In April Intel finally released their dual channel DDR chipset, the Intel 875P, Canterwood, and thus the Pentium 4 is no longer restricted to Rambus memory for the best possible performance. Chipset manufacturer SiS negotiates a bus license with Intel and will, unlike Via, now be legally able to design and manufacture chipsets for Intel’s Pentium 4. Soon after this announcement rumors circle the web about a possible Pentium 4 chipset from SiS using Rambus memory, it isn’t until later this year that these claims are indeed substantiated.

The SARS epidemic starts affecting the Taiwanese manufacturers as shipments from Taiwan are often quarantined overseas to ensure there’s not health risk. Later on many manufacturers will use the SARS epidemic as an excuse for a decline in their quarterly revenues. Nevertheless due to the launch of the Canterwood and Springdale chipsets the Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers start shipping motherboards based on these chipsets in high volumes. Although the SARS epidemic was feared the world over, less people have fortunately died from the deadly lung infection than was initially estimated.



Fig 7. AMD Opteron processors, AMD’s first step into 64-bit computing in a corporate environment.
April also marks the first shipments of AMD’s Opteron processor which was announced just a month ago. Unfortunately the Athlon 64, the desktop version, is postponed until September of 2003. The Opteron shows it is able to keep pace with Intel’s 3.0 and 3.06GHz Xeons in dual processor server configurations and it looks like AMD finally has a processor that’s able to compete with Intel in the corporate environment. Unfortunately the Athlon XP is losing ground to Intel in comparison to the new 800MHz FSB Pentium 4 processors, suddenly the Athlon XP’ 3000+ rating doesn’t look as appealing anymore.