Prices of Intel`s top-range Pentium 4 processors have dropped with the introduction of its 1.7GHz flavour. The company has also publicly announced Tualatin - its 0.13 micron processor technology.
The P4 1.5GHz chip will drop 51%, costing distributors $256 instead of $519. The 1.4GHz and 1.3GHz processors will drop 49% and 28% respectively, bringing them both to the $193 price point.
According to Intel`s roadmap, a 2GHz processor can be expected in the third quarter, while the transition to 0.13 micron technology will begin in the fourth quarter.
Codenamed Tualatin, Intel`s 0.13 micron processor technology will "support desktop, mobile, workstation and server systems", according to the company. Mobile Tualatin chips will start shipping in the second half of this year.
"The processors will feature the world`s fastest transistors, the smallest transistor gates, the thinnest gate oxides, and the smallest SRAM cells," says Intel.
The Celeron and Pentium 3 products will continue to evolve, with the 850MHz Celeron shipping already, and the 1.13GHz PIII expected this quarter.
Mobile PIII processors are currently shipping in 1GHz versions, while the Mobile Celeron is expected to break the 700MHz mark before the end of the quarter. Low voltage PIIIs will ramp up from 700MHz to 750MHz, while the low voltage Celerons will push from 500MHz to 600MHz this quarter. Ultra-low voltage Celeron and PIII chips for sub-notebooks will move to 500MHz, 600MHz and 700MHz before the end of the year.
The Intel XScale micro-architecture, introduced at the Intel Developer Forum late last year, is expected to appear in handhelds and Internet devices this year. The roadmap does not predict StrongARM speed increases - a telling sign that XScale is expected to roll-out soon.
Ultra dense servers based on Intel mobile processors are due in the first half of this year.
In the high-end family, the PIII Xeon 900MHz with large on-die cache (1MB and 2MB) is available now. The future Xeons will sport the NetBurst micro-architecture - similar to that in the Pentium 4 - and will run at a minimum of 1.4GHz at its launch. The Xeon NetBurst chips are expected to appear in pilot phase this quarter, and will be generally available in the second half of 2001.
The 64-bit Itanium chips have already shipped in prototype format to Intel`s partners, while over 100 end-user pilot sites are conducting tests on the chips. They will feature 2MB or 4MB of L3 cache, 25.4 million transistors, 295 million cache transistors, and will be based on 0.18 micron technology. The 64-bit chips are expected this quarter.
Itanium may be in its infancy, but its three successors - McKinley, Deerfield and Madison - are already entrenched on the roadmap. McKinley is expected in pilot before the end of the year, and systems will roll-out next year. Deerfield will be Intel`s first 64-bit processor based on 0.13 micron technology, and the Madison will follow, also based on 0.13 micron.
Finally, new chipsets expected include the 860, 870, 460GX, Brookdale, and Plumas. The 860 will support Foster processors in Q2, 4x AGP support, and RDRAM.
The 870 supports 2-, 4- and 8-way systems for the McKinley and other 64-bit processors, as well as IA32 systems. It supports DDR and RDRAM memory. The 460GX is designed for 4-way Itanium systems. The Brookdale chipset for P4 supports 133MHz SDRAM as well as Direct DRAM (DDR). The Plumas will also allow for DDR, support the upcoming InfiniBand architecture, and will facilitate both one- and two-way servers.
Share
