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12/16/2000: NVIDIA acquires 3dfx!!

    The world of the graphs 3D has given one I overturn with the newly announced acquisition of the pioneering company of the sector 3dfx (patents, commercial marks, inventory of chips... QUITE) for the successful NVIDIA.
    The operation realized with the mutual agreement of the corresponding councils of administration, will suppose to NVIDIA the payment for 112 million dollars (70 millions in cash and 1 million in common shares); later 3dfx it will dissolve like company, staying only his commercial mark.
    Many analysts had foreseen a similar result, although perhaps not so rapid; but as there indicates Alex Leupp, president of 3dfx, intensive slope suffered in the last months (with a descent of the benefits of 55,5 % in the third trimester), together with his incapability to obtain enough credit, he has precipitated the events.
    I dress retrospectively, one of the principal errors of 3dfx was his pretension to be the only manufacturer of graphic cards with his chips Voodoo, what joined to diverse problems of manufacture and design and the consequent debts they sank his position on the fast graphic market.
    Now his personnel will pay these errors, big part of which will have to be dismissed, and the users, who lose one of few companies that was doing certain competence in NVIDIA. Let's hope that ATI should resist a lot of time...

More information in:
www.nvidia.com/news.nsf/121500.html
www.3dfx.com/comp/news/rel-15dec_2.htm
NVIDIA aims at another point more: the GeForce optimized for the Pentium 4
More problems for 3dfx: the Voodoo3 and 5 cannot be used by the new Pentium 4
The first impressions on the future chip NV20 of NVIDIA
RAMPAGE + SAGE, new bet of future of 3dfx
NVIDIA enters on the chipsets market
NVIDIA in the top: all kinds of chips graphs GPU of high scale
More problems for 3dfx

News written for: Juan Herrer�as

12/15/2000: Was there a change of design in the new Pentium 4? Did a version 0.9 exist?

    As aims USA Steal and The Register, an engineer of Intel admitted this Wednesday into the conference Micro-33 of Monterey that the current design of the Pentium 4 is not the original.
    Darrell Boggs, engineer chief of Intel in charge of design of mikes of dessert, mentions that the original design of the Pentium 4 would have turned out to be a too big and expensive chip of making with the 0,18 micron s current technology ; really, the current design already has THE SURFACE DOUBLE that the Pentium III...

    Between the not implemented original characteristics they stand out: two units of floating comma (or FPUs; this might tell that porqu� the Pentium 4 depends so much in his yield of the SEE2); 16 KB of cache memory L1 (the current one has 8 KB: cost reduction, manageability?); 128 KB of cache memory L2 (the current one has 256 KB: compensation for the absence of a FPU?); and 1 MB of cache memory L3.
    He had forced the above mentioned to arrange the mike in format "cartridge", as the Slot 1 (Pentium II and the first Pentium III), turning out to be in any case a mike even more big than Pentium Pro (something inadmissible five years after the arrival of the architecture P6), and with a few even major energy needs. We go, Intel would have "broken" the quantum beginning of "smaller, more rapid".
    Separate pranks, there is the one who believes that Intel has rushed in the throwing of the Pentium 4, a promising and "adolescent" mike in a world for more adult mikes. Well, some day will be able to grow (better to "shrink"), after 0:13 microns come ...

More information in:
www.eetimes.com/story/industry/semiconductor_news/OEG20001213S0045
www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/15481.html
New Pentium 4: some lights and not few shades
The production of mikes 0,13 microns Intel will begin about 2001

News written for: Ody

12/14/2000: SiS presents his innovations: graphs and DDR

    The Taiwanese chipsets manufacturer attacks in two fronts. First of all he makes use of his experience in chipsets with integrated graphs (like the SiS730S for Athlon/Duron) to penetrate into the difficult world of the control chips for graphic cards, monopolized by the solutions of ATI, NVIDIA, Matrox and 3dfx, with his graphic chip SiS315.
    This graphic solution 3D, it is provided with the most advanced technology, as it is the support for T&L, 256 bits (with a band of memory of 5,3 GB), support of up to 128 MB of memory of video DDR, AGP4X and, together with the additional chip SiS301, support for 2 monitors, screens flat or exit of TV. Of course, it is compatible with OpenGL and DirectX.
    On the other hand, also the new chipsets have been presented for basic badges of SiS (for once without integration of graphic capacities). The new chips are the SiS635 and SiS735. Both share characteristics, with the proviso of which the first one is directed for processors Intel Pentium III and Tualatin 0,13 micron s (future Pentium III ), and the second one to the processors AMD Athlon/Duron.
    Between the characteristics of both chipsets there meets the support of AGP4X, support of memoirs DDR266, DDR200 and PC133 (up to 3 grooves DIMM), the only chip instead of two (Northbrige and Southbridge), internal communication to 1,2 GB/s (ten times more that in a chipset BX), ATA100, up to 6 ports USB, support of network Ethernet, audio (with digital exit S/PDIF) and modem integrated and, of course, the support for grooves AMR, CNR and ACR.

More information in:
www.sis.com.tw/news/sis315.htm
www.sis.com.tw/news/sis635sis735.htm
SiS and ALi react: new chipsets for mikes AMD

News written for: Miquel Tarazona

His publicity in CsH

12/13/2000: Intel and AMD lower the prices of his microprocessors

    The appearance on the part of AMD of the Athlon and of the Duron has propitiated not only one increase of the yield, but also the decrease of the prices. If earlier we were used to seeing how Intel was "releasing" the mikes with dropper and was marking the prices that he wanted for the same ones, now it does not have any more remedy than to adapt to a market that turns out to be more and more competitive to him.
    This way, as aim sources of confidence like The Register, AMD has lowered the prices of his mikes, being located the Athlon between 254 $ of the model to 1,2 GHz and 85 $ of the model to 700 MHz. The model to 900 MHz places environment to 143 $, and the Duron has an incredible value for money: 800 MHz for 79 $.
    The same sources point, as it was of hoping, that Intel has done the proper thing reducing the prices of his family Pentium. This way the Pentium 4 is located 1,4 GHz concerning 574 $ (a decrease of price of 11 %), although it comes to 1,5 GHz to 819 $. Pentium III also lower his prices; the 750 and 733 MHz models are I half-close to 173 $ and the Celeron lowers 9 %, being about 155 $ to 766 MHz (bargain sale, but enough more expensive than the Duron). These reductions affect only to the mikes for dessert PCs.
    Certainly, there is the one who says that AMD has been capable of making to enter reason of Intel. Although skylight, the users we will keep on thinking that he still lacks a little more...

More information in:
www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/15363.html
www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/15359.html
New Pentium 4: some lights and not few shades
AMD continues in head: memory DDR and mikes with bus to 266 MHz

News written for: Ody

12/12/2000: Rambus attacks now...: to NVIDIA!

    Nobody seems that Rambus Inc does not stop before anything to make to cost his pretensions on the intellectual rights of fundamental parts of the design of the memoirs SDRAM and DDR-SDRAM. After the memoirs manufacturers and chipsets, now the new target of his anger is neither more nor less than the well-known company of chips graphs NVIDIA, as indicates this one in his financial report of the fourth trimester.
    We suppose that Rambus has decided to stake everything for everything and begin asking royalties any company which products should be minimally related to the memoirs SDRAM or DDR-SDRAM... what supposes the practical totality of the manufacturers of chips graphs, for example.
    Despite the extravagant of the situation, NVIDIA must have taken it very seriously, but it has not yielded before what he considers a few "void patents, not infringed (for NVIDIA) and of not forced fulfillment". The same they think the rest of companies faced Rambus (tens, hundreds?): that the interfaces of the above mentioned memoirs are opened standards of the industry, developed in meetings of the JEDEC and therefore out of any possible patent.
    In any case, and even if Rambus "invented" part of the technology on which there are based the SDRAM and the DDR-SDRAM (of the RDRAM nobody has ever doubted that it is a Rambus development), it is necessary to wonder why they never claimed the above mentioned rights earlier, why they hoped that the whole world should use them as an irreplaceable "standard"...

More information in:
biz.yahoo.com/e/001208/nvda.html
Rambus threatens with more judgments and contract even more pleaded

News written for: Juan Herrer�as

12/11/2000: Will IBM reach 0:13 microns before anybody?

    The new technology of manufacture of microchips "CMOS 9S" is already practically completed, makes sure IBM today in a press release. The first commercial products made with her, probably chips PowerPC for servants, would be on the market at the beginning of 2001.
    The principal characteristic of this technology of manufacture is that it is a question of a 0,13 micron s process (with the minor cell of memory successful SRAM never: only 2,16 micras²), what allows to make chips with many other transistors of the same space, with minor consumption, more bargain sales (since the size of the chip is an important factor in the manufacture cost), but, especially, at higher speeds.
    The CMOS 9S uses transistors isolated with the skill SOI and interconnections of copper (in up to 9 layers) instead of aluminum, for his best electrical characteristics. Until now only AMD makes processors for PC using copper, and only in his factory of Dresden; Intel has managed to be supported with the aluminum for the time being, but it will pass to the copper prompt to support the career for the GHz (something essential if he wants that his Pentium 4 triumphs).
    Of confirming to him finally the announcement, one would suppose moving forward the equivalent Intel technology in a few months, and to AMD probably in half a year. Any way it seems difficult that IBM between in the struggle for the microprocessors market for consumption PCs... but is never known.

More information in:
www.ibm.com/news/2000/12/11.phtml
The production of mikes 0,13 microns Intel will begin about 2001

News written for: Juan Herrer�as