KEY POINTS:
The big news here at Intel's IDF is that the chip maker will in November launch its 'Penryn' chips, which are based on 45 nanometre technology and provide a 20 per cent increase in performance and improved power efficiency. Production of the chips is apparently already well under way.
CEO Paul Otellini also waved around a 300mm silicon wafer based on 32 nanometre technology which will ready in 2009.
What all this means is that Intel is able to make its chip technology smaller, which allows more power to be packed into the same piece of silicon.
Also, Intel's fifth generation Centrino mobile computing architecture for laptops will include built-in WiMAX support and native support for the two competing high-definition formats - Blu-ray and HD-DVD.
That means that machines running on Intel's Montevina platform will work just as well with either format.
Also, Otellini spent a good deal of time talking about graphics chips, feeding speculation Intel, which is already the market leader in sales of integrated graphics chips, will take on NVIDIA and ATI with so-called discrete graphics cards.
AMD bought ATI last year and wants to merge graphics and CPU in the near future. That leaves Intel with the choice of developing its own graphics cards or cosying up even further to NVIDIA. It will probably do both, such is its wariness of AMD, which slipped up big time in getting its Barcelona generation of quad-core processors out the door after competing fiercely with Intel in the market for dual-core chips.
AMD issued a spoiler attack on Intel this week by announcing a triple-core chip for desktop computers.
All of this means the remainder of the year and next year will be a busy time for chip-makers with an acceleration in the output of new chips. That's good for the consumer as each new generation and configuration of multi-core processors means better computing performance.
Meanwhile, lost in the chatter was Steve Jobs' visit to London to announce the long-expected debut of the iPhone in the UK.
As expected, O2 will be the carrier of choice and the iPhone will sell for 269 pounds. Ouch, that's NZ$747.
Which means that if you want to bring an iPhone home and software hack it to work on the Vodafone network, buy it in the US, where you'll pay a mere US$399 (NZ$551).
