The Intel GIGA PC
  03/27/2001 9:23:04 PM MST Albuquerque, Nm
  By Dustin D. Brand; Owner AMO

It's coming, a true Giga PC from Intel...   ANAHEIM, CALIF. -- Pat Gelsinger, vice president and CTO of Intel, said Tuesday that innovations from Intel and Microsoft, combined with work by computer makers, will deliver what Gelsinger called the "Giga PC" by the end of the year.

  In his keynote address Tuesday at the WinHEC 2001 conference, Gelsinger said the arrival of innovations such as gigahertz-speed system buses, gigabit connectivity, gigabyte storage capacity, and faster Intel Pentium 4 processors will all happen before the end of the year.

  "The result of all [these innovations] will be what we think of as the Giga PC," Gelsinger said.

  WinHEC is Microsoft's annual developer's conference for computer makers.

  The Intel CTO also told the audience to expect a 1.7GHz version of the Pentium 4 chip "very shortly."

  According to Gelsinger, a Giga PC will likely run a version of the Windows XP operating system. Microsoft announced a Beta 2 version of the simplified OS here yesterday, promising full availability by the end of the year. XP is based on the Windows 2000 kernel, according to Microsoft.

  "Windows XP and the Pentium 4 processor will enable [the Giga PC]," said Gelsinger, who added that Intel and Microsoft are aligned to deliver the Giga PC before the holiday shopping season.

  What this means quite simply, is that not only the bus (the part of the PC that passes data to and from the CPU and Memory), but the CPU, and memory will all operate at or above the 1 GigaHertz barrier, and by this Holiday season these GIGA PC's will be shipping...

  On the IA-32 front, Gelsinger said an SDRAM (synchronous DRAM) version of the Pentium 4, code-named Brookdale, will arrive by the end of the year. IA-32 is Intel's name for the company's 32-bit PC CPU's.

  On the IA-64 front, Gelsinger said that Intel's McKinley chip is still set to go to market next year. McKinley, Intel's next-generation 64-bit processor for high-end database applications, will be followed by improved versions of itself, code-named Madison and Deerfield. No time line was given for Madison or Deerfield.

  Gelsinger also said 64-bit client computers running a 64-bit version of Whistler Server will hit the market in the second half of this year.

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