INTEL calls it 鈥渞elentlessly improving technology鈥�, but for Christmas
shoppers it means that a PC bought now will be out of date by January. Anyone
who waits until the new year will be able to buy a PC with an upgraded Pentium
microprocessor that runs multimedia programs up to 50 per cent faster.
The American chip manufacturer makes the microprocessors that power
three-quarters of all PCs now sold. Its marketing department will say only that
the 鈥淧entium with MMX technology鈥� will be available in the first quarter of
1997. The company鈥檚 engineers are less coy and said, at a seminar in London
recently, that it would be here by January.
PCs with an MMX Pentium will play video CDs without the extra hardware needed
at the moment, and will also be able to send videoconference pictures down
ordinary phone lines. The Californian company PCtel will show the first
multimedia modems for an MMX PC at the Comdex computer show in Las Vegas this
month. Microsoft is already providing the software needed to exploit MMX with
the latest versions of the Windows 95 operating system and the Internet Explorer
Web browser.
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The MMX chip uses a parallel-processing technique called Single
Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) to carry out repetitive tasks, such as encoding
or decoding pictures. The chip divides incoming data into several streams and
applies the same instruction to each one simultaneously. The MMX Pentium has its
own 32 kilobytes of cache memory, twice the amount on existing Pentiums. So it
also wastes less time sending data to and from the PC鈥檚 main memory.
To perform its new tricks, MMX needs software that exploits SIMD. Microsoft鈥檚
ActiveMovie can use SIMD to decode video which has been compressed to the MPEG-1
standard used for video CDs. Microsoft is now including it in the versions of
Windows 95 which it supplies to PC manufacturers to install in their machines.
Raza Zaidi, an engineer with Intel鈥檚 multimedia group, says that the combination
of MMX and ActiveMovie means 鈥渧ideo decoding free with PCs from January
1997鈥�.
Intel says there will be an 鈥渙verdrive鈥� chip available after Christmas, which
people with earlier PC models can buy to make them work like an MMX. But Intel
has not yet said which Pentiums can be upgraded, how much the overdrive chip
will cost or whether owners will be able to fit them without expert help.
Frank McCabe, vice-president in charge of Intel鈥檚 chip factory in Ireland,
claims that the new chips will not cause a problem in the run-up to Christmas.
鈥淧eople buy cars even though they know there will be a new model next year,鈥� he
says.
