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Intel moving on VIA Technologies?
One of our readers sent us an interesting Forbes article detailing some of the "odd" movements that Intel has taken in reference to one of their partners, VIA Technologies. VIA makes a 133 mhz chipset, competition to Intel's 100 mhz chipset. You may remember VIA as the company that Intel accidently sued in mid-April, but withdrew the suit, saying it was a clerical mistake.
NVRAM harddrives have been available for a while. The CRAY T932 has 800GB/s memory bandwidth, I'd say it's safe to say that that bus is running at at least a GHz. I haven't heard of a 10GHz CPU, unless you are talking in the aggregate (eg. 10 processors running at 1GHz each), in which case the CRAY T932 almost certainly qualifies. You should go out and get one, and install an NVRAM harddrive in it.
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Open mind, insert foot.
IIRC, it ends up that your average performance will be about the same with Rambus as with SDRAM. For large block memory reads, Rambus is faster due to its higher bandwidth, but for small noncontiguous reads it's slower, due to its higher latency. For average use (whatever that is), they supposedly end up being about the same.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Intel chipsets use the Rambus memory standard while the VIA chipset uses the PC-133 Synchronous DRAM, which is nearly 35% cheaper than Rambus memory.
Sneakin' it in the back door. Thats like attaching a handgun bill to a public transit proposition.
Bastards. Go VIA.
Four-digit slashdot ID. Recognize.
1) VIA isn't THAT tiny. Intel's chipset sales were 1.2 billion. VIA's was 200 million. That's still 1/6th of Intel's sales, which isn't too shabby. Also VIA sells chipsets at bargin rates and Intel doesn't. That means that VIA has shipped a lot more chipsets than Intel has, per dollar amount.
Also, VIA has to compete with ALI, SIS, and a few others for AMD/Cyrix sales. Intel has no such competition for the Celeron/PIII sales.
2) VIA is very close to AMD and I believe that AMD licensed VIA's chipsets for AMD's 640 Socket 7 chipset. VIA will also be one of the main manufacturer's making K7 chipsets.
3) VIA is trying to do an endrun around Intel by using National Semiconductor's license with Intel for the basis of their chipset. This was also done by AMD and Cyrix back in the 486 days, and it worked. However, it's almost a natural that Intel should sue.
4) VIA is mostly owned by FIC, who is a major OEM manufacturer in Taiwan. If they, and other Taiwan manufacturers could purchase Celeron and PIII chipsets locally, they would in a hearbeat. VIA already has very good relationships with all of them (most use the MVP3 chipset already).
Could be interesting...
jf
According to Tom's Hardware the 133mhz bus thing only provides incremental improvements over the 100mhz bus, and at astronomically higher prices. BTW, when is the 200mhz bus/K7 combo supposed to come out?
The point is that other companies aren't doing what intel is telling them to. And intel really doesn't like that.
You see, the real issue (although the original article doesn't seem to mention it) is memory. VIA and others have been arguing for supporting a PC133 memory standard. Intel doesn't like this because they want everyone to move to DRDRAM (Direct RAMDBUS DRAM), while VIA and others are more interesting in DDR-SDRAM (Double Data Rate SDRAM). Intel says RAMBUS is great because it runs at 800 mhz. The slight problem is that it's only 16 bit. That means that 800 mhz RAMBUS has the same bandwidth as 200 mhz SDRAM. It's not that great an improvement. Plus, RAMBUS has some serious problems with high latencies.
PC133 is actually just the first step towards PC266, using DDR-SDRAM at 133 mhz. DDR-SDRAM is like conventional SDRAM only it transfers data on both the rising and falling edges of the signal, giving twice the bandwidth at the same speed. Plus, DDR-SDRAM doesn't have the latency problems of RAMBUS. In addition, it costs less and is more similar to SDRAM so the memory manufacturers can switch to making it more easily. If that's not enough, RAMBUS is a proprietary standard controlled by one company, and DDR-SDRAM is an open standard. Here's even more: DRDRAM has some serious yeild problems and intel is still working on some major bugs while DDR-SDRAM is almost ready for widespread adoption.
But intel has absolutely no plans to support DDR-SDRAM or even PC133 (Heck, there are rumors that even when they come out with a 133 mhz chipset they will run the memory at 100 mhz.). Perhaps it's because they've invested a lot in RAMBUS, or maybe because they are stubborn bastards who subscribe to the NIH (not invented here) philosophy. It's probably both, actually. But there are companies like VIA who are saying, "Gee, DDR-SDRAM is a LOT better. Why don't we use it?". This is making intel furious. They are used to having everyone in the hardware world do exactly what they tell them no matter how stupid it is. Increased competition has started to change this, and it's definately for the better.
Back to your K7 comments, this is very much an issue. The K7 may have a 200 mhz bus between the chipset and the processor, but the memory bus is only 100 mhz. This is simply because there is no 200 mhz memory. While future K7 chipsets will support RAMBUS (just in case intel wins and it's adopted), they will also support DDR-SDRAM. VIA made K7 chipsets certainly will, as will VIA made P6 chipsets. There is even a chance DDR-SDRAM will be supported on the old socket 7 platform if VIA releases a new chipset for it (It's not that unlikely. The K6-III will still be made and should go at least as high as 600 mhz in the future). Maybe common sense will prevail and the superior technology will actually win. Then again, with intel's marketing muscle, maybe not.
I am not an idiot. Please use my name to email me.
"That's right, I'm quoting myself."
-Upsilon
Various intel leakages have implied there were or
as it appears now should have been 133MHz FSB
parts. Notably the documentation that escaped on
the 0x2A MSR.
I wonder what the real story is
Alan
Capitalism has failed when an entity achieves a monopoly, and is able to smother any smaller one. What's worse is that capitalism is not failing by itself; our "Intellectual Property" laws which were designed to promote it are choking it to death.
Capitalism, like anything, works only when you know how to use it.
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