SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Intel has completed a major milestone on the long road to its 64-bit Merced microprocessor. The chip has taped out, Paul Otellini, executive vice president and general manager of the Intel's business architecture group, said yesterday in a conference call to discuss the company's latest earnings report.
"This means the processor design is complete," an Intel spokeswoman said.
However, Merced still has a long road to hoe before it's in designer's hands. Now that it has taped out, the spokeswoman said, "We're moving forward to making samples." That silicon is expected sometime during the third quarter of this year.
Intel said it remains on schedule to begin full-scale production of Merced in mid-2000.
Merced is the first implementation of the new IA-64 architecture, which was jointly developed by Intel and Hewlett-Packard. Although industry pundits have anxiously awaited Merced, some engineers now appear more interested in its near-term successor, which is code-named McKinley. That processor is intended to deliver faster performance.
As for company's financial picture, which was the main purpose of yesterday's call, Intel said it took in $6.7 billion in revenues in its second quarter and had a net income of $1.7 billion.
