Underlining the importance of Taiwanese computer industry players and component makers, Intel launched its 1.7 gigahertz Pentium 4 microprocessor at the Intel Developer Forum in Taipei yesterday.
The company also plans to release a 2.0GHz processor by the third quarter of this year, according to Louis Burns, vice president and general manager of the desktop platforms group at Intel Corp.
The new Pentium 4 chip and Intel's announcement of the 2.0GHz coming down the road cements the manufacturer's position as the company to beat for microprocessor speed.
Last year at around this time, Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD), Intel's only real competition in the market for high-speed microprocessors, beat Intel to the punch with both a 1.0GHz chip and a 1.2GHz chip. Since that time, AMD has managed to increase its processor's speeds to only 1.33GHz.
A number of industry analysts have pointed out, however, that speed is not necessarily the way to go in the market for personal computers right now. Most people use computers for word processing and basic Internet surfing, including e-mail and looking up information -- which does not require a 1.7GHz microprocessor. A 400 megahertz processor (1,000 megahertz=1.0 gigahertz), is suitable for such applications.
New uses for computers usually come out as chip speed rises, however, and Taiwan's Ulead Systems (
The company makes software for photography and video editing, and many believe video editing could offer the next new direction for software design. Ulead is already on version 5.0 of its software VideoStudio, which helps users edit home videos and amateur films.
"The most time consuming thing in video editing is rendering" such as adding transitions or correcting the light or darkness of a scene, said Dwight Jurling, director of international marketing at Ulead Systems. This is where a 1.7GHz chip would come in handy by speeding up the computing time during editing.
Jurling also said a 1.7GHz chip would accelerate recording time if a person wanted to download video onto a compact disc. Ulead Systems' VideoStudio software can format a video so that when it is recorded on a recordable CD, it retains the quality and functionality of a DVD movie. A slow microchip would require much more time to perform the task than a 1.7GHz processor.
In a sign people are starting to snap up the software this year, Ulead has already shipped over 20,000 retail boxed copies of VideoStudio to Softbank, Japan's largest software distributor. According to the firm, this number eclipses the total number of retail copies sent to Japan during all of 2000.
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