The 2001 VHJ Awards
By Van Smith
Date: January 3, 2002
As we welcome the
new year along with the hopes it brings for better times, VHJ
looks back on 2001 to acknowledge those products and technologies that stood out
for their excellence, and recognize achievements with outstanding positive contributions to the computer industry.
While last year was difficult for us all, the high tech industry has been sagging in one of the worst slumps of its history. Despite adverse conditions, lost jobs, dying businesses, evaporating revenue, shrinking markets, complete retreat of venture capital and a future clouded with uncertainty after the September 11th attacks, the industry continues its inexorable momentum forwards towards faster chips and lower costs.
And like the computer industry, we all have to continue to move ahead. Good times will follow bad, they always do.
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High-End Processor of the
Year: Tie – The IBM Power4 and the AMD Athlon MP
The IBM Power4 is easily the fastest microprocessor on earth. This 170-million
transistor monster features two CPU cores and three cache levels including a
1.5MB shared L2 cache and a 32MB off-chip L3. IBM deserves accolades for its
forward-looking multi-core design, some aspects of which will be seen in
upcoming designs from AMD.
The Athlon MP brings a new level of high-powered multiprocessing to economical,
but brawny servers and workstations. Boasting performance levels that soundly
beat comparable Intel offerings, the Athlon MP is also AMD’s first major foray
into SMP. Dual processing Athlon MP systems have been both a critical and
commercial success from the upstart CPU maker. Expect market share for these
systems to continue to grow strongly throughout 2002.
Desktop Processor of
the Year: The AMD Athlon XP
Attractively priced with peerless computational muscle, the AMD Athlon XP is an
easy choice for VHJ’s 2001 Desktop Processor of the Year. With a die size
only about sixty percent that of its closest competitor, the Intel Pentium 4,
the Athlon XP blows by its rival in performance at a much lower price. While the
Pentium 4 can be said to be a CPU made for marketing, the Athlon XP is a chip
designed by perhaps the most gifted engineering house currently in existence.
Embedded Processor of
the Year: Tie – The Intel StrongArm and the VIA C3
Making a clean sweep of the PDA world, Intel’s impressive StrongArm has won its
place with performance, high clock speed, and low energy budget.
The VIA C3 is a glimpse of things to come as it delivers high-performance x86
computing to new generations of low-power embedded devices. While able to
leverage the vast library of x86 code including Microsoft Windows-based
programs, the VIA
C3 trounces its nearest rival, the Transmeta Crusoe, in overall application
execution speed. The VIA C3 also has competitively low energy budgets.
Lastly, the VIA C3 provides all this for very thrifty prices.
Chipset of the Year,
Intel Platforms: The VIA P4X266A
Although the VIA P4X266A is the center of some controversy between VIA
Technologies and Intel, there is no controversy regarding its performance
merits. The VIA P4X266A runs applications as fast or faster than Intel’s i850
RDRAM-based product, but at costs much, much lower.
Budget Chipset of the
Year, Intel Platforms: The SiS635T
The SiS635T is a product impossible to overlook. Currently the fastest Socket
370 chipset, the SiS635T is also remarkably inexpensive. A “single chip” DDR
SDRAM chipset, this core logic controller wins both in terms of price and raw
speed.
Chipset of the Year,
AMD Platforms: Tie – The NVIDIA nForce 420 and the VIA KT266A
Known for its legendary prowess producing graphics controllers, NVIDIA has given
birth to a landmark product in its nForce line of Athlon-based DDR SDRAM
chipsets. By its innovations alone, the nForce 420 merits this award. We praise
the San Jose, California-based chip designer’s determination to blaze new trails
in the core logic wilderness. The nForce 420 features two channels of DDR SDRAM
providing the most bandwidth of any desktop chipset in the world. Coupled with
an integrated GeForce2 controller, the nForce 420 dominates all other integrated
chipsets in terms of embedded graphics performance. With industry leading
features like an 800MB/s HyperTransport interlink and mind-blowing 5.1 Dolby
Digital audio, the nForce is a tour de force of bleeding edge technology.
The VIA KT266A has earned the reputation as the world’s fastest Athlon DDR SDRAM
chipset. It is delivered at very attractive price-points, and perhaps most
telling is that current AMD Athlon XP reference systems are based on this
product.
Budget Chipset of the
Year, AMD Platforms: The SiS735
SiS makes a clean sweep of our awards for the budget chipset categories this
year. The SiS735, while not quite as fast as the VIA KT266A, provides very
acceptable DDR SDRAM performance. Another of SiS’s famous “single chip”
chipsets, the SiS735 delivers good performance and full feature sets at almost
absurdly low prices.
Interconnect Technology
of the Year: HyperTransport
2001 was the year of the interconnect with HyperTransport, Rapid I/O, and
Intel’s Infiniband and Arapaho making headlines. While some of the other designs
deliver promises that are years away, HyperTransport is here today in products
like nVidia’s nForce and Microsoft’s Xbox. An elegant, simple, flexible,
scalable and inexpensive design, HyperTransport easily wins this year’s award
for best interconnect technology.
Riser Card Technology
of the Year: ACR
Although a relatively arcane category that’s image has been tarnished by Intel’s
inadequate AMR, the Advanced Communications Riser, or ACR, is a critical
enabling technology for next generation computing. Immensely flexible, ACR
offloads a cornucopia of communications features, freeing up PCI slots and
reducing total costs of ownership with comprehensive driver packages.
Graphics Controller of
the Year: NVIDIA GeForce3 Ti 500
NVIDIA is the perennial champ of graphics controllers and this year is no
different. Although widely reported fab difficulties has caused delays in
NVIDIA’s next generation 3d graphics engines and ATi has produced a strong
product in the Radeon 8500, the GeForce3 Ti 500 retains NVIDIA’s leadership
position. With the best performance overall, combined with driver support that
is almost as legendary as NVIDIA’s hardware, the GeForce3 Ti 500 is VHJ’s
Graphics Controller of the Year.
Budget Graphics
Controller of the Year: Tie -- NVIDIA GeForce2 MX400 and the Imagination
Technologies Kyro II
Both the GeForce2 MX400 and the Kyro II power graphics cards start around $70
and both jockey back and forth for overall performance leadership. The GeForce2
MX400 earns its title as the Budget Graphics Controller of the Year for it
rock-solid driver support as well as great performance and relatively full
feature set. The Imagination Technologies Kyro II is our co-Budget Graphics
Controller of the year because of good performance coupled with innovative
tile-based rendering whose ideas will be copied in upcoming products from rival
companies.
Audio Product of the
Year: The NVIDIA nForce APU
A technology that promises to transform the industry, the NVIDIA nForce’s
integrated Audio Processing Unit is essentially free in all nForce-based
motherboards. Capable of real-time Dolby Digital 5.1 encoding and a horse trough
full of advanced DSP accelerated DirectSound gaming features rendered directly
to main memory thanks to the nForce’s 800MB/s HyperTransport interlink, the
nForce APU might be the most powerful consumer-level audio processor, period.
With an nForce motherboard selling for about the same price as a comparable
sound card, the nForce APU is an astounding technological advance.
Motherboard Manufacturer of
the Year, Intel Platforms: MSI
Providing innovation and quality in new Pentium 4 motherboards, MSI wins our
award for best Intel-based Motherboard Manufacturer for 2001.
Motherboard Manufacturer of
the Year, AMD Platforms: Tie -- Epox and Iwill
These two manufacturers came on strong in 2001 with their support for AMD Athlon
and Athlon XP processors.
Budget Motherboard
Manufacturer of the Year, All Platforms: ECS
ECS has surged ahead and is now the leading Taiwanese motherboard producer,
dethroning Asus. Providing feature packed products for eye opening prices,
ECS (and its subsidiaries such as PCChips) wins the 2001 VHJ award for
Budget Motherboard Manufacturer of the Year.
Internet Browser of the Year:
Mozilla
The Open Source Mozilla has made great strides in the last year to overtake
Microsoft's Internet Explorer as top Web Browser. Mozilla is now more flexible
and attractive than its Microsoft adversary. That it is Open Source, makes
the decision for Browser of the Year an easy one.
Digital Camera of the
Year: The Nikon 995
The Nikon 995 improves upon the already excellent 990, while significantly
reducing prices.
Budget Digital Camera
of the Year: The Casio QV-2900UX
No other digital camera delivers so many features for so little money. The image
quality of the little 2.1 mega pixel Casio QV-2900UX is also very good.
Most Promising Future
Memory Technology: Kentron’s Quad Band Memory
Doubling DDR SDRAM's bandwidth while adding little cost, this module level (or
board based) technology has gained tremendous momentum over the last year. Expect to see
Kentron QBM support in upcoming chipsets from major vendors.
Fabrication Facility of the
Year: AMD's Dresden Megafab
In a year that has seen many
embarrassing stumbles by rivals such as Intel, AMD's amazing Dresden,
Germany-based Fab30 keeps humming.
Most Promising Future
CPU Design: AMD’s Hammer
Recognizing precisely which
bottlenecks are retarding today's computing, AMD has presented a design with the
64-bit Hammer that is elegant, simple, fast and cost effective. In the next few
years, Hammer will change the face of computing.
Media Award for Best
Internet-based IT News Publication: the inquirer
In an unprecedented short period of
time, Mike Magee has taken his startup to the very top of the IT news heap. The
little-site-that-could battles vastly wealthier companies, but the
inquirer, remaining true to its ideals, has become the most influential IT news
publication in the world.
Product of the Year:
The Microsoft Xbox
The Xbox represents a paradigm
shift in the computer world. The first truly successful convergence device
melding traditional x86 computers with entertainment devices, Microsoft's Xbox
blazes trails into vast new markets for the IT industry. Not just the most
powerful gaming console around, the Xbox is a hotrod-style stripped down PC that
is sneaking into living rooms all over the world. In time, the Xbox may
well turn out to be the most important computer product introduction in 2001.
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