Intel chief executive Craig Barrett outlined his company's
road-map for the delivery of technology merging computing and
communications at last week's Intel Developer Forum in San
Francisco.
The convergence, he said, would show the ongoing validity of
Moore's Law. "Intel's commitment to Moore's Law now allows us to
create integrated platforms that deliver a broad range of
capabilities for individuals and organisations that use
technology," said Barrett.
Moore's Law was advanced by Gordon Moore in 1965 and identified the
ability to double the number of transistors in the same silicon
area every year. He later broadened this to 18 months.
Intel is now trying to keep the law alive by offering technology
such as multi-core processors and other platform innovations, said
Barrett, to squeeze greater performance from the processor.
Developers would play a key role in making sure that multi-core
solutions kept Moore's Law going.
Barrett said, "We will continue to innovate at the transistor and
individual chip level, but our job now is to work with the extended
eco-system of developers, software designers, systems engineers,
service providers and others to innovate at the platform level.
"Multi-core technology represents a tremendous opportunity for the
developer community. It provides the foundation for almost
limitless innovation and creativity in addressing the changing ways
people want to use computing and communications devices."
Going forward, Intel is developing Intel hyper-threading, lagrande
security features and virtualisation abilities to allow users to
run different operating systems on the same hardware platform.
Barrett also highlighted new Intel I/O (input/output) acceleration
technology, designed to improve communication between networked
servers and applications for handling the overwhelming demands of
app-lications, such as web commerce, messaging, storage and server
clustering.
Delegates at the conference also heard of Intel's plans to produce
chips for the forthcoming Wimax fixed wireless broadband
technology.