Mike Magee at The Inquirer reports that AMD will not respond to Intel's 2GHz P4 release until the first week in October.  That is when AMD will release the 1.5 GHz Athlon 4 (Palomino). If AMD had been true to form, they would have at least announced the desktop Athlon4 debut officially yesterday. Considering the fact that the mobile version of the Athlon 4 has been available for over a month, it seems perplexing that AMD is not forthcoming with the desktop version.

Apparently AMD does not have the fabrication capacity to make as many chip lines as they would like simultaneously. They are slowly phasing out the ancient K6 line of microprocessors which are still used in some notebooks.  The quicker, the better, if you ask me.  The Duron can easily take the place of those cheaper, older chips in low-cost notebooks.

Based on the time schedule reported over at The Inquirer, AMD is shooting for the beginning of the holiday shopping season.  But they will obviously  completely miss the back-to-school shopping season.  I can only surmise that they just aren't ready yet, or they would have jumped on the opportunity to tarnish Intel's 2 GHz processor debut.

                                           Dr. John

Scott over at The Tech Report has a thorough review of the new 478-pin 2GHz Pentium 4 processor posted.  Finally, Intel's flagship processor keeps up with, and barely passes the 1.4GHz Athlon in some benchmarks.  To Intel's consternation, the Athlon still wins in many FPU (floating point math unit) operations.

So despite Intel's 600 MHz advantage, the P4's architecture is still holding the processor back significantly on a clock for clock basis. So much so  that AMD will be able to regain the crown easily as soon as they release the new Palomino version of the Athlon in the next few weeks.  But then AMD is in the unenviable position of having to remind all potential customers that "MHz are not everything".  

Indeed, Intel seems to have learned that MHz are everything when it comes to marketing.  Most customers are not nearly savvy enough to read long comparison articles over at The Tech Report. Instead, they just call up Dell and buy the highest rated MHz computer they can get.  In such a scenario, AMD will lose.

However, until Intel implements it's next round of processor price cuts, the 2 GHz Pentium 4 costs at least three times as much as the 1.4 GHz Athlon. Add to that the fact that Rambus DRAM is two to three times more expensive than SDRAM or DDR DRAM, and you have an equation that makes the Pentium 4 significantly more expensive than an equivalent Athlon system.

Should you consider buying a Pentium 4 system now?  If you do, make sure you get a 2 GHz system based on the new 478-pin processor.  Expect to spend substantially more than you would on a comparable Athlon system.  In addition, keep in mind that the 2 GHz Pentium 4 is still manufactured with the older 0.18 micron fabrication process.  Intel is now transitioning the Pentium 4  to the new and improved 0.13 micron process. The newer version chips will run faster and cooler, and appear to be just around the corner.  So if you are hell bent on getting an Intel processor, it is my recommendation to wait for the 0.13 micron version.

AMD will be releasing the new Palomino version of the Athlon 4 for desktops soon.  It is my belief that this processor will outperform the 2 GHz Pentium 4 in most benchmarks (except maybe Quake III Team Arena).  So as you can see, the processor wars are far from over, and making a purchasing decision hasn't gotten any easier.

                                           Dr. John

So what's all this hype about the X-Box supposedly being far superior to PCs for playing games?  It's about Microsoft trying to become like Apple, the proprietary distributor for all of your computer hardware.

Not sure about this?  Think about all the hype you are hearing: the graphics are better than GeForce3, the chipset is nForce, and everything is hardwired for gaming goodness.  Plus, X-Box games will not, and will never, work on any PC.  Nor will MS make PC-compatible versions of X-box games.  This exclusive game development is obviously intended to sway people over to the X-Box for gaming.

But what's the real story?  Currently the X-Box doesn't even work, and there are no native X-Box games.  The developers constantly talk about how "buggy" the system is, particularly the audio. And finally, by the time the X-Box is mature and stable, and a decent number of games are available for it, PCs will have moved on.... way on.

I don't care how hardwired the X-Box is, at 700MHz it ain't gonna beat a P4 at 2.2GHz, or a dual Palomino Athlon system with two 1.5GHz chips running in tandem with a GeForce 3 Ultra card. And that's over just the next few months.  The tired old, hardwired X-Box will lag sorely behind PC hardware by Spring of next year.

But MS wants everyone to think the PC is dead (at least for gaming), and wants them to get locked into the proprietary snare of the X-Box.  I won't ever buy one myself, as I think paying MS for my operating system is more than enough.  I sure as hell won't pay them for a bunch of cheesy, proprietary hardware too.

                                           Dr. John  

The Inquirer

The stories about Gateway are disheartening to all but the likes of Dell.  Apparently, Gateway stock has achieved junk bond status.  Sounds like a Swan Song to me.  

But in the long run, it may be critical for the eventual recovery of the PC industry for several more big players to exit the scene.  With such fierce competition, no one is able to make a decent profit, and as such the industry is suffering as a whole.  While this is good (temporarily) for consumers, eventually there will be a final shakeout. 

The question is, how much longer can the wounded and dying hang on?  And of course, who will survive the drought and continue to move on? The PC industry is in flux now for more than just financial reasons, we are also experiencing a significant change in the platform itself.  New memory types and CPUs are coming online, and a new bus interface is just around the corner. 

While the probable death of Gateway will dismay it's loyal customers greatly, there is no doubt that there are too many PC vendors, too many PC parts, and not nearly enough willing customers. Supply and demand are cruel mistresses.

                                           Dr. John

Mike Magee at The Inquirer has started another Windows XP activation rumor.  This time he says that MS may release an update to the OS (after some time?) which relaxes the re-registration scheme for "power users" who change their hardware without warning or reason.  You'll need to go to the bottom of an unrelated Office XP story to see the rumor mongering.

Rambus share prices were down to nearly $5 yesterday, as compared with nearly $500 several years ago. This is the same company that managed to arrange special deals with Intel and Sony to monopolize a large portion of the memory market.  And for a time, Rambus had managed to convince most of the memory manufacturers to pay royalties on standard, non-Rambus memory parts. Their SDRAM royalties alone amounted to millions of dollars per quarter.

So how could the company that was sitting so pretty end up in the privy? Mr. Bill Teel notwithstanding, it boils down to pure greed.  The troubles began for Rambus Inc. almost as soon as they sprang their "patent trap" in early 2000. Rambus had secretly patented several aspects of basic memory design at the same time they were a member of a memory standard setting committee.  

When they felt the time was ripe, they sprung the patent trap and demanded royalties from all memory manufacturers.  But they were demanding royalties on standard SDRAM and DDR DRAM, not Rambus DRAM.  This not only infuriated memory manufacturers, but appeared highly unethical to computer users who had heard about the story.  As the court cases proceeded, and more details leaked out, public opinion toward Rambus soured further.

By the time the first court case ended with a judgment against Rambus (who had been the litigant), the Company's reputation was nearly destroyed.  In fact, at this point in time, Rambus is being sued by its shareholders who claim they had been misled by Rambus concerning what patents it owned.  When your shareholders turn against you, you have run out of friends.

How could all of this been avoided?  Simple.  Rambus should have vigorously defended all of its Rambus DRAM patents, but not attempted to claim ownership of any existing standard memory types.  You don't enter into a memory standards committee in good faith, only to turn around and use the information to amend your existing patent applications.  Beyond being just plain wrong, deceitful, and underhanded, it's also not a good business practice.  Reputation is everything in business, and Rambus single-handedly destroyed it's own reputation.

Unfortunately for Rambus, it seems too late to turn the situation around.  So rather than being a major player, Rambus will be reduced to a niche player, and even that may fade away over time. And it's not because Rambus is an inferior technology. Indeed, Rambus DRAM does provide significantly better memory bandwidth.  As such they could have been the preferred memory type for PC enthusiasts.  That is, if they hadn't trashed their own name through uncontrollable greed.

                                           Dr. John

The Inquirer 
The Inquirer

Lots of small interesting stories today.  First off there is a Duron/Celeron slugfest over at The Tech Report for those of you interested in the value market. This is the new Morgan version of the Duron. It's not at all surprising that the new Duron beats the Celeron in virtually every benchmark.

Next is the story that Windows XP is about to go "gold", meaning that Microsoft is about to release it too large OEMs. It's not really ready yet, but Bill needs to get it out the door before the courts come up with any Anti-Trust remedies that might delay its debut.

And apparently, ATI's release of the new Radeon 8500 has spurred NVidia to announce the release of the GeForce 3 Ultra.  The core clock speed is said to be set at 240 MHz, while the DDR memory will be running at 500 MHz (250MHz x 2).

Finally, the stories about memory maker's preparing to shut down production are all over the Web today.  If they can coordinate an industry wide slowdown or shutdown of DRAM production, you can bet your bottom dollar that DRAM prices will start to rise again.  

                                           Dr. John

In general, Pentium 4 sales have not met Intel's expectations.  Many analysts blame the problem on Intel's reliance on Rambus memory.  Rambus DRAM is significantly more expensive than competing types of PC memory, and the cost premium may have helped slow Pentium 4 sales. 

Another factor slowing the acceptance of the Pentium 4 processor is the simple fact that a less expensive 1.4 GHz Athlon beats a 1.8 GHz Pentium 4 in many benchmarks. Intel's strategy to reverse this situation is to cut the price on the Pentium 4 processor to below production costs, while at the same time offering new motherboard chipsets which support less expensive types of memory.

Intel's new i845 chipset has just been released with support for standard SDRAM memory.  At the same time, VIA has announced its new P4X266 chipset which offers double data rate DRAM support for Pentium 4 processors.  The problem is, Intel did not license VIA to make this new chipset. But VIA claims that it does not need a license from Intel to produce the chipset. Intel has said it will sue VIA over the matter. 

While it is almost certain that motherboards which support less expensive types of memory will help boost Pentium 4 sales, it is not certain that Intel will reach its projected market penetration for the new processor anytime soon.  In addition, until Intel can transition the Pentium 4 processor to 0.13 microns, it will be selling these processors at a loss to compete with AMD's Athlon. To further Intel's woes, initial benchmarks show VIA's P4X266 chipset with DDR memory significantly outperforms Intel's i845 chipset with SDRAM memory.  And finally, VIA's P4 chipset offering is substantially less expensive than Intel's.  So the chipset wars are on, and the clear winner so far is the consumer!

                                           Dr. John

A report over at The Register suggests that Windows XP is almost ready for release. One indication of the impending debut is a change in the product activation code.  As expected, Microsoft  wants to change the product activation  scheme right before XP is released to the public.

But as in the case of Windows 2000, I have my reservations that XP is really fully baked.   When Windows 2000 was first released, Microsoft said it was the most stable, reliable and secure operating system ever created.  Many service packs later, users have found otherwise.  

Some of the most frustrating problems for early adopters of Windows 2000 were driver related.  I expect drivers to be a significant problem for Windows XP as well.  A quick check of gaming benchmarks over at Anandtech shows XP crashing games far more often than Win 98SE or Windows 2000.  Those crashes (mostly with the new Radeon 8500 card) are almost certainly driver related. Even the GeForce 3 with new Detonator-4 drivers crashed Windows XP in one benchmark.  

So MS may want Windows XP to be ready, but I'll bet there are a bunch of application and driver programmers out there that have a slightly different take on the situation.

                                           Dr. John

If The Inquirer has their facts right, NVidia's motherboard chipset, known as nForce, will be delayed by several months.  According to motherboard manufacturer's, the chips don't work right. The built-in audio system seems to be a particular problem.  

Perhaps NVidia is finding out that making a computer chipset is not the same as making a graphics chip, and that the larger the chipset, and the more integrated features included, the harder the engineering problems become. Why they wanted to incorporate the GeForce MX graphics system is still beyond my comprehension. Not only does it take up valuable space in the chipset's die, but it will cut into GeForce video card sales as well.  It makes the chipset more difficult to engineer, more expensive to manufacture, and more prone to problems. Considering that a perfectly good AGP slot will be sitting right there on nForce motherboards, it's hard to imagine what NVidia is thinking.

                                           Dr. John

The Federal Court in Virginia has made it's ruling on the Rambus vs. Infineon case.  The ruling states that Rambus can not sue Infineon over SDRAM, but that they may try to continue legal action against Infineon for DDR memory.  The court also ordered Rambus to pay Infineon's legal fees, amounting to $7.1 million.  

Both companies declared victory, but it is clear that Rambus failed in one of it's prime objectives, to claim the rights to, and royalties for, SDRAM.  It also seems to me that they are going to have a tough row to hoe in claiming DDR DRAM as their own.  They lost the SDRAM ownership fight due in part to the lack of a multiplexed bus for SDRAM.  DDR SDRAM uses almost the same bus interface as SDRAM, and as such, I expect Rambus to lose the DDR DRAM fight as well.  And if they are ordered to pay those court fees as well, they will be hurtin' for certain.

It will be interesting to see how the Rambus vs. Infineon and Rambus vs. Crucial DDR fights go in the future, but the entire affair seems to be a lost cause for Rambus Inc.  Indeed, the loss of potential SDRAM royalty revenues has led Rambus investors to file a class-action law suit against Rambus Inc. for misleading the investors about patent ownership and potential royalties.  The class-action suit claims that Rambus Inc. misled investors with wild claims about owning patents to all forms of computer memory, along with statements about the huge royalties that would be collected from the SDRAM industry. So it looks like Rambus officials are finally getting a serious lesson in how not to run an IP company. 

Intel has canceled the 0.13 micron version of it's desktop Pentium III processor.  The mobile version will be the sole version produced for distribution.  Mike Magee of The Inquirer had been hinting at this for weeks, but it seemed too weird to believe.  Obviously Intel does not want to be embarrassed by any more benchmarks showing the Pentium III outperforming the Pentium 4 on a clock for clock basis.  So the sluggish Pentium 4 and the crippled Celeron 2 will be Intel's only consumer-level desktop CPUs. 

Microsoft expects everyone and their Uncle to spend a significant portion of their computing time checking for, downloading, and installing security patches to Windows 2000 and Internet Information Server (IIS). Unfortunately for Microsoft, some of their own System Administrators don't adhere to this exceedingly laborious security paradigm.

Indeed, while everyone else, and their Uncles were patching IIS to stop 'infection' by the "Code Red Worm', several of Microsoft's Hot Mail Sys Administrators were playing solitaire, and checking the clock for the approach of Miller Time.  And because of this "me-no-patchy" attitude, some Hot Mail Servers have been infected with the Code Red Worm.

If Microsoft can get caught like this, how the hell do they expect everyone else to patch all the security holes in Windows 2000?  At least the little Dutch boy had 10 fingers and only one hole in the dike to plug.  With Windows 2000, it seems like t'other way round.

When a new processor version comes out, the first speed-grades out the door are almost always the most conservatively clocked.  This means that the earlier speed-grades tend to be the most overclockable.  As the desktop version of the Athlon 4 gets ready for market, the initial indications are that it will have a multiplier that can be set as high as 18x.  This means that the Athlon 4 will clock to at least 18x100MHz = 1.8GHz, and perhaps even 15 x 133MHz = 2GHz.  If so, Intel's Pentium 4 at 2GHz will seem noticeably slower. It will be very interesting to see if AMD can spoil the 2GHz P4 release with the Athlon 4 release.  I can't wait!

Intel has decided to sue VIA Technologies for not licensing VIA's new Pentium 4 chipset called the P4X266.  VIA has always claimed it did not need a license, and I guess now we will find out if that's true or not.  But these things take time, and by the time this case gets to court, Intel and VIA will be arguing about a Pentium 5 chipset with quad data rate DRAM support.

As the days go by, the number of memory manufacturers cutting DRAM production rises. Hitachi just announced significant production cuts. The end result will be that memory will probably begin to increase in price, slowly at first, and may actually spike slightly during the back-to-school buying season. At current prices, it doesn't pay to make memory chips anymore, so cutting production is their only option.

Dynamix, the company that brought you Tribes and Tribes 2, has been axed by parent company Sierra.  Dynamix was shut down on Thursday, and all employees sent home.  Considering how rare good new computer games are becoming, this is not good news for gamers.

                                           Dr. John

Several stories have cropped up on the web that suggest Intel is getting both interested and worried about DDR support for the Pentium 4 processor. 

The first is Intel's attempt to discredit VIA's new P4X266 chipset which provides double data rate DRAM support for the Pentium 4 processor.  Intel apparently wants motherboard makers to feel uncomfortable about using VIA's new DDR chipset, because it is both un-validated, and unlicensed. According to Intel, it would be very risky for motherboard makers to rely on VIA chipsets.

The other two stories, here and here, concern the fact that many motherboard makers fear invoking Intel's wrath.  Intel has been known in the past to limit chipset supply to motherboard makers that use VIA chipset's. Now it appears that Intel is suggesting that it may only be able to supply 30 percent of the i845 (Brookdale) chipsets that motherboard makers have requested. This would permit them to pick and choose which motherboard makers would get the chips.

Such rumors coming from Intel almost certainly are intended to help keep motherboard makers in line.  Combine these Intel-based rumors about supply shortages with Intel rumors about the inferiority of the VIA DDR chipset, and it seems likely that a number of motherboard makers will cave in and wait for Intel's Brookdale chipset.

                                           Dr. John