SAN FRANCISCO: Intel Corp. will unveil new microprocessors, including one for data
networking equipment, at its conference for software and hardware developers later this
month, as the world's largest chipmaker seeks to boost sales in areas outside its mainstay
personal computer business.
The network processor and a related semiconductor that directs information in and out
of the guts of networking gear will both be based on Intel's XScale architecture, which it
is pushing as a standard in both the wireless and networking industries, spokeswoman
Christine Chartier said.
At the Intel Developer Forum, the Santa Clara, California, company will also announce
new Xeon processors that are the brains of powerful server computers that serve up Web
pages and comprise computer networks.
Intel will also announce that it will resume manufacturing chipsets for Xeon
processors, which it stopped doing in early 2000, Chartier said. The chipsets connects the
processor to memory chips and the rest of a server computer.
Executives will also tout Intel's forthcoming McKinley processor, which is due to be
available in large quantities by the middle of this year. McKinley is the successor to the
Itanium processor, Intel's first chip that crunches data in chunks of 64 bits at a time,
compared with the 32 bits that Intel's Pentium and Xeon chips do.
For years, rivals Sun Microsystems Inc. and International Business Machines Corp. have
sold their own 64-bit chips, which are used in very powerful computers. Performance
details and the price of the new chips and chipsets weren't yet available, Chartier said.
Chief executive Craig Barrett on Feb. 25 will kick off the San Francisco conference
with an address on the state of the telecommunications and computer industry. The
conference, which runs through Feb. 28, is expected to draw about 4,000 people, the same
number who attended Intel's conference last fall.