ntel's "Geyserville" to invigorate laptops
By Michael Kanellos
Staff Writer, CNET NEWS.COM
February 24, 1999, 5:00 p.m. PT
PALM SPRINGS, California--A host of Intel technological improvements will boost PC notebook
performance to a level on par with mainstream desktops this year as notebooks will begin to play
a larger role in the company's destiny.
"This year, we will have notebooks running at least 600 Mhz or higher in the maximum performance mode," said
Robert Jecmen, vice president of the Intel mobile and handheld product group, during his keynote at the
company's developer conference here today. "We expect to deliver near desktop performance by the end of the
year for the first time."
"Geyserville" is one of the chief reasons for the acceleration in performance, according to Jecmen. Geyserville,
which comes out with first the mobile Pentium IIIs in the early part of the second half, allows notebooks to
operate at a lower power state when running on batteries.
A 500-MHz Pentium III Geyserville notebook, for instance, will run at 500 MHz when plugged into the wall but
only at 400 MHz when operating on batteries. The notebook, however, will consume 40 to 50 percent less
power.
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While the technology extends battery life, Geyserville's main effect comes in increasing plugged-in performance.
For years, notebook vendors have used "brute force clock throttling" to preserve decent battery life on
Intel-based notebooks, he said. Now, notebook vendors no longer feel constrained to dumb down their
notebooks because of battery constraints. Historically, Intel chips have also been power hogs, said several
sources.
"It has taken us out of the constraint that we have to limit the performance of the CPU," Jecmen said, adding,
"battery technology is not scaling like silicon technology."
Other improvements will come as well. Toward the middle of the year, the company will roll out 400-MHz and
433-MHz Pentium II mobile processors based around the 0.18-micron manufacturing process, which will be the
first chips made on this process. Intel will then follow up with a 500-MHz Pentium III processor with 256KB of
integrated, secondary cache, another first.
For the value line, Intel will release a 333-MHz Celeron for notebooks in the second
quarter, a 366-MHz Celeron during the summer, and a 400-MHz version in the
second half. In addition, the company will release the 440 MX chipset, code-named
Bannister, which will make it possible to adopt soft modems and soft audio functions.
The notebook effort comes as part of an effort to maintain the company's historic
growth rates. Computer shipments will continue to grow in double digit figures, Paul
Otellini, general manager of the Intel Architecture Business Group said earlier in the
week. In fact, by the year 2000, PC sales will likely outpace TV sales worldwide.
Prices, however, continue to drop. More ominous, approximately 70 to 80 percent of
all current purchases come from repeat buyers.
"We have to find the recipe to bring the rest of the 50 percent of the U.S. households and 80 percent of the
homes on a worldwide basis," to the computing market, he said.
As for notebooks, he added: "You will see notebooks go from $1,900 to $1,500 to $1,200. We are working
with our partners in the industry to find the next price point. We don't know if it will be $999, but we will work
with our partners to establish the new price point.
"You will see processor performance that is equivalent to the desktop," he added. Intel itself will switch from
having a computer base consisting of 80 percent desktops to 80 percent notebooks.
The effort to drop notebook prices follows a disparity in the market caused by cheap desktops. Last year, while
notebook vendors were still directing their wares toward performance users, resellers were reporting fantastic
sales on any products priced below $1,300.
Competition is also increasing. Earlier this year, Toshiba started to use AMD processors in its consumer
notebooks in Japan. Toshiba has now extended it use of AMD chips to Canada and several European
companies, say AMD sources.
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