Hot! IDF Spring 2003: the reportage continues

Hot! Intel Developer Forum Spring 2003: live from the Silicon Valley

More on ABIT GeForce FX 5800 and OTES III coolers

Tyan announces new barebones and server boards

AMD showcases Mobile Athlon 64

Rambus´s Redwood: more details

Pentax releases 5-megapixel Optio 550

Intel to re-equip Fab12 for 300mm production

Hermes 651 (MS-6232VA) and Hermes 845GV (MS-6243VA): new barebones from MSI

Hot! IDF Spring 2003: the reportage continues

The first IDF day is over. Hasn’t brought any announcements – it was traditionally dedicated to IT segment evolution strategies.

Craig Barrett made a keynote speech. He spoke of industry and new technologies prospects for the near and far future. He underlined the scalable content concept (same looking content on any display be it your smartphone, notebook or large TV). It’s clear industry requires standards and scalable platforms in order to achieve this.

Hot themes of this IDF include:

1. Intel Centrino – the initiative and brand offering an entire component serie:
   • Pentium 4-M (ex-Banias) processor
   • New family of 855 mobile chipsets
   • Mini PCI WiFi module
   • Configuration drivers and software
   • The most important: certification of notebooks and other mobile solutions for WiFi and other standard compatibility, including operation time.
2. 90nm Prescott and its future servers brothers: Nocona (1Mb cache, dual configurations) and Potomac (4Mb cache(!) and multi-CPU configurations)
3. Manitoba "all-in-one" solution for handsets that features XScale and DSP cores (including wireless GPRS part), 4Mb flash memory. Currently only Intel can offer such a platform with wide developer support, including the reference design and software development kits
4. Itanium 2 in the Madison variant with 6Mb cache
5. The all-chipset transition to PCI Express bus in 2004, including related new form-factors and a standard codenamed New Card to replace the PC Card that features Low Power PCI Express, USB 2.0 and SMBus. Such bays will be integrated in notebooks as well as desktops (it’s high time – I’ve got 3 notebook cards which I´d like to use with my desktop as well.)

We’ll discuss all of the above soon and now some information (it’s nice to spend the evening in a bar talking with right people. :-)

• Prescott will be announced and showcased at IDF tomorrow
• In 2004 Intel will support DDR II memory modules in servers and then in desktops
• Manitoba smartphones will be inexpensive – about $300-350 initially to get cheaper in the future. The chip itself will cost about $25.
• Thursday will bring more on Nocona and Potomac. For now: Nocona is a 90nm chip with 1Mb cache and initial 3GHz; expected in Q4. Potomac – a 90nm chip with up to 4Mb cache and initial 2GHz+; expected early in 2004
• Besides, existing 130nm server solutions will reach 3GHz before the year ends and already now will obtain 1Mb caches for dual configurations.

Appendix: The photo of DDR II DIMM PC5300 (667MHz) on Infineon BGA chips. The company is ready to make them in volumes already in 2004.

P.S. After the keynote Craig Barrett said he is a big fan of Matrix looking forward to the release of Matrix 2 and even Matrix 3. :-)

At the same event we’ve watched some excerpts from these movies and were introduced an Atari game that is to connect the sequel and "triquel".

More news to follow very soon! Stay tuned and read the newest!

Hot! Intel Developer Forum Spring 2003: live from the Silicon Valley

Our Alexander Medvedev aka Unclesam is already there sending us the first reportage.

The Silicon Valley is in its Spring and even the memorial garage of Hewlett and Packard starters seems to bloom up.

It’s about an hour before IDF starts and a strange bus is parked near the Hilton hotel. This is a wireless bus. Satellite Internet is broadcasted inside via (802.11a/b) access point. Note the marks on this transport:

Intel is inside along with the satellite Internet and...

...a familiar ECHELON system. The Big Brother watches you! ;-)

More Californian exotics:

This notebook seems to feature Itanium (where’s the battery box I wonder. :-)

In the corner you can notice a double mark of LG and IBM. Well, it doesn’t seem to be a joke!

This is only a first report. More to follow and we are ready to post!

More on ABIT GeForce FX 5800 and OTES III coolers

GeForce FX 5800 and GeForce FX 5800 Ultra will be shipped as a Limited Edition in stylish wooden boxes. Shipments are scheduled to the end of February. And the complete specs are to be posted by that time as well.

All these cards will feature new ABIT OTES III coolers with claimed to provide very low noise. Click below to get a big pic of GeForce FX 5800:

Tyan announces new barebones and server boards

However, it was The Digitimes that provided most information about Tyan novelties. Besides Tiger i7505 (S2668), the company announced new Transport GX14 B2723 and Transport FX27 B4520 barebones as well as Tiger i7501 S2723, Thunder i7505 S2665 and Trinity i7205 S2662 motherboards.

Transport GX14 B2723 is a 1U rackmount design on Tiger i7501 S2723 motherboard supporting two Xeons. Transport FX27 B4520 4U systems are designed for 4 Intel Xeon MP processors. They support 24Gb DDR200, have 7 PCI-X HotPlug slots, dual-port LAN and also support IPMI.

Source: The DigiTimes

AMD showcases Mobile Athlon 64

This time it is not an exception: in San Jose Convention Center in Fairmont Hotel, AMD showcases its various 64-bit processors.

For the first time AMD presented reference PC design on Mobile Athlon 64 expected about September. The prototype bases on K8T400, has 256Mb PC2100 and ATI M9 graphics.

Besides, it showed off another two systems: on Athlon 3000+ / nForce2 and 3.06GHz Intel Pentium 4 / i845PE. Running a Photoshop script with Intel Hyper-Threading on both resulted in 1500ms for AMD and 1700ms for Intel. But all this has already been thoroughly discussed in our forum. So, I hope we won’t get back to this soon. :-)

Another AMD system – 4-processor Opteron-based system under SuSE Linux. It also features AMD 8131 + 8111 (HyperTransport) chipset bundle, 12Gb PC2100 memory, 80Gb hard drive and Matrox G450 graphics.

Source: The Inquirer

Rambus´s Redwood: more details

According to Rambus, Redwood parallel interface will be realized as a special core for embedding into processors and interface chips. Redwood bus can be used to connect CPU with Northbridge and Northbridge with Southbridge. Besides, Redwood can be used to connect comm processors with requried circuitry. In the consumer electronics segment Redwood can be implemented to connect HDTV encoders and processors in HDTV sets.

Redwood is compatible with the current industrial protocols such as LVDS, HyperTransport, Rapid I/O and SDI-4. Redwood´s high data throughput is achieved with the help of previously announced Rambus FlexPhase technology being a way of adjusting bus data flow for each chip pin receives a signal in a time unit. As I guess this is about signal latencies equal for each chip pin. According to the company, this will allow to significantly reduce PCB cost prices and energy consumption as requires only four board layers.

According to provisional data, Redwood core is likely to be integrated into both BGA, and CSP bodies.

Deeper into technicals: FlexPhase signalling technology, Redwood underlie, is based on the Differential Rambus Signaling Levels (DRSL) protocol instead of the previous pseudo-differential RSL. It features 200mV amplitude excursion (1.2V stands for logical 0, 1.0V – for logical 1), including ODT (On Die Termination) and duplex signalling familiar from the Yellowstone.

DRSL is backward compatible with LVDS (Low Voltage Differential Signaling). So, I guess there are no more blank spots left (or maybe these technicals turned into a large blank for you :). This is the company vision of a PC based on RDRAM; RaSer serial interconnect for RDRAM-chipset and chipset-peripheral controllers; Redwood serial interface for CPU-Northbridge and Northbridge-Southbridge; Yellowstone bus for the most critical locations like in-between GPU and video memory):

Pentax releases 5-megapixel Optio 550

Optio 550 features smc PENTAX 5x optical lens (F2.8 — 4.6, 37.5 – 187.5 mm in 35mm equiv.), 1/1.8" 5.25Mp CCD (5.0 million pixels effective). The camera allows to shoot at 2592x1944, 2048x1536, 1600x1200 and 1024x768 and record 320x240@15fps QuickTime movies. Each shot can be commented for up to 30s. The model supports Exif Print, PIM II (PRINT Image Matching II) and DPOF; USB 1.1 and and has SD/MMC slot. Naturally, the device is operates as "USB mass storage". The minimal focusing range is 2cm in "super macro" mode. Besides optical VF, Optio 550 features a 1.5" LCD display (about 110,000 pixels). The bundle includes Windows 98/Me/2000/XP and Mac OS 8.6+ software.

Measured 100x39.5x59 mm, Optio 550 weighs 205g (250g with SD card and battery). Its MSRP is about $800.

Source: ASCII24

Intel to re-equip Fab12 for 300mm production

After re-equipment Fab 12 will become the fifth 300mm fab owned by Intel. Currently 300mm wafers are made at Intel fabs in Hillsboro, OR, and Rio Rancho, New Mexico. Another 300mm production line will be launched in Oregon late this year. The Irish fab will start working in H1 2004.

The company has also announced plans to sell 524 acres of land in Texas. These were bought in 1997, but turned useless for the company.

Hermes 651 (MS-6232VA) and Hermes 845GV (MS-6243VA): new barebones from MSI

The case has LPX form-factor (84x309x345 mm chassis) and 200W power supply. System board is sized 320x195 mm and designed for Socket 478 Intel Pentium 4 with 533MHz FSB and up to 2.8GHz clock speed. It also has 1 PCI slot, 2 DIMM sockets for up to 2Gb DDR200/266/333, 6-ch. audio codec (ALC650), integrated Fast Ethernet controller (Realtek RTL8101L/BL or Intel 82562ET for MS-6243VA).

Speaking of Hermes 651 (MS-6232VA), we mean SiS651 + SiS962L + SiS301B bundle. In case of Hermes 845GV (MS-6243VA) – i845GV + ICH4. Cases feature 4 USB 2.0 ports, audio in/out (including SPDIF), IEEE 1394, TV-outs.

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