Mcrea outlines the future
Intel today opened IDF with a speech from Jeff Mcrae, Director of Intel USA, who opened by stating that Intel’s aim is to lead and pioneer the future. He paraphrased Alan Kaye by saying the best way to predict the future is to invent it.
The main theme of IDF this year is the multicore platforms and Intel want to drive the developers and the community towards a common goal. Intel’s strategy is one of higher performance and lower power consumption.
Ottelini stated that Intel are no longer building ‘a CPU’, what they are now building is a product people want to buy. In Q2 05 the US retail channel notebooks outsold PC sales. The reason? Intel has given the consumer better battery life, more mobility through reduced weight, better performance and the wireless networking.
Intel are attempting to create what they call “The New Normal”. They see the market as now being based on usage orientated technology. The winners will be those who provide a product that gets tasks done and Intel recognize that the consumer doesn’t want to worry about the underlying technology. In the 60s Intel were a DRAM company, in the 80s and 90s they were a microprocessor company, and in 00’s Intel are a Platform.
Earlier this year Intel re-structured and moved to a new platform groups – Mobility, Digital Home, Health and Enterprise and Channel platforms. They all operate around the ‘Where does the user interact with a need?’ and ‘How can technology help deliver this need?’
The new Intel structure has finally shown convergence – communication and computers have finally merged. Intel has changed their classic focus of the ‘GHz’ to a computing experience.
The Performance/Watt Yonah will move in to ultra dense server environment. The performance per Watt is 2X that of Banias. Intel believes that their shipment will overtake sales of 90nm with 65nm in Q3 ‘06, at that time Intel believes that DC will overtake SC processors… and to keep the progression going, Intel has 10 QuadCore products coming too.
The power in all platforms it has been very important, with the reduction in power reducing the total cost of running the platforms. Computer users can change $1Billion per 100million units sold. This is just the cost of running the PC – not the cost of cooling or heat in to the environment.
