Business Tech

Dadi Perlmutter, executive vice president and general manager for the Intel Architecture Group, speaks Wednesday morning at IDF.

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

SAN FRANCISCO--Intel has moved its latest desktop and server chip architecture to the laptop with the announcement of its 45nm Core i7 mobile processor, based on its new Nehalem microarchitecture.

Officially launched at the Intel Developer Forum here Wednesday morning, the chip is initially available in two standard and one Extreme Edition versions. Formerly known as Clarksfield, the quad-core chip combines Intel's Turbo Boost and Hyperthreading technologies.

"It's a 2GHz chip, but with Turbo Boost it can go up to 3.2GHz," said Mooly Eden, vice president and general manager of Intel's PC Client Group. Turbo Boost works by switching off cores when not in use and overclocking the active cores left. "Clarksfield is the best quad-, dual-, and single-core chip," said Eden.

The chips run at 45 watts, 55 watts for the Extreme Edition, and have an integrated memory controller--the first Intel mobile chips in this lower cost, higher performance configuration.

Dadi Perlmutter, newly promoted general manager of the Intel Architecture Group in charge of processors, said next year would see the Westmere 32nm designs in laptops, with the Arrandale processor adding on-chip graphics for another boost in performance and better power savings.

He also said that Intel was working on new security features for laptops. "Working with LoJack and available next year," he said, "we'll have new capabilities that let you send a message to a lost or stolen computer. If you're nice, you can say 'Please return my computer.' Some say 'The data is shredded, and so are you.'"

Intel also unveiled Light Peak, a new optical fiber interconnection technology that it hopes will eventually replace most or all of the current cabling that computer and mobile users have to deal with.

Running at 10Gbps--enough to transfer a Blu-ray movie in under 30 seconds--and with a maximum reach of 100 meters, Light Peak is designed to carry high-definition video, networking traffic, and high volumes of other data at the same time. Capable of scaling up to 100Gbps, Intel says it is planning to have components ready for manufacturers in 2010.

"We know that legacy takes a long time to change," said Perlmutter, "but we're hoping that over time, this one single cable will replace huge amounts of cable." He said that the primary advantage of this wired system for mobile users is that "the amount of connectors you have in the back of your notebook is a limit to how small it can get."

Rupert Goodwins of ZDNet UK reported from San Francisco.

Production isn't the only thing being scaled back at Intel because of the world economy. The world's largest chipmaker will cancel its developer conference in Taiwan this year and scale back the one in Beijing.

The Intel Developer Forum in Taiwan typically takes place in October, while China IDF is in April. The IDF in the United States in September will not be affected, Intel said Monday. The Beijing IDF will be shortened to a one-day event. It is typically two days.

Intel uses the IDF to launch many of its products and technologies.

"It's the economy," said David Dickstein, an Intel spokesman. "The reaction we've gotten from exhibitors and sponsors when we told them about the scale-back in Beijing and cancellation of Taiwan, actually was overwhelmingly positive. They're saying it helps with their bottom line."

Attendance will fall dramatically in Beijing. "Before we would bring more than 100 international press to the event. But now the event is really geared toward the local community. We're looking at under 1,000 attendees instead of 5,000 plus," he said. Dickstein said he is working on ways to bring Beijing IDF to the world. "We're looking at a virtual conference," he said.

Both forums are slated to resume again in 2010, he said. So, this is a one-time action.

This was reported earlier at DigiTimes.

There's life beyond WiMax. At the Intel Developer Forum in Taipei Intel is looking beyond that wireless technology to other communications methods for its upcoming Moorestown smartphone platform.

Intel senior vice president Anand Chandrasekher, speaking Monday at IDF, said that Intel will collaborate with Ericsson for High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) data modules for the Moorestown platform. WiMax is also supported, but it faces stiff competition from entrenched wireless technologies and may not be compelling enough to rise above the fray.

In addition to WiMax and HSPA, other wireless technologies including WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, and mobile TV will be supported on Moorestown, Intel said.

Moorestown is a system-on-a-chip (SOC) comprised of "Lincroft," which integrates a 45-nanometer processor, graphics, memory controller, and video encode/decode onto a single chip. It also includes an "I/O hub" code-named Langwell that supports connection to wireless, storage, and display components.

Intel was also showing a number of slides that detail its upcoming Nehalem i7 processor and the accompanying X58 chipset. Intel said last week that Nehalem is shipping now and is due to be officially rolled out in November.

The i7 will initially appear as a quad-core processor and feature QuickPath Interconnect--a high-speed chip-to-chip communications technology--and "Turbo Boost," which had been referred to previously as "Turbo Mode." This is essentially a switch that turns off unused processor cores and then uses the remaining active cores more efficiently.

In Taipei, Intel also delineated the differences between Atom-based "Nettop" desktops and more mainstream desktop PCs. Intel is trying to promote Nettops for Web browsing, word processing, e-mail, and "legacy" games. Anything more taxing than these basic applications is not recommended for Nettops.

Intel Core i7 and x58 chipset features.

(Credit: Intel)

Intel Atom-based Nettop desktop.

(Credit: Intel)

SAN FRANCISCO--Intel will finally enter the high-capacity solid-state drive business with the goal of replacing hard-disk drives in both consumer and corporate markets.

Inside an Intel solid state drive

(Credit: Intel)

This comes 20 years after Intel introduced its first flash memory--a 256KB flash chip in 1988. The world's largest chipmaker is announcing the line of solid-state drives at the Intel Developer Forum here.

The presence of Intel will intensify an already intensely competitive market. "Intel's entry into the SSD market has been expected for a while and although a bit delayed, represents the start of what we expect to be a very competitive market," said Avi Cohen, managing partner at Avian Securities.

Initially, Intel will have 80GB and 160GB solid-state drives based on multilevel cell (MLC) technology for the consumer and notebook markets, and 32GB and 64GB drives based on single-level cell (SLC) for the enterprise market. In 2009, Intel expects to have MLC drives with capacities up to 320GB.

MLC allows drive makers to build higher-capacity drives at lower cost but is not as fast as SLC nor inherently as reliable. Though SLC solid-state drives are used currently in some ultralight laptops, in most cases they will be replaced by MLC drives in future laptop models.

"The new generation of MLC-based products are an improvement over the initial SSD offerings which had a host of issues," Cohen said. "SSDs are ideally suited for the netbook category and will eventually replace (high-performance) hard-disk drives in the enterprise segment."

But most notebooks will continue to use hard-disk drives, Cohen said. "We expect mainstream notebooks to continue to utilize HDDs for the foreseeable future."

The "E" identifier on Intel solid-state drives will indicate "extreme" for SLC drives, and "M" will be associated with mainstream MLC units.

"The MLC will go into production in the next 30 days and the SLC in the next 90 days," said Troy Winslow, marketing manager for the NAND Products Group at Intel.

Drives will come in 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch sizes and be based on the Serial-ATA (SATA) II interface. Generally, ultralight notebooks such as the MacBook Air, ThinkPad X300, and the just-introduced HP 2530p use 1.8-inch drives, while corporate customers use the 2.5-inch size in server environments.

Solid-state drives provide much better performance for server-centric IOPS, or input/output operations per second, Intel says.

(Credit: Intel)

Intel says it has put a lot effort into making its solid-state drives reliable. "Right now 95 percent of the flash (memory) consumption is in consumer electronics devices. Storing photos, showing videos. (If) your card fails, you throw it away," Winslow said. Flash card makers have paid little attention to reliability, according to Winslow.

Getting the "intelligent design" right so data is secure is one reason for Intel's delayed entry into the market. "That's why we weren't first to market. It's tough," Winslow said.

Winslow thinks Intel solid-state drives are reliable enough now to have a good shot at replacing high-performance hard-disk drives in large server installations. "We know the data is critical. We know enterprise is going to thrash these drives 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for years," he said. "Bottom line is (enterprise users) can't count on hard drives. You can't predict their failure. By being solid-state there is that predictive ability. You can predict when it's going to wear out, when it's going to fail."

Fusion-io Chief Technology Officer David Flynn sees solid-state drives as a very disruptive force in hard-disk-drive-centric enterprise storage market. "This player is good at video on demand, that guy's good at IOPS (input/output operations per second) for database...It's a highly fractured market," Flynn said. "The differentiation between storage infrastructure will disappear as soon as you can put enough performance and capacity right inside the server."

Flynn echoed Intel's prediction that hard-disk drives will ultimately be relegated to the role that tape drives play today: "Hard disks will become the new tape (drive)...hard disks will store data...(SSDs) will house active data...very big difference...your active data tier will become a silicon tier."

Click here for full coverage of the Intel Developer Forum.

SAN FRANCISCO--In a speech here Tuesday, Intel Chairman Craig Barrett complained about a lack of R&D investment incentives in the U.S. while showing how low-cost computers and a little innovation can make a difference in the classroom.

Intel chairman Craig Barrett (right) watches as Carnegie Mellon University's Johnny Chung Lee demos a Nintendo-based low-cost whiteboard

(Credit: Brooke Crothers)

Barrett lamented that the U.S. is not doing enough to spur R&D compared to the rest of the world. "You've got to have the right environment to invite investment in innovation, to invite investment in development," he said in his keynote address at the Intel Developer Forum. "This is my political statement of the day...There's really only one country where I don't see (this) attitude--this one (the U.S.)."

"We don't focus as hard as we should at incentivizing investment and innovation...the lapse of the R&D tax credit is enough of a political statement today. Where the government refuses to acknowledge that investing in R&D is important to the future competitiveness of the U.S., everyone else (in the world) is recognizing that."

But not all innovation requires great sums of money. Barrett brought out Carnegie Mellon University's Johnny Chung Lee, who showed how to create a "low-cost multipoint interactive" whiteboard using the Nintendo Wiimote.

"Since the Wiimote can track sources of infrared (IR) light, you can track pens that have an IR LED in the tip. By pointing a Wiimote at a projection screen or LCD display, you can create very low-cost interactive whiteboards or tablet displays. Since the Wiimote can track up to four points, up to four pens can be used. It also works great with rear-projected displays," Chung says in a description on his Web site.

Chung concluded his demonstration by saying that cheap, off-the-shelf technology used creatively can do a lot more than just raw computing power. (Not exactly an Intel mantra.) "To be interesting today, technology has to be the fastest, the best, the brightest, the lightest, but here you can see if you sacrifice a little bit of capability and performance for dramatic savings in cost, you can have a pretty dramatic impact."

Click here for full coverage of the Intel Developer Forum.

SAN FRANCISCO--Intel is working on future technology that is capable of understanding human behavior and pointing people to the appropriate course of action.

Mobile devices of tomorrow will be smaller, yet equipped with more powerful computing capabilities, and enjoy platform-wide power efficiency, Mary Smiley, Intel's director of emerging platforms, told the media here on Monday, or "Day Zero," of the Intel Developer Forum.

A key feature of such devices will be sensors that provide the ability to understand the world of the users, as well as the "situational awareness" to provide inference and guidance.

"Tomorrow, (those devices) will have such a deep understanding of you, they will scream out what's important to you," Smiley said.

At the heart of connecting the physical and digital worlds are sensors, Andrew Chien, vice president of the corporate technology group and director of Intel Research, noted in his presentation on sensing technologies.

Chien highlighted several research projects, including an initiative known as "everyday sensing and perception," or ESP, which began in the fourth quarter of 2007.

The idea behind ESP is to make computers become more aware of their users and context in everyday activities and environments, he said, adding that Intel and its partner academic researchers aim to achieve 90 percent accuracy for 90 percent of a typical person's daily life. Such technology involves a range of capabilities, from low-level sensing to high-level understanding that can interpret movement, emotions, and words.

One research application of ESP is to infer activities using visual object recognition, which involves the use of "egocentric video" captured by a mobile camera worn on the shoulder. At present, the automatic system can achieve between 75 percent and 90 percent accuracy of seven objects; Intel hopes to scale this up to hundreds of objects and video hours, said Chien.

One challenge, however, is power efficiency, Chien pointed out. Real-time video event detection currently requires about 4 teraflops and consumes 10 kilowatts of power. In future, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company hopes to lower power consumption to less than 1 watt on a handheld, he said.

Beyond connecting the physical and digital worlds, Intel's connected visual computing vision also aims to bridge the two with a third--the virtual world--using visually rich interfaces.

Jim Held, Intel Fellow and director of tera-scale computing research, noted that there are over 2,000 virtual worlds today, and many are merging with popular social networks. Augmented reality--combining real-world information with data overlays--is also evolving, he added, with mobile augmented reality becoming more "compelling".

However, connected visual computing demands more from servers, clients and network, said Held. To that end, Intel's research in this area will cover four broad areas: platform optimization, distributed computation, visual content, and mobile experience.

In the area of visual content, for example, researchers are working on parameterized content, which offer manipulative tools or dynamically adjustable parameters for people to create customized faces with more concise expressions.

Vivian Yeo of ZDNet Asia reported from San Francisco.

Click here for full coverage of the Intel Developer Forum.

When the Intel Developer Forum kicks off Tuesday in San Francisco, the theme of low power will be high on the agenda of topics.

Nehalem can deliver greater performance at the same power consumption level of the Core 2 architecture, Intel says.

(Credit: Intel)

The headliner at IDF this year is indisputably the upcoming "Nehalem" Core i7 processor. Though the new microarchitecture is replete with esoteric technologies like QuickPath (for faster chip-to-chip communication) and on-chip memory controllers--things that end users can't readily relate to--better power efficiency is something every consumer gets because it results in better battery life.

"(Nehalem) is pretty subtle because it's a change in microarchitecture. A lot of the changes aren't all that visible to the end user. But one of the most notable (changes) is power saving," said Roger Kay, founder and president of Endpoint Technologies.

This won't become apparent to many consumers, however, until Nehalem mobile processors hit the market, according to Kay. "Nehalem notebooks should have dramatically longer batter life," Kay said. Nehalem mobile chips will not appear until next year.

Overall, Nehalem is better than previous Intel architectures at scaling up performance while keeping a lid on power consumption. So, for example, a Nehalem quad-core desktop processor may deliver better performance at power levels equal to current Core 2 quad processors--so Intel says. Nehalem will have all four cores on one piece of silicon, a first for Intel in the mainstream market.

An Intel IDF blurb that describes the technological highlights of Nehalem also states that chips will have "dramatic new energy efficiency gains when workloads are scaled back." Intel will presumably clarify nebulous statements like this at IDF.

In the more immediate future, Maximum PC recently tested a Nehalem "Bloomfield" desktop system that uses a 2.93GHz processor and an Intel motherboard with an X58 chipset. Both of these are expected to ship in the fourth quarter.

Atom is next on the short list of high-profile topics--and Atom is all about power efficiency, not high performance. The tiny mobile chip has a power envelope not exceeding 2.5 watts, far below the 35-watt power envelope of mainstream Intel mobile processors to date.

Though Anand Chandrasekher, general manager of Intel's Ultra Mobility Group, will talk about Atom in handheld mobile Internet devices and discuss Moorestown, the next iteration of Atom, the netbook category is the driving force behind Atom right now. David (Dadi) Perlmutter, general manager of Intel's Mobility Group, will talk about the low-cost mobile market and show off a variety of netbooks, according to Intel.

Current high-profile netbooks include the Asus Eee PC and Acer Aspire.

Since netbooks are synonymous with low power don't expect dual-core Atom processors from Intel designed specifically for netbooks anytime soon, according to Bill Calder, an Intel spokesperson. "There's no reason to do dual core in the netbook. Single-core Atom is perfectly adequate," Calder said. (Dual-core Atom chips for "nettop" desktops are coming by the end of the year.)

"These things are intended for basic Internet use. Mostly reading, sharing, viewing. Not creating, building, burning," Calder said.

Intel will also mention more about it's ultra-low-voltage (ULV) mobile processors. These are essentially Core 2 mobile processors designed for the stringent power requirements of ultralight notebooks like the MacBook Air, Lenovo X300, and the just-introduced Dell 12-inch Latitude E4200.

The current ultra-low-voltage lineup will be refreshed in September with 45-nanometer parts. All LV and ULV processors being sold now are based on older 65-nanometer technology.

Dual-core processors in this category have thermal envelopes as low as 10 watts, though more mainstream low-power processors (like those in the MacBook Air) will fall somewhere between 10 and 25 watts.

Many of these sub-one-inch-thick notebooks will also offer 80GB and 128GB solid state drive options. Micron Technology has introduced solid state drives in 128GB and 256GB sizes. Large-capacity SSDs will be part and parcel of ultralight notebook offerings in the coming months.

At the high end of power spectrum, Intel will also talk more about its first quad-core mobile processor. Both Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo are already showing off quad-core laptops and HP lists the quad-core mobile chip as an option on its EliteBook 8730w mobile workstation. The quad-core mobile processor is also expected to appear in gaming laptops from Dell's Alienware unit.

Click here for full coverage of the Intel Developer Forum.