As we reported on Friday, Sean Maloney, Intel’s newly appointed president of Intel China, is announcing a big shift toward low-power chips in a keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taiwan today, where he is unveiling a heavy-duty effort to steer Intel into the production of low-power microprocessors.
“Computing is taking many forms,” said Maloney in a statement. “Technology innovation is a catalyst, and we believe the changes Intel is making to its roadmaps, together with strong industry collaboration, will bring about an exciting change in personal computing over the next few years.”
This shift within Intel is similar to the shift that occurred when it launched its Centrino laptop processors in 2003 — which Intel referred to as a right-hand turn. This is another right-hand turn, since the current roadmap isn’t as ambitious when it comes to low power consumption.
That’s a big difference, but it doesn’t mean Intel will cancel a bunch of chips in development. Rather, the company will modify the roadmap over the next couple of years so that the center of its efforts focuses on 15 watt or lower chips.
The Ultrabooks will be thin and light laptops, akin to a Macbook Air, that will have high performance, all-day battery life, good security, and tablet-like features. Asus is introducing its first Ultrabook model, the UX21, today using Intel’s latest Core microprocessors. The machine is less than 20 millimeters thick and will sell for less than $1,000. Jonny Shih, chief executive of Asus, said his company is aligned with Intel on the vision for the Ultrabook.
The second chip dedicated to the Ultrabook vision will be Intel’s code-named Ivy Bridge 22-nanometer microprocessor. Intel has showed a working Ivy Bridge chip, one of the flagship chips for this new low-power strategy. The chip uses Tri-Gate transistors, which take advantage of three dimensions and allow for a 50 percent power reduction at a given level of performance with only a 2 to 3 percent increase in costs. Ivy Bridge will debut in the first half of 2012 and will be followed by a chip code-named Haswell that will represent the fruition of Intel’s efforts to reduce the average wattage of its mainstream chips. Haswell will debut in 2013.
Intel is also designing a brand new Atom single-chip computer architecture, code-named Silvermont, from the ground up. Those chips are also going to be designed for low power, and the cadence for introducing new chips will become increasingly fast. The 22-nanometer Silvermont chips are expected to be introduced around 2013.
Asia is a good place to make the announcement since China is expected to be the largest PC market in the world starting next year. Maloney’s assignment to that region is significant. Maloney was considered the heir apparent to Intel chief executive Paul Otellini. But a stroke threw him off that path. He returned to work in January and is regaining control of his motor skills.
Intel’s Atom processors are beginning to appear in tablet computers and about 10 of them will be shown off at the Computex show in Taiwan. Those tablets use the Atom Z670 processor.
Maloney said Intel is benefiting from the mobile era in other ways. He noted that for every 600 smartphones sold, one Intel server is required. And for every 122 tablets sold, one new Intel server is required.
source: venturebeat.com
