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940 versus 940. That may be the confusing Intel-AMD processor model-number juxtaposing that consumers can look forward to next year.

A Chinese Web site has posted details of Advanced Micro Devices' upcoming Phenom II desktop processors, of which at least two are due to be launched at the Consumer Electronics Show in January.

The post on HKEPC lists more than a dozen new models due to be launched during the next eight months. AMD is now moving its chips to 45-nanometer process technology from an older 65-nanometer process. Generally, smaller geometries result in faster and more power-efficient processors.

Processors listed include the quad-core Phenom II X4 920 and Phenom II X4 940 due in January, rated at 2.8GHz and 3.0GHz, respectively.

Interestingly (and maybe not coincidentally), AMD's high-end Phenom II X4 920 and 940 model numbers match the branding of Intel's Core i7-920 (2.66GHz) and i7-940 (2.93GHz).

Both the AMD and Intel models are 45nm quad-core desktop processors with large caches. High-end Phenom II processors come with 8MB of cache memory. Typically, the more cache memory, the better the performance.

Other processors listed include the Phenom II X4 810 and 805, both due in February, rated at 2.6GHz and 2.5GHz, respectively, according to HKEPC. These have 6MB of cache memory.

HKEPC also lists triple-core Phenom II X3 processors and Athlon X4 processors.

The site also posted a table showing new naming scheme for the processors.

AMD will bring out its first generation of 45nm processors just as Intel is beginning commercial shipments of its second-generation 45nm product, the Core i7, which Intel officially introduced on November 17.

The Semiconductor Industry Association said Monday that global sales of semiconductors declined by 2.4 percent in October as memory products saw the steepest declines.

This follows an SIA report last month that said chip sales in the fourth quarter, historically a strong time period for the microelectronics industry, are expected to decline by 5.9 percent from the previous quarter.

Monday's report said that global sales of semiconductors declined by 2.4 percent in October to $22.5 billion against sales of $23.0 billion in October 2007. October sales were off by 2.1 percent compared to the $23.0 billion in September 2008.

Memory products--such as flash--have been the hardest hit and are dragging down other chip sectors. If memory is excluded, industry sales increased by 3.8 percent compared to October 2007 but declined by 1.4 percent compared to September 2008, the SIA said.

NAND flash--used in digital cameras, digital music players, and solid state drives--sales were off by nearly 41 percent in October compared to a year ago. DRAM memory was off 14 percent.

Memory manufacturers, including Micron Technology and South Korea's Hynix, have been struggling in the face of sales declines. Micron said in Ocotober that it would stop making NAND flash memory at a joint Intel-Micron facility in Boise, Idaho and cut 15 percent of its workforce. Hynix, meanwhile, has been trying to sell off a 36 percent stake in its operations.

"The slowdown in worldwide semiconductor sales that became evident in September continued in October," said SIA President George Scalise in a statement. "The worldwide financial turmoil is expected to continue to impact demand for semiconductors as we enter 2009," he said.

The SIA report last month projected that 2009 sales will decline by 5.6 percent to $246.7 billion before resuming growth in 2010, the first decline in global chip sales since 2001.

In 2009, PC unit shipments are projected to fall by 5 percent and cell phone unit shipments are expected to be down by 9 percent. These two categories account for approximately 60 percent of total demand for semiconductors, the SIA said Monday.

The world's largest chip manufacturers such as Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) have both said they expect a sharp drop in revenue in the fourth quarter.

The SIA reiterated what it said last month: sales were trending up until October. Sales for the first ten months of 2008 were $216 billion, an increase of 2.6 percent from the first ten months of 2007 when sales were $210 billion.

The Netbook, take two: When Advanced Micro Devices said it wasn't going to focus on Netbooks, as Intel and its partners defined them, maybe it was on to something.

Intel is re-evaluating the Netbook market as possibly not The Next Big Thing. This from the company that makes the Atom processor and accompanying silicon that go into most of the Netbooks sold today.

HP Mini Netbook 1030NR: the next big thing?

(Credit: Best Buy)

At a recent Raymond James IT Supply Chain Conference (streamed via this Intel page), Stu Pann, vice president in the sales and marketing group at Intel, said his company sees the Netbook differently now.

"We originally thought Netbooks would be for emerging markets and younger kids, and there is some of that. It turns out the bulk of the Netbooks sold today are Western Europe, North America, and for people who just want to grab and go with a notebook," Pann said. "We view the Netbook as mostly incremental to our total available market," he added.

And the most revealing statement? "If you've ever used a Netbook and used a 10-inch screen size--it's fine for an hour. It's not something you're going to use day in and day out."

Though this may simply reaffirm some people's view of the Netbook, it may also be surprising to others who thought the Netbook was potentially a laptop replacement for highly mobile users looking for a lightweight design. Or at least a design that was bearable beyond one hour.

Enter AMD and its take on the market. Though it won't resist if computer makers use its upcoming Huron and Conesus CPUs (one of these is due early next year) for Netbook-like designs, its focus is on ultrathin laptops similar in build to the 13-inch MacBook Air (and even 14-inch designs) but at a much lower price point.

AMD Chief Executive Dirk Meyer said earlier this month that "we're ignoring the Netbook phenomenon--just thinking about PC form factors above that form factor." And Bahr Mahony, director of notebook product marketing at AMD, said at that time that there are "a fair number of people" who are not satisfied with the experience they're having with Netbooks.

Mahony added that the dissatisfaction with Netbooks "has been exhibited by the high return rates that have been seen on these mini notebooks" in Europe. (AMD uses the terms "Netbook" and "mini notebook" interchangeably.)

AMD believes that the Netbook screen size is too small and the performance disappointing.

The coming year should show whether the Netbook has legs or whether it was just another marketing flash-in-the-pan like the UMPC (ultramobile personal computer) before it.

Updated on November 25 at 11:00 a.m. with correction about Intel Moorestown chip and additional comments at bottom.

Rumors of an iPhone-style Microsoft phone running on Nvidia silicon add heft, in part, to what Nvidia has been talking about since early this year.

Nvidia prototype phone using Tegra APX chip

(Credit: CNET Networks)

In the spring, Nvidia demonstrated its Tegra chip-based mobile phone prototype to me and pretty much anyone in the media who made a visit to its Santa Clara, Calif., headquarters.

(See CNET Reviews video of the phone.)

Nvidia has made it clear that the chip platform was targeted at Windows Mobile--a point that an Nvidia representative reiterated Monday.

Though the prototype phone (actually a development platform) is quite a bit thicker than a real "thin" phone that a handset provider would bring out at some point, the prototype runs on top of Windows Mobile, as it would presumably in a commercial device.

And what does Nvidia bring to the table? The master of faster graphics processors wants to apply its chip know-how to juice up the mobile Internet device market and the Windows Mobile interface. After a decade of pumping up PC performance, Nvidia is betting a big part of its future on boosting graphics performance in fit-in-your-pocket mobile Internet devices, or MIDs.

iPhone-style devices with Nvdia's Tegra APX (or Tegra 600) incorporate most of the functionality of a PC. And Nvidia is building all of the core electronics that will run a mobile Internet device, not just the graphics component. (This Nvidia Mobile Device page shows the Tegra 600 series and Tegra APX.)

Tegra is different from Intel's Atom processor platform--which is offered as a processor and a separate chipset--because Nvidia integrates everything onto one piece of silicon. This makes it more akin to Texas Instruments' OMAP processors or Qualcomm's Snapdragon. (See "Additional Comments" below with corrected statement on Moorestown.)

Images shown on Nvidia Mobile Devices Web page.

(Credit: Nvidia)

Nvidia's goal is to pack as much processing punch as possible into a few-hundred-milliwatt power envelope. Notebook PC processors typically operate in power envelopes between 10 and 35 watts.

But to the user, the biggest difference will be Microsoft's Mobile Windows interface and what can happen when there's Nvidia GeForce graphics silicon pushing everything around.

The platform that Nvidia is demonstrating goes far beyond the staid, pin-striped Windows Mobile that is used today. Nvidia has been showing finger-flick-and-roll screens and accelerometer-based reorienting 720p video.

Devices--according to Nvidia's thinking at least--will also be designed to run 720p HDTV video for 10 hours--one of the marquee features that Nvidia will be emphasizing. The company has demonstrated the prototype Tegra APX-based device plugged into a large screen TV--via a High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) connector--playing high-definition movies with the same fluidity and resolution as you get from a big HDTV box or bigger computer.

Additional comments on two points: One, correction on Moorestown. As a reader pointed out, Intel's upcoming Moorestown is not a single-chip device. It is still at 2-chip solution. Two, about Tegra: another reader commented that Tegra is based on the ARM11 (shipping in products now), which is "older" than the Cortex-A8 class OMAP products from Texas Instruments.

Micron Technology will bring out a 256GB solid-state drive early next year while it moves, along with Intel, to a new manufacturing process.

Micron SSD

(Credit: Micron)

A Micron representative said Monday that the company will start volume production of a 256GB solid-state drive for consumer use in March 2009.

This follows Samsung's announcement last week that it had begun mass-producing 256GB solid-state drives.

The Micron RealSSD C200 will read data at 250MBps (megabytes per second) and write at 100MBps. It is sampling to customers now. Samsung, by comparison, is claiming sequential read rates of 220MBps, with sequential write rates of 200MBps.

The Micron representative said that the company is slightly behind schedule in delivering the 256GB product, as it was originally targeted for the fourth quarter of this year.

Solid-state drives are generally faster than hard-disk drives, particularly at reading data. Computer makers such as Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Toshiba all offer laptops with solid-state drives ranging in capacity from 64GB to 128GB.

Intel is due to deliver a 160GB solid-state drive this quarter. The chipmaker is currently shipping 80GB solid-state drives to customers such as Hewlett-Packard, which offers it in its EliteBook 2530p ultraportable.

In related news, as reported back in May, Micron and Intel announced mass production Monday of their jointly developed 34-nanometer, 32-gigabit multilevel cell NAND flash memory device.

The "32Gb monolithic die will give us the ability to cost-effectively produce over 300GB-capacity SSDs in standard 2.5-inch and 1.8-inch form factors," Intel said Monday.

Multilevel cell technology allows makers of solid-state drives to deliver lower-cost devices at higher capacities.

The new Micron 256GB drive will not be based on the 34nm process, however. Drives based on this process will come out later in 2009.

Intel and Micron have a joint NAND flash memory venture, IM Flash Technologies (IMFT), which manufactures the NAND chips. The two companies market the products separately.

The companies "are ahead of schedule with 34nm NAND production" and expect their Lehi facility to have moved more than 50 percent of its capacity to 34nm by year's end, according to a statement.

"The results from IMFT continue to exceed our expectations," Randy Wilhelm, vice president and general manager, Intel NAND Solutions Group, said in a statement.

In October, Intel and Micron said they would discontinue supply of NAND flash memory from Micron's Boise facility. The NAND operation shutdown will reduce IMFT's NAND flash production by approximately 35,000 (200-millimeter) wafers per month, Micron said at the time.

Discontent with Intel graphics goes back a few years. But the unsealing of 3-year-old e-mail exchanges between Intel and Microsoft reveals something about the present, too.

Intel 915 chipset

(Credit: Intel)

First some background. Intel makes integrated graphics silicon--that is, graphics functionality that is built into its chipsets. Performance is not the name of the game for Intel. Delivering power-efficient, adequate graphics that can handle everyday tasks and do basic gaming is the goal. Anything beyond this is left to the high-octane discrete chips from ATI and Nvidia.

"We've always been consistent that high-end gamers should use discrete graphics," said Intel spokesman George Alfs. Intel graphics is also inexpensive and comes virtually free on some PCs.

But Intel graphics silicon is everywhere. It ships in tens of millions of PCs every year. And herein lies the issue. The silicon becomes the lowest common denominator that Microsoft and game developers must write to because it's so ubiquitous.

This is the root of the Intel 915 integrated graphics and the "Vista Capable" controversy. As widely reported, Intel's 915 (which shipped as standard in many PCs) was not up to running Vista's Aero Glass interface (among other features). So, Microsoft dropped this as a requirement.

Reams of material have been released according to this Seattle Times blog documenting the infighting that took place trying to resolve the 915 issue. The documents stem from a lawsuit that alleges Microsoft misled consumers by lowering the requirements so a 915-based PC could be designated as "Vista Capable."

According to an unsealed motion citing e-mail and internal Intel and Microsoft documentation released by U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman, Microsoft objected to an internal Intel link "positioning the 915 GM as optimum for Windows Vista on mobile PCs." The motion states that Microsoft viewed this as "misleading" and "egregious" and that Microsoft asserted that the 915 chipset "should not even be in the list of recommended hardware for Windows Vista" and further opined that the "higher end of the chipset choices" from Nvidia and ATI were more suitable.

But that may not be the whole story. According to an article on Channel Web, Microsoft did not "cave" to Intel and the 915, but rather "it was Microsoft, led by Poole, that initiated that change all on its own." Will Poole at that time was a Microsoft senior vice president.

"We are seriously confused. We believed that 915 is NOT vista ready as it will never have WDDM drivers," according to an e-mail from Intel Vice President Renee James, cited in the Channel Web article. (WDDM stands for Windows Display Driver Model.)

Whatever the case, Intel integrated graphics was so commonplace that it was a big issue.

(For the record, Nvidia had issues with its drivers and Windows Vista too.)

Intel targets graphics
Fast-forward to September of 2006 and the Intel X3000 and X3100 (G965/GM965) graphics. With this silicon, Intel decided it was going to provide a better graphics experience for gaming in particular. The 965 started shipping in September of 2006, but it took Intel nearly a year to write the drivers needed to unlock better performance.

"New drivers for the company's 965GM chipset, found in many notebooks and midrange desktops, still don't deliver the uniform performance increases promised earlier this year, according to testing by CNET Labs," CNET News' Tom Krazit wrote in October 2007.

Intel documentation (here) says that "Intel recently introduced the 15.6 and 14.31 Windows Vista and Windows XP graphics drivers that enables Shader Model 3.0 including support for hardware vertex shader and HW TnL on the Intel G965, GM965, and G35 Express Chipsets."

The document continues: "This capability has shown enhancements in game compatibility as well as game play" and concludes the "Introduction" by saying: "The end result is that Intel is able to deliver the highest possible frame rates by leveraging Intel's world class processors."

Now fast-forward to the present and the MacBook Air. The first version of the MacBook Air was rolled out in a show of great camaraderie with Intel CEO Paul Otellini. Intel silicon all around: not only a special version of the Intel mobile Core 2 Duo was used, but Intel X3100 graphics, too. At that time, Apple CEO Steve Jobs heaped praise on the Core 2 Duo processor.

Then came the MacBook Air update. Intel graphics out, Nvidia 9400M graphics in.

This time Apple stressed the graphics capability of the Air.

Gains and compromises
To reiterate, the issue is not that Intel graphics are horrendous. It's simply that Intel's graphics silicon is so widespread that it becomes an issue for people, for example, who buy a laptop and later decide they want to play games at a certain level or do more high-level graphics.

What do analysts think about the X3100? Jon Peddie says Intel graphics has improved, but he is cautious. (Note that the X3100 has recently been superseded in laptops by the Intel GMA 4500MHD.)

"Whereas it would never be used by a real gamer (of which I like to consider myself) it will allow someone with a tighter budget to have some experience (with gaming on a PC)," Peddie said in response to an e-mail query. Peddie does research and testing of graphics products from Intel, Nvidia, and ATI.

Peddie: "Based on early tests we have run on the X3100, we found it ran all the games we tried, i.e., Spore, Stalker Clear Sky, Crysis, and Far Cry Warhammer, but "mind you we had to use lower resolution than we would normally, and if the game didn't automatically turn off some of the special features, we had to in order to get a descent frame rate."

He continues: "But the fact that it ran at all is I think a major slap on the back for Intel. Turning features off and reducing resolution is a reasonable compromise considering the costs."

But Intel (to state the obvious) is not Nvidia. "Now having said that I also have to say that the Nvidia mGPU 9400 (now used in the MacBook Air) is much more capable and you can run at higher resolutions with more features turned on," Peddie said.

The conclusion. Intel graphics is adequate and probably does more than enough for most users. But the issue will never go away because integrated graphics set itself up as a low-watermark benchmark for competitors (that offer higher-end discrete cards) to surpass. Meanwhile, it forces multimedia and game developers to make their games and applications run in a less-than-stellar way on millions of PC worldwide.

Samsung on Wednesday night said it has begun mass-producing 256GB solid-state drives. This size tops the largest-capacity SSDs found in laptops today.

Samsung currently offers 64GB and 128GB SSDs for laptops.

The new 256GB drives are faster too, the company claims, more than doubling the performance rate of Samsung 64GB and 128GB SSDs.

The drives combine sequential read rates of 220 megabytes per second, with sequential write rates of 200MBps. "This sharply narrows the performance gap between read and write operations to only 10 percent, compared to a read-write speed difference of between 20 (percent) and 70 percent for other SSDs," the company said.

Samsung did not mention random write performance, however. Despite being generally faster than hard-disk drives (particularly at reading data), solid-state drives fall short of hard disks when they randomly write data. Random writes are generally considered to be the Achilles' heel of solid-state drives.

Getting this 256GB SSD in a notebook "is analogous to having a 15,000-(revolutions-per-minute) drive, without all of its size, noise, power, and heating drawbacks," Jim Elliott, vice president of memory marketing at Samsung Semiconductor, said in a statement.

The 256GB SSD boosts data transfer when large multimedia files are simultaneously read and stored. "It can store 25 high-definition movies in just 21 minutes, a significant advancement over a 7,200rpm hard disk drive (HDD), which takes about 70 minutes," the company said in a statement.

The drive's performance is derived from a new single-platform design consisting of a chip controller, NAND flash, and special drive firmware developed by Samsung. "This single platform is designed to easily adapt to Samsung's 40-(nanometer) class NAND flash memory," according to the company.

It consumes 1.1 watts of power, versus 2 or more watts for a comparable HDD. Similar in weight to a 128GB SSD, at 81 grams, the 2.5-inch multilevel cell 256GB SSD has the same 9.5-millimeter drive thickness.

Samsung's 256GB SSD is also available with optional proprietary encryption programming that provides full-disk encryption, a key feature for some corporate users.

Pricing was not immediately available.

A clash is brewing as PC and cell phone chip suppliers vie for new designs that fall outside traditional product categories, an analyst said in a research note Wednesday.

Asus 10-inch Eee PC 1000

(Credit: Asus)

Doug Freedman, a chip analyst at AmTech Research, said the "line between cell phones and PCs is clearly blurring" and that consequently "PC and cell phone food chains will battle for market share in these new classes of devices." He calls this the "big bang between PCs and handsets."

This will happen as more tweener products emerge. "New product categories such as Netbooks, MIDs (mobile Internet devices), and smartphones all lie in the spectrum between the traditional PC and handset product categories," he wrote. "Cell phones are increasing in screen sizes, computational power and capabilities, while PCs are seeing declines in screen sizes and increases in connectivity."

This may present problems for chip suppliers as they rush to build inventory for these newfangled devices, resulting in an oversupply for device categories that don't succeed. "It's a safe bet that we'll end up with losers," he said in an interview. Moreover, there will be lower-than-expected gross margins (a crucial indicator of profitability) for some of the chips that go into these products, according to Freedman.

While the Netbook is considered a successful tweener product, it exemplifies a category that may be facing a reality check as the novelty wears off, resulting in an oversupply problem, he said. Intel says it has seen strong demand for the Atom processor on the back of the popularity of Netbooks but there are signs that demand has started to ebb, according to Freedman. This has resulted in cancellations from device makers for chips that go into Netbooks, Freedman said.

Netbooks have been popular because of their novel design--what is essentially a very small, very-low-cost (below $500) laptop, a category that hasn't existed to date. Ultra-small laptops (such as the MacBook Air and Toshiba Portege) have traditionally commanded a very stiff premium, typically going for more than $1,500.

Contrary to what Intel has been saying, Freedman wrote in the research note that the "initial generation Netbook solutions may not succeed in emerging/low income markets as users find feature and performance sacrifice in Netbooks (i.e. 5- to 8-inch screens) unacceptable for a networked family."

He added that Intel will also continue to be challenged by cannibalization of Netbooks: that is, Netbooks will take market share from traditional notebooks.

Down the road, Freedman writes, "we do not expect the PC and handset to converge into a single 'holy grail' device." PC and cell phone makers will continue to build devices that try to bridge the gap. Apple's iPhone is an example of a device at one end of the spectrum, while the 10-inch Asus Eee PC Netbook addresses the other end.

"We expect most users to continue to require two devices: one large form factor device and one small form factor device," he said in the note.

Correction, 10:46 a.m. PST: This story misstated the day the SIA made its announcement. It is Wednesday.

The Semiconductor Industry Association said Wednesday it is projecting the first decline in global chip sales since 2001.

SIA projects that 2009 sales will decline by 5.6 percent to $246.7 billion before resuming growth in 2010.

The forecast projects sales this year of $261.2 billion, a 2.2 percent increase from sales of $255.6 billion last year. But sales in the fourth quarter, historically a strong time period for the microelectronics industry, are expected to decline by 5.9 percent from the previous quarter, the SIA said.

The near-term prospects reflect comments from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC)--the largest contract chip manufacturer--at the end of last month and a fourth-quarter warning last week from Intel.

TSMC said that it expects to see a 20 percent drop in revenue in the fourth quarter as the "supply chain"--the myriad companies that order chips from TSMC--reduces "inventory very aggressively."

Intel said revenue will come in "significantly weaker" than expected across all its market segments.

"The current global economic turmoil is clearly having a significant impact on semiconductor sales," said SIA President George Scalise in a statement. "The fortunes of the semiconductor industry are increasingly tied to consumer spending on electronic products. Consumer purchases now drive well over half of worldwide semiconductor sales."

The SIA statement Wednesday cited a recent Deutsche Bank report that estimates personal computer unit sales will decline by 5 percent and cell phone unit sales will decline by 6.4 percent in 2009, with declining sales across all geographic regions. PCs and cell phones together account for approximately 60 percent of worldwide semiconductor consumption.

The semiconductor industry has enjoyed six years of uninterrupted growth since the dot-com collapse in 2001, according to the SIA. "There are few similarities between 2001 and the current conditions," said Scalise.

"The collapse of semiconductor sales in 2001 was driven primarily by the implosion of 'dot.com' industries which resulted in an enormous inventory overhang," he said. "Excess inventory is not an issue today, and the industry is well positioned to resume growth quickly once the current worldwide economic uncertainty subsides," Scalise said.

Sales will grow by 7.4 percent in 2010 to $264.9 billion and by 7.5 percent in 2011 to $284.7 billion, the SIA said.

A Dell slide shown Tuesday was a reminder that a future 80-core processor is still in sight.

Flash back two years to the Intel Developer Forum when CEO Paul Otellini pledged to deliver an 80-core processor in five years.

Otellini said at the time that the chips will be capable of exchanging data at a terabyte a second and that the company hopes to have these chips ready for commercial production within a five-year window.

Michael Dell referred to a slide showing an 80-core chip Tuesday at SC08, a conference in Austin, Texas, focused on high-performance computing.

The trend of packing more compute power into small supercomputing enclosures "is really driven by what's going on in microprocessors. The x86 revolution continues. You see more and more cores. Increased performance. But also without more power required," he said, speaking during the keynote.

Dell slide shown Tuesday at SC08

(Credit: Dell Computer)

In various venues, Intel has spelled out its intention to bring out many-core processors including its upcoming Larrabee graphics chip and future server processors that may reach 32 cores. Currently, Intel's Dunnington processor gets the prize (at Intel) for the most cores: six. Sun Microsystem's "Rock" processor will have 16 cores.