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.
Boasting bigger screens, bigger hard drives, and an integrated Webcam, updated versions of the Classmate PC were introduced at the Intel Developer Forum Thursday.
The 7-inch Classmate PC in blue
(Credit: Intel)Blurred images of laptops that looked strikingly similar to the Classmate have been floating around the blogosphere over the last couple of weeks, popping up with different names, like the 2go PC. That's just one version, which will be made by Computer Technology Link, or CTL.
Intel creates the basic design for the Classmate PC, a category of computer the chipmaker is calling a NetBook, and regional manufacturers put their own spin on it.
The latest versions will be available starting this month with a 9-inch screen and a 30GB hard drive. It will sell for between $300 and $500. Those prices put it just above the cost of the Classmate PC's chief competition, the XO from the One Laptop Per Child program. The XO costs just under $200, and is chiefly targeted at students in developing nations.
The price of the new Classmate PCs put it in direct competition with the popular Eee PC from Asus, which is also a small, light laptop. From the beginning, Asus has said its Eee PC was intended for children, not necessarily for emerging countries, however. The larger screen, bigger hard drive, and higher price show Intel intends to go after mainstream Western markets now, too.
Don't miss CNET's full review of the new 9-inch Classmate PC.
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.
Intel CTO Justin Rattner on Thursday showed off this 3D input device that includes 'haptic' force-feedback technology.
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)SAN FRANCISCO--Most folks who try the Second Life virtual world grimace as the primitive 3D imagery drags its way onto their screens. Intel Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner, though, smacks his lips with anticipation.
The chipmaker, always on the lookout for something that will give people a reason to buy a new PC, has reason to be excited about Second Life and its ilk. The technology, while still mostly for a fairly nerdy audience, has the potential to appeal to a broader audience than video games where overmuscled marines blow away aliens.
And just as significantly, Rattner said in a speech here Thursday at Intel Developer Forum, virtual worlds will stress out servers as well as PCs.
Intel has also eagerly anticipated some processor-taxing technologies that have come to fruition, including streaming audio and video, and some that haven't, such as speech recognition.
Rattner showed statistics that indicated a PC's processor bumps up to 20 percent utilization while browsing the Web, while its graphics processor doesn't even break above 1 percent.
Intel CTO Justin Rattner
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)But running Second Life--even with today's coarse graphics--pushes those to 70 percent for the main processor and 35 to 70 percent for the graphics processor, he said. The Google Maps Web site and Google Earth software pose intermediate demands.
Running a virtual worlds server is vastly more computationally challenging, though, when compared with 2D Web sites and even massively multiplayer online games such as Eve Online. An Eve Online server can handle 34,420 users at a time, but Second Life maxes a server out with just 160 users. Network capacity also is much more heavily used.
In addition, virtual worlds exercise parts of a processor such as math calculation engines that are idle when handling Web sites.
SAN FRANCISCO--Microsoft next week plans to issue its first Windows Server 2008 release candidate, a near-final version of its operating system, a senior executive at the software company said Thursday.
"We expect the release candidate next week," said Mike Neil, Microsoft's general manager of virtualization, in an appearance during a speech at the Intel Developer Forum here.
The release candidate will include a test version of software code-named Viridian and formally called Windows Server virtualization. This "hypervisor" allows multiple operating systems to run simultaneously, a useful technology in improving server efficiency and eventually leading toward more flexible data center operations.
Neil showed a server running virtual machines on Viridian, one the bare-bones "reduced-footprint" version of Windows Server 2008 and another Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Server. The software can take advantage of the horsepower of a four-processor Xeon system, Neil said.
Microsoft hasn't had a smooth time delivering either software to the market. In May, Microsoft stripped out several significant Viridian components from the first version of the technology, and in August, it delayed Windows Server 2008's release to manufacturers from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the first quarter of 2008.
Viridian is scheduled to ship in final form within 180 days of the final version of Windows Server 2008.
SAN FRANCISCO--Intel will begin building flash-memory drives into servers in 2008, starting with 32GB models that the company promises will boost system performance.
Flash drives can perform 10 to 50 times as many input-output transactions per second as conventional magnetic hard drives, said Pat Gelsinger, general manager of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group, in a speech at Intel Developer Forum here. In addition, they consume 4.5 times less power and write data at twice the speed.
Of course, the flash-drive capacities are much smaller. "The cost per bit is clearly going to be higher," Gelsinger said in a meeting with reporters. But some customers are bound much more by performance, he said, often running lots of hard drives in parallel but filling them only to 10 or 20 percent capacity.
Intel will offer samples of the technology this year and sell production models in 2008, Gelsinger added in an interview.
Intel will start with 32GB models, using NAND flash memory. "We'll have nice progression as we go to 64GB and 128GB over time," he said.
SAN FRANCISCO--This Nehalem plan better work out for Intel, because the chipmaker set very high expectations for the next-generation processor design Tuesday.
Pat Gelsinger, general manager of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group, speaks at Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.
(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET Networks)Pat Gelsinger, general manager of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group, demonstrated a Nehalem-based system at the Intel Developer Forum here that he said will bring major performance improvements for the company's x86 processor line. The processor family itself is due to arrive in 2008.
The Nehalem demonstration featured a system with two quad-core processors; each processing core can handle two independent instruction sequences called threads, and the demo showed all 16 threads at work on various tasks. The processor was the very first incarnation of Nehalem--the "A0" version--built for the first time three weeks ago, Gelsinger said.
"What you saw today was incredible health," he boasted during a meeting with reporters after the speech. "It really is pretty spectacular, and we're excited by the progress."
Nehalem brings major changes not just to the processor but also to the way in which it communicates with memory and other processors, a technology formerly called CSI, which variously stood for Common System Interconnect or Interface, and now branded as QuickPath Interconnect, or QPI. QuickPath reproduces a technique that rival Advanced Micro Devices used for years to market share against Intel and secure a solid position in all four major server makers' product lines.
The Nehalem processors demonstrated Tuesday each had four cores on a single slice of silicon, the approach AMD uses with its new Barcelona member of the Opteron processor family. In 2009, Intel will sell Nehalem processors with eight cores on a single slice of silicon.
Intel also is expected to sell less expensive Nehalem processors with dual cores per die, a source familiar with the company's plans said.
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