Intel's Triton alters market

Electronic News, Nov 27, 1995 by Jim DeTar

Mountain View, Calif.--The extent to which Intel's introduction of the Triton chipset is altering the market became evident as a variety of chipset vendors, including Via Technologies, ACC Micro, and Acer Laboratories Inc. (ALi), scramble to roll out products designed to maintain and grow their market shares even as Intel pushes deeper into this area.

A striking demonstration of the powerful effect Intel's Triton chipset, introduced earlier this year (EN, Jan. 16), has on the semiconductor market came recently when NexGen rolled out a 120MHz version of its 5x86 processor line at Fall Comdex. The device is dubbed the Nx586-P120, with the "P120" nomenclature designating the chip's internal clock speed. Previously, NexGen had de-rated the clock speed about 7 percent, claiming its devices offered performance comparable to higher-speed Intel chips.

For example, NexGen's previous high-end chip was the P100, which was actually a 93MHz device that NexGen claimed performed as well as the Intel Pentium-100. From now on, NexGen said, it will match the speed of the Nx586 and its successors with the processor's name. The reason, according to sources close to NexGen, is that the Triton chipset significantly improved the performance of its Pentium chips and NexGen felt it would fall behind if it kept de-rating the numbers for its processors.

Dave Kulbarsh, NexGen's VP of marketing, confirmed that Samsung is doing a chipset for the NexGen line as well. "The deal is done. We have a major contract and Samsung is sampling to us. We will announce another one or two chipset agreements," in the near future, he added. When asked whether that indicated new agreements would be forthcoming by yearend, he replied that it is not likely--that the agreements will probably be announced early next year.

In a broad-ranging interview, Wei-Tau Chiang, president of ACC Microelectronics, headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., discussed the growing influence of Intel in areas such as chipsets and motherboards and what steps ACC Micro is taking to stay competitive.

Dr. Chiang, who at one time worked for Intel, asserted that "Triton cannot support the complete ISA." He added, "To support PCMCIA, you need ISA. That's why Intel is pushing the Cardbus standard."

ACC Micro will, however, follow others into the Intel-developed Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) arena shortly. "We will release a single-chip PCI," this coming week, he said, adding: "We have a number of design wins already."

ACC Micro's ACC2051 PCI single-chip offering for notebook applications will provide a 64-bit controller to support the Pentium, Cyrix' M1 and Advanced Micro Devices' K5 microprocessors. Company sources said that Texas Instruments will be among the companies adopting the controller for its notebook line.

Features of the ACC2051 will include level 2 write-back cache controller, DRAM controller, PCI interface, burst EDO support, power management control and ISA (industry standard architecture) interface.

In an attempt to cover all bases, ACC Micro will also shortly unveil a single-chip product for the recently-introduced AMD AM5X86--previously code-named X5, and for the Cyrix M1SC--both processors developed to fill a perceived gap between 486-level and Pentium-level performance.

ACC Micro's chip, to be called the ACC2048, will support notebook processors operating at speeds up to 100MHz with EDO DRAM as well as Fast Page mode DRAM and flash EPROM. It will come in a 208-pin PQFP package and feature level 1 write-back cache support, local bus IDE, level 2 cache controller, PCI bus support and power management.

Dr. Chiang also revealed that ACC Micro is currently completing the acquisition of a company that does PCMCIA I/O and plans to announce that shortly. Providing a product roadmap, he noted that the company also plans to introduce its first MPEG II product in late 2Q96 or early 3Q96.

The private company plans to do $50 million in revenues in the coming year and has been profitable on a quarterly basis for three years running. When asked whether ACC Micro plans to go public, Dr. Chiang replied: "Hopefully, soon." The company has growth plans that will require additional financing, a spokesman said.

ACC Micro is also looking at doing an equity investment in a foundry. Currently, it uses both Seiko Epson and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC). Dr. Chiang noted that the president of Seiko Epson, which has done similar deals with a number of companies in recent years, is on the board of ACC Micro. ACC Micro is not the only chipset vendor that has ambitions to compete toe-to-toe with Intel.

Chin Wu, president of ALi, commented on the major shift at Intel in recent years. "There is a big controversy," Dr. Wu said. "Triton is number one now, but in the past Intel provided chipsets only at the beginning of the life of a new CPU." Noting that Intel's previously-introduced Mercury and Neptune chipsets did not achieve significant market acceptance, he claimed that Intel's present strategy may also eventually falter.