Intel Sets An Agenda For Global Cooling

From a technology standpoint, Intel&s new plan will focus on building higher-performing multicore chips aimed at all segments of the computing market—desktops, servers and mobile systems—with the efficiency of a low-power consumption chip. The new PCs would act and look very similar to what a user would find in a Pentium M notebook.

All chips will share the same circuitry and include similar features such as Hyperthreading and 64-bit addressing regardless of the market segment at which they are aimed. There are also whispers that Intel has more than 10 processor projects in the works, including four or more processor cores per chip.

By the second half of 2006, Intel plans to release the 5-watt Merom chip for notebooks, 65-watt Conroe processor for desktops and 80-watt Woodcrest processor for servers. Intel promises that Merom would deliver a threefold improvement in performance per watt over the original chip and Conroe and Woodcrest a fivefold improvement.

With the power-conserving technology, Intel is essentially harkening back to its earlier efforts at managing power consumption. Its Banias technology, developed largely by engineers in Israel, is based on the idea of turning off idle parts of the processors until needed and was eventually woven into its Centrino mobile platform. Now Intel plans to improve on and spread that technology across its line.

Advanced Micro Devices has been pitching its own technology, PowerNow, that does much the same as Intel&s power-saving technology—but which AMD executives are quick to point out has been around longer and is combined with what its executives say is a superior processing platform: the AMD64, which includes the Athlon64 for desktops and the Opteron for servers and workstations.

Next year, AMD is slated to begin shipping lower-power processors with its Pacifica virtualization, Aero Glass graphics and Presidio security technologies. It will offer a sub-10-watt, low-voltage chip for blade servers and thin clients.

While the channel awaits Intel&s next-generation architecture, the company in the interim plans to release two other chips in early 2006 that will include some of those developments. The Sossaman server processor will ship in early 2006 using the core of the Pentium M mobile processor and will run at 31 watts, providing the channel with its first look at lower-power server chips. The Yonah processor for mobile systems will include Intel&s performance-enhancing NetBurst technology.

In his address at the Intel Developer Forum in August, Intel CEO Paul Otellini emphasized how converging technologies were the catalyst for and top reason the company was shifting its focus. While it may look like Intel is getting a jump on AMD, in many ways, AMD introduced the world to this era of converging technologies when it launched its 64-bit architecture almost two full years before Intel did. Moreover, the premise behind all of AMD&s microprocessor technology has rested on surrounding architecture rather than clock speed.

Regardless of who gets the credit, the direction is now set. Power usage is becoming as critical as performance across all of the emerging new form factors in this era of convergence.