NEC posts SPEC benchmarks for Itanium2 -

The NEC box uses NEC compilers and trails the similarly configured SGI machine by quite a bit.

http://www.spec.org/osg/cpu2000/results/res2003q1/


EP

Dew -

What ever happened to BRCM’s suit that INTC was ripping off BRCM’s employees and trade secrets? Was it dropped or settled?

Don't know. Sorry.

EP

Intel Wins New Trial in Patent Dispute With Broadcom Corp.
By Susan Decker


Wilmington, Delaware, Feb. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Intel Corp., the world's biggest maker of computer chips, won a new trial in its bid to get $82 million in damages from Broadcom Corp. over two patents for computer network and video processing.

U.S. District Court Judge Sue Robinson said part of a jury's verdict rejecting Intel's claims was ``inherently inconsistent and thus, warrants a new trial.''

wbmw -

Nice to see those systems going out to Universities and research centers but Intel needs more than acadamia to make IPF a success. Let's hope we see more business customers as well.

EP

02/12 12:52
Intel to Produce More Than 5 Million Centrino Systems in 2003
By Todd Prince


Moscow, Feb. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Intel Corp., the world's No. 1 maker of computer chips, expects this year to make more than 5 million systems that allow wireless access to the Internet through laptop computers from train stations, hotels and coffee shops.

Intel has invested more than $300 million to develop the Centrino system, a three-piece processor that contains several chips for Wireless Fidelity technology, or Wi-Fi. The technology allows people to send files and e-mails for short distances and at high speeds over airwaves from convenient places, dubbed hot- spots.

Chief Executive Officer Craig Barrett is placing one of his biggest bets on Wi-Fi, which he hopes will drive new demand.

``We are expecting to produce well over 5 million (Centrino) processors this year, and we expect next year Centrino mobile technology to be the highest selling product in notebooks,'' said Michael Splinter, an Intel executive vice president, in an interview in Moscow.

Intel expects there will be about 2,000 hot spots in Europe, including Russia, by the end of the year, Splinter said.

Dew -

EP: you use 1986 as a base for gauging INTC’s financial metrics? I assume you meant that to be for comic relief. 1986 was 17 years ago -- the year Microsoft went public.

That was the last major semi recession. You think it makes sense to compare today's GMs with the height of the boom? That's comic relief.

EP

Dew -

Are we looking at the same numbers? What I see is that 2001 and 2002 had the lowest gross margins since 1989. Moreover, the average of the 2001 and 2002 margins – 49.5% -- was 1,080 basis points below the 60.3% level attained as recently as 1997

You're comparing the current margin with the greatest boom in semi history. 49% gross margins look outstanding compared to the 31% in 1986, the last major semi bottom. Try puting things in perspective.

EP

Barton benchmarks - in French

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/454/page2.html

Stabman -

Can anyone say 3400+ ?

I'm sure they can say it...

drjohn -

Does anyone think that the rumors of Prescott having a larger L1 are credible, perhaps with a 1 Meg L2 a larger L1 begins to make a significant difference.

The L1 cache on the Northwood P4 is very fast and adding to it's size may require adding an additional clock. That's a bad thing and here's why; for example say the L1 is accessed in 2 clocks and has a 75% hit rate. Doubling it's size may raise the hit rate to over 80% but it will require 3 clocks instead of 2 for all accesses. Have you gained anything? No you've made all accesses 50% longer for just a small increase in hit rate. So L1 may be small but it's very fast and the size is optimized for overall performance. The 90nm process may allow for a larger L1 with no access penalty, we'll just have to wait and see.

EP

wbmw -

Canterwood appears to be a chipset, not a CPU

Yes, I see that. Also no mention of a 1Meg P4 cache anywhere else in the press. Oh well...

EP

Pixar switches from Sun to Intel

http://news.com.com/2100-1001-983898.html


By Michael Kanellos
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
February 7, 2003, 9:00 PM PT


Pixar Animation Studios, which brought the world Monsters Inc. and Toy Story, is switching from Sun Microsystems to Intel, as the melodrama in the server market heats up.
The Emeryville, Calif.-based film studio is replacing servers from Sun in its render farm--a bank of servers that fuses artists' images into finished film frames--with eight new blade servers from Rackspace. In all, the blade system contains 1,024 Intel 2.8GHz Xeon processors, and it runs the open-source Linux operating system.

Pixar installed the Rackspace system over the previous six months and will use it to develop its next film, The Incredibles, which will likely hit theaters in 2004.

<more>

Here is an article that suggests Intel is planning a larger cache P4 called Canterwood, apparently before Prescott. First I've heard of this in print.

http://crn.channelsupersearch.com/news/var/39775.asp


EP

wbmw -

Very interesting article on HyperThreading and distributed processing.

http://www.sudhian.com/showdocs.cfm?aid=280

EP

wbmw -

don't know why IBM sees Opteron has having any kind of 64-bit story in 2003.

I'm puzzled by their comment as well. They say they'll offer Opteron "if it takes off" but that'll take quite some time after the April vapor launch. Meanwhile they've already telegraphed their intentions to kill it off shortly after a potential release. What kind if a marketing plan is that?

EP

Dew -

tried to explain in the message to wbmw:

Yes, I didn't see it until after my post. Is there a link to their CC?

EP

Dew -

After listening to today’s CSCO CC, all I can say is: I would not want to be a CSCO supplier… or a competitor.

Huh? These two points seem to be at odds. How about explaining?

EP

Associated Press
Cisco Posts Higher Fiscal 2Q Earnings


Tuesday February 4, 5:11 pm ET
By Matthew Fordahl, AP Technology Writer
Cisco Systems Inc. Posts Higher Fiscal Second-Quarter Earnings


For the three months ended Jan. 25, Cisco earned $991 million, or 14 cents per share, on sales of $4.7 billion. In the same period last year, the company earned $660 million, or 9 cents per share on sales of $4.8 billion.

Semi -

I say the stock will probably remain above $10. I doubt we'll see 7's again.

Well I think he got half of that right...

EP

AMD speeds up server chips


By Michael Kanellos
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
February 3, 2003, 9:00 PM PT


Advanced Micro Devices on Tuesday released a faster version of its Athlon chip for servers and workstations, an upgrade to help the company maintain its new foothold in the server processor market.
The Athlon MP 2600+ can fit into one and two processor servers and workstations. Approximately 49 system integrators and PC makers, mostly small and regional manufacturers, will release systems in conjunction with the new chip, according to the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based processor maker.

Despite a spate of product delays over the past year, AMD has managed to carve out a spot in the lucrative server processor market. Two years ago, the company sold virtually no chips into the server market.



Now, AMD ships approximately 100,000 server chips a quarter and accounts for around 5 percent of the chips shipped into the so-called X86 server market, according to Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research.

A growing number of large companies are installing AMD-based servers as well. ConocoPhillips, for instance, uses Athlon MP servers in its seismic imaging department. DaimlerChrysler also has installed Athlon servers.

In April, AMD will try to increase its presence in this market with Opteron, a completely new server chip that will be capable of running both 32-bit and 64-bit software.

Additionally, Opteron will come with an integrated memory controller, a typically discreet component that relays data between main memory and the processor. Opteron will be connected to other processors via a high-speed link called HyperTransport. Executives from IBM, among other companies, have said that the chip could challenge Intel.

Opteron, though, comes to the market after substantial delays. AMD also had to postpone a desktop version of the chip until September. The holdups in part revolve around trying to incorporate "silicon on insulator" (SOI) technology, which reduces energy consumption, into the Opteron family. AMD had to redesign Barton, the code name of a chip coming in February, and remove the SOI element to get the chip to market.

The Athlon MP 2600+ will cost $273 in 1,000 unit quantities. AMD often gives substantial discounts to customers who buy larger quantities of chips.

The 2600+ runs at 2.1GHz. AMD's performance numbers roughly correlate to the equivalent clock speed of Intel's Pentium 4 chips, although exact comparisons vary, depending on the benchmark test and other factors.

wbmw -

Someone should tell the author that the original intro date was late 2001 and by my could this is the 5th delay!

EP

Greg -

Fine piece of detective work! I find the same thing.

http://www.quicken.com/investments/insider/?filer=CECFDD6A75B627AFC6CD226E2C8848E8&symbol=SCH

Hello Humble one.

Lets talk about director Pottruck. Nobody has been able to explain why this Director, CEO of Charles Schwab Corp. was given the right to by 300,000 shares at $1.60 per share.......How did Pottruck provide Intel with valuable service to earn this money or was his friendship with Grove and Barrett sufficient to be given this gift?

I have no idea and I hope someone does and will post here. I would add though that I believe those options must have been granted at what was fair market value at the time.

EP

Another ClawHammer benchmark -

http://www.heise.de/ct/03/01/018/bild.gif

Dew -

“Brazil is the country of the future… and it always will be.”

Robert Noyce said pretty much the same thing about Gallium Arsenide.

wbmw -

So you still believe that this claim is bogus?

I sure do. I believe it's getting the expected performance clock for clock but as they said they can't get the frequency up to snuff. The new agreement with IBM is for 65nm and below. How's that going to help Hammer? Isn't their current SOI already licensed from IBM? How is IBM going to add any additional help above and beyond what they're already providing via license agreement? We know that Power is not scaling particularly well on SOI. Maybe SOI just isn't the miracle process everybody thinks it is?

EP

borusa -

The datasheet lists a max Vcc of 1.425 and a max Icc of 65.4A. That gives 93.195 watts but the datasheet is VERY confusing and takes a lot of reading to figure it out.

EP

borusa

I have to go with the 100W P4 nearing the end of thermal limits theory.

A read of Intel's datasheet puts today's 3.06GHz P4 at about 93 watts.

EP

Fingolfen/wbmw -

I can't help but believe that AMD has known all along that they weren't going to hit their performance numbers, but it would have been suicide to admit that earlier. The Athlon64 admission today is just more proof. If they can't hit their frequency target with Athlon64, how are they going to do it with a larger Hammer with more cache and more aHT ports? I would look for more disappointments to come.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/story.html?id=1044030411

AMD Responds to the Athlon 64 Delay
Posted 1/31/03 at 11:26 am by Anton

We managed to find a response of an AMD official about the postponement of the Athlon 64 processor that was announced earlier today. From the response we learnt we can figure out the following:

The performance of the x86-64 products is meeting AMD’s design expectations. However, the company underestimated the challenge of getting the SOI transistor to scale to the target frequencies. AMD believes that the technology development agreement with IBM and their understanding of SOI can help the Sunnyvale-based company to address these issues.
AMD will bring the Opteron processors to the market on the 22nd of April this year. As Hammer is mostly server architecture, the benefits are huge in multi-processor configurations.
The Athlon XP “Barton” core’s increased performance gives AMD the ability to meet customer demand for the high performance PC processors available in the market and they have decided to postpone the introduction of the AMD Athlon 64 processor until September 2003 when the company expects it will take over as AMD's highest performance flagship PC processor. It seems to be logical enough, as in case AMD cannot set the x86-64 processors to work at high clock-speeds, the Athlon64 currently is a rival to the Athlon XP “Barton” and it does not make sense to make it available, especially as the Barton is better from price-performance standpoint. Furthermore, AMD does not want an internal conflict between the Athlon XP and Athlon 64 CPUs, especially because there will be a lot more Athlon XP “Barton” chips on the market, while the initial volume of the Athlon 64 is low.
AMD will optimise the manufacturing cost and frequencies, and will wait for better customer demand later this year.
So, taking into the account all these facts, especially AMD’s inability to produce a lot of faster Athlon 64 CPUs now, it definitely makes sense to postpone the introduction of the part till Fall and promote the good-old Athlon XP processors in Spring and Summer. In case AMD launched even very few of the Athlon 64 processors now, the market attention would be turned to the newcomer, not the Athlon XP. As AMD is not able to fully fulfill the demand on the fast x86-64 processors now, their sales would be affected.
Of course, it all does not make any difference for the market. Intel seems to be in more favourable position, as they will be able not only to increase the core-clocks of their CPUs, but also add 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus and the Hyper-Threading technology to their chips.

More Clawhammer Benchmarks.


http://www.ocworkbench.com/ocwbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=25;t=000048;p=

John -

No they don't deserve that large of a grant, not in my opinion. However did you notice that all of those options in the attached article were under water, some by a large margin? Also a large percentage of their current options have a strike price in the $30s $40s and even $60s. So consider that as well. So most will take years to have any value, if ever.

EP

John -

There has to be a better way to align compensation and performance

But those options have been exercisable and in the money for 5 years. For all intents and purposes they were assets for those people for the last 5 years. It required no cash outlay and they could cash them in at any time. If they were mine, I would have considered them hard assets all along. They are not all of a sudden being rewarded. They were rewarded years ago and they just chose now to move the asset from one category to another. It's almost like having a check but waiting to cash it.

EP

Spooksave -

Hey, what else are friends for?

EP

Spooksave -

http://quote.bloomberg.com/fgcgi.cgi?mnu=news&ptitle=Stock%20Market%20World&tp=ad_uknews&...

Ok, which one of you guys is it?

Obscure investor now owns 8.2% of Transmeta

Singer ups shares while share price rises

By INQUIRER staff: Thursday 30 January 2003, 10:03


JAMES R. SINGER, who bought so many shares in Transmeta last year that he owned a 5.9% stake in the chip firm, has spent more of his hard earned cash and now owns 8.2% per cent of the company.
Singer, according to an SEC filing today, owns 11,142,900 shares in Transmeta – amounting to an 8.2% holding.

The filing is shown here.

Yesterday, the Transmeta share price closed at $1.50, rising quite a substantial 26.05% on the day, while today Pacific Growth raised its profile from "under" to "equal weight".

USUCK -

Single's are not so far away if an IBM/AMD combo gets rolling <GGGG>

Another brilliant one-liner with no insight, explanation or comment.

About time to put you on ignore for lack of content.

EP

Greg -

It doesn't make a lot of sense to build a new processor for a niche market

A niche market??? They promised unparalleled performance. CH was supposed to take over the world. It looks to me like they are admitting it wasn't competitive enough to sell. Reality meets delusion.

EP

SGI posts their CFP2000 Rates SPEC scores for 16, 32 & 64 way Itanium systems.

http://www.spec.org/osg/cpu2000/results/res2003q1/

John -

I agree. I see a real value in having a portable computer that doesn't need a lot of battery life. I'm going to a remote city and I need it in my hotel room or presentation room, not on the plane.

EP

Sorry