Intel's Paul Otellini on Low Power Intel Architected Processors ...
... and related topics as Intel x86 and ARM's energy efficient RISC ICs start to do battle in MID and perhaps eventually smartphone space.
>> Intel CEO Talks x86 World Domination, App Stores for All
Intel CEO Paul Otellini kicked off this year's Intel Developer Forum with a talk on the "continuum of computing," a continuum that features x86 at each point. He also announced an app store framework intended to bring vendor-specific app stores to Intel-based mobile devices.
Jon Stokes
Ars Technica (San Francisco)
September 22, 2009
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CEO Paul Otellini kicked off the 2009 Intel Developer Forum with a keynote that quite literally laid out Intel's plan for world domination. The keynote's theme was "a continuum of computing," and Otellini was keen to stress the 32nm process node as the point at which x86—or "Intel Architecture" (IA), as the chipmaker prefers to call it—can claim a place inside everything from smartphones to servers.
"Users and developers have to have the freedom to move seamlessly back and forth across this continuum," Otellini told the crowd, but Otellini himself spent most of his time on the low-power end of it, talking about Intel's system on a chip (SoC) plans.
Otellini claims that Intel has 12 SoC products in the works, and that at some point in the future he can see SoCs out-shipping regular Intel processors by volume. He also referenced Intel's deal with fab TSMC and reiterated that Intel is "not doing this for capacity [reasons]," but because it lets SoC customers mix Atom cores with their own custom IP blocks.
"New rules, new technology," Otellini added in an effort to reinforce his point that the fab giant's commitment to its own process technology hasn't wavered.
The keynote was punctuated by a number of demos, among them a Moblin 2.1 demo that showed a prototype MID that also works as a phone. The MID seemed about the size of a Nokia N810, so not quite smartphone-sized. Presumably the MID was powered by the Moorestown SoC, which Otellini revealed will hit the market in the middle of next year.
A Continuum of App Stores
Otellini announced that Adobe and Microsoft are supporting both Moblin and Windows with their runtime environments, AIR and Silverlight, respectively. He also announced the Intel Atom Developer Program, the aim of which is to deliver tools and SDKs to support Atom development for "netbooks, handhelds, and consumer electronics devices."
Perhaps the most important developer program announcement was the app store framework, which is a set of tools that enable a vendor to easily roll out their own app store. Asus, Acer, and Dell are the first three customers to use the framework, and there were some videos of representatives of each company announcing their app stores. (Dell, at least, was already on the app store bandwagon with its download store, so it's not clear how what it's doing with Intel's app store framework relates to what it already has.)
Though it wasn't entirely clear from the keynote, the accompanying press release gets at the real point of this app store shift with the following quote from an Intel VP: "The netbook has become one of the most popular consumer devices in the market today, but its true potential has been limited by applications that are not optimized for its mobility and smaller screen size. The Intel Atom Developer Program provides a great opportunity for developers to create useful and inventive applications that will unlock a netbook's potential while opening a new sales and distribution channel."
Yes, it's the UI issue again, and it's great to see that Intel is attacking this important problem head-on. It's just too difficult to use normal desktop software on a mobile device, so any move that encourages developers to develop applications specifically for mobile screen sizes and input methods is a step in the right direction.
Speaking of usability, Intel also announced that Atom will go into BMWs starting in 2012 — hopefully the carmaker will have its own interface problems solved by that time (though admittedly the new iDrive generation is an improvement over the much-maligned first generation). Daimler will also begin using Atom in its 2012 lineup. ###
2009 Intel Developer Forum Videos here ...
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