Tenchsatsu & Intel Investors - Intel Will Demo NEW CPUs at Comdex
Intel will have its customers demonstrate a host of new CPUS and chip sets at Comdex - to preview what will be shipped early next year.
These include 300 MHz DIXON Notebooks (Pentium II + 256K On-CHIP L2 cache), 366 MHz Celeron PCs, 8-WAY SMP XEON SERVERS with the new Profusion Chip Set, 4-way 450 MHz XEONS with the new "fixed" XEON chip, 300 MHz Pentium MMX mininotebooks, etc.
There's a lot coming next year and Intel and Intel Customers will have it all on display at COMDEX !
Paul
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infoworld.com
Intel to forge PC systems path for 1999
By Andy Santoni
InfoWorld Electric
Posted at 6:09 AM PT, Oct 26, 1998
At Comdex in Las Vegas in November, Intel will let PC vendors show off systems, in public and behind closed doors, that use more than a dozen processors the company will introduce during the next six months.
With 11 new chips planned on being shown privately to key customers, Intel is laying the groundwork for an ever-increasing variety of systems that PC vendors will roll out in the next year.
On the show floor at Comdex, server makers will offer "technology demos" of systems that use the Profusion core-logic chip set and eight 450-MHz Pentium II Xeon processors, with 2MB of Level 2 (L2) cache memory, one Intel executive said.
Among the systems that vendors can show only in private suites are four-processor servers that use a 450-MHz Pentium II Xeon processor, with 1MB or 2MB of L2 cache, along with the 450NX chip set. These CPUs incorporate a new "stepping," or manufacturing version, of the processor to eliminate the problems that plagued earlier Pentium II Xeon CPUs in four-way configurations, said Anthony Ambrose, director of marketing at Intel's Enterprise Server Group, in Beaverton, Ore.
In general, Intel's nascent strategy of segmentation will give IT managers more choices, but it will make their jobs tougher as they wade through a mountain of specification sheets.
And while Intel is broadening its product base, the company further frustrates customers by continuing to push the speeds of its high-end processors.
"We don't need all of that power," said Alan Boehme, director of strategic planning at DHL, in Redwood City, Calif., and a member of the InfoWorld Corporate Advisory Board. "We're not doing scientific computing in the field," added Boehme, whose company is currently in the process of buying several hundred notebooks.
PC makers, too, see a down side in the overabundance of CPUs.
"It will give IT managers more decisions to make beyond [simply ordering] the latest and greatest speeds and feeds," said an executive at a PC supplier, who requested anonymity. "You can't just
ask for the high end anymore. There's more than one high end. It's hard to plan products because we don't know which chips the customer will choose."
For example, in the notebook space Intel will be offering four versions of mobile CPUs that run at the same speed -- 300 MHz -- in the spring of 1999, sources said. In mainstream mobiles, Intel will
augment its 233-MHz, 266-MHz, and 300-MHz Pentium II chips with 266-MHz, 300-MHz, 333-MHz, and 366-MHz CPUs that use the Dixon core, which incorporates 256KB of on-chip L2 cache. The new 266-MHz and 300-MHz chips will carry the suffix "PE," for Performance Enhanced, to
differentiate them from their older, more expensive siblings.
At about the same time, Intel will release a 300-MHz Pentium MMX processor, which is small enough for mininotebooks.
Behind closed doors at the show, vendors can also show Basic PCs that use the upcoming 366-MHz Celeron processor.
Buyers will get a sneak peek at the first mobiles to use Celeron CPUs, due in April, which will run at 233 MHz, 266 MHz, or 300 MHz and be housed in a new, lower-cost package, sources said.
What Intel will not be showing, or even offering, is a mobile version of the Katmai processor, the next-generation processor for desktop and server systems, according to an Intel executive. As it
stands now, a mobile Katmai would have come to market at about the same time as Coppermine, a 0.18-micron shrink of Katmai, which is due next summer.
In between Katmai and Coppermine, notebook buyers will likely miss some of Katmai's features, including Katmai New Instructions and security features that are built into the processor for access
control, asset tracking, user identification, and software copy protection. The dual-frequency and dual-power mode once planned for Katmai will also not appear until Coppermine ships.
Intel Corp., in Santa Clara, Calif., can be reached at (800) 628-8686 or www.intel.com.
Andy Santoni is a senior writer for InfoWorld.
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