Intel's Otellini has company focused on low power
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The more interesting news was Otellini's goals for Intel over the rest of the decade. The company plans to ship a generation of processors on its 45-nanometer manufacturing technology by 2009 that come with graphics integrated right onto the processor, similar to what rival Advanced Micro Devices has planned for its Fusion chips. Intel will be investing in a joint venture with KDDI, a Japanese telecom company, with plans to build a WiMax network in Japan. And as expected, Intel talked up its low-power chips for MIDs (Mobile Internet Devices), with plans to reduce the power consumption of its handheld computer chips by a factor of 10 compared with the Silverthorne processor, expected next year.
This is all part of Intel's search for growth, which has meandered a bit this decade. Still, you've got to have a strategy for the future, especially as the PC market matures over the next five to 10 years. That appears to have three legs: first of all, don't squander the base market of PC and server processors.
To accomplish that, Otellini has implemented a more gradual series of manufacturing transitions that makes sure the company doesn't try to introduce a new architecture with a new manufacturing technology, and that it doesn't go too long in between revisions to its chips. The hope is that this prevents AMD from catching it napping and losing significant chunks of market share, which is probably the best description of the years from 2002 to 2006.