Intel talks up low power chips to battle Transmeta pressure
PrintBut nothing to see for more than a year
Posted in Channel, 12th October 2000 14:40 GMT
Free research: Application platforms, the state of play
Intel has allowed the first glimpses of its mobile processor roadmap, taking the company through to 2002.
The outline brought promises of 1GHz-plus processors for notebooks (full size) by the end of next year, and low power processors designed to run at over 600MHz requiring less than 1V to operate.
Intel says it is speeding ahead with the production of the low power chips, reportedly in response to pressure from Transmeta, whose low power offering, Crusoe is now available in Japanese Sony Vaios.
Transmeta's top dog David Ditzel said that he saw Intel's movement into the area as validation of his own company's approach to the market.
He says that Intel's low power chip will only differ from Transmeta's by about a quarter of a watt. The Crusoe processor consumes between 0.5 watts and 0.75 watts while the forthcoming Intel chip will consume 0.5 watts when it is running at 300MHz, as it will when powered by a battery.
Intel's spokespeople did acknowledge that Transmeta had done a lot to raise awareness of battery life as an issue for chip designers. But given the manana nature of Chipzilla's riposte, their own company's awareness can only have been raised quite recently. ®
Related Stories
Intel to hype P4 over 1.13GHz PIII, and barely ship either?
Chipzilla and Transmeta in power squabble
Transmeta claims five-year jump over Intel
Dirty, dirty PCs: The X-rated picture guide
Top 500 supers - rise of the Linux quad-cores
Early adopters bloodied by Ubuntu's Karmic Koala
Sign up, sign up for The Register IT security newsletter