SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Intel Corp. contends its new Pentium 4 processor and double-data rate (DDR) chip set will help revive the sluggish PC market as consumers embrace their multimedia capabilities. As expected, Intel today formally introduced its 2.2-GHz Pentium 4, which is fabricated with 0.13-micron technology, and DDR chip set (see today's story).
According to Intel, some 450 million PCs in use today run at 700 MHz or less -- not enough to handle MP3 files, streaming video on the Internet, recordable DVDs, and online gaming.
"The upgrade cycle has already started," said Louis Burns, vice president and general manager of Intel's Desktop Platforms Group. "As the market grows again, it will be P4 based. I'm not saying the market will double in 2002, but it will quickly transition to P4."
Though only slightly faster than existing 2-GHz chips, the difference in the new 0.13-micron P4 processor is "far more than just another couple megahertz," Burns argued.
By moving the P4 architecture from 0.18-micron to a finer process geometry, Intel is able to achieve improvements in both speed and power draw, as well as to double the cache size to 512 Kbytes, Burns said.
Perhaps more significantly, he said, the new process effectively doubles the number of die produced per silicon wafer, reducing manufacturing cost, thus allowing Intel to target multiple market tiers with one high-performance device.
The simultaneous release today of Intel's awaited 845D chip set with support for DDR synchronous DRAM rounds out the multi-segment approach, providing three different memory interfaces. Intel also markets chip sets for SDRAM and Direct Rambus DRAM.
"Whatever price point people want to buy at, I'm giving them," Burns said at a press conference on Friday in Burlingame, Calif., prior to today's introduction.
Regarding the claim by Advanced Micro Devices Inc. that its new Athlon runs faster than Intel's offering (see today's story), Burns said that "[The P4] is unequivocally the fastest thing on the planet, benchmarks will show that. It's about the future with a new architecture, not the extension of an old one."
RSS
Digital
HDD roadmap:
The hard disk drive (HDD) industry finds its lifeblood in a technology roadmap. The areal density roadmap describes the number of magnetic bits per unit area on the disk platter--thereby defining the storage capacity.
10 CEOs out in 2009:
It's been a tough year for the global electronics industry and CEOs. We survey the dismissal of 10 industry CEOs during the first three quarters of 2009 and what's ahead for the rest of the year.
Top 10 IC vendors with cash:
The world's biggest IC companies by revenue rank not only among the best in their respective industry segments but are also more likely to have huge piles of cash that can be used to fund acquisitions, R&D and product development
10 companies in trouble (revisited):
What follows is an updated version of 10 companies in trouble. Some companies have been removed since the last version, others remain. Still others have been added to the mix.
MIPS to go after the cellphone?:
ARM dominates the global cell phone market, and many industry observers scoff at MIPS as a viable player in mobile phone designs. But MIPS disclosed that over the next one or two years' time, there will be MIPS-based handsets shipped.
Hot technologies to watch for in 2009:
Every technologist, marketer, industry analyst and reporter on a hunt for the next big thing is bracing for the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show scheduled less than a month away.
Notable women in microelectronics
EE Times has compiled an international list that celebrates women who are business and technology leaders in microelectronics.
EE Times updates Silicon 60
Seventeen companies have been added to the lastest version of our Silicon 60 list of emerging startups. Forty-three companies survived as emerging companies that are still worth watching.
RSS| 
Digital| 
Mobile
