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To: Mani1 who wrote (2699)	3/10/1999 12:21:00 AM
From: Mad2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3645

Mani, see that article below on Tridents chip. It doesn't appear to compete based on features, however it keeps the pricing pressure on. Electronic Engineering Times March 1, 1999 LENGTH: 618 words HEADLINE: Trident folds north-bridge chip into graphics controller -- Notebook graphics, core logic get integrated BYLINE: Craig Matsumoto BODY: Mountain View, Calif. - Trident Microsystems Inc. is tackling the integration of graphics and core logic in notebook systems, with a solution aimed at low-cost notebooks. The company's CyberBlade i7 chip is the notebook equivalent to the Apollo MVP4 chip set being sold by core-logic vendor Via Technologies Inc. Both are Socket 7 and Super7-compatible parts designed jointly by Trident and Via, with the MVP4 targeted at desktop systems. The CyberBlade i7 is tailored for Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s Socket 7 and Super7 platforms. A version compatible with Slot 1 is being planned but " not to be announced any time soon," said Alan Yuen, Trident's marketing director for notebook parts. CyberBlade i7 replaces the north-bridge core-logic chip, merging those functions with a Trident 3-D graphics controller. One cost- and space-saving advantage to the integration is that it allows removal of external frame- buffer memory, because the north-bridge portion of the chip can define a chunk of system memory-4 to 8 Mbytes worth, in Trident's case-as the graphics buffer, Yuen said. Integration of graphics and north-bridge logic is being pursued by several companies. Core-logic vendor Silicon Integrated Systems Corp. produced such an integrated chip set last year (see Sept. 7, 1998, page 20). Trident appears to be the first to pull off north-bridge integration into a lone graphics chip, and that puts the company a step ahead of graphics competitors such as Intel Corp., Yuan said. In addition, Intel hasn't tested such integration on the notebook market. " Right now, if you look at Intel, they're only talking about the desktop version. And even their desktop version, from a performance standpoint, is not competitive," he said. The concept is valuable mainly for lower-end machines, said Peter Glaskowsky, a senior analyst with MicroDesign Resources. That's because the integration usually means skimping on performance in both graphics and core logic, making a combined chip sensible for a lower-cost system that doesn't require premium performance. "It's basically for sub-$500 PCs, because even at the $600 or $700 level, you have enough budget" for quality discrete graphics chips, he said. That trade-off cropped up earlier this decade, when so-called unified memory architecture (UMA) chips began to emerge in the graphics realm. "There wasn't enough bandwidth to be able to sustain performance. Your graphics subsystem was degraded," said Larry Chisvin, director of marketing for NeoMagic Corp., which also makes graphics chips for notebooks. System bandwidth has increased enough to make UMA more viable, but bandwidth to the graphics frame buffer has gone up as well, as have demands for graphics performance, Chisvin said. "I don't know why that same issue wouldn't exist now," he said. "Certainly, performance of a system running UMA is greater than five years ago, but the expectations have increased." Tom Kao, who once worked on graphics for Cirrus Logic Inc. and now handles marketing for Silicon Motion Inc., said his team dropped the idea of UMA after realizing the performance would be affected. Another concern with merging graphics and core logic is power dissipation. "If you don't have any graphics frame buffer, it's going to cross the system bus to the system memory every time" the screen gets refreshed, Chisvin said. In the case of a laptop computer, the extra bus traffic burns battery life. "If you're going to the system's frame buffer for every access, that's going to use a lot of power," he said. Trident's CyberBlade i7 is sampling now, with production volumes expected in May or June. Copyright 1999 CMP Media Inc. LANGUAGE: ENGLISH LOAD-DATE: February 27, 1999

To: Mani1 who wrote (2699)	3/10/1999 12:26:00 AM
From: Mad2	Respond to of 3645

Electronic Buyers' News Tridents chip to enter production in June February 22, 1999 LENGTH: 502 words HEADLINE: Trident plans mobile-PC chipset BYLINE: Mark Hachman BODY: Silicon Valley- Trident Microsystems Inc. last week became the first graphics-chip maker to announce integration of its technology into a core- logic chipset designed for mobile PCs. Through a reciprocal partnership with chipset vendor Via Technologies Inc., Trident has produced the CyberBlade i7, which combines its 64-bit Blade 3D desktop graphics chip and the north bridge of a Socket 7 core-logic chipset for Pentium-class PCs. The chipset will also include 4-Mbytes of on-chip SDRAM, which will help reduce costs. The company's latest graphics cores, such as the 128-bit Blade3D offshoot expected in the fourth quarter, will initially be brought to market as stand- alone chips. According to Alan Yuen, director of mobile marketing at Trident, Mountain View, Calif., the CyberBlade family will save $15 to $20 over the cost of discrete components. The CyberBlade i7 is sampling now in a 492-pin BGA package for $35 in 10,000-unit lots. "In summary, this is the industry's first integrated core-logic solution for the notebook," Yuen said. "We want to enable sub-$1,000 notebooks, and hope that this will carry us into the value, mainstream, and performance segments." Trident hopes an emerging class of sub-$1,500 mobile PCs will include the CyberBlade family of integrated-graphics chipsets, which requisition part of the PC's system memory to perform graphics calculations. A third-party south bridge must be purchased separately. By the time Trident's chipset enters production in June, analysts said they suspect the company's efforts will be followed by other players in the graphics market, such as NeoMagic Corp. or S3 Inc. Neither has announced such a device to date, although S3 says integrated-graphics chipsets are on its roadmap. In part, that may be because integrating a graphics core and core logic also means matching production schedules. According to Dean Hays, vice president of marketing for Via's U.S. operations in Fremont, Calif., S3 and Via discussed a similar project, but talks broke off after S3 failed to deliver its core in time. While Via incorporated the Blade 3D core into its own MVP4 integrated chipset, Trident executives said the CyberBlade chipset was designed entirely by Trident engineers using Via's patents. In the fourth quarter, Trident will use the P6 license that Via negotiated with Intel Corp. to ship an integrated-graphics chipset for the mobile Pentium II. The partnership allows the companies- both minority players in a commodity market-to set themselves apart. "It's a good way for a smaller company to differentiate itself and get out of the price-cutting wars that have been dissipating R&D budgets across the industry," said analyst Jon Peddie of Jon Peddie Associates, Tiburon, Calif. Trident believes the chip should yield a score above 850 on the older 3DWinBench 98 benchmark. That would approximate the performance of Via's MVP4, which exceeded its initial performance estimates. Copyright 1999 CMP Media Inc. LANGUAGE: ENGLISH LOAD-DATE: February 20, 1999