Intel will ship its first quad core PC and server processors in
November, aimed at the high-end PC gamer and content creation
market, and will follow up with quad core processors for the masses
in the first quarter of 2007.
Paul Otellini, president and CEO of the world’s largest chip
company, made the announcement during his keynote address at the
Intel Developers Forum. Many observers had believed that Intel
would try to pull its quad core release forward once again as part
of its aggressive efforts to regain some of the momentum it has
lost in recent years to its smaller rival Advanced Micro
Devices.
“Much has been written in last year about Intel losing its
momentum in market place,” said Otellini. “With these new products
we are regaining our leadership.”
The quad core processors will actually be made up of two dual
core processors in a package. Intel has taken this approach because
it provides faster time to market, requires less engineering
resources and offers better yields.
Intel plans to release a quad core Xeon processor at 130 watts
and a quad core PC Extreme Edition processor for gamers in
November. These will be followed by lower watt quad core
processors in Q1 2007 for more mainstream markets
Game maker Remedy has engineered its new psychological action
thriller game to take advantage of Intel’s quad core Extreme
Edition for gaming, offering near photo-quality scenery, lighting
and action and what seems like real time rendering.
The demonstration showcased that progress is being made by
application programmers on creating software that can take
advantage of multicore processors – something that has been a key
concern of both Intel’s CTO Justin Rattner as he discussed in an
interview with Electronic News, and his recent keynote at HotChips,
as well as a key concern of top technologists at AMD.
Intel executives did not offer concrete detail on when Intel
would move to four cores on a single die but alluded to such a move
becoming easier as Intel scales down to the 45 nanometer node.
Otellini also provided an update on the company’s process
technology progress, noting that this month for the first time
Intel’s 65nm processor shipments are greater than its 90nm
processor shipments. This week the company will have shipped 40
million total processors at 65 nanometers, he said, “compared to
the rest of the industry which has shipped at total of zero at 65
nm.”
The company is also progressing on its 45 nm work with Fab D1D
in Oregon making the processors which Otellini said would deliver a
20 percent performance boost and 5 times reduction in leakage.
Intel demonstrated a 45 nm test chip in January.
“The process yields for this generation are tracking on par with
65nm,” he said.
Intel is building two more 45nm fabs – Fab 32 in Arizona and Fab
28 in Israel. Production in Arizona will begin in the second half
of next year and in Israel in the first half of 2008. The total
investment for these new fabs is $9 billion and the clean rooms
alone take up 500,000 square feet, Otellini said.
Intel has 15 products in development at 45nm, and the first
design will be completed in Q4, Otellini said.
One of the major new markets for multicore processors will
likely be the huge data centers built by companies such as Google,
MSN and Yahoo. Otellini noted that YouTube alone served 100
million daily page views and Yahoo was at about 3 billion per
day.
On the home side of the equation, Intel’s CEO noted that several
companies are working on a device to enable home media servers such
as Viiv to work with legacy televisions. This digital media adapter
is now available from NetGear for $250, and several other companies
will soon release offerings including D-Link and LinkSys.
To spur development of home media PCs, Otellini announced a $1
million prize to the designers who can create the sleekest new PCs
based on the Viiv platform and Core2 Duo. The winners will be
announced at next year’s IDF.
For Intel’s mobile platforms, Otellini said that the next
generation platform, Santa Rosa, will use Core2 Duo and include the
Microsoft Vista operating system, 802.11n and add NAND flash memory
onto the motherboard. The addition of NAND to the motherboard for
the first time will improve notebook performance and battery life
by allowing frequently accessed data to be stored on that solid
state memory. Because it’s faster and closer, the boot time is
faster and there is a 2 times decrease in time to resume from
hibernation, Otellini said.
Ultimately the vision is for a pocket-sized broadband device
that can provide full PC functionality to mobile users. This
project, called Broadband2Go will incorporate WiMax wireless
technology. Otellini noted that both Sprint and Clearwire have made
major WiMax announcements over the last 60 days.
The new class of ultra portable devices enabled by WiMax and
other technologies such as a 5 watt ultra low voltage processor.
Using 2006 as a baseline, Otellini said that by 2007 the device
would use half the power and a quarter of the surface space. By
2008 the power profile would be reduced by 10 times and the device
would be half the size. And ultimately it would become a
highly-integrated PC.
“All of these devices will offer full web capability and will
run full versions of Microsoft Vista,” he said.
Otellini showed a prototype that was about the size of a
portable DVD player and offered a near full-sized keyboard. That
device size will shrink, he said, as development continues.
Otellini also showed a Classmate PC designed for education
classroom use and piloted in a classroom in Nigeria. The full
function PC offers an ultra-mobile processor and a NAND hard drive
to improve portability. It will be released to other markets at
the beginning of 2007.
Lehman Brothers analyst Tim Luke noted ahead of the show that
while he expected Intel’s moves to be positive, they still have a
long way to go to catch up with AMD’s momentum.
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