The Microprocessor Report has now added its voice to those who doubt the wisdom of Intel Corp’s plans to integrate its i740 graphics chip into mainstream processors. Intel’s Whitney chipset, a future add-on for the low-end Celeron chip range, is to combine the i740 with a 440LX chipset aimed at sub $1,000 PCs (CI No 3,456). Tighter integration is set to follow. But the report believes the move could be a serious tactical blunder on Intel’s part. Talk has been that the strategy aims to take away business from the graphics chip vendors. But, as the report points out, even if Intel took the entire market, it would still amount only to small change for the $25bn company. What is more likely to be behind Intel’s strategy is its need to rekindle demand for high-end processors while keeping hold of the architectural control on the market which it currently enjoys. One way of doing this is to get its 3D hardware distributed widely enough so that the entire software industry starts incorporating 3D graphics into products, taking demand beyond the games and workstation applications that use 3D today. That’s unlikely to happen in today’s fragmented graphics market. But the report estimates that Whitney won’t be widely deployed in Celeron systems until 2000, in which case the i740’s not-too-impressive 1998 performance will be used in PCs coming onto the market in 2001. Whitney will simply be too weak to support such a strategy, says the report, which predicts a backlash that will give competitors an opening and force Intel to back away from its integrated graphics plan. Intel does have follow-on products to the i740 in the works (CI No 3,467) but Whitney is expected to be the first integrated part.
