Intel Takes Aim At Transmeta, Again

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January 30, 2001 (6:21 AM EST)

By Mark Hachman,

In introducing a new low-voltage Pentium III, Intel Corp. is trying to do a lot with a little -- quite a little, if you ask one of its chief competitors.

Tuesday morning, Intel (stock: INTC) announced a 500-MHz Pentium III with SpeedStep technology -- its first product to lower the operating voltage below one volt. Intel also announced a similar 500-MHz mobile Celeron, without the SpeedStep technology.

The first PC OEM to adopt the new chip will be IBM, which also evaluated -- and later declined -- Transmeta's Crusoe chip last year in a laptop designed for Asia's market.

The announcement again takes aim at Transmeta Corp. (stock: TMTA), the rival startup founded upon the premise that today's OEMs are interested more in the power a processor consumes, rather than in its performance. On average, the new Pentium III consumes less than half a watt, according to Frank Spindler, vice-president and general manager of the Mobile Platform Group at Intel, Santa Clara, Calif.

A year ago, Intel executives emphasized the performance of their mobile processors, and urged notebook makers to craft "desktop-replacement" notebooks. In this category, Spindler said Intel will break the 1-GHz barrier with the mobile Pentium III by the first half of this year.

Now, in addressing this new segment of the mobile market, Intel is betting that more and more end users will begin buying "thin-and-light" and so-called "mini-notebooks," which are distinguished by their smaller screens and lighter weight.

"Let there be no doubt: We absolutely will provide performance leadership and power leadership in each of these product segments, be it yesterday, today, or tomorrow," Spindler said.

Intel will advance the clock speeds of the low-voltage Pentium III from its current rate of 500 MHz to 600 MHz, and then to 700 MHz and beyond by the second half of the year, aided by a transition to 0.13-micron technologies.

A new architecture to further reduce power will be introduced in "2002 plus," Spindler said, although a spokeswoman previously hinted the chip would roll out possibly even in 2003. Both the mobile Pentium III and the forthcoming architecture were hinted at during an October's Microprocessor Forum in San Jose.

Intel is still betting that 30 percent of its chips will go into the full-size desktop replacement notebooks. But the majority, or 60 percent, will likely ship inside thin-and-lights, which feature a smaller 13-inch screen and are between 1 and 1.4 inches high.

Mini-notebooks, which should command about 9 percent of the market, Intel estimates, are even smaller, and often sacrifice optical storage to bring the weight below four pounds.

"We think this is positive for the mobile business," Spindler said. "It provides people with a range of options ... and they can select what suits their needs best."

Connected to a docking station, the 500-MHz Pentium III runs at 1.1 volts and consumes less than 1 watt, Intel estimates. In a battery-optimized mode, the Pentium III slows down to 300 MHz, drawing less than 0.5W on 0.975 volts. Together, the Pentium III and the 440MX chipset consume about 0.8W, Spindler said.

And that's the chip's weak point, according to Dave Ditzel, chief executive of Transmeta, Santa Clara, Calif. "It's kind of surprising that this is big news," he said. "When running on batteries, it's a 300-MHz CPU ... If Intel's just offering a 300-MHz part, why are we getting excited about this?"

According to Spindler, the IBM iSeries 1124 ThinkPad notebook has a battery life of about 5 hours. While the battery life of a notebook is also heavily dependent upon the display, hard drive, graphics chip, and chipset, Ditzel said most notebooks using the Crusoe chip, which runs up to 700 MHz at under a watt, have at least twice the battery life of the IBM notebook.

An IBM spokesman in Armonk, N.Y. declined to comment on his company's decision to use the Pentium III.

Reduced power consumption is a feature of Intel's SpeedStep technology, which allows the processor enough power to complete compute-intensive tasks, then quickly throttles it down to conserve power.

Transmeta's LongRun technology is similar. Transmeta also claims its code-morphing technology improves performance over time, something which today's run-once benchmarks don't account for.

Theoretically, a legal battle could be in the offing. Spindler noted that Intel applied for a patent in 1994, covering the dynamic voltage adjustment inside a microprocessor used in the SpeedStep technology. When asked if Intel would enforce the patent, Spindler replied that Intel would "evaluate that as the case arises."

When asked if any company currently violated that patent, Spindler replied that there was "nothing we could comment on right now." Ditzel also said there were no legal issues between Transmeta and Intel that he was aware of.

At the press conference, Intel officials said prototype notebooks from Acer, Compaq, Dell, Gateway, IBM, and Toshiba all use the forthcoming 1-GHz Pentium III chip.

The mobile 500-MHz mobile Pentium III costs $208 in 1,000-unit lots. The 500-MHz mobile Celeron, which lacks the SpeedStep technology, costs $118.