133MHz PC makes debut

LOCAL technology house Houston Crest has brought to Hong Kong the Micron Millennia 133MHz computer, which the company claims is the fastest PC in the world.

The first computer to be launched in Hong Kong based on Intel's flagship 133MHz Pentium processor, the Micron Millennia 133MHz has won a succession of computer magazine awards in the past few months, including the coveted PC Magazine Editor's Choice.

For the technically-minded, the Millennia 133MHz achieves its remarkable speed by adopting three new key technologies.

The first is Intel's new Triton 82430FX PCI chipset, which supports synchronous (which means you can read and write to the cache at the same time) second-level cache; the second is Micron's EDO (Extended Data Out) RAM, which allows the Pentium processor to overlap the beginning of one memory access with the end of the previous one; and lastly Micron's second-level SyncBurst cache, which can cache data twice as fast as a conventional second-level Async static RAM cache.

The Micron Millennia offers a zero wait-state memory sub-system, so Intel's Pentium 133MHz processor can really shine. In most Pentium-based computers available today, the memory sub-system simply cannot keep up with the CPU, making the Pentium chip wait for the RAM to catch up.

This obviously slows down your whole computer. Expect to see a speed difference of about 30 per cent, in real life applications, between a Millennia-based Pentium system and a normal Pentium system.