<font color=red>Paul and others, I have been watching the IDF Webcasts from yesterday. There are some very interesting things from Ron Smith's webcast, and I thought I'd point them out.
- Intel recently launched 3rd generation Strataflash, which offers 4x performance and 1/2 power of previous generation.
- .13u flash production has started, as well as the transition from 64Mb flash to 256Mb flash.
- Demonstrated an entire wall filled with Intel flash and PXA enabled devices. Includes cell phones, PDAs, and other devices (quite a lot!)
- Talking about PXA250 and PXA210 X-Scale processors. The former is more aimed at PDAs, and reaches up to 400MHz, while the latter is aimed more at next generation cell phones.
- Demonstrated a 400MHz PXA250 processor in a Taiwanese manufactured PDA (actually, a little smaller than the iPaq - thinner, too).
- First demonstration involved a video - completely *unoptimized* - running at 30 frames per second. Ron Smith comments that it's about 2x as fast as current StrongARM video performance.
- Second demonstration was very impressive. They ran a 3D video game that resembled the old Space Harrier game, and had similar graphics to the Playstation 1. This was all on the Hand Held PDA!. The audio was also very high quality.
- Game developers confirm that the graphics capability can easily meet or exceed Playstation 1 level performance (all due to the CPU, and no external video solution).
- The processor also uses 1/3 less power than the StrongARM. If clocked back to 200MHz, it can run at 2/3 less power, and still be higher performance.
- Ron moves onto a different topic - tools - and mentions the launch of the Intel PCA Developer's Network, a "global community of Hardware and Software developers". Over 800 different member companies involved. More than 400 solutions already listed.
- Intel is also now offering PCA developer's kits. Availability is on the PCA Developers Network. A Demonstation showed all the capabilities to developers in the kit. Very impressive, in terms of included interfaces, software, and support (thanked IBM for their involvement in this process).
- Also includes Microsoft Platform Builder with optimizations for PCA and X-Scale. Brings out expert from Microsoft that confirmed a close joint effort with Intel that has already taken place over the course of several years. Talks about Windows CE .NET, Microsoft's new OS that supports X-Scale optimizations, etc.
- They joke around about the "complexity" of the solution. It's so complex, that you have to actually click on "File" and "New" and when the dialogue box comes up, you actually have to click on the "next" button a few times. It will automatically optimize around the development platform. :-)
- Moving on to roadmaps, Ron talks about integrating full wireless support on the chip - will offer lower power and more performance for use in 2.5G and 3G cellular phones. The goal is to go from 10KB/s connectivity today to 100's of KB/s for tomorrow.
- The idea is to integrate Intel Flash onto the X-Scale CPU, as well as the new Intel Micro-signal Architecture.
- Test chips for 3G are already available. 2.5G wireless technologies will launch later this year. Will use .13u manufacturing.
Intel has a very interesting future for their PCA Architecture. Hopefully, my predictions about the huge potentials for Intel's "other" businesses end up coming to fruition.
wbmw |
