"The AMD Athlon^tm processors not only delivery the reliability and stability of the our demands, but the added power and performance enable our network to run significantly faster." said Mike Lawson, president, ArtistPro.

AMD announced the new AMD Athlon? XP processor, the world's highest-performance processor for desktop PCs on Oct 9, 2001. AMD also announced plans to drive an initiative to develop a reliable processor performance metric that PC users can trust. The True Performance Initiative reflects AMD's continued commitment to business and home PC users.

Through the True Performance Initiative, or TPI, AMD is setting out to assist customers in understanding the benefits of PC performance. TPI also will help define a new, more accurate measure of processor performance for standard applications. The initiative will be chaired by Patrick Moorhead, who has been appointed as AMD's Vice President of Customer Advocacy, reporting to the Office of the CEO.

Historically, x86 microprocessors have improved both instructions (work) per clock and frequency compared to older generations. However, this is not true with some processors today. Therefore, megahertz cannot be solely relied upon as a measure of system performance.

"Consumers are beginning to understand that the true indicator of performance is how fast their applications run, not the megahertz of their processor. Megahertz measures only how many cycles per second the engine spins, not how much torque it delivers," said Roger Kay, director of client computing at IDC.

About the technology of Transmeta, Crusoe processor, it is a revolutionary x86-compatible family of solutions specially designed for the handheld and lightweight mobile computing market. The high-performance Crusoe processor consumes 60 to 70 percent less power and runs much cooler than competing chips, by transferring the most complex part of a processor?s job ? determining what instructions to execute and when ? to software in a process called Code Morphing. Because it enables a battery charge to last twice as long, this technology allows all-day computing.

I am wondering why Transmeta will have the second highest voting from our clients. Hence, what makes the Crusoe processor ideal for Internet devices and the ultra-light mobile PC category?

Remarkably low power consumption, allowing the processor to run cooler than conventional chips. Battery life is extended up to a whole?day.

High performance, optimized for real-life usage patterns. Crusoe delivers, whether you?re browsing the web, watching a DVD, or recalculating your spreadsheet.

x86 compatibility, so you are free to run the applications and Internet plug-ins of your choice.

The Crusoe smart processor is a flexible and efficient hardware-software hybrid that replaces millions of power-hungry transistors with software. Ultra-light mobile PCs and Internet devices made with Crusoe processors will be among the lightest, fastest, and coolest on the market.

Intel belives in innovation. They're driven by it and they believe by it. And it's this principle that led them to create the world's first microprocessor back in 1971.

For more than three decades, Intel Corporation has developed technology enabling the computer and Internet revolution that has changed the world. Founded in 1968 to build semiconductor memory products, Intel introduced the world's first microprocessor in 1971. Today, Intel supplies chips, boards, systems, software, networking and communications equipment, and services that comprise the "ingredients" of computer architecture and the Internet. Intel's mission is to be the preeminent building block supplier to the worldwide Internet economy.

So far, Intel offers microprocessors optimized for each segment of the computing market:

• The Intel? Pentium? 4 processor, Intel's highest performance desktop processor
• The Intel? Pentium? III processor for entry-level servers and workstations and performance desktop PCs
• The Intel? Itanium? processor for high-end servers and workstations
• The Intel? Pentium? III Xeon? processor for mid- to high-end servers and workstations
• The Intel? Celeron? processor for value PC desktop and mobile systems
• Mobile Intel? Pentium? III processors and mobile Celeron? processors
• Intel? StrongARM* microprocessors for portable, handheld and applied computing applications

Intel is known as?the world's largest chip maker, is also a leading manufacturer of computer, networking and communications products. but why didn't they come at the top of the list. From our survey, they're only stading 14.33% of the total of 349 votes.

Cyrix is a US cooperation founded in 1988 that manufactures Intel-compatible microproseccors.?Its 6x86 line of processors is comparable to Intel's line of Pentium chips. Cyrix was acquired by National Semiconductor in 1997 and then by VIA in 1999. Since Cyrix was acquired by VIA (who later also acquired Centaur's WinChip processors) people have been wondering about the future of those processor families... after all; VIA had until this time been a chipset manufacturer.

VIA is a "fab-less" processor manufacturer, and uses the manufacturing capabilities of National Semiconductor, TSMC, UMC and who knows? possibly even IBM or Motorola at a later date...

RAMBUS would not be adopted as quickly as Intel hoped seems to have borne fruit; major vendors have to use VIA's PC133 chipsets at this time if they want to take advantage of PC133 memory.

Actually RAMBUS may be an interesting alternative once chipset manufacturers begin to use two or better yet, four channels of RAMBUS; then we would see a definite bandwidth improvement; one that would swamp the latency penalty currently imposed by RAMBUS.