Intel developer forum kicks into high gear

Held annually, the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) gives developers, analysts, engineers and geeks (such as yours truly) a peek into the roadmap of the world's biggest chipmaker over the next 12-24 months.

Held in San Francisco, this year's event was kicked off by Intel CEO, Paul Otellini, whose keynote speech covered a lot of ground, creating a real stir as he demonstrated chips made using a new manufacturing process that can cram a boggling 2.9 billion transistors onto a single chip. Due out in 2011, this could result in big jumps in memory capacity as well as more powerful and more energy efficient computer processors.

Otellini also talked up the company's new PC processor family, codenamed Westmere, which is due by year end 2009. According to Otellini, the new 32 nanometre manufacturing process will let Intel produce chips containing 1 billion transistors in commercially viable quantities.

This is big news as Intel's current range of CPUs is manufactured using a 45-nanometre technology and a smaller manufacturing process should result in faster, more energy efficient chips. In the ultra-competitive PC processor marketplace, 32-nanometer chips will also put Intel ahead of arch-rival AMD.

Intel's first installment of the Westmere family (which seem bizarrely codenamed after shopping malls), the Clarkdale and Arrandale CPUs, will also incorporate built-in graphics processing.

This could in turn help to drop PC costs by reducing the number of separate components used. This said, the actual performance of any built in graphics processing will also play a big role in determining if PC gamers are to splash and add their own graphics hardware for decent gaming performance.

Otellini also talked up the next generation of Atom chips that drive the bulk of today's ultra-low cost netbooks sold, saying a new version (which in staying with the shopping centre theme has been codenamed Saltwell) will significantly improve battery life.

Otellini expects Intel to sell more Atom processors than other chips as they make in-roads into embedded electronics such as in-car entertainment systems and TV set-top boxes whilst maintaining their already sizeable footprint with the Atom CPU in the low-end PC space.

The importance of embedded and consumer electronics to Intel was further underscored by Otellini announcing that both BMW and Mercedes-Benz are to use Atom-based in car entertainment systems from 2012 onwards.

Going with a standardised platform should not only make development faster and easier for both manufacturers, but could also be significantly more profitable as it'll save them from investing in building new platforms from the ground up for each subsequent model of car.

Silicon aside, Otellini finally pulled things together by talking up the move away from the era of the personal computer to one of personal computing in which people are beginning to use multiple computing devices throughout their day.

Using what he called "the Continuum", Otellini envisages a future which people will use a common computing environment ranging from high-end desktop PCs all the way down to tiny low power mobile devices, all of which will be able to run the same applications and have access to the same data.

Otellini also showcased Intel's open source Linux implementation, Moblin, initially positioning it as an alternative operating system for netbooks, but also demonstrating its latest version running on a mobile internet device only marginally larger than a typical smartphone.

Intel may be late to an already crowded mobile market, but Mobiln's interface looked pretty slick, and should Intel bring an ultra low power version of their Atom CPU to market, they could quickly gain ground in the mobile space as phones continue to get smarter and PDAs become more connected.