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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Pravin Kamdar who wrote (39055)	10/12/1998 11:22:00 AM
From: Joey Smith	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1573902

3DNow in BIG TROUBLE...looks like they will have to resort to copying Intel again <ggg> Monday October 12 9:23 AM ET Katmai could kill 3DNow, analysts say By Robert Lemos, ZDNet It's blood and gore in 3-D, and it isn't fun and games. Rather, it's the face-off in multimedia between PC chip giant Intel Corp. and its rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. On Tuesday, Intel (Nasdaq:INTC) is expected to announce further details of its Katmai processor at the Microprocessor Forum in San Jose, Calif. Not to be outdone, rival AMD (NYSE:AMD) will show off its latest 3-D enhanced processor, codenamed "Sharptooth," and reveal details of its next-generation K7 processor. The brewing hostilities are not just of interest to gamers. The new instructions can be used for a variety of other multimedia applications - from voice recognition to video processing. Showdown in 3-D For the AMD-led 3DNow initiative, Intel's coming Katmai is a major threat. In fact, the so-called Katmai New Instructions chip could be AMD's Waterloo. Intel's coming processor adds multimedia functions to what is essentially a Pentium II core, giving Katmai all the advantages of AMD's K6-2 and none of its weaknesses. "It doesn't really kill the current 3DNow processors, but for applications makers it doesn't make sense to support both Katmai and 3Dnow," said Pete Glaskowsky, an analyst at semiconductor technology watcher MicroDesign Resources Inc., MDR hosts the annual Microprocessor Forum. 3DNow is cool, but ... The 3DNow feature set is 23 instructions designed to speed 3-D and multimedia processing. Applications using the technology - mainly 3-D games - can see up to 30 percent faster performance. But while AMD's 3DNow-enabled processor is strong in optimized applications, it is barely better than an older Pentium in others. "It comes down to instruction sets," said Mike Feibus, an analyst at semiconductor watcher Mercury Research Inc. "Katmai New Instructions will be much richer than 3DNow." Included in Katmai: Enough power to do real-time video encoding, useful for video conferencing and home video editing. Feibus admits: "It remains to be seen whether those will be compelling applications" for users. Biting back with Sharptooth AMD is preparing its defense. The Sunnyvale, Calif. company plans to hit back with Sharptooth, a better version of the K6 that will add 256KB of memory on the chip. If AMD's performance gain maps with what Intel gained when it added 128KB of memory to its Celeron processor, AMD will likely see a 20 to 40 percent improvement - which may be enough to hold users over until its summer release of the K7. 3-D's hot, but why? Despite the buzz about MMX, 3Dnow and Katmai New Instructions, the question is, do they really sell PCs? Analysts raise doubts, saying that only highly technical users know enough about their PC to care. Even so, AMD has been somewhat successful in getting applications makers on board. Graphics board maker 3Dfx Interactive Inc. has optimized its drivers, as has Matrox Electronics Systems Ltd., and IBM Corp. has put the instructions in its ViaVoice voice recognition product. Officials at the companies credit the instruction set with increasing the performance of these applications by up to 30 percent. 3DNow around later? Ultimately, software makers may determine whether AMD advances or retreats. If they balk at supporting both 3DNow and Katmai New Instructions in software, AMD may abandon 3DNow in favor of copying Intel. "We are evaluating going to Katmai at some time in the future," acknowledged Dana Krelle, vice president of marketing for AMD's computational product group. For AMD, cloning may be the better part of valor.