Scumbria - Here's some more BAD NEWS about your Beloved IDTi Centaur LoseCHIP.
The wheels are falling off this dog and pony show, Scumbria - taking your money with them !
Talk about a bad idea getting WORSE !
Paul
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ebnews.com
Exclusive: Centaur Cancels X86 MPU that only integrates core logic
By Mark Hachman
Electronic Buyers' News
(10/06/98, 05:20:12 PM EDT)
Centaur Technology Inc., a subsidiary of Integrated Device
Technology Inc., will announce next week that it has cancelled
plans to develop a microprocessor that only integrates core
logic. Instead, Centaur is "redirecting" development to add
graphics technology derived from an outside source.
IDT officials separately confirmed that the company has shelved
development of its own standalone graphics chip, which industry
sources said was called VisionArray. Instead, Centaur
executives said they will probably license or work with one of the
thirty-odd existing PC graphics chip companies.
As of May of this year, Centaur's roadmap called for the existing
WinChip 2 microprocessor to be quickly succeeded by a
WinChip 2+, with double the on-chip cache memory. In early
1999, Centaur planned to roll out the WinChip 2+NB with an
integrated “north bridge” of the core logic, but has since decided
against it.
“What I think I'd choose to say is that we've 'redirected'
development [of the WinChip 2+NB],” said Glenn Henry,
president of Austin-based Centaur Technology. “What we
discovered is that instead of integrating just the north bridge,
people want higher levels of integration. But I'm not going to say
what we're doing right now.”
What Henry did say, however, is Centaur's roadmap has been
rewritten yet again. The WinChip 2+ has been renamed the
WinChip 3, scheduled to run at 233 to 300 MHz. But the original
WinChip 3, a 500 to 600 MHz part expected in 1999, now will be
called the WinChip 4.
Henry is expected to announce the changes at next week's
Microprocessor Forum, sponsored by Sunnyvale, Calif.-based
analyst firm MicroDesign Resources.
The redesigned roadmap is not the only hurdle Centaur's
WinChip has had to overcome. In late September, IDT
executives said that the company has had problems
manufacturing the Centaur-designed WinChip at higher clock
speeds, as well as utilizing manufacturing capacity that is sitting
idle.
“We're shipping 240-, 225-, and 200-MHz versions of the
WinChip,” said Dave Côté, vice-president of marketing for
Santa Clara, Calif.-based IDT, at the time. “But the market's at
266 MHz.”
Centaur's redesigned integrated processor could take the same
approach as the MediaGX or MXi integrated processors from
Santa Clara, Calif.-based National Semiconductor, and its Cyrix
Corp. subsidiary. Both Centaur and Cyrix design the
microprocessors that their parent companies then manufacture.
Both Cyrix and Centaur's strategy is to design microprocessors
that integrate discrete components in a single chip, which lowers
the cost for the OEM. In May, Centaur's Henry described three
approaches: integrating the microprocessor and the north
bridge; integrating the entire core logic chipset plus graphics;
and finally, integrating the processor, north bridge, and graphics
chip.
Centaur might take a similar approach to Cyrix's MediaGX or
MXi, which integrate at least the processor and graphics, Henry
said. But he added that Centaur was eyeing graphics
technology, probably sourced from a third party.
“There's thirty-four graphics chips out there,” he said. “Graphics
is technically very complex.”
But market forces, rather than technical challenges, have
apparently doomed IDT's own standalone PC graphics chip.
A spokesman for Santa Clara, Calif.-based IDT confirmed that
the company has cancelled development of its standalone
graphics chip. “Graphics was not an area we decided we
wanted to go into,” a spokesman said, adding that competitive
pricing pressures in the graphics industry did not make the chip
worth the investment.
An industry source close to IDT's aborted effort reported that the
chip was named VisionArray, part of a program dating back
almost four years. The high-end PC chip reportedly contained a
large number of instruction units that would execute instructions
in parallel, a common design technique in high-end computing.
Jon Peddie, president of analyst firm Jon Peddie Associates,
Tiburon, Calif., called IDT''s graphics efforts “schizophrenic,”
noting that the company's on-again, off-again relationship with
graphics dates back to when IDT designed floating-point
co-processors for Intel's 286 microprocessor.
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