A selection of reports on IT issues relevant to managing or enhancing a small business.

Contents

• Low cost, removable media

• Pentium Processor Briefing

At last, low cost, high capacity, removable media is here in the form of Iomega's Zip drive and the SyQuest EZ135 drive. Relatively fast, compared to current CD-ROM drives, these 3.5 inch drives enable you to carry 100Mb and 135Mb, respectively, of readable-writable data in your pocket - perfect for storing large graphics files, files related to one project or backing up your system.

And the price to pay? The Zip drive costs £140 and its media costs £13 per 100Mb disk, whilst the EZ135 costs £130, and disks for this are priced at £13 per 135Mb. Breaking this down, the Zip costs 13p per Mb and the EZ135 is 9p per Mb - not bad compared to the traditional high density floppy disk.

In terms of performance, although not as fast as a fixed hard disk, as mentioned earlier, both drives perform better than today's CD-ROM drives, and much better than the standard floppy disk. Comparing the drives to each other, we find that the EZ135, although a slightly more bulkier unit to carry around, seems to allow a slightly faster access and data transfer.

Hence, both the Zip drive and EZ135 drive point the way forward in low cost, high capacity removable media. And for the greedy, Iomega has produced the Jaz drive - 1Gb disks at £90 per disk, while SyQuest has just released the SyJet, a Jaz rival also with 1Gb storage.

NB All prices quoted are in Pounds Stirling and are approximations before VAT. Also, the prices are street prices, not RRP.

This briefing will describe processors planned to be launched by Intel and its rivals during the next 5 years, and what it is expected that the processors will offer. (Note: "MMX" refers to the Intel Pentium class processor that has 57 new instructions for multimedia processing and a Level 1 cache of 32Kb.)

1. Klamath/Pentium II
   Expected: mid-1997
   This processor will basically be the Pentium Pro with multimedia extensions (MMX). It will be available on an encased card called a Single Edge Capsule (SEC) which will attach to the motherboard via a bus called a Slot 1. The Pentium II will be launched with clock speeds of 233MHz and 266MHz, and will have a 0.35micron construction and a 32Kb Level 1 cache.

   AMD K6

   Expected: April 1997

   A rival to the Pentium II, the K6 will be pin-compatible with the Pentium. It will include the MMX extensions, will be optimised for 32-bit code, and will have 64Kb Level 1 cache. It will be launched with clock speeds of 180MHz, 200MHz and 233MHz, followed by 300MHz, and will be manufactured on a 0.35micron process size, but is is planned to be manufactured as 0.25microns for later versions.

   Cyrix M2

   This will also rival the Pentium II, with MMX extensions, 32-bit code optimisation and 64Kb Level 1 cache. Similarly it will also be pin-compatible with the Pentium and will be manufactured on a 0.35micron process. The difference will be in the split core design: the M2's core will run at 2.8V, while the external section will run at 3.3V. Further core voltage reductions to 2.5V will mean that the M2 could become the first Pentium Pro class notebook processor. The M2 will be the only processor to run on a 75MHz external bus, and will have a clock speed of 225MHz, while other versions based on slower bus speeds will run at 180MHz and 200MHz.

   Deschutes

   Expected: early 1998

   Intel's next processor after the Pentium II will use a 0.25micron process, and will be available for notebooks, as well as desktops. It is expected that the Deschutes will have clock speeds of 300MHz or 333MHz.

   Katmai

   Expected: mid-1998

   Following Deschutes, the Katmai will have new MMX extensions, to be known as MMX2. MMX2 will include more 32-bit instructions (the current MMX instructions mainly being 16-bit), a 100MHz external bus and an enlarged Level 1 cache.

   Willamette

   Expected: late 1998

   This will contain an advanced Pentium Pro core and a 100MHz external bus, doubling the performance of the Pentium II and Deschutes. It is also possible that is will have better floating point performance and more support for 3D geometry.

   Merced

   Expected: 2000

   This will use the 64-bit IA-64 instruction set, marking the end of the x86 architecture. It should produce noticeable gains in performance over older RISC and CISC processors, but will still be able to run x86 code.