Rambus gets Intel ramboost

It's pretty evident that chip giant Intel is now going to go the whole hog and push its Pentium 4 project to the limit.

That follows reports on both Cnet and Electronic Buyers' News, which are reporting that Intel is offering a rebate on Rambus based Intel Pentium 4 systems of $70 in Q4 and $60 in Q1 of next year.

Those articles are based on a report by chip analyst Bert McComas, which has confirmed many of the details of Intel's processor plans originally revealed by The Register during the course of this year.

The prices of the Pentium 4, which we now expect to debut around the end of October, are also intended to make machines based on the platform cheaper than most people originally thought, given that the die size of the microprocessor is quite large.

The interesting question now is whether Intel will also offer sweeteners to its other partners, including motherboard makers, to further encourage the arrival of the Pentium 4.

PC vendors are, today, receiving samples of Intel's "Garibaldi" mobo – a boxed offering which they will use as a reference platform to fine tune their own offerings, sources at different tier one vendors have told The Reg.

Over the weekend, we reported that Kingston Technology was preparing a large Rambus ramp up which will kick in towards the end of this year. ®

See Also

PC Rambus RIMM future hangs on mobos
Pentium 4 positioning a puzzle
More Pentium 4 benchmarks tip up
Pentium 4 to arrive October

External Links
Inqst article
CNET
EBN