Intel Sharpens Focus on Digital Home Convergence

At the opening of the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, Paul S. Otellini unveiled Intel's next-generation, power-optimized micro-architecture for future digital home, enterprise, mobile and emerging market platforms -- and low-power products that will enable a new category of converged consumer devices.


Intel will introduce a micro-architecture in the second half of 2006, that combines the company's current Intel NetBurst and Pentium M micro-architectures and adds new features.


"We will deliver 'factor of 10' breakthroughs to a variety of platforms that can reduce energy consumption tenfold or bring 10 times the performance of today's products. At the same time, Intel innovation will continue to deliver unique digital enterprise, home, office and mobile features, such as greater manageability, security and virtualization, along with an increasing capability to manage and view digital content," Otellini said.


Intel currently has more than 10 processor projects that contain four (quad-core) or more processor cores per chip.


Otellini also announced that forthcoming lower-power products will lead to a new category of ultra energy-efficient "Handtop PC" devices that provide a converged communication and PC-like experience but require less than a watt of processing power and weigh under a pound.


In his speech, Otellini also emphasized that WiMAX plays a key role in both delivering high-speed broadband and premium entertainment to digital homes, as well as Internet access to rural areas.


He also noted that Intel is also working closely with the emerging digital entertainment industry to spur innovation in the home, including PC and CE devices that work together. Specifically, Intel is developing a platform and related technologies to power these PC and CE devices, as well as working with the entertainment and computing industries on interoperability standards and digitizing content.
http://www.intel.com/idf/us/fall2005/index.htm