Intel Developer Forum To Push Multicore, Low-Power Solutions

Next week's Intel Developer Forum (IDF) will see the show branching out like never before as Intel's technology partners showcase a variety of their wares.

Some 5,000 attendees are expected at San Francisco's Moscone Center for the 9th annual IDF, whose theme this year is "Multi-core Platforms: Accelerate Your Future." Third-party companies will present about half the content at the event -- the biggest proportion ever for the normally Intel-focused show.

Much of the emphasis is expected to be on multicore, low-power technologies for everything from servers to laptops. As the demand for computing power increases, so does the need for saving money through more economical power consumption and for distributing computing tasks through multiple processors.

One of the conference's goals is to lay more groundwork for the shift to 64-bit computing, which is expected to play out over the next few years. In an interview earlier this year, Intel's Steve Dallman, senior director of distribution and channel sales, said he expects the performance capabilities of 64-bit computing to increase rapidly over the next few years while the price comes down.

"I'm constantly stunned by the ability of people to get more performance out of 32-bit computing, but the performance of the (64-bit) Itanium processor should increase another 50-100 percent while the price drops," he said.

The move to 64-bit computing can't come fast enough for Intel, which has found it increasingly difficult to distance itself from competitor AMD. Although AMD garnered only 11.2 percent of the spring-quarter x86-based server-processor market with its Opteron chip, that number is sharply up over the 7.4 percent it scored in the previous quarter.

"The transition to 64-bit won't happen overnight, but it was a good thing for AMD to get into the server market," said Tom Halfhill, senior analyst at In-Stat, a research consultant. "64-bit is already being used in databases, servers and memory-intensive applications that cut horizontally across a number of industries."

Intel CEO Paul Otellini will kick off the conference with his Tuesday keynote address, outlining Intel's plans for its next-generation architecture. By the second half of 2006, this updated approach will produce multicore processors with improved efficiency and performance. Intel also intends to develop new processor form factors and increase capabilities, such as virtualization, manageability and security.

Otellini also will discuss new mobility, digital-home and digital-enterprise platforms and outline Intel's vision for processor parallelism. Also on Tuesday, Sean Maloney, Intel's executive vice president and general manager of the mobility group, will deliver a speech that showcases the company's upcoming laptop platform, code-named Napa. Maloney is expected to discuss the increasing integration of mobile computing and the telephone, and he also will provide new details on Intel's plans for broadband wireless technologies including Wi-Fi, WiMAX and UWB.

Other keynotes from Intel executives will discuss the company's plans for digital-health technologies, for its next generation of more power-efficient client and server platforms and for more detailed looks at its digital-home product road map. In the more cutting-edge category, Intel expects to update attendees on its progress so far in developing new concept laptops and batteries with eight hours of power. The batteries currently are slated to arrive in 2008.

Included among the third-party vendors will be IBM, which is expected to announce a new enclosure design for its BladeCenter servers, and STA will demonstrate its new serial-attached SCSI drive technology. Other sponsors include Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Broadcom, NEC, Silicon Graphics and Lenovo.