Rise Technology Inc has said that it is giving up the unequal struggle of competing with Intel Corp and others in the desktop processor market and will instead focus on producing x86 microprocessors for low-cost ‘internet appliances’ – handhelds, set-top boxes and smartphones. Talking to the Wall Street Journal, Rise CEO, David Lin, admitted that the Santa Clara, California-based company was unable to compete with Intel’s continual hiking of processor clockspeeds. Intel’s fastest Pentium III currently clocks at 733MHz; Rise’s chips run at 250MHz.
The move is not entirely unexpected. Taiwanese chipset vendor Silicon Integrated Systems Corp signed a deal with Rise last month (CI No 3,767) to use its chips in integrated chipset designs. We suggested then that the firm might be planning to move into the set-top market, using its mP6 II chip – renowned for its low power consumption – as the basis of an inexpensive board with integrated graphics and audio functions.
Given Lin’s comments about clockspeed, it seems likely that the company will drop its Celeron rival, code-named tiger, which needs some serious R&D work to compete on the desktop.
