Intel planning shift toward mobile designs for chips

IDG News Service - Over the next few years, Intel Corp. will shift its desktop processor architecture away from the power-hungry design that fuels the current Pentium 4 processor to a more power-efficient design that builds on the success of the Pentium M chip, sources familiar with Intel's plans said this week.
At some point in 2005 or 2006, Intel will begin to phase out desktop processors based on the NetBurst architecture of the Pentium 4 as the company shifts to dual-core designs, sources said.
This transition should be under way by 2006, when Intel introduces the Merom processor. Merom is scheduled to appear after the release of Tejas, Intel's next Pentium 4 processor, and Yonah, the successor to the Dothan Pentium M chip that will be launched Monday.
An Intel spokeswoman declined to comment on unannounced products.
After years of ever-increasing frequency and transistor counts, the semiconductor industry has realized that in order to continue to shrink chip sizes and increase performance, it needs to develop chips that sip, instead of guzzle, power.
Enterprises are starting to understand how much they are spending on power to keep a company full of computers up and running. Home PC users are said to be gravitating toward what Intel calls entertainment PCs, or small and quiet PCs that sit in the living room rather than the office and control a home media network.
Notebooks have had to live with power considerations for far longer than desktops or servers. This led Intel to develop the Pentium M processor, first known by its Banias code name.
The Banias architecture was said to be a combination of the power efficiency of Intel's Pentium III chip and the performance of the Pentium 4 processor. Notebooks based on the chip have garnered excellent reviews for both their battery life and system performance.
The Israeli design team that developed the Pentium M took power consumption into account with every design decision, said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight 64 in Saratoga, Calif.
Power-efficient chips allow PC designers to free up space within desktops that had been allocated for sophisticated cooling equipment and either add additional features or reduce the size of the PC. Many PC analysts and vendors feel that consumers won't put PCs in their living rooms unless they eliminate the loud cooling fans required to maintain optimal performance in current desktops.
Intel's own engineering team uses a number of small form factor PCs from Shuttle Inc., a source said. The Shuttle PCs are smaller and quieter than traditional desktops but could

Reprinted with permission from

IDG.net
Story copyright 2009 International Data Group. All rights reserved.