Intel will debut a new version of its Xeon chip on Tuesday in what will be a major day for processor releases.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker plans to release a 2.4GHz version of its Xeon chip for one- and two-processor servers during its developer conference in Taiwan, sources close to the company said. Dell Computer, Hewlett-Packard and others will use these chips in upcoming products.
Along with being faster than existing Xeons, the new chip will be the first Xeon manufactured on wafers with 300-millimeter diameters. More than twice as many chips can be produced from these wafers than standard 200-millimeter wafers for roughly the same cost. Intel started producing Pentium 4 chips on these wafers in the first quarter.
As a result, the new wafers can lead to higher profits, or provide insulation in a price war. The chip is expected to cost $165 in 1,000-unit quantities.
Intel dominates the market for chips for smaller servers, but competition is heating up.
Sun Microsystems plans to make a renewed push into this market later this year with inexpensive one- and two-processor Linux servers that will compete against wares from Dell, Compaq and other Intel customers, according to Sun executives. Sun will market two types of servers in this area. Some will be based on its own UltraSparc chip, and others will contain chips based around the "x86" architecture, the same architecture that underlies chips from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices.
Sun will not make these chips but buy them from Intel, AMD or another manufacturer. However, Sun's relationship with Intel has been rocky.
AMD is also coming out with more server chips. It entered the market last year with a multiprocessor version of its Athlon chip and the company now claims that it has gained 6 percent of the market for chips for small, x86 servers, according to AMD. Small manufacturers for the most part sell AMD-based servers.
Dean McCarron, an analyst at Mercury Research, could not confirm that AMD has obtained that much market share, but said that the company has definitely made progress. Eighteen months ago, he noted, AMD had no presence in the market.
On the other side of the world in New York, Intel will be holding press conferences to unveil cheaper versions of its Pentium 4 chip for notebooks.
News source: ZDNet News
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker plans to release a 2.4GHz version of its Xeon chip for one- and two-processor servers during its developer conference in Taiwan, sources close to the company said. Dell Computer, Hewlett-Packard and others will use these chips in upcoming products.
Along with being faster than existing Xeons, the new chip will be the first Xeon manufactured on wafers with 300-millimeter diameters. More than twice as many chips can be produced from these wafers than standard 200-millimeter wafers for roughly the same cost. Intel started producing Pentium 4 chips on these wafers in the first quarter.
As a result, the new wafers can lead to higher profits, or provide insulation in a price war. The chip is expected to cost $165 in 1,000-unit quantities.
Intel dominates the market for chips for smaller servers, but competition is heating up.
Sun Microsystems plans to make a renewed push into this market later this year with inexpensive one- and two-processor Linux servers that will compete against wares from Dell, Compaq and other Intel customers, according to Sun executives. Sun will market two types of servers in this area. Some will be based on its own UltraSparc chip, and others will contain chips based around the "x86" architecture, the same architecture that underlies chips from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices.
Sun will not make these chips but buy them from Intel, AMD or another manufacturer. However, Sun's relationship with Intel has been rocky.
AMD is also coming out with more server chips. It entered the market last year with a multiprocessor version of its Athlon chip and the company now claims that it has gained 6 percent of the market for chips for small, x86 servers, according to AMD. Small manufacturers for the most part sell AMD-based servers.
Dean McCarron, an analyst at Mercury Research, could not confirm that AMD has obtained that much market share, but said that the company has definitely made progress. Eighteen months ago, he noted, AMD had no presence in the market.
On the other side of the world in New York, Intel will be holding press conferences to unveil cheaper versions of its Pentium 4 chip for notebooks.
News source: ZDNet News
"It's taking longer than expected," Bittman said, adding that the problems will have consequences for the succeeding Windows release, which is code-named Longhorn.
Rob Enderle, an analyst at Cambridge, Mass.-based Giga Information Group Inc., said he altered the Longhorn ship date on his product road maps earlier this year, as soon as he learned that it had been shifted from a minor to a major release. He said Microsoft's security and .Net initiatives, as well as the government's antitrust case, may also be factors in product changes and delays.
Enderle said he expects the Longhorn desktop operating system to emerge in the second half of 2004, with the server version to follow in mid-2005.
"Some [corporate users] were thinking they were going to wait for Longhorn because it was a minor release and 2003 seemed like it was relatively close," Enderle said. "Now it's slipped to 2004, and that's a long time to wait."
At Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference last fall, Paul Flessner, senior vice president of Microsoft's .Net Enterprise Servers, had said the company expected to ship Longhorn in 2003 .
But that statement was issued prior to the news that the Windows .Net Server would slip. Microsoft Vice President Cliff Reeves said last year that Longhorn probably wouldn't ship until 18 months to two and a half years years after Windows .Net Server's release.
Corporate users who may have been waiting for Windows .Net Server to take advantage of its Active Directory improvements may not want to wait. Even if the product ships in early 2003, they would be well advised to wait four or five months for the new features to stabilize, Bittman said, "What we'll generally tell clients is, if they're ready to deploy in the next three to four months, they should deploy with Windows 2000 rather than wait and bring in .Net Server when it's ready," Bittman said.
Gartner gives the Longhorn server operating system a 40 percent chance of shipping in 2004 and a 60 percent chance of shipping in 2005, according to Bittman.
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