Is Intel's Monahans Xscale's swan song?

Monahans State Park on the southwestern-most part of the Texas panhandle consists of 3,840 acres of sand dunes, some up to 70 feet high.

There should be enough silicon in those dunes for Intel to make is next generation of Xscale processor, whose code-name also happens to be Monahans.

At the moment, Xscale is Intel's best shot at the handheld computer market, although the company may be making overtones that it is easing its dependency on the RISC-based architecture because England's chip design firm known as ARM owns several licenses to Xscale.

In its push for more of its chips in consumer electronics and as a possible alternative to Xscale, Intel is highlighting its x86-based Low Power Intel Architecture project (LPIA) this week at the Intel Developer Forum. One design includes a processor for mobile computers that only takes half a watt (0.5) to run.

Could LPIA replace Xscale? Not immediately, according to industry guru Roger Kay who recently forged Endpoint Technologies Associates--his own analyst group--after departing IDC last month. But Intel has been wildly successful with its x86 designs and has shown every interest in continuing that trend.

Monahans' future seems safe. The new Xscale chip is expected to play a big part in Intel's plans in 2006 to create cellular platform components for next-generation wireless smartphones, handhelds and consumer electronic devices--so said Sean Maloney, who heads up Intel's Mobility Group during his keynote address Tuesday.

Maloney said Monahans is expected to eventually give off "five times more performance within the next few years, while consuming less energy than previous Intel-based platforms."

Those platforms include Intel's current Xscale offerings: the PXA270 code-named "Bulverde" (used by Palm for the Treo 650 and Dell in its Axim handhelds) and the PXA255 (a favorite of HP's iPaq family) for those of you keeping score.

Maloney's boss, CEO Paul Otellini expressed a similar 5X performance boost for Conroe, an upcoming multi-core desktop processor due out next year.

Intel is even advertising that it is working with Crown Castle and DiBcom in a series of commercial user trials in 2005 and 2006 to demonstrate mobile broadcast TV on Centrino laptops and Xscale handhelds.