During today's opening session of the Intel Developer Forum, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich outlined the company's progress in ultra-mobile devices such as tablets, phones and wearables with new products over the next year and beyond, including a new, lower-power product family.
Krzanich said Intel plans to leave no segment - from datacenters to ultra-mobile devices - untapped. "Innovation and industry transformation are happening more rapidly than ever before, which play to Intel's strengths. We have the manufacturing technology leadership and architectural tools in place to push further into lower power regimes. We plan to shape and lead in all areas of computing."
This year's Intel Developer Forum marked the first keynote addresses by Krzanich and Intel President Renee James since assuming their new roles in May.
In her presentation, James envisioned a new era in which every device and every object computes, meaning that integrated computing solutions must be smaller, faster, more versatile and produced in higher volume.
"Semiconductor-based technology will continue to address the world's most pressing problems and exciting opportunities, changing how we live our lives, run our cities and care for our health," said James. "Intel has played a pivotal role in every previous technology transition and will continue to enable breakthroughs in the future."
Krzanich said that Intel this week will introduce "Bay Trail," Intel's first 22nm system-on-a-chip (SoC) for mobile devices. "Bay Trail" is based on the company's new low-power, high-performance Silvermont microarchitecture, which will power a range of innovative Android and Windows designs, most notably tablets and 2 in 1 devices.
Defining the expanding ultra-mobile segment as smartphones, tablets, 2 in 1 tablets that take on PC functions with add-on keyboards, and other devices beyond traditional mobile computers, he said that ultra-mobiles are a more dynamic segment than is often recognized.
"Smartphones and tablets are not the end-state," he said. The next wave of computing is still being defined. Wearable computers and sophisticated sensors and robotics are only some of the initial applications."
Krzanich announced the Intel Quark processor family. The new lower-power products will extend Intel's reach to growing segments from the industrial Internet-of-Things to wearable computing. It is designed for applications where lower power and size take priority over higher performance.
Intel will sample form-factor reference boards based on the first product in this family during the fourth quarter of this year.
As the next era of computing grows even more personal, wearables are a hotbed for innovation. Krzanich highlighted a bracelet as an example of a concept with reference designs under development, and said the company is actively pursuing opportunities with partners in this area.
In high-speed 4G wireless data communications, Krzanich said Intel's new LTE solution provides an alternative for multimode, multiband 4G connectivity, removing a critical barrier to Intel's progress in the smartphone market segment. Intel is now shipping a multimode chip, the Intel XMM 7160 modem, which is one of the world's smallest and lowest-power multimode-multiband solutions for global LTE roaming.
As an example of the accelerating development pace under Intel's new management team, Krzanich said that the company's next-generation LTE product, the Intel XMM 7260 modem, is now under development. Expected to ship in 2014, the Intel XMM 7260 modem will deliver LTE-Advanced features, such as carrier aggregation, timed with future advanced 4G network deployments. Krzanich showed the carrier aggregation feature of the Intel XMM 7260 modem successfully doubling throughput speeds during his keynote presentation.
He also demonstrated a smartphone platform featuring both the Intel XMM 7160 LTE solution and Intel's next-generation Intel Atom SoC for 2014 smartphones and tablets codenamed "Merrifield." Based on the Silvermont microarchitecture, "Merrifield" will deliver increased performance, power-efficiency and battery life over Intel's current-generation offering.
Krzanich also demonstrated a 14nm-based "Broadwell" system. "Broadwell," set to begin production by the end of this year, will be the lead product made using Intel's 14nm manufacturing process. The first "Broadwell" products will deliver higher performance, longer battery life and low platform power points for 2 in 1 and fanless devices, Ultrabooks and various PC designs. Krzanich hinted that the Broadwell PCs could arrive in the second half of next year, but didn't provide an exact date. Chips based on Broadwell will be 30 percent more power efficient and faster than their Haswell counterparts, he added.
Saying that Intel will bring the full weight of its manufacturing process and architectural leadership to the Intel Atom processor family, he confirmed Intel intends to bring its Intel Atom processor and other products based on the next-generation "Airmont" microarchitecture to market on Intel's 14nm process technology beginning next year.
As the only company offering 3-D Tri-gate transistors and the only semiconductor manufacturer in production at 22nm, Intel leads the industry in transistor technology by about three years. With its coming 14nm process, Intel's second process generation with 3-D Tri-gate transistors, the company will further extend this lead. Advanced 3-D Tri-gate transistors enable the improved performance and energy efficiency demanded by today's spectrum of computing that ranges from ultra-mobiles to servers.
Intel's datacenter business develops solutions that help businesses keep pace with the increasing demands for cloud services and for managing data generated from billions of users and connected devices worldwide.
Intel's newest Intel Xeon processor family for datacenters will launch later today; last week Intel introduced a portfolio of datacenter products and technologies, including the second generation 64-bit Intel Atom C2000 product family of SoC designs for microservers and cold storage platforms (codenamed "Avoton") as well as for entry networking platforms (codenamed "Rangeley").
Datacenter Processor Family
Intel introduced a t IDF the Intel Xeon Processor E5-2600 v2 product family
(code named "Ivy Bridge-EP"), a set of processors that promises to redefine
the server, storage and networking infrastructure found in datacenters.
The new Xeon product family is based on Intel's 22-nanometer process
technology, contributing to energy efficiency improvements of up to 45
percent when compared to the previous generation. The processor family also
features up to 12 cores and delivers up to 50 percent more performance
across variety of compute intensive workloads. The new chips have up to 12
processor cores, support up to 30MB of cache and draw between 60 and 130
watts of power. The clock speeds range from 1.7GHz on the 10-core, 70-watt
E5-2650L v2, to 3.5GHz on the low-end, quad-core E5-2637 v2 and six-core
E5-2643 v2 chips. The 12-core chips include the 2.7GHz Xeon E5-2697 v2,
which draws 130 watts of power, and the 2.4Ghz Xeon E5-2695 v2, which draws
115 watts of power. The chips will be priced from US$202 to $2,614 in
quantities of 1,000.
The Intel Xeon processors E5-2600 v2 product family will power the new IBM
NeXtScale System, a high-density, flexible computing platform designed for
high-demand workloads such as analytics, technical computing and cloud
delivery. Intel's newest processor family also will be used in IBM's new
x3650 M4 HD high-density storage server, designed for for managing big data
and business-critical workloads, as well as all of IBM's two-socket systems
including System x racks and towers, Flex System, iDataPlex, and BladeCenter
offerings.
Using Intel's Open Network Platform (ONP) server reference design, Intel's
customers can use high-volume Xeon-based servers combined with industry open
standards to consolidate virtualized networking applications. This allows
them to deliver high throughput performance and latency for Software Defined
Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) workloads.
Intel's ONP server reference design is based on the Wind River Open
Virtualization Profile and the Intel Data Plane Development Kit Accelerated
Open vSwitch.
To assist in accelerating the deployment of software defined
infrastructures, Intel also announced Intel Network Builders ecosystem. The
program allows ecosystem partners to take advantage of Intel's reference
architecture platforms to accelerate SDN and NFV deployments. With more than
20 technology companies contributing, Intel's partners will be able to
access a reference architecture library of proven solutions to build and
optimize software-defined infrastructure based on today's
telecommunications, cloud, and enterprise datacenter requirements.
Starting today, system manufacturers from around the world are expected to
announce hundreds of Intel Xeon processor E5 family-based platforms. These
manufacturers include Acer, Apple, Asus, Bull, Cray Cisco, Dell, Fujitsu,
HP, Hitachi, Huawei, IBM, Inspur, Lenovo, NEC, Oracle, Quanta, SGI, Sugon,
Supermicro, TYAN, Wiwynn and Unisys.
The Xeon processor E5-2600 v2 product family will be offered with 18
different parts which range in price from $202 to $2,614 in quantities of
1,000. Additionally three single-socket Intel Xeon processor E5-1600 parts
will be offered for workstations which range in price from $294 to
$1080.