At the Intel Developer Forum in Taiwan, Intel executives offered a glimpse into the future for both the company's Moorestown platform for mobile Internet devices and Intel's upcoming "Nehalem"-based processors. While the first of the Nehalem-based processors are scheduled to enter the desktop market in November, the Moorestown platform, which will use a new SOC chip called "Lincroft," is scheduled to arrive in 2009.
At its Developer Forum in Taiwan
this week,
Intel
executives demonstrated the company's upcoming Moorestown platform for mobile
Internet devices that will use a new system-on-a-chip design called
"Lincroft" as well as a new generation of processors based on the new
"Nehalem" microarchitecture.
The
Intel
Developer Forum, which kicked off Oct. 20, allowed Intel to detail its product
road map for the rest of 2008 and into 2009 and 2010. The disclosures included
information on mobile Internet devices, or MIDS, which are geared toward the
consumer market, as well as products for the enterprise and business markets.
In addition to some new road map details,
Intel
also slashed the prices on some of its older processors on the same day.
One of the most significant announcements to come from the
show concerned the availability of the first processors based on Intel's
Nehalem architecture.
At
the show, Intel executives said the first of these processors, called the Intel
Core i7, will launch in November in time for the holiday
shopping season. Intel has said that Core i7 is designed for
high-end desktops and gaming PCs.
After the Core i7,
Intel
will turn its attention to the enterprise and release the Nehalem-EP processor
for high-performance computing as well as Nehalem-EX, Intel's first
eight-core processor for server systems. After that, Intel will roll out two
desktop chips-"Havendale" and "Lynnfield"-and then two notebook processors code-named
Auburndale and Clarksfield, by the second half of 2009.
Intel
also disclosed that it will update its vPro technology-a chip bundle
designed to make it easier for IT departments to manage and secure a large
corporate fleet of PCs-in 2009 with two new platforms. The new desktop vPro
platform is called "Piketown," while the laptop version is dubbed Calpella.
For MIDs, Anand Chandrasekher, senior vice president
and general manager of Intel's Ultra Mobility Group, detailed the company's
second-generation platform called "Moorestown."
This platform will launch by 2010.
While
the first Intel MID platform used a variation of the Atom processor, Moorestown
will use the SOC (system on a chip) design Lincroft.
With Lincroft, Intel engineers will combine a 45-nanometer
CPU along with graphics, the memory controller, and video encoding and decoding
technologies into a single SOC package for MIDs. In addition, Intel will also
offer an I/O hub-code-named Langwell-that will allow a MID to connect to wireless,
storage and display devices.
When Moorestown launches, Intel
promises that the platform will offer 10 times the idle power consumption performance
of the first generation. With the SOC technology, wireless connection
and low power consumption, Intel is looking to blur the lines
between MID and the current generation of smart phones in
the market now.
In terms of that wireless technology, Chandrasekher announced
that the new platform will support a number of technologies, including 3G,
WiMax, GPS,
Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. In addition, Chandrasekher announced that Intel had struck
a deal with
Ericsson
to provide HSPA (High-Speed Packet Interface) technology for the Moorestown
platform that should enhance this generation of MIDs to work with third-generation networks.
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