Nanotech - The Circuits Blog

The executive shakeup at Intel that saw vice president Pat Gelsinger leave for EMC appears to have been quite sudden.

Former Intel vice president Pat Gelsinger

(Credit: Intel )

An Intel blog dated September 13 shows clearly that Gelsinger was scheduled to appear in the No.2 speaker slot at the Intel Developer Forum--which started on September 22--behind CEO Paul Otellini. The entry in the agenda states: "Tuesday: Keynotes from Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini, IDF veteran and senior VP Pat Gelsinger."

The announcement of Gelsinger's departure came on September 14.

In the final IDF agenda, Gelsinger was removed and his speaking slot went to Sean Maloney, who, prior to IDF, was promoted, along with David "Dadi" Perlmutter, to co-manage the massive Intel Architecture Group. Maloney, an executive vice president, had been Intel's sales chief, and many observers see him as the odds-on favorite to be Intel's next chief executive. (Current CEO Paul Otellini, though, is likely to be in his post for some time to come.)

Gelsinger, now 48, had been considered to be one of the contenders for the CEO slot and he had had made it clear publicly that he wanted to be president of Intel. He was a leading figure in the development of some of Intel's most popular chips, including the 80486 microprocessor and the Pentium Pro, the latter of which brought Intel into the lucrative workstation and server markets.

The 30-year Intel veteran was Intel's chief technology officer but, in a sideways move, became co-general manager of Intel Corporation's Digital Enterprise Group--his most recent title.

Gelsinger is also an author who has written about balancing work, family, and faith.

Eric Kim of Intel shows how Intel has shrunk the size of the chip (L) from the previous generation of silicon

(Credit: Stephen Shankland, CNET News)

SAN FRANCISCO--A system-on-a-chip for TVs introduced Thursday at the Intel Developer Forum heralds a new generation of silicon from Intel.

The CE4100 packs a number features onto one piece of silicon--the same design goal for future Intel chips that will be used in smartphones and Netbooks. The chip is designed to bring Internet content and services to digital TVs, DVD players, and advanced set-top boxes, said Eric Kim, senior vice president and general manager, Intel Digital Home Group, in his keynote at IDF 2009 here Thursday.

Integration is the chip's strong suit. In addition to an Atom processor, the chip integrates a graphics processor, display processor, silicon for decoding for MPEG4 video, networking technology, and many of the typical connectors--such as USB and Serial ATA (SATA)--found on a PC. Intel says the chip can decode up to two 1080p video streams.

Intel is looking to catch the large wave of content moving to the Internet. Malachy Moynihan, vice president for video product strategy in the Cisco Service Provider Video Technology Group, who gave a presentation as part of Kim's keynote, said his company has now delivered 50 million set-top boxes, adding that high-resolution video, 3D graphics, and high-performance processors are becoming increasingly important as content becomes more multimedia rich.

Adobe Systems was also part of the keynote. Adobe Flash Player 10 will run on the new Intel silicon to "enable for the first time a wide array of Flash-based content on the television," said David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president of Adobe's Platform Business Unit.

And Intel is working with CBS on a new TV widget platform designed to help people discover programs that are relevant to their interests, according to George Schweitzer, president of CBS Marketing. (Editors' note: CNET News is published by the media company's CBS Interactive unit.)

The CE4100 chip is sampling to customers now.

SAN FRANCISCO--Sean Maloney has some issues with the European Commission's antitrust case against his company, Intel, which he says must either "thrive or...die."

Last week, Maloney was promoted, along with David "Dadi" Perlmutter, to co-manage the reorganized--and massive--Intel Architecture Group. Maloney, an executive vice president, had been Intel's sales chief, and many observers see him as the odds-on favorite to be Intel's next chief executive. (Current CEO Paul Otellini, though, is likely to be in his post for some time to come.)

Sean Maloney, executive vice president

(Credit: Intel)

On Monday, the European Commission published a "nonconfidential version" of its May 13 decision against Intel, which imposed a fine of $1.45 billion against the chip giant. That decision found that Intel broke EC Treaty antitrust rules (Article 82) by engaging in illegal practices to exclude competitors from the market for x86 processors, which are the basis for a vast swath of consumer and business computers.

The EC action was based on complaints from Intel's chief rival, Advanced Micro Devices. Intel appealed the decision in July to a European court, saying that "evidence was ignored or misinterpreted."

In an interview this week at the Intel Developer Forum, Maloney explained how Intel's business model, forged after a near failure of the company in early 1980s, requires it to be aggressive.

"I joined the company in 1982. We were getting our butt kicked by Asian competitors," Maloney said. "A few years after I joined, [then president] Andy Grove made the decision, let's focus on microprocessors. We exited all the other businesses, we laid off a third our staff. The company was hemorrhaging money," he said.

In 1983, Intel abruptly exited the memory chip business after Japanese manufacturers drove down prices and made that business unprofitable.

"So we picked one thing to do well, and we put everything behind that," Maloney said. "We're not like a Samsung that has 50 different businesses, or a Sony with 20 different businesses, or an Apple with a bunch of different businesses. We were a company that specialized. If you're a company that specializes, you either thrive or you die. You don't have eggs in other baskets."

As a specialist in PC processors, Intel achieved tremendous success. "As a consequence," Maloney said, "the scrutiny has come along with it. Some of the scrutiny is fair. Some of it we're strongly pushing back on."

He continued: "We can show how the consumer has benefited from the microprocessor in terms of constant, constant price reductions. It's pretty unmatched in every other industry. The industry has a long history of cutting prices. And I don't know a single day in the last decade when you couldn't walk into a shop a buy competitor's product. We believe it's an open market."

SAN FRANCISCO--Dell is launching its first laptops with Intel's new Core i7 processor for laptops.

The Intel "Clarksfield" Core i7 processor boasts four cores and is the chipmaker's first mobile chip based on its new Nehalem microarchitecture. Most Intel processors will move to this design in 2010.

Dell is trying to take an early lead in embracing the new technology. Dell's flagship product for the mobile Core i7 will be the 15-inch Alienware M15x gaming laptop. Dell is also offering the chip as an option on other laptop models worldwide, including the Studio 15 and Studio 17.

At the Intel Developer Forum today, David Perlmutter, executive vice president and co-general manager of Intel Corporation's Intel Architecture Group, is discussing Intel's mobile Nehalem platform that also includes a future chip codenamed "Arrandale," which will integrate graphics into the CPU, or central processing unit.

The Core i7 is packaged with the Intel PM55 Express chipset--companion silicon that assists the processor in communicating with the rest of the system. Two features that differentiate Core i7 from Core 2 Duo processors (the most-widely-used chips in laptops today) is Turbo Boost and Hyper-Threading. Turbo Boost speeds up and slows down individual cores to meet processing and power-efficiency needs, respectively. Hyper-Threading can double the number of tasks--or threads--a processor can execute.

The Alienware M15x configurations include the Intel Core 920XM CPU and 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M graphics chip.

The Alienware M15x will come with Intel's first Core i7 mobile processor.

(Credit: Dell)

The Dell Studio 17 will feature the Intel Core i7 720QM 1.6GHz processor, a 1GB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650 graphics chip, 17.3-inch HD+ (1600x900) display, and 9-cell battery.

The Studio 17 starts at $1,099.

Dell will also offer the Studio 15 with Core i7. Configurations include Core i7 720QM 1.6GHz, 512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570 graphics chip, and 4GB of memory. Pricing start at $999.

And the Dell Studio XPS 16 will come with a Core i7 option, with a starting price of $1,249, Dell said.

SAN FRANCISCO--Heads up, Nvidia. Intel demonstrated its Larrabee graphics chip for the first time Tuesday at the Intel Developer Forum.

Larrabee will be Intel's first discrete, or standalone, graphics processor in about 10 years and is expected to compete with graphics chips from Nvidia and AMD's ATI unit. The demo used an early "stepping," or version, of Larrabee, which is expected to come out commercially sometime next year.

Larrabee will be targeted initially at the gaming market. The demonstration was based on the game Enemy Territory: Quake Wars from Splash Damage (See video.)

"This is a ray tracing demo," said Intel senior research scientist Bill Mark during the demonstration. "We took the content, the textures, and geometry, pulled it out of that game and put it into our ray tracing engine."

Mark described ray tracing technology as allowing "you to simulate the interaction of light with matter in a way that's accurate and makes it really easy to get effects like light and shadows."

"If you look at the water. That's done with only 10 lines of...code," he said. The demo was written in C++.

Mark said the same thing can be done on a standard multicore Intel processor but with Larrabee there is more parallelism--or the ability to do more things at the same time.

SAN FRANCISCO--Intel is expected to roll out the first "Nehalem" processor for laptops on Wednesday.

Nehalem is Intel's new processor microarchitecture and is used currently in its high-performance Core i7 series of desktop processors and more inexpensive Core i5 series. The chipmaker is expected to move most laptop, desktop, and server processors to the Nehalem architecture in 2010.

The Core i7 "Clarksfield"--expected to be introduced Wednesday at the Intel Developer Forum--is a quad-core processor for higher-end laptop designs. Laptop models from major PC makers are also expected.

The Nehalem architecture will manifest itself later in laptops as "Arrandale," a dual-core CPU (central processing unit) that integrates graphics into the CPU--a first for Intel. The company demonstrated Arrandale on Tuesday in a laptop during CEO Paul Otellini's keynote address at the Intel Developer Forum.

Earlier this month, in a phone interview, Intel Vice President Steve Smith described the technology as moving its high-performance desktop Nehalem technology into laptops. "We just announced Lynnfield (the Core i5 and i7 chips for desktops), Clarksfield is the equivalent product for notebooks," Smith said at that time.

He continued: "Quad-core, 45-nanometer. Based on Nehalem technology but optimized with power management and integration of the PCI express I/O. Moving from a three-chip solution in the original Nehalem products to two chips--and that is our path going forward." I/O, or input-output, is silicon that enables a processor to talk, and shuttle data, to other parts of the system and peripheral components.

Updated on September 23 at 12:30 a.m. PDT: adding information about the Atom Developer Program.

SAN FRANCISCO--In his keynote at the Intel Developer Forum on Tuesday, Intel CEO Paul Otellini focused on moving beyond the PC while introducing a new processor technology and a new development platform for the Atom processor.

"We're moving from personal computers to personal computing," Otellini said.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini shows a next, next-generation wafer containing 22-nanometer chips

(Credit: Stephen Shankland, CNET News)

He called this a transition to a continuum. "The same experience on any device. How we build this continuum out. That's the theme," he said. "Moore's Law, platform architecture, and software--the combination of these three will allow us to build the continuum."

Otellini also had a surprise. He introduced the company's next, next-generation technology, based on a 22-nanometer process. Intel currently makes chips based on 45-nanometer technology and will move to 32-nanometer by the fourth quarter of this year. After that comes 22-nanometer chips.

Generally, the smaller the chip's geometry, the faster and more power efficient the chip is.

"The world's first working 22-nanometer silicon technology," Otellini said. He showed a wafer containing SRAM memory chips that each contained 2.9 billion transistors. "This is on track for for second half 2011."

In the more immediate future are the 32-nanometer processors. "Thirty-two-nanometer enables us to build a billion transistors in high volume. Started production on Westmere (the 32-nanometer technology) for shipment to customers in Q4." Otellini demonstrated the upcoming 32-nanometer mobile "Arrandale" processor--which integrates graphics silicon with the main processor--in a laptop.

The Intel CEO also introduced a new Intel developer program for the Atom processor in order to boost software adoption on Netbooks and expand the development of software beyond those devices. Asus, Acer, and Dell are supporting the program, Otellini said.

The program provides a framework for developers to create and sell software applications for netbooks with support for handhelds and smart phones available in the future. "We want to fuel the growth of Intel Atom-based products designed for the mobile lifestyle," said Renee James, corporate vice president and general manager, Intel Software and Services Group, in a statement.

As another example of where Atom will be used, Otellini said that automakers Daimler and BMW will use in-vehicle Atom-based infotainment systems from Harmon International in future vehicles.

Otellini also addressed the European Commission's publication on Monday of antitrust allegations against Intel. "They consistently ignored information," Otellini said. He added that customers such as Dell will come forward to state that some of the information was "wrong." In a statement, Intel said Monday that "the Commission relied heavily on speculation found in e-mails from lower level employees that did not participate in the negotiation of the relevant agreements."

Addressing the PC market, Otellini said that he expects "significant growth in 2010." This year he sees "units flat to slightly up," he said, but next year "I think the market is poised for a resurgence."

European antitrust regulators on Monday published internal e-mails that detail alleged antitrust behavior by Intel.

The European Commission Monday published a "non-confidential version" of its May 13 decision against Intel, which imposed a fine of $1.45 billion against the chip giant. That decision found that Intel broke EC Treaty antitrust rules (Article 82) by engaging in illegal practices to exclude competitors from the market for "x86" central processing units (CPUs).

The EC action was based on complaints from Intel's chief rival, Advanced Micro Devices.

Intel appealed the decision in July to a European court, saying that "evidence was ignored or misinterpreted."

Today, the EC fired back. Some of Monday's particulars from the EC press release include:

• Intel rebates to Lenovo during year 2007 "were conditioned on Lenovo purchasing its CPU needs for its notebook segment exclusively from Intel. For example, in a December 2006 e-mail, a Lenovo executive stated: 'Late last week Lenovo cut a lucrative deal with Intel. As a result of this, we will not be introducing AMD based products in 2007 for our Notebook products'."

• Intel rebates to Dell from December 2002 to December 2005 were conditioned on Dell purchasing CPUs exclusively from Intel. For example, in an internal Dell presentation of February 2003, Dell noted that should Dell switch any part of its CPU supplies from Intel to its competitor AMD, Intel retaliation "could be severe and prolonged with impact to all LOBs [Lines of Business]."

• Intel rebates to HP from November 2002 to May 2005 were conditioned on HP purchasing no less than 95 percent of its CPU needs for business desktops from Intel (the remaining 5 percent that HP could purchase from AMD was then subject to further restrictive conditions set out below). In a submission to the Commission, HP stated that "Intel granted the credits subject to the following unwritten requirements: a) that HP should purchase at least 95% of its business desktop system from Intel ..." An HP executive wrote: 'PLEASE DO NOT... communicate to the regions, your team members or AMD that we are constrained to 5% AMD by pursuing the Intel agreement.'"

• The EC also cited "Naked Restrictions" such as: "Intel payments to Acer were conditioned on Acer postponing the launch of an AMD-based notebook from September 2003 to January 2004. For example, in a September 2003 email, an Intel executive reported: "good news just came from [Acer Senior Executive] that Acer decides to drop AMD K8 [notebook product] throughout 2003 around the world...They keep pushing back until today, after the call with [Intel executive] this morning, [Acer Senior Executive] just confirmed that they decide to drop AMD K8 throughout 2003 around the world. [Acer Senior Executive] has got this direction from [Acer Senior Executive] as well and will follow through in EMEA [Europe Middle East and Africa region]".

AMD was quick to chime in with a comment Monday. "This is the first time that Intel has had to confront now publicly available facts of its illegal behavior and it won't be the last. The U.S. FTC and New York Attorney General's continuing investigations and AMD's civil case against Intel will provide other clear demonstrations of Intel breaking the law, and we remain confident that we will win our U.S. civil case against Intel, which goes to trial in March," AMD said.

Intel also issued a response Monday. "There is nothing new here. This Decision reflects the underlying bias we have come to expect from the case team that ran this investigation," Intel said. "The Commission relied heavily on speculation found in e-mails from lower level employees that did not participate in the negotiation of the relevant agreements," Intel said. "At the same time, they ignored or minimized hard evidence of what actually happened, including highly authoritative documents, written declarations and testimony given under oath by senior individuals who negotiated the transactions at issue."

Intel continued: "Also, the Commission consistently construed ambiguous documents in a manner adverse to Intel, while overlooking or dismissing authoritative documents as 'insufficiently clear' when they contradicted the Commission's case. This pattern occurred across the board with respect to documents and statements submitted not only by Intel but also by third parties. The result was that the Commission dismissed or ignored extensive exculpatory evidence."

As Intel readies its most potent chip yet for small devices, Apple may already be using competing technology.

Apple iPhone 3GS processor

(Credit: iFixit)

One of the themes of the upcoming Intel Developer Forum (starting Tuesday) will be the chip giant's foray into the smartphone and mobile Internet device (MID) markets. Intel's current Atom chip is fine for Netbooks but has had little impact on MIDs and zero impact on smartphones, where it is simply too power hungry to be usable.

Enter Moorestown. A much more power efficient Atom chip, due by 2010, that should find its way into high-end LG smartphones, MIDs from Asian device makers, and tablets (from HP? Dell?).

Just so happens that Apple is doing analogous chip development. When Apple acquired chip design firm P.A. Semi in March 2008 it got a team of very capable engineers that, almost certainly, are designing silicon for future iPhones, iPods, and tablets (or "media pads"--choose your nomenclature).

But it's really not even necessary to speculate about the future. The Apple chip has already arrived (see photo). Some analysts believe that the Apple-branded chip in the iPhone is a fairly unique design and that Apple is simply using Samsung as a chip "foundry" or manufacturer. That would mean Apple is already competing with Intel's Atom, not to mention the host of ARM chip suppliers such as Texas Instruments and Qualcomm.

And where might Apple supply its own silicon in the future? Beyond the iPhone--where Intel clearly has nothing to offer currently--there's the expected emerging tablet and MID markets. Make the iPod touch's screen a few inches bigger diagonally, add a few more features and you theoretically have a MID. (Some, of course, will argue that the iPod is already a MID/media player.) Make the screen even bigger (8 to 10 inches), give it more compute and graphics horsepower, and add a few more software and hardware bells and whistles, and you theoretically have a next-generation Apple tablet and/or media pad.

Those are all markets where Intel's Moorestown (and, later, Medfield) will compete.

Apple has a current market capitalization of about $165 billion (Intel's is about $110 billion). Two heavyweights with two competing visions of small devices. Will one of the big battlegrounds of the future be Apple tablets versus Intel-based tablets? Or--perish the thought--an Apple Netbook using an Apple chip instead of an Intel Atom? It's tantalizing to speculate.

And 2010 is just around the corner. It should be an interesting year for fresh new device designs and equally interesting competition between two computer industry Goliaths.

Note: Here's the official Intel description of Moorestown: "Intel's second-generation MID platform, which consists of a System on Chip (codenamed 'Lincroft') that integrates a 45nm Intel Atom processor core, graphics, video and memory controller. The platform also includes an input/output (I/O) hub, codenamed 'Langwell,' that includes a range of I/O blocks and supports wireless solutions.

(See: CNET Reporters Roundtable discussion of IDF and other Intel topics.)