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Rewbob writes "Rise Technology officially released its roadmap for chips in the sub-$600 PC market and confirmed it will release a chip faster and compatible with Intel's Celeron. Check out the whole story over at news.com. "

This year's Microprocessor Forum looks like it's going to be rather interesting. Two new x86 vendors will be presenting their latest work: Rise and Transmeta. Rise is attacking the x86 market with low power designs, somewhat like IDT did with Centaur, (although their efforts appear to be waining). Transmeta will be presenting a RISC chip that can read x86 instructions.

Rise is hoping to deliver its mP6 socket 7, PII-level clones by Christmas. Given that their first silicon worked (not usual) they may be well on track. In related news, Cyrix and IBM will no longer work together. There will be no more Cyrix chips manufactured by IBM. Instead IBM will use ST's Metaflow design. ST (previously SGS Thomson) is another ex-Cyrix licensee.

The new x86 startup Rise plans to release its new Pentium II class x86 at the end of this year to the notebook market entering into direct competition with Intel, IDT and Cyrix. Unlike its competitors, Rise is not integrating functions onto the CPU but plans to license its technology to partners that can. This may interest to Acer, which wants to convert from memory production to customized microprocessor production for its XC project, which it hopes will free it from the domination of Microsoft.

Intel is having a bad month. C't now reports over 500 re-labeled Pentium II chips have been found, including in channels Intel claimed secure. More worrying is that some remarked chips may be undetectable until the overclocked chip is damaged. More info is available here.. In particular the class action suit in Taiwan is worth reading. The announcement that Merced will be late caused Technology stocks to tumble yesterday. And today, news.com reports that the top FTC litigator is recommending that Intel be sued for alleged antitrust violations.

(Read more below)

Meanwhile, the competition is heating up. Newcomer Rise has demonstrated its new mP6 x86 processor, designed (like Centaur's) for the notebook market.

Interestingly, Centaur is abandonning its unipipe solution for its second generation Winchips, using 2 6-stage pipelines at up to 300Mhz. A third 12-stage pipe line architecture is planned, which will running at frequencies between 400 and 600Mhz, should improve performance by 80%. Centaur is also jumping onto the integration bandwagon, proposing its Winchip 2+NB which reduces board area (and costs) by combining the C6 core and a north-bridge on the same die.

AMD has released its K6-2, at a higher price, and with little OEM interest. However this chip is a screamer, profiting from being the first to use the new 100Mhz front side bus, and the new 3DNow! instructions. Centaur, Cyrix, and IBM also plan to deliver these features in their upcoming processors.

Finally, IBM has released a PR333 version of the Cyrix-designed 6x86 MX, which apparently partially gains its speed from a new type of chip-package. This comes as IBM revealed that it expects its Slot1 solution to be developed by Cyrix.

By the end of this year, there will be 7 somewhat incompatible versions of Windows. In addition to the current four x86 vendors there will many more, among which Imes, CPU Tech, Metaflow, Rise, Transmeta ( ? ), and Exponential (??). While new hardware ages computers before they are sold, M$'s bloatware obsoletes them within a year. To compensate, consumers are turning to cheap "disposable" computers. But this trend driven by Microsoft's feature-adding strategy, risks back-firing. As component cost is driven down, and specialised vendors disappear, more application specific devices will emerge. Just like Cyrix's MediaGX, they will be geared towards providing the maximum bang for the buck in a specific environment. This will slowly push the single-OS-for-all paradigm to the side. Indeed, as hardware cost goes down, the direct and indirect price of using Microsoft increases: Windows/Office costs money, it also costs a very powerful environment: memory, harddrive, etc. And if computers are application specific, the choice of an OS becomes irrelevant, and each new feature is clearly costed.