Intel said Thursday it is consolidating its manufacturing operations in China and moving 2,000 jobs out of Shanghai.
"We are consolidating our manufacturing operations in China consistent with actions we announced a couple of weeks ago," Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said Thursday.
Intel said on January 21 that it would close chip plants to align its manufacturing capacity to current market conditions. At that time, Intel said between 5,000 and 6,000 employees would be affected.
"Assembly and testing facilities will be closed in in Pudong outside of Shanghai. This will take place between now and the second quarter of 2010," Mulloy said.
The action will move 2,000 jobs out of Shanghai. "There are two other sites. We have a large assembly test site in Chengdu in western China and the capacity is moving there. We also have a new fab (manufacturing facility) under construction in Dalian," he said. "The affected employees will be offered jobs at one of those sites."
"On the fab, we expect to begin production in the second half of 2010. It is a new fab at a new site, something we've not done in decades, so we will take our time in staffing and put extra training in place for employees. Right now the workforce in Dalian is relatively small but will ramp in the coming 18 months," he said.
For those who don't want to relocate to the other sites a standard severance package will be offered, he said.
Intel is planning price cuts to its lower-end mainstream quad-core processors on January 18.
Barron's Tech Trader Daily first reported the news, citing Pacific Crest analyst Michael McConnell.
These cuts are happening because of the recent introduction of Advanced Micro Devices' 45-nanometer Phenom II and "Shanghai" Opteron processors.
AMD's quad-core Phenom II "Dragon" processor platform has been garnering solid reviews and its Shanghai server chip has been adopted by top-tier server suppliers including Hewlett-Packard, Sun, Dell, IBM, and Fujitsu.
Cuts are expected mainly on quad-core processors, though other processors may also receive cuts.
Let bygones be bygones. That's what Advanced Micro Devices is hoping for with the roll-out of its first 45-nanometer processor Thursday.
(AMD also announced its upcoming 45-nanometer "Phenom II X4" desktop technology. See below.)
The No. 2 PC processor supplier will make the case that Shanghai is not Barcelona. The latter chip--AMD's first quad-core processor--was rolled out in September 2007 to great fanfare but then faced prolonged delays. This gave Intel an opportunity to regain ground it had lost to AMD in the server chip market. (AMD lost more than five percentage points to Intel in the server market during the third quarter of this year, according to various reports.)
AMD Shanghai die
"Barcelona was obviously a pretty rough start for them. And that does not appear to be the case for Shanghai," said Dean McCarron, the principal and founder of Mercury Research, a company that tracks chip market movements. "One of the big distinctions was they wanted to be absolutely sure that Shanghai was ready to go."
Shanghai is not a new architecture but essentially a refresh of AMD's Barcelona Opteron chip. AMD claims Shanghai is 35 percent faster than Barcelona without using more energy. The chip is being built on 45-nanometer process technology, while Barcelona was a 65-nanometer part. Typically, the smaller the geometries, the faster and more power efficient the processor.
Major customers are brimming with accolades for Shanghai. "We've been very pleased. Thrilled with their execution," said with Paul Gottsegen, vice president of Industry Standard Servers, HP, in an interview.
"We'll have products that will be shipping just after launch. We had high performance expectations for the product and it exceeded our expectations," he said. "We're going to put Shanghai across the meat of our product line. You'll see six different rack servers, three different blades, all up and down parts of our product line."
And HP likes the fact that Shanghai is more power efficient, a critical metric for many server applications. "We're seeing a significantly higher performance-per-watt over previous-generation AMD," Gottsegen said.
HP would not comment on AMD's checkered quad-core past. In response to a question about drawing a comparison with AMD's Barcelona launch last September and Shanghai, Gottsegen would not comment. "This is their Shanghai launch. I want to focus on Shanghai," he said.
Cray is also expected to use Shanghai in its supercomputers, according to AMD.
Both HP and Dell are targeting Shanghai processors specifically for virtualization, which allows a data center to reduce the number of physical servers. Shanghai has a silicon "assist" that facilitates virtualization.
Praise from vendors doesn't necessarily translate into market success, however. Especially when the market is going south in a hurry. "We have a demand-falling-off-the-cliff scenario," said Ashok Kumar, an analyst at investment bank Collins Stewart.
"Shanghai, which in a normal environment may have had a window of opportunity, it's not likely to do so today," Kumar said. "By the time demand recovers in the second half of next year, Intel will be fielding their (next-generation) Nehalem product," Kumar added, referring to Intel's server version of the Nehalem processor.
Shanghai Opteron processors are available immediately, the company said. The 75-watt versions of the processor range from 2.3GHz to 2.7GHz in clock speed. Enhanced Quad-Core AMD Opteron HE (55-watt) and SE (105-watt) processors are planned for the first quarter of 2009, AMD said.
Shanghai technology ahead of Intel
Much of Shanghai's raw technology is a generation ahead of Intel. In a posting at EE Times, Don Scansen, a semiconductor technology analyst at Semiconductor Insights, said that many of the features that Intel is touting as new are not new to AMD and were initially introduced in AMD's Barcelona processor.
"Intel's Nehalem is due out soon, but many of the features of what has widely been touted as a 'new' architecture are only new to Intel," he writes.
"There is no question that Intel is at the cutting edge of process (manufacturing) technology, but that's not true for architecture. Intel probably decided it made more sense to introduce a highly integrated, quad-core design on 45nm rather than 65nm just to keep the chip size down. Whatever the reasons, the introduction of Intel's Nehalem architecture will come more than a year later than AMD's Barcelona."
Scansen says that, among other things, AMD has reduced the "die footprint" (chip size) by more than 10 percent, despite doubling the total cache memory from 4MB to 8MB.
Upcoming 45nm desktop processors
AMD plans to bring Shanghai 45nm processor technology to the desktop PC market in Q1 2009 with a platform codenamed "Dragon."
"This platform will be the second-generation AMD performance desktop platform, featuring all next-generation components in comparison to the first-generation AMD 'Spider' platform released in 2008," AMD said in a statement.
The Dragon platform will combine 45nm AMD Phenom II X4 quad-core processors with AMD 700 Series chipsets and ATI Radeon HD 4000 series graphics.
Advanced Micro Devices' first 45-nanometer chip, the Shanghai quad-core Opteron, has made its debut at resellers.
The officially unannounced Opteron 837X and 838X series processors are not cheap. Online reseller PC Connection lists the Opteron QC (quad-core) 8384 at $2,509. Another reseller, Buy.com lists the same processor at $2,240.
The 8384 is expected to run at 2.7GHz and draw 75 watts, relatively low power consumption for a quad-core server processor.
The 8385--same clock speed with a faster system bus--is offered for $2,509 at PC Connection.
Other processors listed include the 8382 (2.6GHz), 8380 (2.5GHz), and 8378 (2.4GHz), priced at $2,177, $1,768, and $1,360 respectively at PC Connection. Note that these prices will differ from official pricing from AMD.
The Shanghai Opteron 230X series includes the 2382 (2.6GHz) and 2380 (2.5GHz). These are priced at $1,019 and $814 respectively at PC Connnection.
Rollout of the chip is expected officially on November 13, according to industry sources.
AMD is hoping to make a much better impression with Shanghai. Its first quad-core chip, Barcelona, was rolled out in September 2007 to great fanfare only to be delayed a whopping eight months (or more, depending how the delay is calculated) due to production glitches and bugs. This gave Intel an opportunity to regain ground it had lost to AMD in the server chip market.
Shanghai is in full production right now, Pat Patla, general manager of AMD's server and workstation chip business said last month. The was confirmed during AMD's earnings conference call earlier this month.
Server vendors are expected to be shipping systems as early as this quarter. A Sun Microsystems spokesperson said Tuesday that it plans to offer Shanghai processors on its current x64 platforms running Barcelona. Systems using the new processors are targeted for the first quarter of 2009, the spokesperson said.
At the same clock frequency (speed), Shanghai will outperform Barcelona by about 20 percent, Patla said last month.
AMD is also boosting the size of the cache memory, which typically speeds performance, from 2 megabytes to 6 megabytes. Another speed improvement will come from increasing "instructions per clock."
Patla also said last month that AMD is "turning on HT3 (HyperTransport 3)"--a communication path between chips--and that partners will start to validate systems in the first quarter of next year with this technology.
AMD said Monday it is set to roll out its next-generation "Shanghai" chip--minus the mistakes of the last generation.
The No. 2 processor maker wants to make one thing crystal clear: Shanghai is not Barcelona. The latter chip was rolled out in September 2007 to great fanfare only to be delayed a whopping eight months (or more, depending how the delay is calculated) due to production glitches and bugs. The chip was also hampered by speed (core clock frequency) limitations. This gave Intel an opportunity to regain ground it had lost to AMD in the server chip market.
"We had some mis-starts in getting Barcelona to market and wanted to bring as much velocity to Shanghai as possible. Learn from our mistakes and, as a company, never do that again," said Pat Patla, general manager of AMD's server and workstation chip business.
Shanghai--a quad-core product targeted at servers--will be AMD's first 45-nanometer processor. (Barcelona is 65-nanometer.) Typically, the smaller the geometries, the faster and more power efficient the chip. Intel has been shipping 45-nanometer processors since last year and these processors now make up most of Intel's offerings.
AMD needs Shanghai to succeed. It is reeling from a string of losses and is on the verge of announcing . "To bring it back to profitability the execution of the server product line is absolutely critical," said Ashok Kumar, an analyst at investment bank Collins Stewart. "That is really their only profit pool."
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Intel senior VP Anand Chandrasekher touts Linux for MIDs.
(Credit: Intel)At the Intel Developer Forum in Shanghai this week, the buzz was about the Atom processor, mobile Internet devices, and Linux. What wasn't buzzing? Microsoft.
Welcome to the brave new world of computing sans Redmond.
At IDF, there was little media focus on Intel's next-generation Nehalem chip and even less on the Centrino 2 processor--both of which will run Microsoft software.
The focus was on devices that won't necessarily or exclusively run Microsoft software: Handheld-size MIDs--shorthand for mobile Internet devices--and Netbooks. Netbooks will run both Microsoft Windows and the Linux operating systems, but the MID category appears to be shaping up as a non-Microsoft enclave. MID makers, who are expected to begin shipping devices later this quarter, include Lenovo, Toshiba, Panasonic, and LG Electronics.
Asianux distributes Mobile Midinux.
(Credit: Intel)Anand Chandrasekher, Intel senior vice president and general manager of the Ultra Mobility Group, said in his IDF keynote: "As always, we partner with Microsoft." Then he proceeded to not mention Microsoft again--and mentioned Linux a lot. "We announced an initiative last year. A Linux-based initiative. In order to get the form factor down, to get the cost down, and to even get lower power levels beyond what was achievable. We have an entire ecosystem behind it. Ubuntu and Red Flag. The initiative is called Moblin," Chandrasekher said.
Aptly enough, the Moblin Web site is entitled: "mobile and internet linux project." That's pretty self-descriptive.
Whether MIDs succeed or not, only time will tell. But if they do succeed, it won't be on Microsoft Windows--at least not in the foreseeable future. Microsoft has recently hired Len Kawell, originally the CEO at Pepper Computer, a start-up focused on MID software, to scale Windows from smartphones (some of which run Windows Mobile) to MID-type devices with "larger screens and faster processors," according to a representative at Weber Shandwick, the P.R. firm that represents Microsoft's Mobile business.
Scott Rockfeld, Group Product Manager for Microsoft's Mobile Communications Business, said this in an e-mail Thursday: "Windows Mobile is constantly innovating the platform to meet the expanding mobile needs of our customers. MIDs are an exciting class of devices that address many of those needs, and we're focused on ensuring that Windows Mobile is a great platform for partners to build MIDs."
But that's probably news to a lot of the attendees in Shanghai listening to Renee James, vice president general manager of the Software and Solutions Group at Intel.
"This new category requires a new software environment. There isn't a built-in ecosystem of developers who have been doing MIDs," she said, describing the incipient market. "For MIDS, we, Intel, are establishing that ecosystem. We launched it in September. It's called Moblin.org. It's an open-source project. Intel has contributed the foundational stack. More than 500 member companies are contributing code into Moblin. And it's particularly strong in Asia."
If MIDs catch on--and that's still a big if (though Apple's popular iPhone is arguably a MID)--it will be refreshing to see a PC platform develop without Microsoft participation, or at least see a platform unfold in which Linux distributors may have an advantage over the software giant.
An Intel executive demonstrated upcoming solid-state drives at this week's Intel Developer Forum in Shanghai, noting that the chipmaker is on track to deliver the drives later this year.
Meanwhile, an Intel fellow describes his "addiction" to solid-state drives in a blog posted Wednesday.
Intel solid-state drives
(Credit: Intel)Knut Grimsrud, an Intel fellow who leads an R&D group responsible for developing new mainstream storage innovations, described in a blog the difference between using a hard drive and a solid-state drive.
"I played the part of Guinea Pig and had one of our pre-production solid-state drives installed in my IT laptop...I was unprepared for the powerful instant high it gave my system," he said in his blog. There was a "dramatic difference in how my system responded," he noted.
"Then the day came that my SSD was retrieved for data mining...and my original hard-disk was put back into my laptop. There's no way to feel the pain quite as intensely as having to go back."
(Note: I can second Grimsrud's statements. I own a SSD MacBook Air. Once you use an SSD and realize that there is a world without hard drive bottlenecks, a hard-drive-based system seems very old.)
Intel is expected to make an announcement about SSDs in the second quarter.
Features of upcoming Intel solid-state drives
(Credit: Intel)David Perlmutter, executive vice president/general manager of the mobility group, commented at IDF Shanghai on the input/output, or I/O, issues related to hard drives.
"CPUs, graphics, and media chips have improved significantly year after year, but I/O remained very limited in performance," Perlmutter, said. I/O refers to the data transfer speed of the hard drive. Even with the fastest processor in the world, he said, an I/O bottleneck can put a crimp on performance.
Intel currently offers small-capacity chip-level (what are called Thin Small Outline Packages or TSOPs) technology that provides end-product sizes ranging up to 16GB. But this modest line of products will get a big boost in the second quarter when Intel offers 1.8- and 2.5-inch SSDs ranging from 80GB to 160GB in capacity. Intel's SSDs will compete with Samsung, for example, which is slated to bring out a 128GB SSD in the third quarter.
Intel showed what it considers the smallest PC motherboard in the world at the Intel Developers Forum (IDF) in Shanghai. The motherboard, or main PC circuit board, will go into the company's next-generation "Moorestown" mobile Internet device (MID) platform due in the 2009-2010 time frame.
Intel's Anand Chandrasekher holding motherboard
(Credit: Intel Corp.)"Our engineers have been very hard at work on Moorestown," Anand Chandrasekher, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's Ultra Mobility Group, said during an IDF keynote speech Wednesday. "The platform design teams have been hard at work in figuring out what is the smallest form factor that they can actually fit a complete PC motherboard into so they can deliver a great mobile Internet experience."
"What I'm holding in my hand is what is possibly the world's smallest PC motherboard," Chandrasekher said. The Moorestown motherboard houses the processor, chipset (including graphics), and memory, along with silicon for 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS, he said. "This is the heart of the new machine."
Moorestown will be Intel's showcase system-on-a-chip, combining the CPU, graphics, and memory controller (and other silicon mentioned above) on a single die. It will likely be the main launching pad for Intel into the mobile phone market--what the chipmaker calls "MID phones." Moorestown may also be a major market for Intel's upcoming solid-state drives.
Intel Moorestown platform
(Credit: Intel Corp.)While the marquee processor theme at IDF Shanghai is "milliwatts to petaflops," Intel is also set to offer a vision of universal connectivity.
The main theme for the event, which starts Wednesday, Beijing time, refers to "very, very big to very, very small and low power," according to Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president and co-general manager of Intel's digital enterprise group, speaking in a video.
(See: Intel rolls out five new Atom processors.)
"Milliwatts" refers to chips such as Atom, a tiny low-power, low-cost processor destined for ultramobile devices and low-cost desktops typically running either Linux or Windows XP. The first Atom chips will launch in June.
"Petaflops" refers to high-performance computing--what used to be called supercomputing. ("Peta" is quadrillion, or a thousand trillion; "flop" is floating-point operation.) Intel is targeting petaflop supercomputers that would compete with the fastest supercomputer in the world: IBM's Blue Gene/P machines.
Though more technology and product details will certainly emerge in the next two days in Shanghai, the main chip themes are already out there. Gelsinger spelled them out at briefing earlier this month.
The specs for Intel's Dunnington processor
(Credit: Intel)The chip buzzwords are: Tukwila, a new quad-core chip with 2 billion transistors, a whopping 30MB of cache, and a new interconnect technology called QuickPath; Dunnington, a six-core chip for multiprocessor computers that can support four or more processors (in this case, each with six cores); Nehalem, a follow-on to the current "Penryn" processors, it is a new 45-nanometer chip microarchitecture due in the fourth quarter that scales up to eight cores; and Larrabee, a visual-computing architecture that uses many cores ("many" usually means many more than a typical quad-core computer).
In addition to Atom, the processor spotlight will likely fall on Nehalem and Larrabee. Nehalem is a relatively known quantity; Larrabee, a relatively unknown quantity. So interest should focus on the latter.
Nehalem boasts increased parallelism, better branch prediction (to move instructions more quickly through the instruction pipeline), and an on-chip memory controller for increased memory performance--what Intel calls "memory latency reduction." Something, by the way, Advanced Micro Devices already has in its chips.
Larrabee is a graphics processor scheduled for the 2009-2010 time frame. It will include a new vector instruction set to improve the performance of graphics and video applications. Larrabee will be compatible with Intel's popular x86 instruction set, theoretically making life easier for software developers.
On another front, Intel is evangelizing universal connectivity, always a problematic proposition, simply because it invariably promises more (sometimes much more) than it can deliver. Intel puts it this way: "Imagine a day when a single device small enough to fit in your pocket...knows your tendencies and preferences and can adapt and optimize its interfaces to match what you are doing at any point any time...Imagine a day when this device...can dynamically become a hybrid combination of other computing and multimedia devices in close proximity." You get the picture. Intel calls this "Carry Small, Live Large."
On a slightly more practical level, the Cliffside technology is being demonstrated from the Mobile Products Group; it enables a single Wi-Fi adapter to function like two independent Wi-Fi adapters. The hope is that this technology could sync your MP3 and video files without a USB cable, directly and wirelessly connecting your notebook to your TV to view HD movies. More here.
There is also a demonstration of wireless device discovery and setup. This demonstration shows how to detect and connect to nearby wireless displays, using the familiar FnF7 (Function F7 key combination).
The following is a partial list of the sessions at this week's Intel Developer Forum in China, which runs April 2 to 3. Topics set to be covered at IDF Shanghai include Netbook, Nettop, Bloomfield (Nehalem), solid-state drives, QuickAssist (accelerators), system-on-chip (Tolapai), and USB 3.0.
The items below are taken directly from Intel's own material:
Intel Atom Processor for the Desktop
The Essential Building Block for Purpose Built, Basic Desktop Computing Devices: Intel's strategy for basic desktop computing devices. See how the new Intel Atom processor based desktop platforms provide the world's best solution for basic computing, content consumption, and thin client.
Intel Basic Mobile Platform with Intel Atom Processor: Growing New Markets
Overview of growth opportunities for internet-centric computing devices or netbook market. Introduction to 2008 Basic Mobile Platform with Intel Atom Processor Architecture. Understand low cost system BOM (Bill Of Materials) & implications for netbooks. How netbooks are different from Mobile Internet devices, Ultra Mobile PCs, and Entry Notebooks. Opportunities for OEMs/ODM/Software community.
The Intel-Powered Classmate PC: Innovating for the Future
An introduction to technology for the next billion users and how to designing a product for first time user in environments that are not ideal. This includes the implementation of specific technical features in the Second and Next Generation Intel-powered classmate PC including: - PATA MLC Flash - Rugged and high temperature tolerant parts/design - Fan-less thermal system design.
Passive and Fanless Thermal Enabling for Affordable Internet-Centric Nettop
Introduction of Nettop, internet-centric computing devices roadmap and associated thermal solution space. Value proposition of passive/fanless cooling - Cost, Noise, new usage.
High End Desktop Platform, Next Generation (Nehalem) Processor
Background on the Desktop version of our Next Generation Intel Microarchitecture (Nehalem) Processor. Key electrical and system design guidelines to consider in designing a platform with the new Intel desktop processor (Bloomfield). Information on the new Quick Path Interconnect (QPI) & the Integrated Bus Controller on the new Intel desktop processor (Bloomfield) processor. Updates on other key new technologies of this High End Desktop platform and the advantages they bring to developers
Microsoft Windows Rally Technologies
The Windows Rally technologies provide manufacturers of network-connected devices with an architecture that enables effortless setup, more secure and manageable connectivity to other devices and computers, and rich end-user experiences. Using Windows Rally technologies enables hardware and software developers to focus development resources on product differentiation rather than connectivity fundamentals. For our mutual consumers, the result will be a dramatic reduction in complexity. Connecting a network device to a PC will be effortless, reliable, and more secure.
SATA Solid-State Drives: Not All Drives are Created Equal
A technical overview of NAND-based high-performance SATA solid-state drive (SSD) technology. A comparative review between Intel's upcoming SATA SSD products and other SSD and conventional hard disk drive alternatives, focusing on the areas of performance, power and reliability
DDR3, the Optimal Memory for Notebooks
Understand the benefits of DDR3 memory. Understand the DDR3 eco-system readiness and outlook for Mobile. Learn how memory impacts critical performance and power benchmarks and what these benchmarks mean to end-users.
Extreme Mobile Gaming: Design Considerations for High Performance Notebooks
Introduction to Extreme Edition Gaming Notebooks. Details on Extreme Edition Notebook hardware & software offerings. Updates on available Thermal technologies. Methods to tune platform performance
Inside Intel Next Generation Nehalem Microarchitecture
Intel's Nehalem microarchitecture is the next major microarchitecture update from Intel aligning to it's "Tick-Tock" cadence for processors. This session will provide architectural insight into this new microarchitecture that will start shipping in the second half of 2008. You will learn the details behind the key microarchitecture features including: Enhancements to the out of order execution engine. Enhancement to the Platform bandwidth. Enhancements to the cache subsystem. Extension to the instruction set with SSE4.2. And more...
Intel QuickAssist Technology Components
Understanding of the scope of Intel QuickAssist Acceleration Technology and Components. Hardware and software architecture of Intel QuickAssist Technology FSB-FPGA Accelerators and AAL. Learn about the Integrated Accelerator & Intel's new System On Chip Product (Tolapai). Hardware and software architecture framework of Tolapai
Moblin.org - Open Source Development for the Intel Powered Mobile Internet Device
Moblin.org, the umbrella open source project hosts the core software stack and technologies for Intel powered Mobile Internet Device (MID). This course will go into technical details on Moblin.org, for how you could setup platform-specific environment and build applications based on Moblin.org sub-projects and technologies.
SuperSpeed USB - Fast Sync-N-Go for Mobile Devices
SuperSpeed Market overview and Industry timeline updates. Update on SuperSpeed USB (USB 3.0) specification architecture details. Guidance on industry opportunities for 2008/2009
Intel Architecture Based SoC (System-on-Chip)
Join us to hear about the vision for Intel Architecture-based SoCs and the unique benefits that they bring to the industry. This Technology Insight will focus on a generic SoC on-die architecture and its impact on SoC-based platforms for embedded communications, mobile devices, and consumer electronics. The talk will also outline Intel's expectations of the industry ecosystem in the areas of Electronic System Level (ESL) language, tools, and new methodologies.
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