Intel's "Tualatin" to compete with the Athlon 4
Intel returned AMD's fire in the 'mobile' marketplace on Wednesday by
announcing that it will release five new chips in July that are targeted to compete with AMD's newly
announced Athlon 4 mobile chip. Intel's new chip is the PIII produced on a 0.13 micron process, and is
codenamed Tualatin. It will be released at speeds of 866MHz, 933MHz, 1GHz, 1.06GHz and 1.13GHz. The
chips will consume less power than current PIIIs, have a 133MHz front side bus, a 512KB Level 2 cache,
and a new version of SpeedStep, a technology that adjusts processor speed dynamically to conserve
power. Intel plans to launch desktop and 'Xeon' server versions of Tualatin after the release of the mobile
version of the chip, much like AMD. Intel plans to eventually move all of its chips to the .13 micron
process. The desktop P4, for instance, is expected to make the switch in Q4 2001.
The chips--code-named Tualatin (pronounced "TWO-ala-tin")--will be the first new and faster
Pentium III chips in more than a year, boasting clock speeds of up to 1.13GHz, according to
sources familiar with Intel's plans.
The fastest new mobile Pentium IIIs will compete with AMD's Athlon 4 chip--announced
Monday--a mobile version of the Athlon that runs at speeds as high as 1GHz.
The five Tualatin chips will run
at clock speeds of 866MHz,
933MHz, 1GHz, 1.06GHz and
1.13GHz.
The new chips give Intel two
other things it needs to
compete in the mobile market:
lower power consumption and
possibly improved
manufacturing yields.
The Tualatin "answers the
competition on all fronts," said
Mike Feibus, principal analyst
at Mercury Research. "I don't
see it as a knockout punch,
but I do see it as an effective
counter" to competitors.
The chips are being built using
the company's new
0.13-micron manufacturing
process.
The transition from the current 0.18-micron process to the new process provides a number of
advantages. It allows for the increases in clock speed while reducing the physical size of the
chip, letting Intel manufacture a greater number of chips per single silicon wafer. At the same time,
the chips will consume less power.
The five new Pentium IIIs will sport a 133MHz front side bus--the data pipeline that connects the
chip to other PC components, such as memory--and are also expected to feature improvements
including a larger 512KB Level 2 cache and a new version of Intel's SpeedStep notebook
battery-saving technology.
SpeedStep, in its current form, allows a mobile Pentium III to scale back in clock speed and
voltage to save power when a notebook switches to batteries. This second version of SpeedStep
will take that further, allowing the chip to switch between the chip's lowest clock speed and lowest
voltage setting to its maximum voltage and clock speed settings.
"This improves on what we've done" in the past, said Don MacDonald, director of marketing for
Intel's mobile products group.
Though he wouldn't comment on clock speeds or the timing of Intel's Tualatin launch, MacDonald
said the chipmaker's goal is to continue to dominate the market for mobile chips.
"We are committed to having the highest-performance and the lowest-power" mobile processors,
MacDonald said. "There's a road map of (Tualatin-based mobile) products coming out throughout
the year.
"The advantage is two ways, depending on how you spin some dials," he said, referring to the
ability to increase clock speed or to decrease power consumption on slower Pentium III chips.
As a result, Intel also plans to launch low-power versions of the Tualatin Pentium III chips later
this year for smaller-sized notebooks. The chips will stick to the same or lower power
consumption as the current line of low-power Pentium III processors but will offer higher clock
speeds.
These lower-power chips will aim to fend off Transmeta's progress
with its Crusoe processor in small-sized notebooks, such as the
recently announced Toshiba Libretto L1.
After the launch of the Tualatin mobile chips, Intel plans a host of
other processors based on the new Pentium III design. The
chipmaker will also launch new Pentium III desktop and Xeon server
processors based on Tualatin. The desktop Pentium III chips are
expected at speeds of 1.13GHz and 1.2GHz. However, Intel is not
expected to aggressively market Tualatin Pentium III chips for the
desktop.
A new chipset will also accompany the Tualatin mobile chips. The
chipset, code-named Almador-M (for "mobile"), offers
improvements intended to complement the new processors,
including support for PC133 memory. It also offers a 133MHz bus.
Intel will, over time, move all of its chips to the new 0.13-micron process. The chipmaker will, for
example, move the desktop Pentium 4 chip to 0.13 micron in the fourth quarter. A mobile version
of the Pentium 4 will ship in the first half of 2002.
The name "Tualatin" comes from the Tualatin river, located near Intel's Hillsboro, Ore., facilities,
where the new chips were designed and are being manufactured in small quantities.
