Intel Drooling To Drive Ultra Mobility

In a keynote at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, Anand Chandrasekher drew a picture of a hyper-connected world where ultra-portable PCs reign supreme. Speaking to a nearly packed house, the senior VP and GM of Intel's Ultra Mobility Group laid out the chip leader's plans for scaling up performance and connectivity while reducing power consumption on handheld Internet devices.

Intel is doing its part, according to Chandrasekher, by preparing its Menlow platform for release in the first half of 2008.

Menlow is based on Intel's upcoming 45nm Silverthorne processor and a next-generation chipset codenamed Poulsbo, Chandrasekher said. The platform, designed for what Intel calls the mobile Internet device (MID) and ultra-mobile PC (UMPC) categories, will reduce power by an order of magnitude below that consumed by early UMPCs like the Samsung Q1. And Menlow will be made to look like an energy hog when its successor, the Moorestown platform, hits the streets soon after with a 10x reduction in idle power, he said.

But that's only the beginning, Chandrasekher said. The next big order of business is to get all of the Internet onto handsets and not just the bits and pieces available on current devices. And that's going to take some effort on the part of Intel's developer partners.

"In general, the whole mobile space is a big mess. I think that's a technical term," Chandrasekher said.

Without naming names, he described currently available handhelds as "inadequate" despite their manufacturers' claims of Internet access. The good news, according to Chandrasekher, is that Intel has a stable of OEM partners about to roll out Menlow-powered devices.

Intel partners with a working Menlow prototype include Taiwanese OEMs Inventec, Compal, Asus, Quanta and BenQ, and Finnish OEM EB, he said.

"The opportunity here is explosive. If we thought cell phones were a big deal, well, this is a huge deal," Chandrasekher said.

A day earlier, Moore sounded wistful at times during his interview with Dr. Moira Gunn, host of NPR's Tech Nation, particularly when talking about those old fishing trips and the environmentalist concerns they stirred in him.

His declaration of an end in 10 to 15 years to Moore's Law -- his famous prediction that the number of transistors on a computer chip doubles about every two years -- got all the press. But it was Moore's pronouncement that his would likely be the last generation with access to true wilderness areas on the planet that touched on a peculiar insight for a titan of technology.

That is, amid all the evangelism for 24/7 connectivity, global network reach and media rich experiences at IDF ... it's easy to forget how nice it can be to get a couple days' head start on all of those things before the office can figure out where you are and make you do actual work.

So be careful what you wish for, Intel.