Intel unveils core micro-architecture

SAN FRANCISCO: In an effort to deliver better performance clubbed with less energy consumption — global chip manufacturing major Intel — has unveiled its core micro-architecture at the ongoing Intel Developer Forum.

“This core micro-architecture is a low power, high performance and highly scalable micro-architecture that can be used across desktop, mobile and server platforms. This is our foundation of delivering even greater energy efficient performance to meet our customer's demands in a better way,” explained, Justin Rattner, Intel Senior Fellow, Chief Technology Officer, Intel.

Citing energy as one of the most critical factors towards delivering better performance Rattner said that management of energy will help the company deliver more when it comes to areas like battery life and power density.

“With the help of this technology we are going to have less energy being consumed per instruction. So as a direct effect of this — there would be a lot of energy efficiency with our systems. Our aim has been to provide all best capabilities and yet save on the energy. We are able to do this now with the help of this architecture,” he added.

As part of this core micro-architecture — Intel will be launching its processors Merom for mobile, Woodcrest for servers and Conroe for the desktop segments.

All these processors are expected to provide better overall performance and energy-efficiency and would be released by the end of this year.

Reinforcing Intel to the fore

Intel believes that its new found focus towards chips that use less power and have multiple cores to process data faster will bring some shine back to a product lineup that is constantly facing challenge from arch rival AMD.

Acknowledging the fact that Intel is under "tremendous competitive pressure," Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner said that the company believes that energy is the next frontier.

“We are under tremendous competitive pressure but our innovative product line-up is much better than what the industry has to offer not only today but moving forward. And we will continue to have that competitive advantage attached with us, Intel's new core micro architecture will have innovative technological advancements like - Intel wide dynamic execution, intelligent power capability, advanced digital media boost, smart memory access and advanced smart cache.”

"You'll see Intel's Core Micro-architecture implemented in mobile systems, but significantly moving now into desktop systems and server systems. We know that our customers would love this as a product," he added.

The successor to the current Core Duo chip will have 20 percent more power while using the same amount of energy. While, the new desktop chip will boost power by 40 percent while using 40 percent less energy, and a new server chip will deliver an 80-percent gain in performance with a 35 percent reduction in power use, Rattner added.

Speaking about the involvement of dual core within the enterprise segment, Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president of Intel's enterprise unit, said that 85 percent of Intel's server chips should have two cores by the end of the year.” We are hopeful that 85 per cent server platforms shipped this year will be dual core. The market forces are driving this and we firmly believe that this is where the future lies,” he added.

Speaking about the manufacturing technology being used for these products, Rattner said that the company is going for 65nm technology. “We have the 65 nm technology and moving forward we would be moving towards the 45 nm technology by next year. Ideally we would be mobilizing all our fabs online for this and we will continue to invest towards this end,” he added.

Intel's developer forum is an important venue for the technology driven community to roll out new products and showcase applications. The event is well attended by Intel's partner community, customers as well as analysts from all around the world.

According to the company, Conroe to deliver 40 per cent improvement in performance and greater than 40 per cent reduction in power as compared with today's Intel Pentium processor for desktops. Meanwhile Woodcrest is expected to deliver greater than 80 percent improvement in performance and greater than 35 per cent reduction in power as compared with today's dual-core Intel Xeon processor for servers.