Intel at ISSCC 2009
Considering this won’t go up until the third day of the conference, it just wouldn’t be right to call this “a preview.” However, last week, I had a chance to get just that from Mark Bohr as he provided an overview of Intel’s contribution to this year’s ISSCC program. Intel is very well-represented at the conference with a total of 15 papers including four of eight in the microprocessor session.
Although, I will not be attending the conference, I am receiving timely updates from our trio of engineers who are at ISSCC right now. Aaron Murray, James Bull, and Mohammad Ahmad are doing a great job of keeping everyone back here in Ottawa up-to-date on the happenings in San Francisco (at least the stuff that’s part of the official ISSCC agenda).
Mark Bohr’s plenary ended before I posted this, so there will soon be lots of places to find a digest of what he presented. The main point is that Intel is moving considerable effort into system-on-chip (SoC) development. As Mark showed, today’s microprocessors are actually really complex SoC devices incorporating several formerly discrete chipset components into a single IC. For example, the Core i7 – or Nehalem – design integrates the DRAM controller and DDR3 I/O’s. Intel is presenting more on Nehalem at the conference. Intel is looking to markets beyond the traditional PC to new, smarter mobile computing platforms. Mark summed it up like this: “Intel is no longer a one-size-fits-all company.”
Looking back, it’s interesting to recall a couple of events. First there was the great debate between TI on the SoC team and Intel on the system-in-package (SiP). At the time (I can’t recall how many years ago), Intel believed that it would be more cost-effective to bring various functionality together inside a package rather than monolithically on a single piece of silicon. Second was Intel’s XScale product line. XScale devices were once a hot topic amongst mobile device developers. But Intel sold the line to Marvell two-and-a-half years ago. What makes Intel circle back to SoC devices targeted beyond the traditional PC? Well, after the dust had settled on the Intel-TI SiP v. SoC debate and the XScale selloff, Apple introduced the iPhone. It’s success provided two key bits of information. First, it was possible for a smart phone to gain serious mass market appeal. Second, the iPhone suggested that a pocketable device was on the verge of being a serious computing platform. Now Intel returns to SoC, and it certainly has the manufacturing prowess to have a big impact in this space. Incidentally, part of Mark Bohr’s presentation touched on continued integration using the Atom core as a building block. Perhaps Intel intends to compete with ARM rather than license their technology as they did in the past with the XScale devices.
The bottom line is that Intel’s renewed interest in SoC technology is going to accelerate the development of ultra-portable computing platforms. Declining sales of the traditional desktop pc are fueling Intel’s move towards other markets. Growth in netbook sales and sockets for the Atom and similar devices are offsetting a lot of the loss in demand for more powerful microprocessors. But the netbook is only an transitional product. Computing is going more portable, and Intel will be ready.
Posted in Event Coverage, Events, Semiconductor Insights | 1 Comment »