After years of claiming it couldn’t be done, Intel Corp is now said to be hard at work developing its own PC-on-a-chip rival to National Semiconductor Inc’s recently announced Geode chip. However, some in industry question whether others will beat Intel to the punch, or if Intel is really interested in the sector at all.
The Intel chip, code-named Timna (CI No 3,705) is expected to be launched in the second half of 2000 or early in 2001. The design, likely to be x86-based, would need to include graphics, video encoder and audio functions and come in at under $100 to compete with the NatSemi chip. No one at Intel was available to comment on the design.
However, Tom Halfhill, embedded analyst at the Microprocessor Report, wonders if Intel is really committed to developing complete multimedia systems on a chip. I still haven’t heard anything to convince me that Intel will actually introduce a product like Timna, he comments, I heard one rumor that the project was canceled long ago. Halfhill points to VIA Technologies Inc as a possible rival to NatSemi in the information appliance sector – the company has already said that it is looking at integrating as many chipset functions on one piece of silicon as possible and claims – with the acquisition of Cyrix and Centaur – to have the clout to produce extremely cost- effective low-end chips. รก
