Tags: Diane Bryant, Intel, enterprise IT management, CIO, mobile Internet device, Atom processor, low-cost PC, emerging markets

The speed of change in the software world is daunting. In his own keynote, SVP and General Manager of the Ultra Mobility Group at Intel, Anand Chandrasekher, noted that everyone is trying to “unleash the Internet, unwire it, and make it go mobile.” Again, the words sound almost obvious, like common sense. They’re not.

It’s true that Intel specializes in bringing incredible advancements to technology on a tick-tock product development schedule that allows industries to grow and thrive. You can see in the matter of weeks and months that Intel’s efforts go from being rumor to being confirmed technological advances (like the recent Dunnington news) that the world is watching itself change in real time. It’s true that a lot of time at IDF in Shanghai was devoted to presentations on specific technologies, platforms and products.

We heard a lot more about Nehalem, about visual computing, about multithreaded CPUs (And just for fun, compare this detailed look at Intel’s sometimes-inscrutable codenames with a detailed look at those same codenames, from a slightly different perspective). Keynotes from Gelsinger and Chandrasekher, along with Software and Solutions Group General Manager and Intel Vice President Renee James and Intel’s Andrew Chien helped to clarify just how much more mobile our technology will allow us to be.

But always in the backdrop was Shanghai. In this video podcast, Jason Lopez connects the dots between Intel’s efforts to push technology past its limits and Shanghai’s amazing journey to pass its own.

Tags: IDF, Shanghai, Intel developers, Pat Gelsinger, architecture for life, Anand Chandrasekher, unleash the Internet, Dunnington, Nehalem, visual computing, multithreaded CPUs, Renee James, Andrew Chien, Jason Lopez, IDF2008, Silverthorne, Intel Atom, mobile Internet device, Nehalem, Dunnington, Multithreading, virtualization, high performance computing, wireless technology, Centrino, WiMax, 45nm, 32nm

This year’s Spring IDF took place in Shanghai.

Tags: Intel, Pat Gelsinger, Dadi Perlmutter, Anand Chandrasekher, Intel Atom, Shanghai, IDF2008, Silverthorne, Intel Atom, mobile Internet device, Nehalem, Dunnington, Multithreading, virtualization, high performance computing, wireless technology, Centrino, WiMax, 45nm, 32nm

Dr. Ren Ng, president and CEO of Refocus Imaging, led a demo of his company’s light field cameras, which record the full light field as it enters the camera, ultimately extending the capabilities of conventional digital cameras and “turning camera hardware into software.” Ng explains that by doing this, light field cameras “bring the economics and power of Moore’s Law to the camera system.” (snapshots from their Web site illustrate the demo, which they re-created live, on stage at IDF!).

Also on hand was Dr. Mendel Rosenblum, co-founder and chief scientist at VMware. He shared the stage with Intel Senior Vice President and General Manager, Digital Enterprise Group, Pat Gelsinger, to demonstrate a flex migration across four generations of hardware as well as the value of the deep collaboration between Intel and VMware.

There was a live demo by Classmate PC, following the news-making announcement of the new, second generation classmate (”featuring a 9-inch LCD screen, 6-cell battery, 512MB memory, a 30GB hard disk drive and a built-in webcam“), the unveiling of Intel’s Tukwila Itanium processor (“Two billion transistors in one processor”), and a mobility-focused Asianux demoonstration of the breadth of Moblin Usage, including a new way to play video from the Web and a new way to order Chinese food.

A Montevina demo was noteworthy after Intel Senior Vice President and General Manager of Intel’s Mobility Group, Dadi Perlmutter, revealed that Intel’s next generation mobile platform, Montevina, will provide twice the 3D processing power of any current integrated solution.

Demos showcasing Neusoft driver assistance, Fuwa robot, Adobe Air, Sobey real-time rendering and MID & mobile designs rounded out the event.

Tags: Intel, IDF, Shanghai, mobility, Ren Ng, Refocus Imaging, light field cameras, Mendel Rosenblum, VMware, Pat Gelsinger, flex migration, Classmate PC, Tukwila, Itanium, processor, Moblin, Montevina, Dadi Perlmutter, Fuwa, Adobe Air, Sobey, IDF2008, Silverthorne, Intel Atom, mobile Internet device, Nehalem, Dunnington, Multithreading, virtualization, high performance computing, wireless technology, Centrino, WiMax, 45nm, 32nm

Intel Senior Vice President and Digital Enterprise Group co-GM Pat Gelsinger speaks with PodTech’s Michael Johnson about what is going to happen at the event in Shanghai.

Here, Gelsinger talks about the scheduled keynotes and new mobile internet devices based on the Intel Atom processor. Gelsinger shares his fondest memories of IDF over the years.

If you aren’t attending in person, that’s not a problem. Intel blogs will keep the information flowing in both directions with regular updates, photos and video.

If you’re not attending the event in person, be sure to follow online at Intel’s IDF pages and check in here for more video podcast coverage.

Tags: Pat Gelsinger, IDF, IDF2008, Nehalem, WiMAX, Dunnington, Intel Research, Mobile Internet Devices, Intel Atom, Intel

Intel’s Bryan Rhoads took the opportunity to blog from the conference using a MID. He used the mobile Internet device to bring his blog readers along with him to breakfast, and to snap a picture of two of Intel’s tiniest products - the Atom processor and the silicon core of an Intel Core 2 Duo.

We showed those tiny products to attendees at SxSWi, and found out how some creative folks are interacting with their computers (and what’s inside).

Related Stories:
IntelMooresLaw, IntelMobility

Tags: SxSW Interactive, IntelMooresLaw, IntelMobility, video podcast, Austin, SXSWi, South by Southwest, SXSW, Intel, Interactive, ultramobile, Atom, Bryan Rhoads, MIDs, mobile Internet device, Core 2 Duo, processor

It’s no secret that China has come a long way in a short time — from being a country known for manufacturing cheap products for export to being, potentially, the next great IT superpower. National Science Board figures show that in 1994 there were only seven U.S. companies doing research in China. Ten years later, that number had risen to more than 500. Gartner analysts James Popkin and Partha Iyengar wrote, in their 2007 book I.T. and the East, that the world “will witness the birth of a real IT superpower if government restrictions are loosened and the Chinese instinctive talent for entrepreneurialism continues to be encouraged.”

It’s against this backdrop that the Intel Developer Forum in Shanghai, April 2 and 3, 2008, takes on extra significance. China now supplies the talent, within the country, to conduct advanced research in chip design. At this year’s IDF in Shanghai, Intel will provide an update on new technologies and features that enable devices with better performance, less power, more mobility, and lower cost.

If you’re not attending the event in person, be sure to follow online at Intel’s IDF pages and check in here for more video podcast coverage.

Tags: new processor, ultra-mobile, Intel, mobility computing, UMPC, mobile Internet devices, notebooks, desktops, netbooks, net-tops, Atom, 45nm technology, Penryn, Core 2 Duo, IDF, National Science Board, James Popkin, Partha Iyengar, I.T. and the East, Intel Developer Forum

Intel’s Brian Fravel helped to announce Atom’s brand name on Sunday, followed by Bob Duffy and others. Outside of Intel, conversation continues. Most blog mentions highlight the tiny processor’s likeley impact on mobile internet devices. As Joel Hruska writes at Ars Technica, “The Atom architecture is intended to give Intel a foothold in handheld devices that have traditionally been the sole domain of very low-power RISC processors.” Noting that no Atom-enabled products have yet been announced, Yahoo! Tech’s Christopher Null predicts that “you should definitely expect some in the next few months.”

More info at:
Mobility@Intel blog
The Intel Pressroom

Related Stories: Intel, IntelMooresLaw, IntelMobility

Tags: Intel, 45nm, transistors, mobile Internet devices, Intel Atom, Intel Centrino Atom, Brian Fravel, Bob Duffy, Joel Hruska, Ars Technica, Christopher Null, Intel, IntelMooresLaw, IntelMobility

Tags: Intel, Paul Otellini, Smash Mouth, Mobile Internet Devices, MIDs, CES, gaming systems, 45 nanometer

Tags: CES 2008, Intel, Atomic Test Museum, BlogHaus

Tags: Intel@Research Day, Intel, Justin Rattner, catom, claytronics

Intel announced that it will begin making 45 nanometer chips, code-named Penryn, in the second half of the year. The new microprocessors are the culmination of years of R&D using new materials to improve the efficiency and performance of silicon-based semiconductors.

The company says the new chip technology maintains Moore’s Law, the observation made by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in the late 1960s that the number of transistors doubles on chips every two years. Intel scientists say that transistors are now so small that more than 300 can fit on a human red blood cell.

In a recent earnings announcement, Intel officials said they expect to rebuild a lead in the computer chip market through innovation and manufacturing efficiency. Intel’s current line of microprocessors includes the Core2Duo, Core2Extreme, and Core2Quad.

In this video podcast, PodTech’s Jason Lopez visits Intel’s Hillsboro, Oregon research facility and fab.

Related Stories: IntelMooresLaw

Transcript:
Host: Jason Lopez – PodTech
Guests: Intel Spokesperson
Guest: Kelin Kuhn - Intel

Jason Lopez – PodTech
Transistors are the miniature machines of the heart of computers. The first transistors built on silicon in the 1960’s were relatively large compared to those of today. But in the last few years, scientists have sensed The End of Moore’s Law as the quest to double a number of transistors on a chip every two years has pushed the limits of physics.

This test wafer is used to measure the reliability of billions of H transistor and interconnect features, the blue prints for making microprocessors. For nearly 40 years, transistors have been made from a polysilicon gate and silicon gate oxide, the materials used to create the switch inside that turns it on and off. But with 65 nanometer technology currently in production, those materials have been pushed to their physical limits. To go smaller at 45 nanometers scientists said Intel chose new materials a Metal gate and High-K gate oxide based on the element hafnium. These materials have enabled yet again the doubling of the density of transistors within a two-year timeframe.

Intel code names its new family of 45 nanometer chips ‘Penryn’ which deliver a significant improvement in power efficiency and performance.

Speaker
This is a really tremendous accomplishment to get all the way down to 45 nanometer dimensions. When I joined Intel five micron dimensions were common. 45 nanometers is more than a 100 times smaller than that. So, quite remarkable.

Kelin Kuhn - Intel
If you think about it, if you look at the Intel 45 nanometer device technology, we can fit 400 transistors on something about the size of the human blood cell.

Speaker
So, it allows us to continue scaling and maintain this Moore’s Law type of evolutionary built up we’ve seen.

Speaker
Well, developing smaller transistors or technologies with smaller feature size is very key, because it allows you to pack more transistors on a chip which means you can do more things with that chip, that also means that these transistors when they’re smaller can use less energy when you switch them on and off. So, you have better power efficiency, you can get certain computational functions done using less energy, less power.

Jason Lopez - PodTech
Intel’s drive to adhere to Moore’s Law is as much an economic decision as it is a scientific one. It’s one thing to make the Metal gate and High-K gate oxide technologies work. It’s another to make 45 nanometer chips enlarged volumes to satisfy the market. Intel’s lead in the chip industry is based on its ability to deliver cheaper and faster microprocessors.

Speaker
Well, one of the key things that Intel does very well is what’s called Design for Manufacturability and the key there is to make sure that the product design and the process manufacturing technology are able to work together and produce high yielding, high quality products and because we’re an integrated device manufacturer, we do the design in-house, we do the process development in-house, we’re able to do a really good job at Design for Manufacturability up front and produce these chips in high volume.

Jason Lopez - PodTech
Metal gate and High-K gate oxide only atoms thick are more electrically efficient helping to reduce heat and power lost from leakage and improving transistor performance by 20%. The idea to use new materials has been around for more than a decade, but the technologies to deploy them were developed by hundreds of engineers over the past few years.

Kelin Kuhn - Intel
Okay so, if you think about how we build gate oxides, historically, we’ve used very simple silicon dioxide materials basically glass, and as we’ve developed our technology expertise over the years we started doing very elegant things to this glass to make ever better oxides basically the gate of the transistor.

When we introduced the Intel 45 nanometer process we moved a hafnium-based material as a radically different way of resolving our gate leakage issues and so it’s a very novel material system that’s intrinsic to the type of leakage improvements we see. Chip design was simple once and we don’t do that anymore. It’s complicated now because we already did the simple stuff that’s my humorous answer, but I think in today’s world if you look at a modern microprocessor. We’re talking hundreds of millions of transistors and it’s incomprehensible that humans can build this to be honest.

Every time we have a success in the fab. I sit back and look at this and we’re looking at devices that are one-tenth the wavelength of light. Little tinnie winnie devices and humans can build these very complicated things and if you think about it, a yielding dye in our process technology means every single transistor worked. Every single one of those 100 million transistors worked and that’s when we sell them. Can you believe it? Humans can actually make something where every single one of a hundred million plus devices worked, it’s remarkable, and we don’t do it as individuals, we do it as an international team.

Speaker
We had the fly of the wafers to Arizona, get them assembled and then fly them back to Folsom, California in order to actually test them.

Jason Lopez - PodTech
So, what was the feeling of the team when you booted up that first OS?

Speaker
I would say one word it was ‘Euphoria’. The team was just tremendously excited. When you considered a number of people involved in the two–and-a-half years that culminated in this boolean of major Operating System with Penryn, it was an awesome feeling.

Jason Lopez - PodTech
Is that simply because it worked or is it because a number of things work?

Speaker
Yeah, it really represents the fact that a number of things worked. Coming out of reset is not so monumentous as say (Inaudible) up to boot Windows XP, or Windows Vista or Linux because there is a lot of functionality that has to be working to reach that level of capability. So, the team was obviously excited for that. All this happened around. I believe we booted around 3:30 in the morning and there was just a lot of adrenalin in the lab at that time and this is a lot of excitement.

Jason Lopez - PodTech
It’s like a moon shot only you didn’t have the big screen looking.

Speaker
Yeah, you could say that. Maybe on a smaller scale, but yeah, that’s equivalent to us on the engineering team as our moon shot.

Copyright ©2006 PodTech.net. All rights reserved. Privacy policy

Tags: Intel, 45 nanometer, Penryn, microprocessors, semiconductors, Moore’s Law, Gordon Moore, Intel, Core2Duo, Core2Extreme, Core2Quad, Jason Lopez, IntelMooresLaw

Related Stories: IntelMooresLaw

Transcript:
Host: Jason Lopez – PodTech
Guest: Mario Paniccia – Intel
Guest: Mark Bohr – Intel
Guest: Kelin Kuhn – Intel

Jason Lopez – PodTech
I am Jason Lopez for PodTech.net. The race to make the smallest fastest chips is arguably one that has no end insight. Today’s chip companies can build transistor so small that more than 300 of them can fit on a red blood cell. The physical constraints are profound. Some of the connectors between components are made by gas and are just an atom thick. So, where to go from there? Well, here is an example, Intel uses light to test chips and it donned on engineers like Mario Paniccia, who heads the Photonic Technology Lab at Intel that lasers might be harnessed to do more than find defects.

Mario Paniccia - Intel
If we can send infrared lights through silicon to measure transistors, what if I could take silicon and send communication data through it and now do — everything we do today — modulating code to build optical components using silicon and the transmission properties of silicon. That evolution over the last couple of years has led to this program today, which we call Silicon Photonics.

Jason Lopez – PodTech
Although, laser-based chips are used away, scientists are still coming up with just-in-time innovations to build new processors that keep Moore’s Law on track, which essentially says that the number of transistors on a circuit doubles every two years as the cost to make that chip goes down.

Mark Bohr – Intel
Ten years ago many of us wondered whether we would ever get to this point.

Jason Lopez – PodTech
Mark Bohr is an Intel Senior Fellow, he spoke with me at the 45-nanometer lab at Intel’s Hillsboro, Oregon Campus.

Mark Bohr – Intel
Not only have we gotten to the point, but it probably didn’t take us quite as much time as we thought it would have.

Jason Lopez – PodTech
Now, when you say it didn’t take you quite as much time, ten years ago. How many years were you thinking?

Mark Bohr – Intel
Well, for the past ten years Intel has been developing a new generation of process technology every two years. Prior to that in the early 1990s, the pace was more of once every three years. So, we actually have picked up the pace over the past ten years. Again, we’ve gotten to this point this quickly is I think pretty impressive.

Kelin Kuhn – Intel
You don’t just walk down the street and start making transistors.

Jason Lopez – PodTech
Kelin Kuhn is the Device Manager for the Intel 45 nanometer chip in Hillsboro. She likens chips to Jumbo Jets. Just as no single person could design and construct a 400 seat plane, chip building requires massive resources and teams of people.

Kelin Kuhn – Intel
There is many years of technology innovation required; each technology builds on the previous technology. If you think about the technology today, if you compare our 45 nanometer technology to the previous technology, what you’re basically looking as a technology that takes about half the area, it’s about 20% faster and it’s about one-tenth the leakage of the previous technology. Now, keep moving that backwards, every technology generation before that built on the previous one and built on the previous one, you do that for many, many years and you can make very intrically small devices.

Jason Lopez – PodTech
The newest crop of chips from Intel is the result of some ingenuity. Mark Bohr says scientists are pushing the capabilities of traditional materials such as silicon wafers or polysilicon gate electrodes or thin oxide layers.

Mark Bohr – Intel
We’ve been scaling those dimensions, making them much smaller every couple of years, but lately we’ve been adding new materials to really enhance those transistors to get them to follow Moore’s Law. The average consumer really amazed at the amount of technology, high technology that’s in their computer at home, on their desk and their laptop. They could take a part of that chip, look inside they’d be surprised at just how much sophistication, new materials, ultra small dimensions are in that chip. The average chip may have 200 or 300 million transistors on it.

Jason Lopez – PodTech
For PodTech.net, I’m Jason Lopez at Intel’s 45-nanometer Lab in Hillsboro, Oregon.

< !—End Transcript -->
Copyright ©2006 PodTech.net. All rights reserved. Privacy policy

Tags: Moore’s Law, Intel, 45 nanometer, chip technology, IntelMooresLaw