Intel having more problems.

[The Grunt]

SOURCE: Reuters

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Intel Corp. (INTC.O: Quote, Profile, Research) on Thursday said it is informing customers that it will miss its year-end target for delivering a high-speed chip for desktop computers, another in a string of delays reported by the world's largest chip maker.

The Santa Clara, California-based company now expects to ship a Pentium 4 chip running at four gigahertz, or four billion cycles per second, in the first quarter, spokeswoman Laura Anderson said.

"We're committed to putting our execution back on track in a way that makes the company even stronger," Anderson said. She declined to give a reason for the delay, other than to say that Intel wanted to be able to provide adequate volumes of the product to customers.

Last week, Intel's chief executive officer sent a blunt message to employees to focus on "actions and attitudes" to halt a string of product delays and manufacturing problems.

Intel has faced a bumpy year, delaying the roll-out of a new line of notebook computer chips in January, recalling a supporting chip for desktop computers in June, and delaying another notebook computer chip earlier in July. Those problems stemmed from various manufacturing and chip design issues.

The delays have prompted grumbling by personal computer makers, which base marketing and product development plans on Intel's "roadmap" for new products. Intel is by far the largest supplier of computer chips, dwarfing rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD.N: Quote, Profile, Research)

The latest delay with Pentium 4 came as part of a broader update on the company's product plans sent this week to customers, Anderson said.

Intel's been having a tough year. This certainly can't help. First they had the laptop chips delays back in Q1, pushed back from januarary to feb. Then they had the nocona/PCIx problems (LINK). They are just having a crappy year I suppose. AMD seems to be doing fine though, which makes me happy

[whizkid2300]

This is funny, I personally don't even want the 4ghz chip, from the reviews that I have read about it, the chip leaks like hell. I mean about twice -4 times as bad as there regular chips.

It's kind of sad, that a company so big, and so powerful, is just trying to keep up with Moore's Law. That is all they are trying to do.

(For those of you wondering, what the hell I am talking about when I say Moore's law, Moore's law is a theory that says, Computer processing can be doubled every 9-18 months.)

That is the bootleg version of what it is.

[QOUTE]
The observation made in 1965 by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every year since the integrated circuit was invented. Moore predicted that this trend would continue for the foreseeable future. In subsequent years, the pace slowed down a bit, but data density has doubled approximately every 18 months, and this is the current definition of Moore's Law, which Moore himself has blessed. Most experts, including Moore himself, expect Moore's Law to hold for at least another two decades.
[/QOUTE]
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/M/Moores_Law.html

[djscribble]

rather than focus so much on attaining moore's law's prediction, they should be working harder on their next-gen 64 bit or even beyond-silicon chips...

kinda sad that they had all these problems this year tho. ...

[Tim_axe]

Acturally, Intel might try to keep on track with Moore's Law and "increased performance" marketing by trying dual core with their 90nm (prescott) process. In a way, this is going "beyond silicon" and into "making glass rectangles".

Infact, after seeing their 3.2GHz Prescott, it was evident they weren't going to be going higher any time soon. With its 103watt "average" heat dissapation, it is hell on transistors. Because as the transistors get hotter, they tend to leak more, which makes them hotter...repeat...until you get little glass squares that cost a lot of money and have now depreciated in value several hundred/thousand fold.

BTW, I'll point out that if going from 1GHz to 1.13GHz (Pentium 3 era) produced 44% more leakage current...shudder...

And it does suck how they had northbridge problems earlier. The year is not going well for Intel...

http://arstechnica.com/cpu/index.html <- Awesome resource

[Nokia]

It sounds like Intel are trying to produce too much too quick!

[The Grunt]

http://arstechnica.com/cpu/index.html <- Awesome resource

As is http://hardocp.com They link to each other quite often. Both of the admins get articles in CPU magazine as well.

A little off topic but if you want a really good magazine you should subscribe to CPU. It has some really good articles in it usually.

[whizkid2300]

TheGrunt yeah your right. Did you see that XLS? That bitch was bad.

2 processors, 2 vid cards, 2 harddrives. I swear I wanted to cry when I saw that damn thing. It is sad that you can't just buy the board though. It would be kind of cool to have that board and mess with it.

The really shitty thing is that box goes for 5k. Damn!!!

[The Grunt]

Yea That looked awesome. I want one. I want one of those new alienwares so bad. Too bad they cost so damn much. With EVERYTHING (monitor, speakers, etc) the total price is like 6900. I was like :| I'll own one of those 10 years down the road when they are in a garage sale.

[Tim_axe]

Yeah, I visit [H]OCP/[H]Forum regularly. Along with NewEgg.com. I also hit up 2CPU every once in a while.


And why does AlienWare get to pimp cool tech before we even get to custom build with it? At least I have a respectable 2.4GHz Dual Athlon system that only cost $650 to build. It won't depreciate enough for me to cry over 10 years from now, so I'm happy.

[dbernie41]

Northwoods better at 2.8 ghz or lower and at 3.0 Northwoods and Prescotts perform about the same but after that Prescott becomes the better processor.