Q&A: Intel CEO Otellini Talks Up The Channel

CRN: What was your overall message to the 370 Intel Premier partners and system builders that attended Intel's Solutions Summit on Monday?

Otellini: The channel in particular is doing a spectacular job ramping our most advanced microprocessor, Core 2 Duo, and in North America even faster than the worldwide channel and in both cases faster than multinationals.

CRN: Why is this?

Otellini: We made product available to them day one from a processor and motherboard standpoint. They know their customer bases and are not worried about the lowest cost product. They did very well on servers, which again was a major product refresh for us but we're also doing a lot of work with validation and preconfiguration. We're announcing today a program with Red Hat where we can do product and validate for every server. That takes part of the hassle out of the channel.

CRN: Intel has done this before, right?

Otellini: We did it with Microsoft, but this is the first time with Linux.

CRN: Has Intel demonstrated the forthcoming Santa Rosa Centrino Duo platform? New products coming out of Intel's new 45 nanometer manufacturing process?

Otellini: Santa Rosa is not [from Intel's] 45 nanometer manufacturing process. It's just a new motherboard platform for the notebook that takes the notebook to the leading edge of graphics and I/O platform that the desktop has had for a quarter or two based on the same "Merome" Core 2 microprocessor. See CRN Online

CRN: And the 45 nanometer process ...

Otellini: On 45 nanometer, the first use is in microprocessors. We talked about five [of these forthcoming processors] and now have six operating systems running on it. I showed a notebook dual core, desktop dual and quad core and DP server dual and quad core.

CRN: When will these new processors be shipping?

Otellini: In the second half of this year.

CRN: Why is this transition to 45nm so significant for Intel?

Otellini: Every generation of silicon is important because it's better on the price and performance curve. This generation we think is a bigger leap than prior generations. Moore said it's the biggest advancement in 40 years. Why? Three things: We were able to start with the existing lithography and others are doing it with immersion or continuous flow of water, and that increases cost. We avoided that. And second, we changed the material inside, employing halfnium, an obscure element in the periodic table that allows us to do a middle layer and Hi K Dielectric and Metal Gate, which gives an industry breakthough with minimal leakage of power.

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