Intel speedens new chip launch

Daniel Sorid

SAN FRANCISCO: Intel Corp. said 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.

Michael McConnell, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities, said investors were reacting to positive comments from a Taiwanese notebook computer maker, Quanta Computer Inc.

In its monthly revenue report, Quanta said notebook PC shipments rose sharply in March.

© Reuters