Intel provided details of the SA-1101 StrongARM device, which was previously announced as the processor used in Hewlett-Packard Co.'s latest portable computer. The SA-1101 is noteable as the Intel's first new StrongARM device, and more are certain to follow, said Mark Casey, StrongARM marketing director for Intel. Specifically, Intel is working on an SA-2 core, a follow-up to the SA-1 inherited from Digital Semiconductor, Casey said, though he wouldn't say when the new core would be completed.

Intel officials were quick to point out that they don't see StrongARM-based handheld computers as a threat to Intel's PC-processor franchise. "Our belief is that these devices are very important to the future of computing, and they function in a way that they'll be very valuable to your computer," said Casey.

The SA-1101's features include video support through a dedicated video memory controller, and on-chip video D/A converters; a USB host controller; and two PS/2 ports to support combinations of keyboards, mice and trackpads.

On the Pentium front, Intel unveiled 166-MHz and 266-MHz embedded parts with MMX. They are the lowest-power Pentium parts currently available from Intel.

Intel is meeting greater success with its embedded X86 parts as some of its customers abandon proprietary or Unix-based systems for PC and Windows standards. Buyers of point-of-sale terminals, for example, are turning toward Wintel-based machines to simplify matters of connectivity and compatibility, said Joe Jensen, a director of marketing for Intel's Computing Enhancement Group.

That trend will strengthen as Microsoft beefs up its Windows offerings, particularly with the embedded version of NT and the upcoming NT 5.0, Jensen said. "If I talk to all of the third-party board guys, they say the market is driving them in this direction," he said.

Among the areas where embedded X86s need improvement, Jensen cited module support and packaging. Intel is addressing the latter with its HL-PBGA package for embedded Pentium processors. It sports a 35 by 35-mm footprint, and doesn't require a heat sink for a 166-MHz part that runs at about 2.9 W. The HL-PBRA uses only a passive heat sink on a 266-MHz part, which will typically run at 5.3 W.

In plastic PGA form, the parts will be available in production quantities in November. The HL-PBGA versions will begin sampling at that time, with production quantities due in the first quarter of 1999.

Intel also presented the i960 VH, a PCI-compatible version of the i960. The i960 line has been fairly quiet since its initial forays into applications such as supercomputers, but Ron Smith, corproate vice president of Intel's Computing Enhancement Group, dismissed suggestions that the i960 had been a stagnant platform of late. Smith said the processor had settled into a niche of applications requiring lots of I/O processing. "We've kept our investment in 960 going ever since you first heard about it," he said.

Particularly strong end markets for the part have been in storage environments, such as RAID systems, and in high-end network switches and routers, said BIll Rollender, product marketing manager for Intel.

The i960 VH is based around the 80960 JT-100 core running at 100 MHz. The part features a single 32-bit, 33-MHz PCI interface, as opposed to the PCI-to-PCI bridge typically found on i960 devices. Also included on-chip are a 16-kbyte instruction cache, 4 kbytes of data cache and 1 kbyte of on-chip RAM.

Beta samples of the part are already available, and general sampling is due to begin in November, with production quantities scheduled for March 1999.