Intel plans to leap ahead this year with a new strategy based on its Core Solo and Core Duo processors, a new media PC platform called Viiv, and a new logo where the ”Leap Ahead” tagline replaces ”Intel Inside”. That, in one sentence, is the gist of the speech that Intel boss Paul Otellini will give later today in the theatre of the Las Vegas Hilton, on the first day of the giant Consumer Electronics Show (CES). If you miss that, Intel is planning a $2.5bn marketing blitz to make sure you’ve got the idea.
But Viiv — which rhymes with alive — is just a new version of the Entertainment PC that Otellini’s predecessor, Craig Barrett, showed in his CES keynote a year ago. And the Core chips that will ultimately replace the Pentium brand name are just the long-expected continuation of the Pentium M line.
Of course, platform companies like Intel and Microsoft cannot keep their announcements secret. There’s no point in Otellini doing a song and dance routine for a new chip. It only makes sense when hundreds or preferably thousands of manufacturers start building it into saleable products, and these take months to develop. In fact, more than 200 companies are due to launch notebook PCs based on Core processors, and NEC announced one in December.
Apple could also make an announcement next week at its Macworld show and, given Steve Jobs’s negotiating skills, may be the first to ship Core Duo systems, if only by hours.
The first dual-core Core Duo chip was previously known as Yonah, and the codename indicates the revolution that has already happened. Yonah is part of a series that started with Banias — the processor used in the Centrino wireless mobile PC chipset — and continues through Dothan and Yonah to Merom. All come from Intel’s lab in Israel, which jumped off from a Pentium III design codenamed Tualatin, after a river in Oregon.
Many of Intel’s US designs got their codenames from local rivers, including Deschutes, Klamath, Yamhill and Willamette, all in Oregon. This line of fast but hot-running Pentium chips is now being superseded as the power-efficient Israel-derived processors take over the mainstream.
Indeed, it’s tempting to wonder whether the choice of Yonah (Jonah) signifies repentance for the Pentium 4’s NetBurst architecture, which stalled at less than 4GHz.
Either way, Shmuel (Mooly) Eden, general manager of Intel’s mobile platforms group, claims in the current issue of Business Week that: ”It’s a change from speeds and feeds to customer needs.”
The first customer need is for mobile PCs that are smaller, lighter, faster, cooler and run for longer on batteries. Intel reckons Yonah (Core Duo) chips can cut power consumption and size by about 30% while delivering almost 70% better performance than old single-core Pentium M chips.
The second need is for small, fast and extremely quiet PCs that are more suitable for home entertainment systems than old-style tower cases with high-speed fans. You could think of them as basically notebook PCs with a separate LCD screen — or without a screen, like Apple’s Mac mini. Home entertainment is the target market for many Viiv designs, and it is rumoured that Apple will offer a Mac OS X-based alternative.
The third need is for cooler chips for multi-processor servers, particularly the ones packaged in thin cases for blade servers. Core chips should deliver more than enough performance while reducing the cost of cooling systems and slashing electricity costs. On the way is a server-class chip code-named Sossaman, and according to Tom’s Hardware Coolsitewebsite, this will be followed by Woodcrest, with the quad-core Clovertown and Whitefield versions expected in 2007 and 2008. There may even be eight-core versions.
Where the Banias/Donath/Yonah line does not shine is in applications where maximum performance is required, especially high-speed gaming. Intel knows it can be done, because AMD chips have often delivered better gaming performance at lower clock speeds. But users will have to wait a year for the first real desktop processor in the Core range, Conroe, named after a lake in Oregon.
Then we’ll find out how far Intel has really changed, apart from the marketing. – Guardian Unlimited Â