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Intel’s Itanium may not come to India

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CIOL Bureau
New Update

One month after canceling most restrictions on the export of data encryption

product, the Clinton government is expected to announce that it has rejected

requests from Intel, Unisys and others to increase the maximum speed of

computers that can be exported around the world without requiring an export

permit.

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Currently, such permits are needed for systems with an operating speed of

6,500 Mtops (millions of theoretical operations per second). That means Intel

will not be able to sell its forthcoming Itanium (Merced) 64-bit microprocessor

to PC makers in many countries outside the United States without an export

permit. And, PC makers around the world would also be severely restricted in

what they can do with the computers they produce. The Itanium chip is expected

to feature a speed of 25,000 Mtops, four times the current legal limit.

PC exports to as many as 50 countries, including India and Pakistan would be

affected should the Clinton Administration fail to raise the top level

sufficiently to accommodate for Intel's Itanium processors which are due to

arrive in this summer. Intel officials have told the government that the Itanium

chip will make the 6,500 Mtop level, set just last June, obsolete. But so far

the U.S. Commerce Department and Defense Department have resisted raising the

limit above around 12,500 Mtops, still only half the Itanium's initial

performance.

"It's our understanding that the new rules will not reflect this new

generation of chip,'' said Ken Kay, head of the Infotech Strategies industry

lobbying group in Washington. Kay said computer executives shouldn't have to

come begging for new rules every six months. "We call it the Mtop

treadmill. Everybody who's working on this realizes the system doesn't work.''

Intel's corporate spokesman Chuck Molloy said his company will continue to lobby

for further relaxation of the export restrictions. "Given the performance

increases in microprocessors, there will be a need to look at this again."

Other analysts said the Itanium issue clearly illuminates the fact that the

high-tech industry is moving too fast for federal bureaucrats to keep up. New

microprocessors with every higher performance levels are coming to the market at

the rate of 3 to 6 per year by each of the major suppliers. Since early 1999,

top-of-the-line Intel and AMD PC processor speeds have moved from 450 MHZ to

500, to 550. to 600. to 650. to 700, to 733, to 750 and most recently to 800

MHz.

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