Intel Opens First European Microprocessor Research Lab

Result of collaboration with Barcelona's Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya

BARCELONA, Spain, September 19, 2002 -- Intel Corporation today opened its first microprocessor research and development center in Europe, Intel Labs Barcelona (ILB) located at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) in Barcelona, Spain. This arrangement will help expand Intel's industry leading capabilities in microprocessor research and development, as well as enable Intel to continue delivering industry-leading performance on future generations of microprocessor.

The center is co-chaired by three UPC professors: Antonio González, who has been a leading microarchitecture researcher for more than 16 years, Roger Espasa and Toni Juan, both experts on high-performance 64-bit processors. ILB research and development efforts will include the investigation of microarchitectures and compilers to support enterprise, business, and consumer platforms. An important research focus is into methods of increasing processor performance while reducing power consumption and heat generation.

"Intel is building a industry leading team of recognized microarchitecture researchers to address the challenges of the next generation of microprocessor" said Justin Rattner, Director, Microprocessor Research and Intel Fellow. "UPC's expertise in microprocessor performance and power aware research, complement Intel's own internal exploration producing a world-class team."

Microprocessor Performance
To enable future applications such as more natural interfaces, photo realistic 3D rendering, and intelligent information discovery, significant increases in processor performance, which translates into more transistors per processor, are required. Intel has consistently delivered on Moore's Law for three decades, doubling the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits every 24 months. The goal of our performance-related research is to continue translating these additional transistors into useful performance improvements.

Power Aware Microarchitecture
Main barriers to increased mobility in computing are battery life and heat dissipation. One of Intel research's top priorities is to reduce overall power requirements while increasing performance. To achieve this, Intel is developing "power-aware" architectures that are conscious of power and thermal issues and able to manage them dynamically. In particular, to support our power-aware research, we deeply look at tools to model active power, leakage power and temperature control. At Intel Lab Barcelona, the researchers will investigate microarchitecture innovations, new compiler techniques and instruction set extensions that will provide more performance at lower power.

"The opportunity to work with Intel allows us to collaborate with many of the world's leading researchers in our field and to learn from product groups working on leading edge technologies," said Antonio González, co-director of Intel Labs Barcelona.

"This synergy between industry and university research provides an environment that will have a very positive effect on our work," said Roger Espasa, co-director of Intel Labs Barcelona.

"The collaboration with Intel offers students and graduates exposure to real-work situations and challenges" added Antonio Juan, co-director of Intel Labs Barcelona.

"Europe has a strong history in innovation and technology developments that are relevant for markets worldwide," said Maria Marced, Intel vice president, Sales and Marketing Group, and general manager, Europe, Middle East, Africa Operations. "We believe our investment in UPC will give us unprecedented access to the best ideas Europe has to offer."

The Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya is one of the largest technical universities in Spain with approximately 30,000 undergraduates. Its dedicated Computer Architecture Department, with about 70 full-time faculty members performs research in areas ranging from VLSI Systems Design to Processor Microarchitecture and Code Generation.

Intel has been funding university research since 1980. Intel currently oversees and supports research projects in more than 75 universities around the world.

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