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Intel veers from IC roadmap, raising PC
makers' uncertainty
A service of Semiconductor Business News, CMP Media Inc.
Story posted 2 p.m. EST/11 a.m., PST, 4/5/99
By Mark Hachman
SANTA CLARA, Calif. (ChipWire/EBN) -- The uncertainty
surrounding Direct Rambus DRAM has again jostled Intel Corp.'s
chip-set roadmap, threatening to unseat the stable platform the
company hopes to establish.
PC manufacturers are being notified that the chip set, once known
as the Intel 815, has been renamed the Intel 810E, offering low-cost
PCs a 133-MHz frontside bus by September--three months earlier
than the original shipping date of the Intel 815.
That has complicated Intel's chip-set roadmap, which was supposed
to be relatively straightforward. At Intel's fall analyst conference,
company executives had promised a simple 1999 chip-set lineup,
minimizing the qualification testing the OEMs needed to perform on
each device.
Ideally, that meant the OEMs would choose from only three
desktop-PC chip sets--one each for low-end, midrange, and
high-end PCs.
According to the roadmap outlined in late 1998, Intel would have
introduced both the Intel 820 (Camino) chip set for high-end PCs
and the Intel 810 (Whitney) chip set for low-end, Celeron-based
PCs. Both releases had been scheduled for the first week of May.
The 815, meanwhile, was aimed at the midrange market.
But the unexpected delay of the Camino until September has
complicated matters. OEMs say that instead of three chip sets by
the end of the year, six could coexist: the new Intel 820, 810, and
810E, plus the older 440ZX and 440BX, and even the 440LX.
A spokeswoman for Intel in Santa Clara, Calif., declined to discuss
future products. But one customer said his company is coping with
the roadmap revisions. "We're used to it," he said. "It's been that
way for the past year."
The Intel 810 and the new Intel 810E will integrate a derivative of
the i752, Intel's next- generation Portola core, and not its existing
i740 graphics chip, as once thought. Both chip sets will support a
unified memory architecture that Intel calls Dynamic Video Memory,
as well as dedicated PC-100 SDRAM.
The features of the various chip set families add still more wrinkles.
The frontside bus of the 440BX and Intel 810, for example, can run
at either 66 or 100 MHz, while the 820 and 810E can run at either
100 or 133 MHz, according to sources and Intel's confidential
documentation. And a rumored 440BX2 chip set would even add
133-MHz frontside-bus capabilities to the BX platform.
"If the Pentium III is to reach 700 MHz by the end of the year, the
processor bus has to run at 133 MHz, or else the system
performance drops," said another Intel customer, who requested
anonymity.
Even so, the introduction of all three chip sets will likely be beat by
Via Technologies Inc., which sources say will sample its Apollo Pro
Plus 133 chip set for a 133-MHz P6 bus early next month.
Executives at Via's U.S. operations in Fremont, Calif., declined to
comment.
Confusing the chip-set roadmap further is the fact that Intel has
reapplied the Intel 815 moniker to yet another chip set shipping this
year, according to two OEMs. The 815 label is being given to a
chip set that integrates Coloma, Intel's third-generation graphics
chip. That will be introduced in May, sources said. Alleged
problems integrating the graphics core forced a delay, as well as the
name change.
Intel's DRAM roadmap is only slightly clearer: By the end of 1999,
Direct RDRAM will be included in high-end PCs, with PC-100
SDRAM in lower-end machines.
The problem is that the Intel 810E, as a low-end-to-midrange chip
set, falls somewhere in between the low and high ends of the PC
spectrum. According to industry sources, Intel has scheduled the
chip set's September launch opposite the Intel 820 for
lower-performance PCs. Like the Intel 820, the Intel 810E adds a
133-MHz frontside bus.
But while the Intel 820's 133-MHz bus interfaces to Direct Rambus
DRAM, Intel has not broadly specified a memory interface for the
Intel 810E. Only two of five sources indicated that Intel will
mismatch a 133-MHz processor bus with a 100-MHz memory
interface to PC-100 SDRAM. "It doesn't make sense to me,
either," said a senior executive at one motherboard manufacturer.
"But our thinking is that there may be some performance advantage
in tying together the processor and graphics in this fashion."
Intel apparently has not changed its position against support for the
PC-133 SDRAM interface.
"History says, if Intel introduces a new memory interface for a chip
set, they'll send a preliminary specification out to suppliers very early
on," said Kevin Kilbuck, manager of memory engineering for
Toshiba America Electronic Components Inc., Irvine, Calif.
Observers speculated that any reversal of policy on Intel's part
would likely come at the end of the year, when the PC-133
interface is expected to be well established.
Additional reporting by Jack Robertson, Andrew MacLellan, and
Sandy Chen.
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