Loading ...Intel goes tick tock
By Joaquim P. Menezes -
“Our tick-tock strategy” – is how Intel CEO, Paul Ottelini, described his company’s game plan to alternate the latest silicon technology, with a new microprocessor architecture.
Otellini’s presentation at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco was calculated to impress.
And some of the stuff he outlined did sound impressive.
For instance Otellini held up a plate-size wafer containing what he said were the world’s first 32-nanometer (nm) semiconductors.
There’s a huge gee-wiz element to this technology.
32-nm enables the creation of transistors so small that more than 4 million of them could fit on the period at the end of this sentence.
Okay we’re impressed. But what’s the practical benefit of this super-shrink technology?
Intel is going to produce 32 nm-based commercially available chips in two years, and in the meantime, it says it will start shipping the industry’s first mass-produced microprocessors based on 45-nm technology Nov. 12.
So what’s the deal here?
Are we just witnessing another phase in the ongoing game of one-upmanship between Intel and arch-rival AMD, which has also announced plans to produce 45-nm and 32-nm chips in mid-2008 and 2010 respectively.
Otellini did take pains to emphasize that there’s far more to this technology than the “wow” factor.
“Smaller is better, smaller is cheaper,” he said.
Basically, it’s the same logic we’ve heard from electronic components manufacturers: smaller components ultimately benefit consumers.
That’s because with component size shrinking – in the case of devices, such as PCs, cell phones etc – a lot of more juice can be packed into a little space.
And Otellini introduced the “green” motif as well.
He said Intel’s 45-nm Penryn processors are expected “improve energy efficiency”, while providing a 20 per cent performance increase.
Some analysts like Doug Freedman, an analyst at American Technology Research Inc. have noted that there’s nothing surprising in Otellini’s keynote.
True enough. After all, Intel isn’t the first to announce 32-nm chip technology.
In May, a group of chip makers led by IBM Corp. agreed to further collaborate to jointly develop this technology.
But the fact that Intel has publicly announced its schedule for commercially producing both 45 and 32 nm chips, may give the company an edge over other players who have also made forays into this space.
As Freedman also pointed out, Intel’s roadmap tends to be conservative, and the company is well on track to meeting its time line.
Posted on September 19th, 2007 by Joaquim Menezes and filed under Computer Science |