FRAMINGHAM (02/21/2000) - My friends, there's trouble in Silicon City, and that trouble is spelled C-H-I-P-S. For the past five years, corporate technology purchases have been based on three simple assumptions - computer capabilities will increase according to Moore's Law (power doubles every 24 months), prices will remain stable or fall slightly, and there will always be enough computers when we want them.
Moore's Law still holds sway; gigahertz processors are just around the corner.
However, our price assumption has been knocked right into a cocked hat, and we're experiencing the first availability crunch in this industry in at least 10 years.
These problems aren't the fault of computer manufacturers. They are all suffering the slings and arrows of Intel Corp.'s outrageous fortunes.
Last year, Intel acknowledged that the Slot 1 packaging for processors - those big black cartridges - wasn't the best way to go. The cartridges are expensive to produce and put the chip far away from the rest of the board, electrically speaking. So Intel decided to return to chip-on-board technology.
The new Pentium III chips are built a little differently than other chips. In most processors, the chip is face down in the package and completely contained.
Pentium III chips have the chip portion facing up and almost completely exposed on top. When you attach a heat sink, it actually touches the chip "core" directly, dissipating heat more efficiently. This packaging is called a Flip Chip. All the newest (and fastest) Pentium IIIs are shipped primarily as Flip Chips, but Intel is having trouble getting enough of the packages from its supplier. The end result is that Pentium IIIs aren't shipping anywhere near as quickly as they should be.
Second problem: Intel provides not only the processors for these top-end computers, but also the support circuitry. The most popular support chipset for these computers is the 820 chipset. The problem is that the 820 set is designed to use a new style of RAM called Rambus dynamic RAM (RDRAM), which runs between twice and four times as fast as synchronous dynamic RAM (SDRAM), but is as scarce as hen's teeth. This has slowed the shipment of top-end computers.
The hero in this case is Micron Technologies. Rather than stay with the Intel support chipset, Micron went looking for a better alternative and found it in VIA Technologies' Apollo Pro 133A chipset. VIA's chipset has the same capabilities as the Intel 820, but supports only SDRAM - and at the same speed as the rest of the bus, 133 MHz. Micron is shipping as many computers as it can get Intel processors for.
Eventually we'll see plenty of Intel processors and RDRAM in the market. But for now, prepare for limited availability and higher prices - when you can find stock. And it's going to get worse before it gets any better. Our school district will be making our annual computer purchase this month, rather than at the end of the fiscal year in June. We're afraid that when we go to the cupboard, it'll be bare.
Shapiro is district technology coordinator for Kingsport City Schools in Tennessee. He can be reached at jshapiro@kpt.k12.tn.us.