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

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (180964)	5/2/2005 3:20:43 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Intel's "Intel Around Us" Strategy Intel has publicly stated that nanotechnology will be an integral component of its long-term strategy. By applying the "science of the small" to a variety of applications both near and far, the company maintains its promise as an excellent long-term investment. By Jack Uldrich May 2, 2005 Recently, the semiconductor industry celebrated the 40th anniversary of Moore's Law -- named after Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) founder, Gordon Moore, who predicted back in 1965 that the number of transistors packed onto a chip would double roughly every two years. Perhaps it was only fitting, then, that the Santa Clara-based company should have had such a good week two weeks ago. Intel posted a 25% increase in quarterly profits, a figure far outpacing its rivals -- including Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD), IBM (NYSE: IBM), Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) and Infineon (NYSE: IFX). Intel also introduced its first WiMax communications chip (a development which should speed the spread of high-speed Internet access) and also unveiled its new dual-core technology a few days ahead of AMD. Just last year, the future wasn't looking so bright for Intel. AMD's chips were outperforming Intel's on several fronts, and the company was forced to cancel a couple of high-profile projects. More bleak, from a long term perspective, were reports that Intel researchers were predicting that Moore's Law would reach its limits in about a decade. What a difference a year makes. The first rays of hope appeared this past November when Intel executives released the company's roadmap to the future and announced that quantum dots, nanowires and nanotube-based technologies were going to help the company extend Moore's Law. This rather technical announcement was made more real last month when outgoing CEO Craig Barrett (who will be replaced by Paul Otellini but remain as chairman) was quoted as saying Intel could now see a path down to the 5 nanometer range. In practical terms, this means that Intel is fairly confident Moore's Law won't hit its mid-life crisis until around its 55th anniversary -- or 2020. To push this bold agenda forward, Intel is investing a significant portion of its nearly $5 billion research and development budget into nanotechnology. Furthermore, Intel Capital, the company's investment arm, as well as many of the company's internal efforts to partner with promising technology-related companies, have also focused on establishing relationships with nanotechnology start-ups as a way of helping it maintain its competitive edge. In March, company officials -- in partnership with Great Britain-based Qinetiq -- announced the development of a "quantum well" transistor made out of a material called indium antimonide. Investors needn't concern themselves with the material per se; what is important is that the atomic features of the material provide a three-fold improvement in transistor performance, without consuming any additional power. It is just one example of the type of new nano-material Intel officials are confident that will be found to help it continue to meet Moore's Law. Nanotechnology is also likely to play a crucial role in helping Intel deal with the critical problem of heat. As more and more transistors are packed onto chips, the circuits are running hotter and hotter. This problem is one of the reasons why the industry has moved to dual-core processors. It is also why Intel Capital has invested in a promising nanotech start-up called NanoCoolers. The Austin-based company claims its technology can replace heat pipes with a technology that has no moving parts and is up to four times better at dissipating heat. Intel is also working with another Texas-based nanotech start-up, Zyvex, to investigate how carbon nanotubes might be dispersed into polymers to act as a more efficient thermal interface. Such advances are very helpful, but they will only get the company so far. This is why Intel is also working with Nanosys -- a leader in the development of nanowire technology. Intel officials are hopeful that such nanowires can be integrated into existing high-volume manufacturing processes and then laid over existing chip designs to produce hybrid chips that will extend Moore's Law a few more additional generations. Beyond this, Intel has been very quiet about its involvement with quantum dot technology and carbon nanotubes. Its competitors, IBM and Infineon, have both been much more public about their work in the latter field, but as Paolo Gargina, a technical fellow at the company, said recently, "If we want to be in business by 2020, we have to start now." My instincts tell me that Intel has started to aggressively pursue a variety of options in this exciting field. All of this work is coupled with the work the company is doing with companies like Crossbow Technology in the area of "Sensor network" deployment and E Ink in the field of "electronic ink" displays; as well as its forays into the life sciences -- particularly with regard to chips that can be used for molecular diagnostics and disease detection, it begins to paint a very compelling vision of Intel's future. In fact, it is easy to see how Intel's future lineup of nanoscale products won't simply be limited to the inside of computers, PDAs, and mobile phones. It will enable sensors to be embedded in the environment around us and, quite possibly, inside of us -- as nanowire computer chips are integrated directly into medical devices. These chips can sense and communicate the presence of individual proteins and molecules to signal disease. And when all of these technologies are linked with its WiMax technology, or its next generation successor, it is not a stretch to imagine the company's current "Intel Inside" marketing strategy might be replaced with "Intel Around Us" to emphasize how all of its products and technologies help consumers connect to -- and harness the promise -- of a persuasive computing environment.

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (180964)	5/6/2005 1:35:00 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Intel demos dual-core Xeons Alexander Wolfe TechWeb.com (05/06/2005 9:33 AM EDT) Moving aggressively ahead with its plans to field a full range of dual core microprocessors, Intel has demonstrated two upcoming Xeon server platforms with the new devices. At its Intel Spring Analyst meeting in New York on Thursday, Abhi Talwalkar, general manager of Intel's Digital Enterprises Group showed off two working servers running upcoming dual-core implementations of Xeon code-named Dempsey and Paxville, respectively. Dempsey is part of a dual-core server platform called Bensley, which features Intel's Hyperthreading technology along with its new high-speed I/O acceleration channel. "We will ship thousands of seed systems to OEMs and the ISV community, in the second half of this year," Talwalkar said in an interview after the event. The platform will officially launch during 2006, he added. The Paxville dual-core part can be fitted into existing motherboards made for single-core Xeon processors. All that's required to get the CPU up and running is a BIOS update. "This processor just arrived in terms of silicon fairly recently," Talwalkar said. "We're going to be sampling to OEMs so they can start their qualification cycles. Remember, this processor drops into systems that are shipping today, so it'll take much less time to get them running than if you were building brand new systems. We'll ship seed systems to the marketplace in the second half of this year. We'll have an OEM ramp-up in early 2006." Additional details about the company's broader dual-core roadmap came to light at the meeting during the presentation by Intel president Paul Otellini. "We've added to our [roadmap] since our Intel Developer Forum," Otellini told the audience. "[There are] three new products that we haven't talked about before: Conroe, which is a second-generation desktop dual-core product; Merom, which is a second-generation notebook dual-core product; and Woodcrest, which is a second-generation Xeon dual-core product. "I'd also point out that Whitefield and Tukwila in our Itanium line are our first multi-core products, meaning more than two cores on the die, and we will ship those in 2007," Otellini added. Otellini pegged the total number of dual-core efforts underway at Intel at 17. Two desktop Pentium parts have already begun shipping. Fifteen other processors, encompassing a mix of desktop, server, and mobile CPUs, are on the way. "We have more than half the units in house, running, and we're very comfortable that we can bring those out in high volume," Otellini said. On the mobile front, Intel's highest-profile project is Yonah, which was will be available sometime in 2006. Yonah is part of what Intel is calling its Napa mobile platform, which also includes a core-logic chipset code-named Calistoga and a wireless LAN chip called Golan. As for competitor AMD, it's planning two upcoming lines of low-power, dual-core mobile processors. The company has also begun shipping dual-core versions of its Opteron server processor and dual-core desktop Athlon 64 X2 parts.