Intel not just Inside-the-box

MUMBAI, INDIA: It is more than a CPU player as it asserts poignantly in its statements and baskets. Think of hardware system security, manageability, energy side developments, software products to make data centres more agile and moves towards software-defined data centres; and you know that we are certainly not talking of just a chip-maker here.

Today at a press briefing outlining the road for 2014, Intel drummed up (well, a demo of an interesting gesture-based music application and) its expanding focus as it picked out some highlights that will continue from 2013 to 2014 and on. Chief among them are the processor's giants strides into areas beyond its traditional forte (and many of them incidentally make the top buckets of Enterprise IT market) like storage, networking and software applications-related areas.

"Many storage products are incorporating new strengths of Xeon and at the same time new latency-targeted impact can be seen on networking side by Intel." Srinivas Tadigadapa, Director - Enterprise Sales, Intel - South Asia fleshed out the new strategy and thrust.

Year 2013, in the words of Intel, saw the company take major steps in areas like IoT and HPC with their applications growing across sectors. With Intel Quark technologies, Intel adds - it is extending the flexibility and scalability of the x 86 ecosystems which encompasses more than 40 years of compute innovation and standards into new markets."

There also seem to be some interesting intersection points between the consumer and enterprise segments that have shown their influence in the way Intel is approaching and evolving its product baskets and strategies for each. Responding to a CIOL query, Tadigadapa explained how increasingly tools, software applications, Cloud, cluster files' or HPC deployments, Hadoop side work and more work are signaling that there's a lot to pick and exchange between erstwhile enterprise markets and consumer markets.

"The way market is moving on consumer side has its impact on how data centres evolve inside enterprises to manage this slew of new devices and the complications or implications that come with them. Growth of connected devices will impact data centre market further."

It hints that these two markets are no more water-tight tanks operating in their own bubbles but they mirror some serious reflections. The growing trend of CPU-GPU combo offerings has tended to be stronger this year among many chief players in the processor industry, and it appears that smart phones are lending more than the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) force to data centres or server parts of this processor market.

As Sachin Kelkar, Head - APAC Scale Software Program, Intel Software & Services Group seconded - Consumerisation of IT is a big thing today and the impact will grow in strength and new approaches for both the markets.

He added, "BYOD is creating an interesting engagement on deployment of applications. We are already asking questions like - can enterprise devices be touch-enabled?"

Besides these cross-pollination pockets, many hotspots continue for 2014 as Intel sees it. Tadigadapa pointed out data centres hosted by Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) or Telcos, HPC applications as few directions that will grow stronger ahead this year.

 

While it may be too early for Intel to let us peek into new-generation work like Broadwell architecture, it could be definitely another high-octave spot to watch out for in 2014. It is still shaping up and by the look and sound of some initial feelers on configurable TDPs (Thermal Design Power) or SDPs (Scenario Design Power); it is apparently packing a road (map) ‘broad'er than initial ticks of Haswell ahead.

It's not just about the excitement of 18 cores on the table here but also about how will this salvo help Intel against rivals gaining steam in smartphone markets and or gaining appetite in server spill-over segments (when it again boils down to energy and power after all).

Networks, storage, supercomputers, clusters, mobiles, 2-in-1s and new cores in its ever expanding circle- well, 2013 and 2014 looks like more than a chip-off-the-old-block for Intel surely.