Barrett: Intel To Migrate Most Platforms To Dual-Core By Year-End

In a Tuesday keynote address at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, Barrett said the company was on track to continue extending Moore's Law and add significant computing performance while managing the thermal envelope.

"We not only have the potential to change the world with this innovation, we are changing it on a daily basis," Barrett said in his speech to about 5,000 conference attendees. During the speech, Barrett questioned a key Intel technologist about the forthcoming dual core and multicore chips.

"By next year, we'll have 85 percent of our products and processorsmulticore," said Steve Pawlawski, an Intel senior fellow and director of platform planning, who joined Barrett on stage. "We're going to continue to integrate more cores, more threads and increase the basic computing performance."

Intel executives have begun referring to processors with two or more processors as "multicore," although chips with more than two cores will not likely be available until late 2006 at the earliest, according to updated road maps the company issued. Dual-core processors will start shipping in the second quarter of 2005.

"In the end-user conversations I have, every one of them said they still have tremendous demand for [processing performance]," Pawlawski said. However, he said they were still concerned about not raising power consumption and multicore processors will achieve that requirement.

In a brief demonstration, Pawlawski showed a multicore system that provided a touchscreen access to a variety of video applications.

The discussion and solidified road map marks a significant change from Intel's position during its last Intel Developer Forum in September 2004. There, Intel executives were busy explaining a series of product slips and cancellations, as the company said its new focus would be on rolling out dual-core and multicore chips throughout its desktop, server and mobile processor lines.

Additionally, Intel earlier this year reorganized itself into several new business units including a Channel Group. Barrett said part of Intel's mission moving forward would be working with channels to custom-tailor uses of technology to specific markets.

"I think this is going to be increasingly important -- tailoring that technology to local use patterns is critical," Barrett said. "One size, as far as user interface and appearance, is not satisfactory. We're going to have to tailor it."

Later, in a press conference, the company said it was working actively on 15 multicore projects in total, throughout its Itanium, Xeon, Pentium 4 and mobile processing lines. The company also and announced three new dual-core chips in the works: Presler, a 65nm dual-core chip, in a multichip package, slated to ship in the first half of 2006; Paxville, a 90nm Xeon MP server dual-core chip, expected in the first quarter of 2006; and Dempsey, a 65nm Xeon two-way, dual-core chip for servers and workstations, expected in the first quarter of 2006.

Intel conducts two developer forums each year in the United States and is expecting developers, analysts and media from 40 countries this week to attend its conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.