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Intel intros notebook chips
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July 30, 2001: 2:58 p.m. ET
New manufacturing process yields speedier, less power-hungry chips
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Intel Corp. rolled out a series of new chips Monday it says will enable manufacturers to produce mobile computers that offer higher performance yet are thinner, lighter and have longer battery life.
Intel (INTC: down $0.06 to $29.16, Research, Estimates) unveiled its Pentium III-M line of mobile microprocessors, which the company claims use 40 percent less power and outperform their predecessors by nearly 50 percent.
The new chips – expected to show up later this summer in notebook computers from Compaq (CPQ: up $0.18 to $14.46, Research, Estimates), Dell (DELL: up $0.12 to $27.58, Research, Estimates), Hewlett-Packard (HWP: down $0.33 to $24.03, Research, Estimates) and others – achieve their higher performance and lower power characteristics because of the more advanced manufacturing process Intel uses to make them, the company said.
The Pentium III-M chips, which are available at speeds ranging from 866 megahertz to 1.13 gigahertz, are Intel's first to be built using a 0.13-micron process technology, which refers to the size of the circuits that are printed on the silicon chips.
Using the 0.13-micron process, the chips contain circuitry that is about 1/1000th the width of a human hair.
Most microprocessors currently are built using a 0.18-micron process. By shrinking the size of the circuits, chipmakers are able to pack more processing power into a smaller package. They also are able to yield more chips per silicon wafer produced, reducing their overall manufacturing costs.
Intel is in the process of transitioning the production of its Pentium 4 desktop processors to.13 micron as well and expects to have some of that production shifted to the new technology by the end of the year.
The new Pentium III-M processors also have several architectural advancements including a larger memory cache – where it temporarily stores data it uses repeatedly, such as instructions from the operating system -- and a 133-MHz processor system bus.
They also use a technology Intel calls SpeedStep that enables the processors to operate at lower speeds when the computer is running on battery power and higher speeds when plugged in, thus reducing power drain.
Competition in the market for mobile computer processors has intensified in recent months as chipmakers, faced with a sharp slowdown in desktop PC sales, have stepped up their efforts in that market, where profit margins are higher.
Silicon Valley upstart Transmeta (TMTA: down $0.30 to $2.69, Research, Estimates) has stirred things up with its low-power Crusoe processors, which have been designed specifically for mobile computers where battery life is important.
Transmeta's processors, which were introduced a little over a year ago, achieve their low-power characteristics using a patented technology called "code morphing," which means they use software to translate the instructions typically handled directly by the transistors on other chips.
Last month, Transmeta introduced its newest Crusoe processors, which are built using a 0.13-micron process and operate at speeds up to 766 MHz. The company aims to release a 1GHz version during the first half of 2002.
In May, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD: up $0.58 to $18.26, Research, Estimates), whose Athlon and Duron processors have been giving Intel a run for its money in the desktop market, threw its hat into the mobile-computer ring as well, introducing its Athlon 4 mobile processor.
Those chips, which the company claims consumer 20 percent less power than previous Athlons, a technology AMD calls PowerNow! which, through a combination of chip-hardware and software, enables the processors to adjust the speed at which they operate based on the computing task at hand.
The Athlon 4 chips are available at clock speeds ranging from 850 MHz to 1 GHz. 
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