Intel gets ready for Penryn, may release Silverthorne early
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Intel confirmed plans to release a server version of the 45-nanometer Penryn before the end of this year, but the company is releasing little information about its plans for mobile and desktop versions of the chip.
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Details are expected on Tukwila, the next-generation 64-bit quad-core CPU, at a chip conference this week.
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Intel Developer Forum this week will zero in on upcoming chips. Areas for longer-term growth aren't quite so clear.
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Intel is working on an updated version of its&#160;Classmate PC&#160;designed for schoolchildren in developing countries, part of a wider effort to spur demand for low-cost laptops.Based on the company&#39;s&#160;upcoming Silverthorne processor, the new Classmate PC will likely be sleeker and have longer battery life than the current version, according to Navin Shenoy, general manager of Intel&#39;s Asia-Pacific operations.&quot;It&#39;s fair to say that there is a Silverthorne-based Classmate design in the works that would likely come out coincidentally with the microprocessor,&quot; Shenoy said, adding that Intel has not determined pricing for the new laptop design.Silverthorne, which is billed as being easy on both power and the pocketbook, is part of Intel&#39;s Menlow platform that also includes the upcoming Poulsbo chip set. The dual-core chip is scheduled for release during the middle of this year and is central to Intel&#39;s plans for small, handheld computers that Intel calls MIDs, or Mobile Internet Devices, and low-cost laptops, like the Classmate and Asustek&#39;s Eee PC.The current Classmate PC is a big-boned, 1.4 kilogram machine with a 900MHz Celeron M processor and a 7-inch screen. The laptop runs Windows XP and comes with Wi-Fi, 256MB of RAM and 2GB of flash memory in lieu of a hard disk. These specifications won&#39;t send a gamer&#39;s heart racing, but they are enough to get the intended job done.Priced at around $285, the Classmate PC is roughly $100 more expensive than the&#160;One Laptop Per Child Project&#39;s XO laptop, the Classmate&#39;s main competitor. Intel has said volume production would bring down the Classmate&#39;s cost to about $200, but the low-cost laptops have so far grabbed more headlines than sales.Even so, Intel&#39;s Classmate PC development efforts have had a wide impact, largely thanks to the Eee PC, which uses many of the same components but has a thinner, more stylish design.Consumer enthusiasm for the Eee PC largely caught Intel off guard. When the low-cost laptop, which also uses a 900MHz Celeron M processor, was announced at the Computex trade show last year, Intel expected Asustek to announce a $199 laptop for education customers. But the Taiwanese computer maker had other ideas and declared -- to the surprise of Intel executives -- that the Eee PC would instead be marketed to consumers in markets around the world.While the Eee PC&#39;s price tag climbed substantially from the original announced price, at $400 or so the small laptops remain a relative bargain and users have been snapping them up as fast as Asustek can make them.As other computer makers show interest in following Asustek&#39;s lead, Intel has embraced the low-cost laptop as an important product segment for the consumer market, as well as the education market.&quot;We think that there&#39;s going to be a wide variety of multinationals and local OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] who decide to go after this segment,&quot; Shenoy said.
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Intel&#39;s revenue increase for the fourth quarter fell short of analysts&#39; estimates in part because of weak prices for memory chips.The company recorded revenue of $10.7 billion, up 10.5 percent year over year, missing the $10.8 billion estimated by analysts polled by Thomson Financial.Though revenue from computing-related products was as expected, NAND memory revenue was lower than expected, Intel said in a news release.The company reported net income of $2.27 billion, below analysts&#39; estimates of $2.38 billion. Earnings per share were $0.38.Intel in November rolled out its next-generation Penryn processors,&#160;which the company claims provide better power efficiency and graphics performance than its earlier chips. Manufactured using the 45-nanometer process, the company first launched Penryn chips for workstations and in early January rolled out 45-nm chips for servers, laptops, and desktops.Intel is expected to launch processors for its Montevina platform, an upgrade to its mobile Centrino platform, later this year. It will also roll out Menlow, a platform for ultramobile computers, later this year. Intel is also working on a new chip architecture code-named Nehalem, which will appear in late 2008.
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Intel will offer a detailed look at a new processor next week during a presentation at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) that should set the stage for an unexpectedly&#160;close battle with Taiwan&#39;s Via Technologies.Intel&#39;s presentation will cover technical details of an unnamed low-power processor that is made using a 45-nanometer process and designed for mobile Internet devices, according to an abstract contained in the ISSCC program. That&#39;s the same general description used by Intel to describe its&#160;upcoming Silverthorne processor.Intel executives declined to confirm whether the ISSCC presentation covers Silverthorne but said the abstract provided an accurate description of the unspecified processor. If the chip described is indeed Silverthorne, the presentation appears set to confirm many rumored details of the chip&#39;s architecture and characteristics.Most importantly, Silverthorne is rumored to be an in-order processor, the same as the processor Intel will detail next week, according to the abstract.In layman&#39;s terms, this means the chip functions like a factory with a single assembly line and is capable of processing one operation at a time. An in-order processor must complete that operation before it can move on to another operation. This is a different chip architecture from that used in Intel&#39;s other processors but it&#39;s the same as Via Technologies&#39; low-power C7 chip, which has proved popular among the portable device makers that are Silverthorne&#39;s target market.The processor that Intel will discuss next week is also a dual-issue processor, just as Silverthorne is rumored to be. This feature -- which Intel is likely to emphasize at ISSCC -- allows two instructions to be issued at a time and should give Silverthorne a performance advantage over the C7, which can issue only one instruction at a time.If these rumored characteristics of Silverthorne are confirmed next week, the stage will be set for an unexpectedly close contest between Intel and&#160;Via&#39;s upcoming low-power Isaiah processors, which are also designed for small, portable computers.Tiny by comparison to Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, Via has nevertheless managed to carve out a comfortable niche selling the inexpensive, low-power C7. Beset by a dying third-party chipset business, Via hopes to become a mainstream processor supplier with its upcoming Isaiah processors, which the company unveiled last week.Unlike the C7 and Silverthorne, Isaiah uses a superscalar, out-of-order processor architecture. This architecture, which is used in high-end chips from Intel and AMD, generally offers better performance than an in-order design and is akin to a factory equipped with multiple assembly lines capable of processing different operations at the time.The performance of Isaiah is further enhanced by being superscalar, or having the ability to process multiple instructions during every clock cycle.Centaur, the Via subsidiary that handles processor design for the company, is confident that Isaiah will outperform Silverthorne, even though an accurate comparison of both chips won&#39;t be possible until the two processors can be benchmarked and assessed by independent observers.Nevertheless, Isaiah looks good on paper. Via chips based on the new architecture will offer 1MB of L2 cache and support a front-side bus running at speeds up to 1.3GHz. By comparison, the chip that Intel will reveal next week has 512KB of cache and a 533MHz front-side bus.But the ISSCC abstract raises as many questions as it appears to answer. For example, it doesn&#39;t specify how many cores the new Intel chip will use and gives no indication for how fast these cores will run.Silverthorne, and arelated processor called Diamondville, are widely expected to be available in single-core and dual-core versions. They are also expected to run at roughly the same clock speeds as the Isaiah chips, will be available in versions running from 400MHz up to 2GHz.&#160;
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Intel's presentation at a conference next week appears set to confirm many rumored details of the chip's architecture and characteristics.
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Intel is expected to kick off its semi-annual developer forum Tuesday by demonstrating a new dual-core processor, something rival AMD showed off last week.
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In our lab tests, Intel's 45nm Penryn CPU didn't blow away the previous generation, but the tech behind it should keep Intel ahead.
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At an early morning keynote address to open the semi-annual Intel Developers' Forum in San Francisco, CEO Paul Otellini confirmed that a Core 2 Extreme quad-core processor is coming this November for the enthusiast segment of the PC market. But can his performance gain estimates possibly be correct?
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Via Technologies&#39; upcoming Isaiah processor likely outperforms&#160;Intel&#39;s Silverthorne chip&#160;designed for mobile computers based on limited information about the chip that&#39;s been made available so far, according to the Isaiah&#39;s chief designer.&quot;Silverthorne is liable to be a little faster than our current C7 [processor], but the new Isaiah will be substantially faster than that,&quot; said Glenn Henry, president of Centaur Technology, the Via subsidiary that does processor design for the company.But don&#39;t look for Isaiah processors to match the performance of Intel&#39;s high-end processors, the Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad.&quot;The Core 2 is going to be faster. Not massively so, but the Core 2 for performance is the fastest architecture in the world. It will be massively hotter too, and of course massively more expensive,&quot; Henry said.Announced Thursday, Isaiah is a 64-bit processor architecture that is significantly more powerful than the Esther cores used in Via&#39;s current line of C7 processors, while consuming the same amount of power. Single-core chips based on the Isaiah architecture will be available soon, with volume production using a 65-nanometer process expected by the end of June.Intel&#39;s Silverthorne processor is due for release&#160;around the same time. The chip is billed as an inexpensive, power-efficient processor that&#39;s ideal for ultraportable and handheld computers. Silverthorne is Intel&#39;s first chip designed for this product segment and will be the heart of Menlow, a chip package that pairs a processor with the company&#39;s Poulsbo chip set.The conclusion that Isaiah processors may outperform Silverthorne is based on the relatively small amount of information about Intel&#39;s chip that has been released. Most importantly, it assumes that Silverthorne and a related processor called Diamondville, designed for low-cost computers, use an in-order processor architecture instead of an out-of-order architecture.An in-order processor is similar to a factory with a single assembly line. The chip can only work on one operation at a time, and other operations must wait for the assembly line to clear before they can be processed. An out-of-order processor, like Isaiah and Intel&#39;s Core 2 chips, is equivalent to a factory with multiple assembly lines where different operations can be processed simultaneously.Other factors also come into play. Silverthorne likely has a substantially smaller cache than Isaiah processors -- which have 1MB of level 2 cache -- and could use a slower front-side bus, giving Via&#39;s chip an additional edge, Henry said.Silverthorne&#39;s performance will also be constrained by business considerations. &quot;They&#39;ve got to protect the high-end money makers in the Intel product line,&quot; Henry said.&quot;You don&#39;t want to make Silverthorne too good and you don&#39;t want to make it possible for someone to use a Silverthorne instead of a mobile Core 2,&quot; he said.Intel declined to answer detailed questions about Silverthorne&#39;s specifications and architecture, and it&#39;s possible the processor may confound Via&#39;s expectations when released. A true comparison of performance won&#39;t be possible until both chips are released and can be benchmarked by independent observers.&quot;It&#39;s very difficult to make an assessment given that Intel hasn&#39;t made a full disclosure on what Silverthorne is,&quot; said Dean McCarron, president of Mercury Research, a market research firm that tracks the microprocessor market.But there are signs the two chips could be closely matched.&quot;The description of the two components, both Silverthorne and [Isaiah], that we know to date would seem to put them in the same general class,&quot; he said, noting that some versions of Silverthorne and Diamondville are expected to ship with two processor cores, while others will have a single core, like Isaiah.&quot;From what has come out, Silverthorne is rumored to be an in-order machine,&quot; McCarron said. &quot;But we haven&#39;t actually seen parts yet, and it&#39;s certainly possible that particular rumor might not be correct.&quot;Intel clearly aims to partition its product line and there will be a &quot;gap&quot; between Silverthorne and the Core 2 product line, McCarron said, noting this gap could be a difference in processor performance or architectural restrictions that limit the features and capabilities offered with Silverthorne.&quot;It&#39;s very safe to say that the Silverthorne products will be positioned in such a way that they would not threaten products above them in the product stack that Intel has,&quot; he said.
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Intel continues its push into the low-cost laptop market, saying the next version of its Classmate PC will use the upcoming Silverthorne processor.
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Chip maker offers few details about its plans for dual-core server processors.
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Intel (nasdaq: INTC - news - people ) released its Pentium 4 Extreme Edition processor on Monday. The hotly awaited--and just as hotly touted--new chip is geared for a &quot;balanced&quot; approach to home PCs: By tightening
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Intel launches a new range of processors - known as Penryn - based on a new material to power PCs.
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Chip maker plans for smaller, faster, less power-hungry processors.
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Intel has 16 new processors to show off in the desert, while AMD plans to trickle out a few details about its upcoming notebook processor technology next week at CES.