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To: Timothy Liu who wrote (12868)	1/11/1999 4:52:00 PM
From: MileHigh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

I do love it. Also, eventually the Pentium III will deploy RDRAM, right? Then below is great news... Pentium III will widen gap with Celeron By Michael Kanellos Staff Writer, CNET News.com January 11, 1999, 10:30 a.m. PT update "Pentium III" will be the official brand name for the next generation of Intel processors, the company confirmed today, but there is more going on than a name change. With the Pentium III, formerly code-named Katmai, Intel will begin to widen the gap in performance between chips for high-end desktops and its own Celeron chips for low-end PCs. Not only will Pentium IIIs be faster than Celeron chips, the chip will come with technological enhancements, such as a speedier system bus and additional multimedia instructions, that won't come to the Celeron line until at least 2000. The chip will come to market in early March, say sources, riding a multimillion-dollar ad campaign and a slew of new performance PCs from major manufacturers. The company also seems intent on avoiding the software gap that occurs historically with the debut of a new processor. With the Pentium MMX and the Pentium II chips, little software existed at the time the chips were released that took advantage of the enhancements brought by the processors. For the Pentium III release, Intel has been working with software developers for over a year to fine tune applications for the chip, according to Greg Welch, brand manager for Pentium III. "There will be more titles for the Pentium III at the launch than in any previous release," he said. "This will enter at the higher end of the PC market, not only in terms of performance but in terms of feature set." A Dell spokesperson also said that it will be working with vendors to develop high-speed Internet video applications that take advantage of the new instructions. The Pentium III in many ways is a sequel to the Pentium II. The new chip is built around a Pentium II core with additional capabilities. For one, the chip will come with 70 new multimedia instructions that will improve graphics performance. Video, for example, will run smoother because a computer with a Pentium III will be able to churn more frames per second. The chip will come out at 450 MHz and 500 MHz and move beyond 600 MHz by the end of 1999, according to company sources. The chip will cost around $560 in volume at its release, sources have said, which is low for a chip introduction by Intel standards. When Pentium III arrives, Pentium II will start to get phased out, he added. No further upgrades for Pentium II desktop chips are planned, Welch said. Pentium III will then come to notebooks in the second half. In addition, the company will release a Pentium III-based Xeon processor for servers. Previously code-named Tanner, the Pentium III Xeon will come out in the first quarter, Welch said. Sources, however, expect the chip to be much more expensive. Moreover, the chip will come with a 133-MHz system bus by the second half. The system bus controls the flow of data between the processor and main memory and the faster they are, the better the performance. Current Pentium II chips use a 100-MHz system bus. Celerons use a 66-MHz system bus, and will likely continue to use that bus until 2000, the company has said. Like previous processor rollouts, Intel will spend millions to promote the new processor. A new logo was released today, which will begin to be featured in advertisements, including television time blocked off during the Super Bowl. The idea will be to achieve "retina burn" with the new logo, he said.

To: Timothy Liu who wrote (12868)	1/11/1999 4:58:00 PM
From: MileHigh	Respond to of 93625

This should also be great news as I am sure Merced will incorporate RDRAM. Also, notice the comments about how Intel is now working with more OS's besides Windows... Sun works with simulated Merced chip By Stephen Shankland Staff Writer, CNET News.com January 11, 1999, 11:35 a.m. PT Sun Microsystems has a version of its Solaris 7 operating system up and running on an early simulation of Intel's next-generation Merced chip, Sun said today. Solaris 7 is a 64-bit version of Sun's Unix operating system, and the final version will be ready in time for the release of Merced, Intel's first 64-bit chip, said Brian Croll, director of marketing for Solaris. Solaris now is working on an Intel prototype of Merced known as the "pre-silicon software development environment." Being able to work on prototype Intel equipment is a big advantage that Sun didn't have developing Solaris for Intel's current chips, he said. In the past, Sun "had to buy an Intel chip and hack on it. Now we're in the inner circle," Croll said. Solaris 7 is part of the shift to 64-bit operating systems, which allow computers to process some information faster and manage larger amounts of information than their 32-bit counterparts. Microsoft's Windows NT currently is a 32-bit operating system, but designers are working on a 64-bit version. Although many companies have announced support for Intel's 64-bit chips, the Santa Clara, California, chipmaker is somewhat late to the 64-bit game. For example, Sun has its 64-bit UltraSparc chip and Compaq Computer has Digital's 64-bit Alpha chip, which can run Windows NT. Merced currently is scheduled to debut in the first half of 2000, but many analysts don't expect the new chip design to catch on for big business until the next version, McKinley, currently slated for release in the second half of 2001. Nonetheless, nearly every major server and OS vendor is preparing products centered around Merced in anticipation of the increasing market presence of 64-bit Intel products. About 95 percent of Solaris is independent of the hardware it's running on, but the remaining 5 percent bears a disproportionate amount of the performance burden and must be tuned for each platform, Croll said. "When we have it up and running on the simulator, it means we're very well along the way," Croll said, but Sun still must get the operating tuned with prototype versions of the new chip before the company begins to heave sighs of relief. There are always a lot of processor-specific instructions that must be weeded out of the operating system when making it work on a new platform, he said. QUOTE SNAPSHOT January 11, 1999, 1:01 p.m. PT Sun Microsystems Inc. SUNW 94.0000 +3.1250 +3.44% Intel Corp. INTC 139.7500 +10.0625 +7.76% > more from CNET Investor Quotes delayed 20+ minutes Sun isn't the only company porting its version of Unix to the 64-bit Intel architecture, called IA-64. Compaq Computer, Silicon Graphics, and Hewlett-Packard, among others, have embarked on a similar strategy. Linux OSes will also likely be tuned for Merced. "What we're seeing here is a change of the scenery. Now we're seeing other operating environments tightly aligned with Intel," compared to the past 15 years, when Intel chips ran little other than Microsoft operating systems. "This is really important in the industry because Merced will be a powerful enough chip that it starts allowing Intel-based systems to deliver a lot more power than was available before," Croll said. Moving Solaris to other hardware besides Sun's UltraSparc chips is part of Sun's strategy to propagate its operating system. Another part is giving Solaris 7 away to noncommercial users such as students and home users for only the cost of shipping. Since August, Sun has given 75,000 copies of Solaris away, Croll said. Sun released Solaris 7, formerly known as Solaris 2.7, in October.