700MHZ PowerPC chips!!! ----------------------- Posted on Fidonet By Asha Develder(Team Amiga) Sent by Anon This makes for some interesting reading. It came in my PowerPC news letter a few weeks ago. A 700Mhz chip would cirtainly make for a nice Amiga Rendering station. Play a good game of Deluxe Galaga PPC too. :) EXPONENTIAL AIMS TO TAKE POWERPC LEAD WITH NEW SUPERFAST CHIPS (December 4th 1995) Exponential Technology (PowerPC News 35) claims to have a revolutionary BiCMOS design process that will enable it to build PowerPC chips far faster than anything that IBM or Motorola have in the pipeline. The San Jose, California-based company, backed to the tune of $14m by Apple Computer and a collection of venture capitalists and private individuals, has negotiated the right to build its own PowerPC chip and says that its first product will tape out early next year with volume production following in early '97. Exponential says its PowerPC processors will offer twice the performance of CMOS for the same die size - possibly better. The first processor will be a functional equivalent of the 604, and though the company is being careful not to quote clock speeds, 'twice the performance' would imply a 300MHz-400MHz part. One source outside the company was talking about 700MHz parts last month. The large majority of the chip's logic circuit will be built from bipolar circuitry, with CMOS used for the onboard cache. Despite early rumours, the company says that it is not involved in building Intel-emulation hardware into its PowerPC clones. Traditionally, Bipolar silicon technology (as opposed to CMOS), has been the province of mainframe manufacturers - it can switch faster than CMOS, with a consequent improvement in processor clock speeds. Unfortunately bipolar has the reputation of being power-hungry, expensive to manufacture and bulky - CMOS components can be packed more closely on the processor. Consequently, even mainframe manufacturers have switched to CMOS-based processors as these have become faster. BiCMOS, as used by Intel in its initial Pentium designs, aims to bring the best of both worlds by introducing relatively small amounts of bipolar logic into the speed-critical areas of a CMOS processor. . However, according to Exponential, this approach has its draw-backs. Exponential claims that this conventional bipolar-on- CMOS approach results in a "relatively weak form of bipolar logic suitable only for building small-to-medium size logic functions and driving long wires". An alternative approach - placing small amounts of CMOS onto a predominantly bipolar chip has languished, mainly because of the previously mentioned size and energy draw-backs. This is a shame since a fast bipolar chip with onboard CMOS cache and support circuitry could be a winner. Exponential claims to have cracked the problem by discovering a way to design bipolar circuitry roughly equivalent to CMOS in size and energy consumption; in particular, it contends, since CMOS elements tend to grow in size anyway as clock speeds increase. The company has applied for 18 patents covering bipolar design methodologies, tools and also chip packaging. So far eight have been granted. There is no reason why the process shouldn't be applied to build BiCMOS variants of any microprocessor and if the company manages to deliver on its promises its technology will be attractive to a number of chip makers. However, Exponential CEO, Rick Shriner (formerly VP of core technology at Apple) says that there are no plans to license the technology out, and anyway "we've still got to prove it". No, instead Exponential intends to sell its products on the merchant market, in competition with IBM and Motorola at the high end. The company does not have its own chip fabrication plant, and is unwilling to divulge who will be making them, other than to say that the fab will be off-shore and the company isn't a US one. The smart money has got to be on Hitachi, which already has some ill-defined deal to build PowerPC processors and has also been banging on about its innovative BiCMOS fabrication technology. (PowerPC News 29/1335). Exponential sales direction Ivonne Valdes, Vice President of Sales denies, however that the company is unduly tied to its nameless manufacturing partner - Motorola and IBM, among others have similar manufacturing capabilities already, she suggests. Exactly how IBM and Motorola will react to the competition will be interesting to watch; as we went to press they had no comment. Rick Shriner says that relations are very good, but acknowledges that if he had the time he could "talk all year" about the negotiations required to get the rights to build the PowerPC variant. Neither IBM nor Motorola are being forthcoming about their thoughts on Exponential. The third partner in the PowerPC triumvirate, Apple, is obviously delighted at the prospect of competition. It was an original investor in the firm when it was founded in the summer of 1994, and came back for second bite of the cherry in a subsequent funding round. "They were looking for someone to put a flag in the ground" in terms of PowerPC performance. Exponential's financial footing is nearly as hazy as its initial product plans. $14m has been raised in two rounds of funding - the first round saw Apple accompanied by venture capitalists, Venrock Associates and a group of undisclosed private investors. The second round saw the two companies joined by Itochu, Innotech, Nazem and Co and Woodside fund. One investor is Jean Louis Gassee, ex of Apple and now head of Be Inc. But whether Gassee is involved on Be's behalf, privately or through the Innotech venture company, was not clear as we went to press. To date Exponential says it has spent half of its funds and expects to start a second round of funding after tape-out of its first product next spring. So can they do it? Exponential themselves point out that the technology is untested, however the names behind it are impressive.The company was founded by George Taylor and Jim Blomgren. Taylor was formerly director of experimental architecture at Sun Microsystems Laboratories, Blomgren also worked at Sun Labs on ECL SPARC processor design and at Chips and Technology on 386/486 processors. Exponential's Chairman Gordon Campbell was also at Chips and Technology - as CEO. (c) PowerPC News - free by mailing add@power.globalnews.com Asha DeVelder....Internet: asha.develder@245.genesplicer.org .......................Charter Member: Team AMIGA........................ Interesting eh?, imagine that, 700mhz power that will kick ass! POWERAMIGA!!!!!!!! the Future! END ---