Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gary Kao who wrote (160764)	3/1/2002 12:08:51 AM
From: wanna_bmw	Respond to of 186894

Gary, Re: "thanks much for the notes...that was a tremendous service." You're welcome. I'm glad you appreciated it. I still plan on watching the keynotes from Monday and Tuesday. If they are interesting, I'll post the summaries for those, too. I especially want to know what Sean Maloney has planned for the Intel Communications Group, Intel's other "other" business. wbmw

To: Gary Kao who wrote (160764)	3/1/2002 2:16:29 AM
From: wanna_bmw	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 186894

<font color=red>Gary and others, here's a summary of Sean Maloney's Keynote from IDF. - Current view of the Telecom industry: Headcount and Research dollars have approximately been halved from their peaks. - Stresses a need for a "modular" approach to this market. Need to reduce costs, and make things standardized. Need to meet the challenges of an exponentially growing market (shows data of Petabytes of Internet traffic per month continuing to grow at an exponential rate through 2000 and 2001). - Communications R&D from Intel is many times that of the other powers in this market. - Must resist the urge for Hypersegmentation - that will only confuse and slow down migration of technology. - Intel launches three new networking chips to aid in the transition to single-chip Gigabit ethernet - the 82546 dual port GbE for servers, the 82545 single port GbE for servers and workstations, and 82540 client based GbE chip. - Demonstration includes Intel 82546 based card based on 64-bit, 133MHz PCI-X. Most servers have two ethernet connections, and this card includes two ports using a single inexpensive chip. Each port dissipates only 1.5W. - Client based 82540 fits into the same space-saving 15x15 footprint as Intel's previous 10/100 based ethernet controller. Power on this board is 2W/channel. - Demonstration includes 8 clients feeding into a single server. The server contains a 10/100 switch, but the clients contain 82540 based GbE. The demonstration shows the kind of performance one can expect by upgrading the server to GbE. - With the 10/100 switch, the server CPU utilization is only at 10%, and the clients are being held back waiting for data. A gigabit switch is substituted for one port, and the network traffic to the clients increases to 1100MB/s from 200mb/s. Once the second port is transferred to the gigabit port, the network traffic reaches nearly 100% utilization at 2GB/s. - Next, talks about 802.11, and Sean says that there is no doubt that this technology has won the battle for wireless standards. It is being used or pursued in nearly every industry - so much so that Sean considers it in the "Irrational Exuberance" stage. There is a lot of work yet to be done before it is a viable technology. - There is a security challenge involved. Intel recommends VPN as the superior security solution right now. Later this year and next, Intel is pursuing TKIP and AES through IEEE (FYI, they plan to get it there ASAP :o). - Legitimate objections to the standards in Europe need to be addressed as well. Need to come up with a Global Standard. - The Post-Recession Technology will be: A dual band 802.11a and b. - Demonstration includes a laptop with ethernet and 802.11b access card. Streaming video and live webcam is recording the demo, both connected via ethernet. The ethernet connection is unplugged, but the networking continues, after having switched over to the 802.11b wireless network. Later, the laptop is plugged back into the ethernet connection, and the ethernet connection is restored, all without interrupting the video and webcam. - Optical needs for speed - 10Gb ethernet. This is crucial for Internet infrastructure, and highly integrated modular parts will allow the costs to be feasible. - Three main market segments - "Long Haul" reaching out over 100s of kilometers, "Metro" in the range of 10s of kilometers, and "Enterprise" in the range of 2 or fewer kilometers. Cost, power, and port density varies greatly between these markets, and so do the challenges. - Package design is one challenge, as tolerance for smaller package becomes lower as one moves to the Enterprise optical segment. - Some interesting slides follow in terms of technologies for these optical segments. The theme was that different segments have different technologies to optimize around. While this keynote didn't have the same exciting product launches or demonstrations as the other keynotes, it's clear that Intel has a good vision in terms of furthering the networking and communications market. It's been a tough six months for the industry, as Sean points out in the beginning, but Intel may have what it needs to be on top once the market picks up again. wbmw

To: Gary Kao who wrote (160764)	3/1/2002 3:19:48 AM
From: wanna_bmw	Respond to of 186894

<font color=green>Summary of Thomas Franz' keynote from IDF. - Begins by showing a video about the benefits of a programmable network controller. Many different speakers from different areas of the industry speak about the cost savings due to flexible networking solutions. - Brings up X-Scale, and how it can be the solution to many different segments. These include (in order of low power -> high performance): Smart Phones, PDAs, Internet storage (RAID, SAN), Customer Premise Equipment, Internet Access System Line Cards, and Internet Backbone Devices. - The benefit to all these applications is to amortize the cost of research into many different areas. Compilers, optimizations, tools, etc, may be reused across various segments. - New products for discussion include the IOP310 and IOP321 from the Internet Storage market segment (5th generation I/O processors). Also, there is the IXP425 processor for Customer Premise Equipment, the IXP2400 processor for Internet Access System Line Cards, and the IXP2800 processor for Internet Backbone Devices. - Talks about the IOP321 I/O Processor. Runs at 600MHz for 3x performance increase over previous generation IOP303 product. Is already implemented using 64-bit, 133MHz PCI-X, consumes 40% less power, and takes up 36% less board space than the IOP303. - Introducing new IXP network processors aimed at providing more security, more reliability, and more features on a packet by packet basis. - IXP425 operates at 533MHz, has 3 packet offload engines, integrated voice compression, and integrated WAN, LAN, and USB interfaces. - IXP2400 operates at 600MHz for the X-Scale core, has eight 600MHz 2nd generation micro-engines, 3x the performance of the previous generation IXP 1200 at the same price, and industry standard interfaces. Runs at 10W. - IXP2800 operates at 700MHz for the X-Scale core, has sixteen 1.4GHz 2nd generation micro-engines, 25,000 MIPS, 60 million "store and forward" operations per second, Hypertask chaining, and .13u manufacturing. Runs at 14W. - Realizes the need to provide more than silicon - in other words, the development tools. Need to provide compilers, debuggers, VTune optimizers, 3rd party libraries, and many other tools. - Talks about Fixed Function vs Programmable solutions. With programmable chips, as opposed to configurable chips, you have the room to integrate several different ASIC chips into a single programmable networking chip. The IXP 2000 family of processors allows this. Intel also makes the libraries available to customize the chips easily. - IXP2800 reference design can perform 1000 instructions per packet along a 10Gb line rate. Can also replace modules on the fly at a later time (i.e. IPv6 to replace IPv4). - IXA Developer Network: over the last couple of years have established an industry effort to provide Operating System, Software, and Development support for the IXA line. So it appears that Intel's X-Scale Architecture has a big future in Intel's Networking and Communications Group. Intel also seems to have the first hand experience to create new products capable of fulfilling the requirements for the future of the Internet. Hopefully, the low cost and flexibility that Tom Franz stresses really do make these products compelling enough to make them a big hit in this market. wbmw