Intel may have canned Tejas project

[Feuerwizard]

PERSISTENT RUMOURS from people close to Intel engineers are suggesting that the chip firm may have canned its work on Tejas, the chip that is supposed to follow Prescott.
These sources tell the INQUIRER, and as yet this is unconfirmed, that the project has been shelved before tape out, and layout resources are no longer working on it.

The tape out was supposed to have happened round about now.

The speculation on the semiconductor street is that Intel is frantically attempting to take the Pentium M to the next shrink and move it as rapidly as possible into the pole position.

And the legendary skunk works in Oregon, the same sources suggest, have already designed a 64-bit wide P6/Pentium M core, perhaps dropping the legacy stuff and including 32-bit compatability.

Which would strongly suggest,that Intel might well bring its Conroe and its Merom projects closer to reality than first anticipated.

[Terry Penrod]

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Is this a reaction to AMD's new Athlon 64 CPU and Microsoft's promise to develop a new 64 bit OS sooner than later?

Cheers, Terry

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[Gaim Mastr]

Partially, Terry.

Intell has scraped the Tejas (codename for next-gen Pentium 4 chips) and the Jayhawk (codename for next-gen Xeon server chips).

Check the Reuters report (http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=5077870).


By Daniel Sorid

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Intel Corp. said on Friday it has scrapped the development of two new computer chips in order to rush to the marketplace a more efficient chip technology more than a year ahead of schedule.

Analysts said the move showed how eager the world's largest chip maker was to cut back on the heat its chips generate. Intel's method of cranking up chip speed was beginning to require expensive and noisy cooling systems for computers.

The chips being canceled include the fourth-generation Pentium 4 chip, code-named Tejas, which was to be sold next year, Intel spokeswoman Laura Anderson said.

Also being dropped is a new Xeon processor for low-end computer servers, code-named Jayhawk and based on similar architecture to Tejas. Engineers who work on those projects will be reassigned, Anderson said.

Instead, Intel next year will sell chips for both desktop and notebook computers that combine two microprocessors onto a single piece of silicon, "like putting two cylinders in a car instead of having one big cylinder," Nathan Brookwood, an analyst with Insight 64, said.

With just a single "cylinder," Brookwood said, Intel's future chips "were running too hot."

So-called dual-core chips allow for lower power usage and can double performance. This strategy was not expected for at least a year-and-a-half, said Dean McCarron, the head of Mercury Research.

McCarron said that while heat generation was a factor in Intel's decision, another impetus was likely Intel's success in developing advanced manufacturing techniques that can accommodate dual-core chips.

"They're also taking advantage of their new manufacturing capability, which allows them to put two processors onto one (chip)," he said.

A single chip that contains the cores of two microprocessors need not run at as high a "clock speed" -- a term familiar to PC shoppers as gigahertz or megahertz -- in order to crunch data as powerfully.

Intel's top competitor, Advanced Micro Devices Inc., has the capability to make dual-core chips and will introduce the technology "when we feel there is a market need," AMD spokeswoman Brenda Rarick said.


This is BIG news !!

It means the CPUs will be slightly larger, run a respectable amount cooler, require lower-noise fans, run quite a bit faster, and handle multi-tasking more efficiently.

AMD claims to already posses the technology to manufacture these chips. Of course, they've been sitting on it and waiting until they can squeeze any funds that they can out of the current single processor chips on the market, or we'd have them already.

But beyond the basic benefits of dual processor chips (which 3D Studio Max users should LOVE), I'm looking at how this will apply to the future of video cards.

Once Intel and AMD start pumping out these dual-chips, the manufacturing costs will drop considerably. And this should be picked up by nVidia and ATI, among others. The ability to process graphical information faster, cooler and on multiple levels simultaneously will provide us gamers with graphics getting MUCH closer to those seen the movie "Shrek (http://www.shrek.com)" !!

Right now, uni-chips need to have various aspects of a single piece of graphical art streamed through the processor. First one piece of the data, followed by another, followed by another, and so on until that single piece of art is able to be rendered on the monitor.

But with dual-chips, they will be able to process more of these various aspects simultaneously. Thus creating less processing 'load' or 'backlog'.

Things like dynamic lighting, shadows, water and weather effects, and high-res details should take a tremendous leap forward with this long overdue technology.


Granted, the first generation or two of these dual-chips will be for motherboard CPUs only. And both Intel and AMD will start out slowly, thus milking this technology for everything it's worth. But in two years we should be seeing some jaw-dropping systems coming to light.

And it will probably be at least two-years before we see any dual-chip video cards. But it's nice to see that this new technology is being pushed into the market at least a full year ahead of schedule. :yes:


My question is, what about these freakin' drives ?!?! :face4:

As everyone knows, aside from optical drives, hard drives are already the slowest part of a modern system. So when are we going to see some seriously new HD technology coming to light ??

I'm talking about HDs with 40,000 RPM (or relative equivalent) and much higher bus speeds.

All things considered, there hasn't been anything especially noteworthy in HD advancement in the last three or four years.

[Ojnod]

Yes hard drive could use some advancing. They are the slowest piece of (gaming) equipment in ALL of our systems

[DanTheManPR]

Damn load times!!!

[Terry Penrod]

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Funny that my brand new super duper top-of-the-line gaming system will be sooooooo obsolete when those things become avaialble, along with the next gen GPUs with the faster DDR2 RAM and PC Express, etc. Kinda makes me wonder if we really will achieve total photo-realism in full 3D real time with zero lag in the next several years.

If so, I'd also love to see huge strides in the game software for scaling / reactive, positional surround sound, AI and physics as well as graphics plus perhaps some truly good voice recognition software that auto-translates to/from every known language / dialect on earth and much better force feedback devices and other intuitive, experience enhancing game gear. The new tech for future displays is also very exciting.

Can true VR for average consumers be on the reasonably near horizon too?

Cheers, Terry

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