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Timna Canceled
New motherboards designed for a previously unseen Intel CPU were lurking in the shadows at the Computex 2000 tradeshow in Taipei, Taiwan. There, MSI showed off a mainboard with an unusual variant of the Socket 370 that is known as the Socket370S.
New motherboards designed for a previously unseen Intel CPU were lurking in the shadows at the Computex 2000 tradeshow in Taipei, Taiwan. There, MSI showed off a mainboard with an unusual variant of the Socket 370 that is known as the Socket370S. This processor socket, said the company, was designed for an upcoming integrated CPU Intel code-named "Timna." This new processor, said to be designed for the sub-$600 market, was originally expected to appear on the market by the second half of 2000; however, the release date of the Timna was subsequently pushed back, as the company was forced to rethink its original strategy to provide support only for expensive RAMBUS memory. A revised Timna design, with a revised MTH ("Memory Translation Hub") architecture providing DDR SDRAM support and clock speeds starting at 700 MHz, was then expected to be released early in 2001, with a portable version following on towards the middle of the year. The new processor, sources close to the company proclaimed, would integrate almost every feature of a PC into a single low-cost chip, a technology Intel called "Smart Integration."
Smart Integration, said Intel moves the memory controller and the graphics controller off of the motherboard and integrates them onto the CPU. This is not an ideal solution for high performance gaming enthusiasts, but it would have helped Intel compete effectively in the entry-level PC and portable computer market segments.
Alas, this plan, too, fell by the wayside. Intel, in the waning days of Sept. 2000, canceled the Timna chip. The decision to cancel the project apparently came after some of Intel's largest customers told the company they were no longer interested in the chip. Timna had already delayed several months due to Intel's decision to rework it so that it would not require costly Rambus memory. It was, in essence, already obsolete before its release.
Indeed, many long-time Intel watchers are disappointed at the company's engineering direction in recent quarters. An editorial published by The Register just before the cancellation announcement expressed an all-too-common sentiment -- that Timna was shaping up to be a "dead duck" processor, in the vein of the NatSemi "Geode" or Intel's own infamous no-show: the i752 graphics chip. Intel now says it will use the fabrication facilities originally slated for Timna production to manufacture low-cost Celeron chips instead.
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