IDF: Otellini Touts Intel's Computing 'Continuum'

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Intel CEO Paul Otellini on Tuesday regaled Intel Developer Forum attendees with a tale of the "continuum" of computing experiences on devices of many shapes and sizes -- all built on Intel microprocessors, naturally.

"Welcome to the beginning of the continuum," said Otellini, delivering the opening keynote at IDF in San Francisco. "We're building out a spectrum of computing devices on Intel architecture."

Paul Otellini At IDF

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip giant is working towards a future where computing devices ranging from embedded systems to handhelds to traditional PC clients to servers all "work together in a seamless fashion," Otellini said, walking attendees through several demos of the latest Intel technology.

Intel has also produced a working SRAM cell with its future-generation, 22-nanometer silicon fabrication process. Per tradition at IDF, Otellini held up a 22-nm silicon wafer that represents the 2011 cadence of Intel's Moore's Law-driven "tick-tock" model of alternating die shrinks (Penryn, Westmere) with microarchitecture updates (Nehalem, Sandy Bridge) on a roughly biennial schedule. Chips built on the 22-nm process will contain 2.9 billion transistors, Otellini said.

Lest we get ahead of ourselves, Intel's current "tick" of 45-nm products is set to be succeeded by 32-nm chips, including notebook processors, code-named Arrandale, that are scheduled to ship before the end of this year. In terms of energy efficiency, that new class of microprocessors, code-named Westmere, will benefit from the transistor shrinkage alone, but Otellini said Intel is also baking in new sleep-state features on its 32-nm chips to further save power and extend battery life in notebooks.

In addition, some Westmere chips will have graphics built into the processor package, and Intel's vPro line of business-class hardware platforms will be refreshed with new security and manageability features.

Westmere is the second generation of Intel's high-k metal gate process technology introduced with the 45-nm chips, code-named Penryn. That's important, Otellini said, because while "Intel has shipped 200 million processors on 45-nm high-k metal gate technology, our competition has shipped zero."

Fair enough, though Advanced Micro Devices might reply that its current 45-nm generation of products utilizes immersion lithography, which Intel has yet to transition to -- though it certainly will in the future.

Next: Intel Preps For Windows 7

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