Posted on 07/24/2008 1:59:42 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
(Intel is a sponsor of SVW)
Intel announced plans for a new business group manufacturing system-on-a-chip (SOC) semiconductors. SOCs are souped-up microprocessors that are tuned for specific types of devices, such as mobile internet devices, smart phones, or medical devices.
Intel's SOC chips combine a microprocessor with memory, graphics, and embedded software plus specialized chip and software functions.
SOCs can shrink almost an entire board of chips into just one or two chips. This makes digital products more reliable and less expensive to make.
Intel predicts that within a few years there will likely be billions of digital devices connected to the Internet. Most of these billions of devices won't be PCs but will include virtually any industrial, office, or home electronics device that can benefit from some processing and Internet connection--which is most electronic products. Intel wants its PC architecture to move into many different devices helped by the massive number of Intel architecture software developers.
To target non-PC products Intel is making SOCs that are specially designed for a specific product category.
Intel has several advantages against SOC rivals:
- It owns advanced fabs in which its design software is already tightly integrated into the complex process technologies used to make chips. It takes several hundred processes to make a chip and each machine has to be finely tuned to the design--minute differences can lead to low yields and other problems.
- Most SOC rivals rely on third party chip foundries to make their chips and sometimes it can take several months to fine tune a production run.
- Intel's microprocessor design is difficult to clone.
- Intel has unique chip functions that it can easily combine on its process technology.
Wednesday it announced 8 SOC chips and said it would have 15 SOCs in 2009.
Foremski's Take:
I asked Intel if it would make an SOC only for one customer. I was told that the goal is to create a broad family that would be available to any buyer.
However, Intel already makes specialist products for just one customer. It makes the motherboard for Apple's MacBook Air. It was given just a year to design the board, which gives the MacBook Air its super slim shape and lightness. It was a challenging project but Intel managed to do it--and it did it for just one customer. Why not do the same with SOCs?
One way for Apple to reduce its future costs of manufacture is to shrink as much of a notebook computer's motherboard onto SOC chips, making it a natural customer for Intel's SOC group.
If that were to happen, would Apple seek to enhance the uniqueness of its notebooks and hardwire special functions into the chip that would provide its products with special qualities--but also guard against clones?
Could others follow? Would it make sense for Dell notebooks to have different sets of chip based features from Lenovo or other notebooks?
Closer to customers . . . SOCs can also tie customers more closely to Intel because switching to rival Advanced Micro Devices' microprocessors would be more difficult due to the specialist nature of the chips.
Fragmenting the PC platform? There will be at least 15 different SOC platforms next year with different sets of capabilities--that means software won't be easily portable between the many Intel PC architecture platforms.
The SOCs will represent fragments of a 26 year old PC platform standard. It'll be interesting to see how those fragments will grow into billions of connected devices. Intel's latest business launch seeks to make a big impact on the future of tech.
WSJ: Intel Brings Out Multifunction Chips
fyi
CherryPal launches $249 mini PC into ad-backed cloud
Lots of players getting into the "small PC and device market"
Intel Brings Out Multifunction Chips In Bid to Diversify
********************EXCERPT*******************
Intel Corp. Wednesday unveiled the first fruits of a new effort to make multifunction chips, a strategy that could accelerate a longtime goal to diversify beyond computers.
The company said products it is developing -- called SoCs, for systems on a chip -- can be used in an array of devices, including car entertainment and information systems, TV set-top boxes, and industrial robots, as well as security and communications hardware.
Intel Takes on Embedded Market With Atom Chip
*****************************EXCERPT********************
Agam Shah, IDG News Service Thu Jul 24, 12:10 AM ET
Taking a jab at the embedded market, Intel on Wednesday said it was working on new x86 chips to use in devices ranging from consumer electronics to mobile phones.
| ADVERTISEMENT |
Intel is developing more than 15 system-on-chips based on the x86 core found in Intel's Atom chip, which can be found in mobile Internet devices and low-cost laptops.
By using the Atom core, the company is trying to increase performance and drop power consumption on the new chips, said Gadi Singer, vice president of Intel's mobility group, at a press event in San Francisco.
Information and entertainment centers in cars, for example, will be much richer and demand higher-bandwidth connections to the Internet, so chips need to deliver better performance-per-watt, Singer said. The new chips will include subsystems to accelerate applications for video decoding and security.
Intel has already said it is working on an Atom successor codenamed Moorestown, due for release in 2009-2010 timeframe. The platform includes an SOC code-named Lincroft, based on a 45-nanometer Atom core.
The company also has chips based on the Atom core under development for set-top boxes, including Canmore, which will be released later this year, and Sodaville, due for launch next year.
Although the power-efficient design fits well in mobile devices, Intel enters as a challenger, not an incumbent, said Nathan Brookwood, an analyst at Insight 64. Arm is the market leader in the mobile space.
I’ll be surprised if Intel pulls this market move off. First, the vast majority of gizmos use the ARM architecture.
Example - your startup company wants to design a new gizmo. You have the choice of using X86 or ARM. From my quick read of you either use one of the “off-the-shelf” X86 designs, and “off-the-shelf” ARM design, or you role your own using the ARM as the basis of the design.
There has always been an option of using X86 for off-the-shelf - but that was normally something from AMD or VIA. ARM has been the hands-down winner in this arena for years.
As for the roll your own option - which is how I make a living. The usual situation is that nothing off-the-shelf does the job required OR the customer has some value-add hardware that they want as part of the SOC. If past records are to be used as a metric. The one other time Intel tried to play in this arena they were marvelously inept and sluggish.
This is why I’m not worried about them taking my job away anytime soon.
“Fold THIS!” Ping
Should get very interesting....
Intel reveals future chips
AFP
http://technology.iafrica.com/news/technology/1062860.htm
[snip] Intel and rival Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) already sell chips with two or four “cores” - basically the brains in processors. Intel is to release in 2009 or 2010 a first wave of Larrabee chips with 16 to 48 cores and tailored for handling computer game graphics... Intel researchers have already made an 80-core processor [end]
Intel Reveals More Larrabee Architecture Details
Hot Hardware | August 04, 2008 | Marco Chiappetta
Posted on 08/04/2008 11:34:24 AM PDT by antiRepublicrat
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2056342/posts
Studio Chooses Intel for Chip Pact (Shrek picks HP)
Wall Street Journal | 7/8/08 | DON CLARK
Posted on 07/08/2008 12:45:27 AM PDT by BurbankKarl
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2042269/posts
If they mated: Intel and Cray to conceive x86 Linux monster
Ars Technica | 29 April 2008 | Jon Stokes
Posted on 04/30/2008 1:04:12 PM PDT by ShadowAce
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2009305/posts
Intel: Six-core chip to ship by second half ‘08
ComputerWorld | 17 March 2008 | Sharon Gaudin
Posted on 03/18/2008 4:01:05 PM PDT by ShadowAce
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1987809/posts
-and-
Researcher to demonstrate attack code for Intel chips [All OS’s vulnerable]
InfoWorld | Jul 16th 2008 at 3:06PM | By Sumner Lemon, IDG News Service
Posted on 07/16/2008 12:56:41 PM PDT by CarrotAndStick
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2046501/posts
-historically-
Interview - Stephen Morse: Father of the 8086 Processor
PC World | June 17, 2008 | Benj Edwards
Posted on 07/06/2008 1:35:22 PM PDT by HAL9000
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2041558/posts
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