ITotals: October`2002

Processors

AMD finally released its Athlon XP 2700+ and 2800+, but it was only an official announcement - the first processors with a 333MHz system bus rolled out at the end of the month in Japan only as preproduction samples. Again in Japan, two months after the release of the Athlon XP 2400+ its first real solutions hit the streets in the second half of October. Announcement of a processor is not followed straight away by deliveries of real solutions today. It concerns both Intel and AMD, but AMD has it even worse. And nothing is going to change here in the near future: the 2800+ will arrive only in the first quarter of next year!

Athlon XP 2800+

However, the poor Duron has lost its favor entirely: in this quarter production of this family will be ceased. Well, it's quite fair since it's wasteful to maintain a separate cheap line taking into account the current prices for the junior Athlon XP. Moreover, the Opteron will undoubtedly forces down the prices for the Athlon XP line even more. But it might have problems with its release as both the Opteron and its analog for desktop PCs are going to get the mass support only in summer 2003 instead of the initially scheduled Q4 2002.

I can't help mentioning once more the mine AMD put under the Hammer which is a built-in memory controller Intel is so delighted with. The upcoming DDR-II makes them make changes in the processor's design. If a new specification arrives tomorrow, the design will have to be changed again. But from the architectural standpoint (as RDRAM) the idea looks good which is proved by preliminary tests of the 2GHz sample.

Intel, however, didn't have a lot to boast of the last month, though it has a great heap for November, including the well known processor of the senior x86 line - 3 GHz Pentium 4 to be released on November 14, and Celeron 2.1 and 2.2 GHz expected on November 10. Now it's clear why AMD had to give up the Duron line, though such radical overfulfillment of the plans (the processors were scheduled for the first and second quarters next year) looks strange. But no secret that the new Celerons are not very successful because of a too small L2 cache; and the idea to lift up their performance at the expense of the clock speed seems to be nice. The most pleasant thing for customers here is that in the middle of November both lines will have their prices lowered marginally. End-users will notice the effect later, and the effect will really be strong enough.

Also, Intel had tremendous plans for the server processors - it got first working samples of the Madison (0.13 micron Itanium 2) in October which is to be announced next summer, almost simultaneously with the desktop 0.09 micron Prescott. The "Celeron from Itanium" - Deerfield, which traditionally has its L2 cache cut down is expected by that time as well. But the processor will remain a server solution with 3 MB of L2 cache. By the way, once we touched upon the senior server line of Intel, I must say that the last orders for the Itanium (Merced) will be accepted in April 2003 - after that the market will have only the McKinley to offer.

But the processor makers didn't have much time indeed as they were busy summing up the results of the third quarter. AMD had the sales volume of $508M with the loss of $254M which is worse in both cases compared to the second quarter. The expected capital expenditures this year are $750M. In 2003 the company is going to make its business profitable again at the expense of reducing the costs and increasing the sales volume.

And here the Hammer can be of much help in the second half year, at least, there is certain interest toward it today - Dell dancing around it might have a real interest or just try to force its old partner Intel bring down its prices; besides, AMD is noticed by the Chinese Ministry of Education (the volumes must be impressive then); moreover, Cray promises to build up by 2004 one more super computer for the US government within the ASCI program on the Opteron processors which is predicted the first or second position in the world table of ranks of the world super computers. Well, the level is going to be high enough provided the AMD is not too late.

The company's share on the market of x86 processors amounted to 11.6 %. It's quite a failure compared to the second quarter (15.6 %) and the worst outcome since the Q2 1998.

Those lost 4% were immediately picked up by Intel whose share thus increased from 82.8% to 86.8%, and the outcome of the last quarter amounted to $6.5 billion of the sales volume and $686 million of income. Both sums look much better compared to the second quarter. The capital expenditures in 2002 are around %4.7 billion (that's much lower than the planned %5.5 billion). One of their achievements is Fab 11X set going in October with 0.13 micron 300 mm production estimated at $2 billion; next year it is switching to the 0.09 micron production.

One of the failures in October is the victory of Integraph in the court, and Intel has to pay off the forfait of $150 million and then $100M for purchase of the disputed technology. The company has appealed to the court but the Intergraph's victory is almost undoubted.

One more player on the market, Sun Microsystems, has its scores between AMD and Intel, still nearing AMD. Its sales volume amounted to $2.7 billion with the losses being $111 million. The sales volume is a little worse compared to the previous quarter but the losses are smaller. That's the result of the proper restructuring. The company keeps on following this policy which may soon bring in 20% reduction of the staff.

And finally, we have Transmeta whose figures look much more decent - the sales volume is just $6.4M and losses are $21.8M. The tendency is like in case of Sun - the sales are falling down but the expenses are being reduced. The company is going to get profit by the end of 2003 but it seems that by that time the Crusoe will be buried by Banias, and the company will reach the zero balance.

VIA is now mostly working for its future - at present it is agitating the manufacturers for the Eden whose clock speed will reach 1 GHz next year, get the SSE support (Nehemiah core), and I have a feeling that VIA will focus entirely on this family having phased out production of the Socket-370 processors without even starting the Socket-478.

VIA uncovered its roadmap at MPF which was quite a risky undertaking this year. Although Intel unleashed the new Xscale at IDF held at the same time, it's not very important as the details are much more significant. Intel showed two first processors of the new concept - system-in-a-package which combine the XScale PXA250 core and Intel StrataFlash memory on the same chip. The Manitoba will add the DSP core, which is going to be an ideal combination for new cell phones. But it will be only in 2004. Apart from the RISC in the mobile field Intel also announced the 0.13 micron 400 MHz ULV Celeron, 3.4W.

AMD responded instantly, though only orally, with its new trade mark AMD Alchemy Solutions, - such processors will belong exactly to the same niche the new XScale is in now. But they are the processors of future, like those announced at MPF and meant for the same market niche - 800 MHz NEC Sapphire and 1.2 GHz Samsung Halla - and this is the good old ARM.

By the way, at MPF ARM Holdings displayed its microprocessor cores of the ARM11 family. They support DDR, consume just 200 mW at 533 MHz, has an integrated FPU and a lot of new buses. The ARM11 will be used for the most new processor cores including the XScale. But the MIPS is not given up yet - at the end of October Toshiba released a new core based on this architecture, this is a new offering for digital TV sets, printers etc.

However, the RISC is used not only for PDA and peripherals - just remember the PowerPC and Apple. At MPF they showed us a new PowerPC: PowerPC 970, the first 64-bit sample of this line, which is actually an analog of the x86 Opteron. The old 32-bit core polished with the 64-bit superstructure. This is a good marketing trick of Apple in the future competition against the Pentium 4.

Mainboards

ABIT IT7-MAX2 v2.0

The debut of the new chipsets, though only from Intel, was a very contributory step. First of all, it helped cut down prices of the previous generation - i845E/G/GL. Secondly, the demand for the i845PE turned out to be underestimated and the prices started creeping up. But this situation must be resolved on December 29 when the prices for the whole line are to be brought down. The first dual-channel Intel's chipset supporting DDR SDRAM, i7205 (Granite Bay), is expected earlier on the market. The name is peculiar to the Intel's chipsets designed for the workstation sphere, but I have no doubts it will be integrated into boards of High-End PCs. And it won't be too long until the ICH5 (Serial ATA, 8 USB 2 ports) and a user version of the Granite Bay - Springdale, expected in April.

DFI NB80-EA (Granite Bay)

By the way, you don't need to wait for dual-channel chipsets supporting DDR. Certainly, I mean the SiS 655 (not nForce or nForce2) the motherboards on which started glutting the market at the end of October. Two PC2700 channels, AGP 8X, Serial ATA, possible Gigabit Ethernet controller from Broadcom, - all this can be found in stores already in November.

ASUS P4SDX (SiS 655)

Let's add a less readical chipset SiS 648 the boards on which keep on arriving with more interesting ideas, and their number is so great that it seems to be shortage of this chipset. But it's not new for SiS because the company has been suffering the lack of production facilities since it started making successful solutions. Another problem is the litigation with UMC finished not so long ago: out of 29 charge points SiS was found guilty only by one, but it was enough for the US Trade Commission to ban sales of certain SiS's chipsets on the American market. However, production of almost all such chipsets is phased out already, and SiS doesn't suffer much.

VIA is in the completely same situation: all its positions depend only on the KT400; such mainboards keep on flooding the market and they've got the support of Athlon and FSB333. The KT400 is so popular that VIA had to achnowledge its shortage, though it never had problems with production facilities. Note that the today's High-End boards on the KT400 do not differ from High-End boards on the Pentium 4 - they both feature AGP 8X, SerialATA, Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth, etc. (And it seems that the Wi-Fi support will soon become standard for the High-End market).

MSI KT4V

However, VIA should develop something new, and in November it's expected to announce the P4X600 (dual-channel DDR for Pentium 4), and two integrated chipsets - P4M266A and P4M400. The KT400A is also arriving soon; it differs from its predecessor in a more rapid memory controller.

But while VIA is hesitating NVIDIA keeps on attacking - at the end of October the Japanese retail market accepted nForce2 based mainboards from Leadtek announced a couple of weeks before. The price of $113 is really pleasing - the second version of the NVIDIA's chipset comes at a really competitive price. The company has already claimed that it covers 35% of the market of OEM boards for Athlon, and with the triumphal entry of the nForce2 this figure will be quite believable.

Finally, the news from Germany - the circuit court of Dusseldorf banned the import of the VIA's chipsets for Pentium 4 into Germany, by the suit from Intel. It also concerns mainboards on these chipsets. They will surely start appealing now against the decision and it's far not clear yet that such decision will be made in other countries, but it would be disappointing if the Intel's quite fair claimes made VIA stop its production of chipsets for Pentium 4.

Memory

By the way, Hynix announced the 0.10 micron 512 Mbit DDR SDRAM chip and is going to start its mass production by the turn of the year. However, this fab process will hardly become world-wide adapted as most manufacturers still prefer 0.13-0.15 micron techniques. For example, Nanya that received the 0.11 micron technology from IBM, is currently switching over only to the 0.14 micron process.

One of the key events in October was the scandal stirred up by Infineon and Mosel Vitelic, a joint owner of their enterprise ProMOS; Infenion took up the issue of persistent material damages and has been pressing for the entire control over sales of the ProMOS memory. It seems that the relations of the partners are taking a bad turn now, but it mustn't be a big blow for Infineon as the company has been collaborating with Winbond and Nanya for a long while. At present Infineon purchases about 30% of chips from Winbond, but by the year end the figure can reach 50%. Thankfully, there are channels to push them off - Kingston declared it was going to increase the share of chips bought from Infineon from 10% to 20-30%.

It's interesting which type is implied because in October Kingston started deliveries of PC3200 modules from the ValueRAM family, though they are highly overclocked. Others keep on speeding up; thus, several manufacturers released modules clocked at 434 MHz (3500 MB/s), with the CAS equal to 2.0, i.e. the performance is OK. But they guarantee flawless operation of only one such module on a mainboard. Well, can anyone understand mad overclockers?

PC3500 DDR

Besides, the DDR-II is coming very soon - Micron already demonstrated 256 Mbit 533 MHz DDR-II chip of 4300 MB/s and then a prototype of a server using modules on such chips. The vague shapes of the DDR-III are becoming sharper - further voltage decrease (1.2-1.5 V), bigger size (from 4 Gbit), higher frequency - from 800 to 1500 MHz (DDR). First samples will arrive in 2007.

The situation in the video sector is more optimistic - ATI showed off its first video card with DDR-II and completed development of the special specification of the graphics memory GDDR-3 based on the DDR-II with the throughput of 1-1.5 Gbit/s per output, which is almost twice greater than the throughput of DDR-II chips. Contrary to DDR-II, GDDR-3 chips will pour onto the shelves in the first half of 2003.

On the flash memory market we have a new promoted format - xD, which is due to replace the CompactFlash entirely in two years.

xD is in the center

Olimpus is now designing all its new digital photo cameras for the xD format, and owners of the old models can use such an adapter:

Video

ATI Radeon 9500 Pro

I must say that ATI goes in the right direction: it's ceasing production of its own graphics cards and switching to the NVIDIA's business model. Reportedly, Radeon 9500 and 9700 based cards will be produced exceptionally by ATI's partners who have already announced them (as well as the 9500 Pro; such cards are also going to be produced by ATI). Moreover, the company stops selling cards under its own trade mark on the retail markets of China and Taiwan except FireGL and All-in-Wonder including the latest model All-in-Wonder 9700 Pro. It will be cutting its share further on the OEM and retail markets of finished video cards. And they will focus on the relations with the card makers, in particular, using the quality control program "Certified by ATI".

GV-R9500

At the moment NVIDIA has enough to worry about: the month was started with price cuts for OEM for the mid-range chips, MX440 and Ti 4200 (a little later ATI made the Radeon 7500 and 9000 Pro less pricey as well), and at the end NVIDIA said that the demand for MX440, Ti4200 and Ti4600, the most popular lines, exceeded expectations. The company wasn't ready for the Xmas season. But this takes place today, and the tomorrow's outcome depends on the chips which debut today. In this respect NVIDIA has nothing to boast of in October except the GeForce4 460 Go, the senior model of the NVIDIA's mobile line sporting 1 Gtexel/s.

The long-awaited NV30 must come out onto the scene very soon, at least, as a sample - Comdex will begin on November 18 and no doubts NVIDIA will announce its chip there. The latest rumors have it that it will use DDR-II clocked at 1 GHz, but the memory bus will be only of 128 bits, i.e. twice narrower than that of the Radeon 9700. ATI can easily switch over to the DDR-II taking into account that the Radeon 9700 integrates such controller. Besides, TSMC won't be able to finish the work on the 0.13 micron technological process by the first quarter of 2003, hence the consequences with the mass production of the NV30. The video cards will reach the stores in February, at best.

However, today nobody suffers a shortage of graphics solutions based on the current chips: in October there was an ocean of cards on the 8Õ chips of NVIDIA , which is not surprising, like first announcements of Radeon 9700 and 9500/9500 Pro based cards. The number of cards is growing also because of new players on the market - Crucial, QDI, DFI and reincarnations - Neue ELSA (old ELSA) and BFG Technologies (successor of Visiontek).

ASUS V9280S (Ti4200-8X)

The world beyond has some other news for us: thus, at the end of October Matrox announced the 256 MB version of its Parhelia. Well, $600 for a card with unclear performance and quite weird capabilities... In its roadmaps for the near future the company has not less strange solutions - a 64 MB version of the card, AGP 8X, and 0.13 micron chip full compatible with DirectX9, advanced Fragment Anti Aliasing, redesigned memory controller and rendering pipelines and higher clock speeds.

Another ghost is Imagination Technologies Group, developer of the PowerVR architecture which is now known mostly as KYRO. Some time ago Intel licensed the PowerVR MBX core (which might soon be seen in the Springdale) from the company and it let us hope that Imagination wasn't going to leave the scene. Moreover, the company is now developing new things. At least, they refused to finish the PowerVR Series-4 created for STM architecture and switched over to the PowerVR Series-5 which is a 0.13 micron chip with the tile architecture, programmable pixel and vertex shaders etc. The release is expected in 2003.

Data storage

At the same time IBM closed its Hungarian HDD factory saying that the demand for hard drives was quite weak. The HDD makers have to save on many things these days, just look how short the warranty periods became. However, WD now offers again a 3-year warranty but at $20. Because of such steps (or thanks to them) WD showed excellent results in the quarter ended in September: sales volume of $583M and revenue of $22M. Both figures look much better compared to the previous month and previous year. Seagate also achieved a lot: $1579 billion and $110 million respectively. The prospects look optimistic, and we should believe WD and Seagate that this business is not that bad.

New logo of Seagate

Another new solution is a 60 GB 2.5'' hard drive from Toshiba rotating at 5400 rpm which will certainly be used in High-End notebooks and likely in digital video recorders and other similar devices. Also, we've got new external drives from Maxtor - Personal Storage 5000 having the size from 80 to 250 GB and USB 2.0 and FireWire interfaces.

Maxtor Personal Storage 5000

As for new technologies, October brought us the final version of the 1.0 Serial ATA II specification (Serial ATA II: Extensions to Serial ATA 1.0 Specification), and a week later Intel released the first disc controller supporting that specification. But they ratified only the first part, the second part dealing with data rates up to 300 MB/s will appear in the second half of 2003.

In the CD-RW sphere nothing has changed much - there are a lot of new models as always, only the top models now have formulas like 52/24/52 (whether it's rational to produce such models is highly arguable). The mainstream sector now includes models of such speeds as 48/24/48; thankfully, CD-R 48Õ media has become quite popular with manufacturers. By the way, in October VIA kicked off production of 48Õ CD-RW controllers at the TSMC's factories. Last year the optical department of the company managed to spin up very well: from 0 to 1.5M pieces a month. The strengthening competition will certainly force down the prices.

The DVD drives haven't jumped over 16Õ yet and most new solutions are either internal models for notebooks or external drives. And most of them are DVD-ROM/CD-RW drives. As for DVD recorders, the manufacturers prefer mainly the DVD+R/RW format (only such models were released last month). The DVD+RW Alliance keeps on improving it - it has lately founded the Recorder Group DVD+RW Compatibility and Convergence Group. But the competitors are not dozing - in this quarter they promise DVD-Multi drives supporting DVD-RAM and DVD-RW discs.

The only parameter common for all the formats is 4Õ speed. NEC unleashed the first DVD-R/DVD+R drive with such write speed, Mitsubishi was first to release 4Õ DVD+R discs, CenDyne promised the first 4Õ DVD-R/DVD-RW drive in October.

But the most important news on the market of DVD recorders were prices! The Sony DCR-500UL which supports almost all formats will be available at $500 for the external version and $400 for the internal one!

Sony DCR-500UL

Supported formats

But it's still nothing compared to the Blu-ray Disc! Though on the other hand, the Blu-Ray is not going to leave the prototypes yet: at CEATEC prototypes of DVD players working with 25-50 GB discs were showed off by Hitachi, Matsushita Electric, Pioneer, Philips, Sharp, Sony, JVC, and TDK. There were competitive solutions as well: thus, Toshiba demonstrated a DVD player able to work with data on discs of 15 GB per layer; note that their technology is very similar to the today's DVD techniques; it means that the cost of media and equipment won't differ much either. The technology promoted by Toshiba and NEC competes directly against the Blu-ray.

Matsushita Blu-ray

In November the market will possibly bring us a new player from Taiwan - Advanced Optical Storage Research Consortium which is going to offer the HD-DVD (High-Definition DVD) format with 15-17 GB discs. It promises the minimal license taxes to owners of the respective patents, in contrast to the current DVD formats. Well, chaos is not weakening.

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