Intel's Power Play

We reported on August 12 that Intel was
planing to unveil a new mobile processor
that will dramatically cut power consumption.
Today Intel chief executive Paul Otellini used
the opening keynote of Intel Developer Forum
in San Francisco to give a first public
demonstration of the next generation
low power micro-architecture.

Heat production is a major issue in processor
chips. It prevents computer builders to create small form factor, fan-less
computers. For enterprises, heat production in servers requires
enterprises to invest in extensive cooling systems for their server rooms.

The technology is set to dramatically cut power consumption for both
server, desktop and laptop processors and over time the technology
should allow for a new kind of ultra low power portable computer that
offers all day battery life.

Chips based on the new technology are due out in the second half of next
year. The chips are codenamed Merom for mobile devices, Conroe for
desktops and Whitefield for servers. The chips will offer two cores and
support 64 bit instructions. They will however lack support for hyper
-threading, at least initially. A micro-architecture sits one layer below the
chip architecture such as the IA-32 that is used in today's Pentium and
Xeon chips. It allows software to interact with the chip architecture.