM, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Compaq Computer Corp., Intel Corp. (INTC) this week launched its own plans for advanced server I/O. A likely scenario has PCI-X plugging a performance gap for Intel-based servers until switched fabric-based I/O, which Intel is backing, is commercially viable, perhaps in late 2000. The PCI-X spec, jointly and secretly developed by rivals IBM, HP and Compaq, promises up to a sixfold increase in overall server performance. A PCI-X bus, for example, will run at 133MHz and move up to 1GB of data per second between the CPU and peripherals, sources said. At the Santa Clara, Calif., company's Developer Forum here this week, Intel executives said they are still evaluating PCI-X but that it seems too focused on bandwidth, not scalability and availability. There is a lot of headroom left in today's PCI, an Intel official said, citing a twofold performance improvement expected in 1999, when Intel introduces a 64-bit-wide 66MHz bus and multisegmented PCI support in the 450NX chip set. "I haven't been able to understand why they're focused on raw bandwidth," Justin Rattner, an Intel fellow and director of Intel's Server Architecture Lab, in Hillsboro, Ore., said of PCI-X. "Where is the improvement if all you do is wait faster for your data?" Despite the criticism, sources said Intel has already given a nod to the PCI-X trio. An executive with one of the companies involved in developing the spec said they designed PCI-X to address PCI's current power and performance limitations. He agreed that a fabric-based architecture is the way to go long-term. "After about the year 2000, we will need a very different architecture to handle I/O," the executive said. The PCI Special Interest Group, a standards body, is evaluating PCI-X and will make a determination in October on whether to support it. Switched fabrics are vastly different from buses. Rather than take a signal from a CPU into a bus through hard wires and into an I/O subsystem (the PCI bus implementation), signals come from the chip and into a high-speed switch. This switch acts as a controller and directs the signal to a subsystem, another chip or even another server. Performance is based on the speed of the switch. There is far less latency in switched fabrics because CPUs do not waste power pushing data through a PCI pipe. "We will move away from bus-based solutions to switched fabric," said Intel's Rattner. Intel is working with a very small group of companies on fabrics, possibly as few as one. It will host a large-scale private meeting in November for companies seriously interested in supporting fabrics. "The next wave [in I/O] will be switched fabrics. They should replace buses," said Jerry Sheridan, an analyst at Dataquest Inc., in San Jose, Calif. Supercomputers and mainframes have employed custom switched fabric implementations for years, but Intel's plan is to make fabrics extensible across all Intel server hardware at a volume-based cost. The challenge will be in convincing server makers that its plans are not exclusionary or proprietary, which is what drove the development of PCI-X in the first place.

To: Paul Engel who wrote (65212)	9/22/1998 4:57:00 AM
From: Larry Ames	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

All, AMD announcement of 300mhz portable K6 chip from in WSJ this morning. I haven't followed AMD portable chips that closely. Is this something really new or just a turn of the screw and a good marketing blast? interactive.wsj.com Larry ==================================================================== New AMD Chip May Cut Notebook-Computer Prices By DEAN TAKAHASHI Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Advanced Micro Devices Inc. has developed a chip that could help drive down prices for portable computers, offering comparable performance to archrival Intel Corp. for about one-third the price. AMD, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., will announce Tuesday that it is shipping a microprocessor for laptop machines that operates at 300 megahertz, the same speed offered by Intel's fastest chip for the portable market. AMD said customers for the new product include Compaq Computer Corp., the No. 1 personal-computer maker, and other manufacturers that it isn't yet identifying. David Summer, director of product marketing, said the new K6-300 will sell for $229, compared with $637 for Intel's 300-megahertz Pentium II. Where computers based on those Intel chips sell for more than $3,000, AMD estimated that K6-based portable computers will sell for $1,999 to $2,499 this fall. Intel has been forced to cut prices rapidly in chips for desktop computers, but its stronger position in laptops has given it more latitude in that market. Intel earlier this month cut prices on its portable chips by 12% to 34%, but it left the price for its fastest 300-megahertz Pentium II chip unchanged. Analysts said the competition from AMD and others will help change that. "There is no question that notebook prices are coming down," said Cameron Duncan, analyst at ARS Inc., a market researcher in Irving, Texas. "I think you'll see more impact next year and a reaction from Intel to speed the introduction of new technology." An Intel spokesman declined to comment, other than to say "we welcome competition." The company is developing its own new mobile products as well, he noted. National Semiconductor Corp.'s Cyrix subsidiary, as well as start-up Rise Technology Corp. are also targeting the portable market in addition to AMD. Rise Technology, based in Santa Clara, Calif., is expected to unveil its plans next month at the Microprocessor Forum conference in San Jose, Calif. Intel's Pentium II line is generally considered better at handling multimedia functions than an AMD K6 chip operating at the same speed. In the first quarter of 1999, however, AMD plans to up the ante again when it introduces a mobile version of an even more powerful chip, the K6-2, which has built-in graphics capabilities. That version will represent a departure for AMD in competing with Intel. To date, AMD has simply developed chips that fit into the same sockets as Intel's chips, allowing AMD to take advantage of Intel-developed technology such as main system boards. Next year, AMD plans to introduce its own additional technology, such as faster data pathways and memory, that enables the K6 to stay competitive. Mr. Summers predicted that AMD's schedule should enable computer makers to introduce sub-$1,500 portable machines early next year.

To: Paul Engel who wrote (65212)	9/22/1998 9:30:00 AM
From: greenspirit	Respond to of 186894

Paul and thread, article...Xeon Freeze -- Intel Confirms Server Chips In Short Supply... September 22, 1998 COMPUTER RESELLER NEWS : Santa Clara, -- Calif.Hoping to get a new four-way Xeon server to a customer? Think again. Intel Corp. is grappling with low yields on its latest high-end Pentium II processor as well as an ECC errata when the processor is placed in a four-way server configuration, said several sources. These problems have forced Intel to ship only one-quarter of its orders to some server manufacturers, said hardware OEM sources. "We placed a purchase order for Xeon chipsets over a month ago and they were due to arrive [last week], but my purchasing agent was informed we would only receive about 25 percent of what we ordered," said one OEM source who asked not to be identified. "Right now, we cannot meet all the demand," said John Miner, vice president and general manager of Intel's enterprise server group. "It's an unfortunate short-term problem." Some PC makers, however, said it is not just a demand problem but rather a screening problem. Several companies said Intel is privately screening chips for the ECC errata. In June, Santa Clara-based Intel said the Xeon chip could lock systems when used in certain configurations. "They're hand-screening the 400MHz Xeon processors, picking out what's good for four-way and that's going in one bucket, and the ones that will be OK in single and two-way systems go into another," said one source, adding there is not a yield problem for one- or two-processor systems, which do not exhibit the errata. Intel had similar shortages with the Pentium Pro, but several vendors said the Xeon situation is worse. "There is a serious supply shortage," said one source. Intel said it is preparing to ramp up production of ECC-enabled processors, effectively putting an end to the screening process. Supply issues should gradually diminish within a few weeks, said an Intel spokesperson. Still, growing interest in high-end servers is exacerbating the situation. Only a few vendors, Dell Computer Corp., Round Rock, Texas; Compaq Computer Corp., Houston; and Unisys Corp., Blue Bell, Pa.; are shipping four-way Xeon servers in volume. These vendors said the product is still constrained. Compaq would not comment on Xeon supply, but Paul Santeler, segment director for Enterprise x86 Servers, said, "Quite frankly, the response from our customers has been tremendous. . . and we just can't build enough [Xeon servers]." Spokespeople at Unisys and Dell said they could not ship enough products. Meanwhile, Hewlett-Packard Co., Palo Alto, Calif., and IBM Corp., Armonk, N.Y., are among several major vendors preparing to roll out four-way servers over the next 30 days. HP would not comment on Xeon availability. Jim Gargan, director of product marketing for IBM's Netfinity server unit, said IBM was getting all the processors it needs. "This situation isn't all that surprising," said Kelly Spang, analyst for Technology Business Research, Hampton, N.H. "Intel is discontinuing, if they haven't already, their Pentium Pro line, and the server guys have to go somewhere."

To: Paul Engel who wrote (65212)	9/23/1998 6:50:00 AM
From: rudedog	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Paul - Intel has had 10 developers on-site at MSFT with the NT-64 team in Redmond for nearly a year, doing work on both the merced simulator (working out the compiler and optimization issues described above) and on Alpha systems (working out the correspondence between 64 bit operations that are new for this version of NT and issues that are Merced-dependent). A separate team has been working on core porting of 64 bit components of NT at Intel, to jump-start the MSFT team's ability to use more advanced Merced features. Intel appears to be doing whatever it takes to advance the state of both 64 bit capability and Merced awareness in the developer community and at MSFT.