Intel chief bets on Internet

SAN FRANCISCO: The Internet is the thing. It will change the universe and

will become the basis for information access, eCommerce, communications and

entertainment. These are the reasons why the Intel chief Craig Barrett is

positive about the future. He added that Internet has just started its build up

globally and would eventually change the way we live. Barrett was delivering the

keynote address at the Intel Developer Forum that got underway on Monday here.

The key developer event has attracted engineers, developers and analysts from

all over the world.

He pointed out that the ‘turbulence’ era for the Internet was over and it

was time for the industry to consolidate and prosper. Barrett said that there

was immense opportunity for the growth of the Internet, especially in the

emerging markets.

"Now is the time to breakaway and bring to consumers some exciting

technology. The only way to beat the recession is to bring out new technology

and innovate," Barrett said. He called upon the developers to collectively

create new products into the market.

Silicon to stay for 15 more years



Barrett said that silicon would continue to drive the semiconductor industry
for another 15 years, at least. According to him, by then each processor will

have two billion transistors and have speed of 30GHz. The processors would be

fabricated on 10nm thin wafers against the current thickness of 0.13 micrometer.

He added that even if the base changes to nanotubes or other elements, the basic

technology to build those switches in the transistors would remain the same.

The Fab Four



The Intel chief said that the four areas that Intel should closely work with
the developer community are security, Web services, broadband and wireless. The

technologies are basically there. He said that open standard was emerging as an

important trend, along with computing segmentation and communications

modularity.

IA-64 will only get stronger



In his address, Intel vice president, and general manager Enterprise Platforms
Group, Michael Fister, showcased some of the technologies that Intel is working

on in the server space. He also announced that in the IA-64 architecture series,

after McKinley, Intel was working on Madison and Deerfield series, which would

be released in 2003. This would be followed by Montecito series, expected in

2004. Rubbing off speculations, Fister said that Itanium was just the beginning

and the momentum in this area was increasing.