Intel Unveils Chip For Low-Price Pcs

Intel Corp. chairman Andrew Grove on Tuesday gave the first public demonstration of a new processor, code-named Covington, it is developing for the booming market for PCs costing less than $1,000.

Grove said Intel will shortly launch a new brand name for this product line, to distinguish it from its higher-end product family, aimed at different market segments.

In a speech in San Jose, Calif., Grove also described how Intel plans to target products for all segments of the computer industry, ranging from the low-cost, under-$1,000 market to mainframe-class computer servers that run giant corporations.

The Intel architecture is extending into more segments of computing, Grove said.

 

The first model of the new Covington processor aimed at what Intel calls the basic computing segment will use the same P6 architecture in Intels Pentium II line, with less costly packaging. Grove reiterated Intels previous statements that the Covington chip will be shipped in mid-1998.

Grove demonstrated Covington at a forum of about 1,000 hardware developers, designers and engineers of Intel-based products, running education software called Body Works.

This is clearly an interesting way to bring the Pentium II technology down to a lower price point. They are not sacrificing much, said Nathan Brookwood, a Dataquest Inc. analyst.

They have taken the ancillary costs out of the chip (with the lower-cost packaging).

The first version of Covington will also not include level two (L2) cache, which stores the information and the order in which the processor performs its executions, but later versions will. Brookwood said any performance differences in the first Covington because of the lack of L2 cache would be very subtle and not noticeable by most mainstream computer users.

While Grove did not disclose Intels expected pricing for the new chip, Brookwood said Intel has to price Covington in the range of $100 to $150 to be used in sub-$1,000 PCs.

Brookwood also estimated Intel will launch the first Covington chip at speeds of about 266 megahertz.

The sub-$1,000 PC market is a booming sector of the PC industry, and the average price of PCs continues to fall.

According to data released on Tuesday by Computer Intelligence of La Jolla, Calif, the total market share of sub-$1,000 PCs slipped slightly in December to about 30 percent of the retail market, as the average purchase price for desktop PCs dropped to below $1,300 for the first time.

Grove also discussed Intels plans for higher-end products, and new packaging for the workstation and high-performance computing segments, called Slot 2. Currently, Intels Pentium II line has a packaging cartridge that holds the processor in the computer, called Slot I, a more costly packaging than the older PC packaging called Socket 7.

The new Slot 2 design will allow for even higher frequency, or speedier, processors to be used in multiprocessing systems and high-performance workstations, systems and servers.

Grove also said Intel plans to launch a brand extension of the Pentium II processor family brand name, to be associated with high-performance computing.