Intel Introduces New Chip Design
Aug. 24–Intel took a gamble on the future of computing Tuesday as it unveiled a next-generation microprocessor design for its chips that will power personal and corporate computers for the next five years.
On the first day of a three-day Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco this week, Intel Chief Executive Paul Otellini showed the server chips working in demonstration units on stage at the Moscone Center West. Over time, he said, Intel would improve the power efficiency and performance of its chips tenfold.
Otellini said there would be three versions of the semiconductor chips based on the new design, making their debut in the second half of 2006. These chips represent a big change in direction as the company will now focus on better power efficiency as well as performance across all of its laptop, desktop and corporate computer server chips.
“It’s time to take things to the next level,” Otellini said. From now on, chip performance will be measured “per watt,” he said, meaning that power consumption figures prominently.
The importance of these new chips to Intel can’t be underestimated. Kevin Krewell, editor in chief of the Microprocessor Report, said Intel wants to sell approximately 1 billion of the chips over the next five years. Mike Feibus, an analyst at TechKnowledge Strategies, estimated the company is spending $5 billion to $10 billion on the 65-nanometer factories that will build them.
Each chip will have two processors — the equivalent of two brains — so that they can do more work without overheating. Otellini said these chips will be several times faster than those introduced a few years ago.
This means consumers will get desktop computers that can handle multiple tasks at the same time, like playing a movie while editing a video, or smaller laptops that have longer battery life.
Otellini showed off a handheld computer with a five-inch screen that he said could run the full Windows Vista operating system (coming from Microsoft next year). He noted that 100 million of the new chips, if they each shaved an average of 30 watts from power consumption, would save $1 billion in energy costs.
The next-generation design has its roots in Intel’s Pentium M laptop chips, developed in Haifa, Israel. That suggests the Israeli chip designers have become the pre-eminent architects — over Intel’s engineers in Santa Clara and Oregon, said Roger Kay, an analyst at Endpoint Technologies.
Intel hasn’t introduced any new designs since it created the Pentium 4 for desktops in 2000 and the Pentium M for laptops in 2003. Laptop chips are expected to account for 36 percent of sales by the end of this year.
The shift toward multiple cores, which many chip makers have already undertaken, represents a sea change in computing. Justin Rattner, a senior Intel fellow, said future Intel chips would have dozens of processing cores.
The new chips should help Intel catch up to Advanced Micro Devices, whose Opteron chip launched in 2003 leapfrogged past Intel’s Pentium 4. But AMD marketing architect Hal Steed said, “Clearly we’re not standing still. We continue to pioneer new architectures.”
He noted that AMD will launch its first dual-core laptop chips in the first half of 2006, about the same time Intel’s competing dual-core laptop chips, code-named Yonah, debut.
Intel’s new chip will feature qualities such as computing in 64-bit chunks instead of today’s 32-bits, as well as virtualization, so that more than one operating system can be run simultaneously. Built-in hardware encryption will provide better security.
Outside the forum, Intel rival Sun Microsystems advertised its dual-core corporate computer servers — with chips from Advanced Micro Devices. Sun suggested that attendees could buy their own dual-core servers now rather than wait for Intel’s. Otellini declined to disclose the name of the next-generation chips, noting Intel would reveal more details in time.
“It’s going to be a slow strip tease,” Feibus said.
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