Rise aims to clone Intel's Celeron
By Brooke Crothers
Staff Writer, CNET NEWS.COM
May 13, 1999, 5:00 p.m. PT
A small, struggling processor startup is aiming to release the first clone of a Pentium
II-class chip in the second half of the year, amid a ravaging price war.
Rise Technology, which currently makes a line of PC processors similar to the Pentium MMX, hopes to bring out
a chip that will utilize the same packaging as Intel's low-cost Celeron chip, which comes from the Pentium II
generation.
The company is also hiring a number of employees and is seeking additional financing, according to David Lin,
Rise CEO.
If successful, Rise could become the first company with a product that's interchangeable with Celeron systems
and, hence, the Pentium II architecture. National Semiconductor has been working on a Celeron-compatible chip,
but recently said it will sell its Cyrix processor division, putting the chip's fate in question.
But clouds loom. Plummeting prices for PC processors has taken its toll on nearly every vendor but Intel, and
sources say that Rise has recently had difficulty meeting its payroll.
"I will not comment on internal matters," Lin said.
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Like other companies, Rise is struggling with the difficult conditions that characterize the PC processor market,
even as it hopes for a breakthrough. AMD has been suffering financial losses while reportedly gaining market
share, and National was losing money on Cyrix for the past few quarters, according to executives at the company.
More recently, IDT, which manufactures the WinChip family of low-cost PC processors, admitted that it can't
operate on its own. The company is currently looking for a "partner" that will provide
financial backing.
Now comes a report that Intel's share is increasing and that it's the only company
making any money.
"We estimate that Intel shipped about 23 million processors in the [first] quarter, for a
unit share of 79%, up from 72% in 4Q98," Michael Slater, founder of MicroDesign
Resources, wrote in a recent issue of The Microprocessor Report.
"Intel's share of the business was 92%," Slater continued, "and when it comes to
profits, Intel was the only x86 vendor to have any!". x86 refers to the Pentium
architecture.
Still, the low-cost PC phenomenon has boosted PC unit sales and opened the door
for companies to manufacture Intel-like processors.
The sub-$600 PC market presents a "tremendous opportunity," especially with National Semiconductor out of the
picture, said Lin. Rise supplies relatively unknown PC makers in Asia, and expects that it will be supplying many
of its chips to PCs that are priced at $299 or $399.
"We are going through major financing for our product ramp," he said, adding "We are recruiting people like
crazy."
After National Semiconductor said it was pulling out the PC processor business earlier this month, Rise began to
get inquiries from former Cyrix people, he said.
But while pricing is difficult for everyone, Rise faces an additional problem, said Slater. The company's chip is
relatively large, which raises costs.
However, the company that manufactures the chips for Rise, its so-called foundry partner, has "strong patent
cross licensing" with Intel, Lin said, which allows the company to make the chips without fear of legal reprisals
from Intel.
Rise's currently family of chips, called the mP6, are essentially low-voltage Pentium MMX chips for PCs under
$600. The upcoming mP6 II will come in the "Socket 370" package and contain 256K of secondary cache
memory integrated into the chip, according to a report from MicroDesign Resources. Rise demonstrated mP6II at
the CeBit trade show earlier this year.
In the more immediate future Rise will launch 240- and 250-MHz versions of its processors. The company rates
them at "PR 333" and "PR 366," claiming performance is equivalent to Intel-compatible chips that run at those
speeds.
Lin said these are expected to hit volume production in July.
Rise began to ship its first products in volume in December of last year and shipped "less than 50,000" in the first
quarter, Lin said. Some industry sources familiar with Rise put this figure far below this total.
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