iTotals - September `02 (IT Monthly Roundup)
Processors
Even if no IDF had been held in September 2002, anyway Intel would have been an undisputed leader of the month. Simply take a sum of all these factors:
as per the 26th August presentation, prices for Pentium 4 2.6 and 2.8 GHz dropped by 22%, while by 55% for Pentium 4 2.4;
- presentation of the Xeon 2.6 and 2.8 GHz processor having 512 K L2 cache;
- launch of the first low power consuming Xeon processor: 1.6 GHz at 30 W;
- release of the Pentium 4-M 2.2 GHz and 10 more various mobile processors;
- start of sales with a further official advertisement of the Celeron 2.0 GHz;
- announcement of the 933 MHz Intel LV Pentium III whose dissipated power is as low as 12.2 W;
Such a formidable list would have been more than enough, wouldn't it? What is more, the IDF was held, a really remarkable event with numerous demonstrations of Banias-based notebooks as well as a Pentium 4 @ 4.7 GHz on the base of the new 0.09 mk Prescott core. The former proved more attractive: its 77 mln transistors which for the very first time aim at the mobile use have every reason to become a true brilliant solution for the sphere, and first Banias-based notebook prototypes are proving that. Intel may even have to use their processor rating to make the buyers aware that a 1.3 GHz Banias is by no means worse than, say, a Pentium4-M @ 2.0 GHz, although Intel's office in Russia strongly deny the fact.
At the IDF, the server front was not passed over, although in the form of outlined prospects: already in this quarter the release of Xeon with the FSB533 is planned, and early next quarter the speed of these processors will reach 3 GHz - as it should be, some time later after a Pentium 4 with the same clock speed has been released. In the fourth quarter this year a 0.13 mk version of the Xeon MP will come out - the long-awaited Gallatin core in which the L3 cache will reach the customary 2 MB. The following forecast was also made public: during the upcoming five years Intel will bring out a 64-bit processor with two processor cores on the same chip. This is quite logical a step which is in line with the most recent trends in the industry of super-powerful processors.
And finally, there's one more sphere where Intel also has left traces - it's new technologies. At the International Solid-State Devices and Materials Conference the company proclaimed their new proposal in the part of creating new chips which solves one of the basic problems still on the agenda of the semiconductor industry: the leakage current. A three-dimensional triple-gate transistor allows to reduce it by 100-200 times relative to the current level.
By the way, a bit earlier AMD who created the world's smallest transistor having two gates and based on the Fin Field Effect Transistor (FinFET) technology manifested their contribution in the progress development. Potentially, this technology allows to create elements with the gate as tiny as 0.01 mk in size. Let's wait for the coming January though when the details of the development will be made public.
But on the real-life front the company's affairs are not that bright, and it absolutely does not make sense arguing that AMD is at least in the tactical crisis. With the recently released Pentium 4 2.8 GHz the consumers have spent a whole month in vain waiting for the release of Athlon XP with FSB333 - this processor has not been produced so far. And in the middle of the month it was announced that the Clawhammer release has been deferred from the fourth quarter this year to the first quarter of the next.
At the same time the Barton has also been moved to the first quarter of 2003 because of the delayed release of Athlon XP FSB333: it is too much producing the former and Barton at the same time. What is more, it turned out that SOI will not be applied in Barton because the technology is still poorly debugged. This reveals something about problems with Hammer. The overall picture appears to be rather sad: with all the good will, it is very very hard to see bright prospects for AMD in the competition '0.13 mk Barton and Hammer vs. 0.09 mk'.
Among the real advancements AMD can boast are merely a couple of new mobile Athlon XP processors which are in fact nothing out of the ordinary. Their XP 1900+ and XP 2000+ offer nothing more than support of PowerNow!. At the same time, prices for the outdated predecessors in this line have gone down.
By the way, as far as the mobile market is concerned, Transmeta has woken up. The company first announced the HP plans to represent their Crusoe-based portable PC on 7 October, secondly, they boasted having a 0.13 mk 1 MHz Crusoe TM5800 sample, and thirdly they promised to produce a 0.13 mk 1.4 GHz 256-bit Crusoe TM8000 next year.
And the last novelty of September was a new 64-bit Sun - UltraSPARC III Cu 1200 processor. As usual, it is a Texas Instruments produce, but what is unusual is this - the 0.13 mk copper process technology was used for the very first time, which gives the following result: compared to the predecessor, 1.05 GHz UltraSPARC III, as the frequency rises by 14 per cent, the power consumption drops considerably, from 75 to 53 W. In fact, this is no more promising than the same results of transition demonstrated by other manufacturers.
 |
Top Stories: |
 |
 |
|
MoBo:
| |
|
|
VGA Card:
|
|
|
|
CPU & Memory:
|
|
