IDT ships Winchip 2

Chipmaker IDT of Santa Clara, California made its bid last week to become a major contender in the x86-compatible marketplace when it announced it is shipping samples of its Winchip 2 and outlined its product roadmap.

IDT's first chip, the Winchip C6, was announced in May 1997, but only small volumes of the processor have shipped. IDT shipped 20,000 processors in the last quarter of 1997, though it ramped up to more than 100,000 in the first quarter this year.

The Winchip family was designed by IDT subsidiary Centaur Technology.

At the PC Tech Forum - an industry event in San Jose, California - Centaur Technology founder and president Glenn Henry outlined the company's roadmap for 1998 and 1999.

The Winchip 2 moves IDT beyond the low-end of the x86 market, where it had been stuck with its current chip. It doubles the MMX and floating point performance of its predecessor, the Winchip C6. According to IDT, this brings the chip up to par with the Pentium MMX or even Pentium II at equal clock speed.

IDT will sell two versions of the chip - the Winchip 2 and the Winchip 2 3D. The latter includes the 3DNow technology, licensed from AMD. 3DNow is a set of 21 instructions to speed up 3D graphics performance.

The processor will have clock speeds of 225, 240 and 266MHz, with a 300MHz version planned for the end of the year. It will support bus speeds up to 100MHz.

The Winchip 2 is based on the Socket 7 interface, which Intel has abandoned in favour of Slot 1. The processor will be manufactured in IDT's own plants, initially in .35 micron and later also in .25 micron technology.

IBM Microelectronics is also set to manufacture the chip, beginning in the fourth quarter.