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Intel Promises Mobile Performance at IDF
SAN FRANCISCO—The bandwidth supplied by next-generation wireless networks is fueling a demand for performance on mobile phones and PDAs, Intel executives said Wednesday.
Intel Corp. announced several enhancements in flash memory during the second day of its Intel Developer Forum here, where the company is competing heavily with rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. for leadership in NOR flash, a subset of the flash market.
Intel's mobility chief also announced a broader adoption of WiMax, which Intel hopes will serve as the next-generation wireless broadband standard.
"Moore's Law is being called on more and more for mobility as well as just the requirements of performance," said Sean Maloney, executive vice president and general manager of the newly re-formed mobility group at Intel.
Intel reorganized its mobile platforms organization a few months ago to better focus on the interaction between notebooks, PDAs and cell phones, he said.
Intel's strategy is to roll out wireless chips and chip sets covering basic cellular up through more advanced wireless services, such as the W-CDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) standard that is becoming prevalent in Europe.
While the company has fared well in the flash market, the number of customers for its next-generation "Hermon" cellular baseband processor is one, according to Will Strauss, an embedded chip analyst with Forward Concepts in Phoenix. Onstage, Maloney brought out a display of cellular phones and PDAs containing Intel silicon, and he identified just one, a next-generation phone under development from AsusTek Computer Inc., as using the Hermon chip set.
Intel also announced several enhancements to its flash line. Intel has released stacking technologies which stack flash chips vertically, saving space, as well as cramming more bits per cell.
Intel's announced products included:
* "Sibley," a 90-nm multilayer flash cell. MLC flash allows multiple bits of data to be stored in a single flash cell, increasing the storage density of the cell phone or PDA.
* "Sixmile," a new line of flash products designed for new embedded applications.
* "Haubinway," a new flash file system, designed for multimedia.
* Intel also announced engineering samples of its 65-nm flash memory, the next-generation technology that will allow greater capacities and reduced power.
In 2006, Intel will introduce "Napa," its next-generation Centrino platform. Napa includes "Yonah," the first dual-core mobile processor, complete with a "Digital Media Boost" or improved SSE instructions for multimedia; "Calistoga," the integrated graphics chip set; and "Golan," a new Wi-Fi chip set that will improve the ability to seek out wireless access points.
Maloney said the Napa platform has been shrunk over 30 percent since its initial design. The chip set will be 69 percent smaller, in terms of board space, than the original Centrino chip set.
Microprocessor Advances
In 2006 and 2007, the first mobile WiMax deployments will begin rolling out, providing broadband to the mobile user. "Wi-Fi is really cool but when you walk outside of a hotspot, it's a disappointing experience," Maloney said. "Signal range and reach are more important than the bandwidth of the signal. You have to get a connection—that's the lesson of the cell phone industry."
Currently, the WiMax Forum has 244 members, roughly 10 times the size it was a year ago, Maloney said. New members include a substantial body of people who have gone through the "3G experience."
Intel has also sampled its first 802.16d "Rosedale" WiMax silicon a few months ago to customers, Maloney said. There are currently 15 carrier trials underway around the world; by 2006, the industry hopes to have 75 carrier trials either being deployed or under trial around the world, he said.
"The objective to take this one step further around the principle that coverage is king," Maloney said.
Source: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1771856,00.asp |
Intel's '06 resolution: Improve notebooks, home PCs
Look for Napa technology to deput in laptops next year
DECEMBER 14, 2005 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - Intel Corp. is getting ready to launch two major products that will combine the most visible piece of the company's evolving platform strategy, its Centrino mobile brand, with the company's most ambitious effort yet at building the digital home, executives said this week.
Napa, the third generation of Intel's Centrino mobile technology, is almost ready for a formal unveiling in January. Likewise, Intel and its PC partners plan to launch and heavily promote Viiv (rhymes with five) entertainment PCs starting the same month. Both products are expected to take center stage in Intel's efforts at the 2006 International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas during the first week of January.
Intel has already shared many details about Napa, which is the combination of the Yonah dual-core mobile processor, the Intel Mobile 945 chip set, and the Intel Pro/Wireless 3945ABG chip. But the company cited performance statistics for the first time Tuesday, revealing that Napa should outperform Sonoma, the current generation of Intel's mobile technology, by as much as 68% based on internal tests, said Keith Kressin, director of marketing with Intel's Mobile Platforms Group. Intel also reduced the average power consumption of Napa-based notebooks by 28% in comparison with current Sonoma-based notebooks, he said.
In addition, Napa notebooks will have smarter wireless chips, Kressin said. For example, Napa notebooks will attempt to find the local wireless connection with the most available bandwidth, instead of seeking out the access point with the strongest signal. The access point with more bandwidth will give the user a faster network experience than would the one with the strongest signal, which might be overloaded with users.
Intel won't have trouble finding partners or customers for Napa-based notebooks, with more than 230 designs already planned by notebook makers around the world, Kressin said. But its Viiv strategy could face a tougher road as the worlds of consumer electronics, PCs and digital content collide in the living room.
Viiv is modeled on the Centrino platform strategy, in which Intel sells its PC partners a combination of chips and then helps them promote the brand with a blanket advertising campaign. To get the marketing help, the PC vendors have to use all the Intel-specified components of the platform, which in this case includes a dual-core Intel processor, one of several multimedia chip sets, a Gigabit Ethernet networking chip, Microsoft Corp.'s Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, and several other components designed to deliver high-definition audio and instant on-off capabilities to Viiv PCs.
Intel plans to certify devices and applications that have been designed with Viiv in mind, trying to make it easier for consumers to set up home media networks, said Merlin Kister, Intel Viiv technology program manager. The company has already certified dozens of applications and services from companies such as Movielink LLC and British Sky Broadcasting Group PLC within the Viiv program, and more are expected during 2006.
Delivering an easy-to-use experience with Viiv is crucial to Intel's success in the living room, Kister said. Of equal importance is Intel's high-wire balancing act of assuring content providers that consumers won't be able to freely share copyright wares with the world, while convincing consumers that they will still have the right to shift movies and music among devices and burn copies as backups, said Charlotte Lamprecht, director of digital home brand management in Intel's sales and marketing division.
To date, major content providers have been hesitant to embrace Intel and Microsoft's fledgling attempts at building a PC-based digital living room with premium content available over the Internet. Over the next year, however, several content providers that have been holding back on the digital market will make announcements related to making digital content available for downloading, said Eric Kim, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's sales and marketing group. New Intel partner Apple Computer Inc. has had more success in this area, signing deals with U.S. television networks ABC and NBC to make popular television shows available on its iTunes online store.
Intel will also look at convincing cable and satellite providers to accept Viiv PCs as a delivery method for their content, Kister said. Viiv PCs will be able to receive content from set-top boxes that currently accept cable and satellite television feeds, but early versions will not have ports that can directly accommodate the protected digital stream of content from companies such as Comcast Corp. or The DirectTV Group Inc., he said.
Source: http://www.computerworld.com/hardwaretopics/hardware/story/0,10801,107059,00.html |
SAN FRANCISCO -- About to buy a notebook computer? You might want to wait until next year.
Intel provided more compelling details at an event here today about its forthcoming mobile processor, code-named Yonah. Yonah is slated to appear in notebooks in the first quarter of 2006.
Most of the press event was devoted to the chip giant's launch, also for early next year, of its Viiv brand of PCs aimed at consumers. Details below.
"Napa will be the fastest ramp-up in Intel history for a mobile platform," said Keith Kresen, Intel's director of marketing. Napa is Intel's code name for its next-generation mobile platform based on the dual-core Yonah processor.
To be sure, it's a certainty the new dual-core notebooks will cost more than the end-of -year bargains out this holiday season. But if price is not the only issue, Intel (Quote, Chart) trotted out some compelling performance specs for the new systems. Company officials also noted the development effort was all done in parallel, so the chipsets, CPU and wireless technology are all new. Said Kresen: "No one is making any compromises, everything is better with Napa."
Power savings in the new Intel-based notebooks will make at least five hours of battery life standard. "I think a few years ago, few people would have predicted we could increase the performance and drop the energy requirements at the same time," said Kresen.
For example, Intel is claiming up to a 68 percent performance gain, as measured by the SPECint industry benchmarks; a 28 percent power saving as measured by MobileMark 2005; and a 30 percent reduction in the Intel components versus current models. Noting that benchmarks don't always reflect how systems are used, Intel showed a more "real world" demo of the time it took to convert a PowerPoint presentation to a PDF file while running Virus Scan software in the background. A test notebook powered by Napa performed 39 percent faster than a traditional high-end notebook based on Intel's current single-core Pentium M 780 running at 2.26GHz.
Intel is also moving from PCMCIA (define) to the PCMCIA Express standard, which will add a second slot for components for notebook manufacturers who want to add such items as additional wireless capabilities or a TV tuner.
Intel says it knows of over 230 designs among customers for Napa, far more than for Centrino, its last major mobile platform launch, many of which will appear in the first half of next year. Kresen said there will also be more than 200 applications over that same time period that take advantage of Yonah's dual-core properties, where applications can run in parallel without the performance hit a traditional single-processor system would take.
On the consumer side, Intel gave a few more details about next year's Viiv-branded line of PCs. A major rollout is planned for next month's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Microsoft (Quote, Chart) has been pushing various solutions to make the so-called living room PC more popular, and Intel is making the software giant's Windows Media Center software a standard component of Viiv systems. But Eric Kim, Intel's chief marketing officer, said Media Center, while "the best software platform today," hasn't taken off, because it hasn't met the threshold of a compelling user experience with compelling content.
"A PC type of tower system with a fan and all the noise is okay for the study, but you would never think of putting that in the living room," said Kim.
Viiv systems will be quieter and, in some cases, very small. "You could argue that specs are secondary to many consumers," said Kim. "It's more about how the system feels, the user interface and what you can do with it. We think we're just touching the tip of the iceberg with what's possible."
Viiv PCs will include Intel's QuickResume technology, so systems can be turned off and on like a TV, without the usual lengthy rebooting process.
Kim said Intel spent hundreds of millions of dollars on its Centrino brand and expects to exceed that for Viiv. In other words, if this is the first time you're hearing about Viiv, it surely won't be the last.
Source: http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3570716 |
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