Intel VP: Intel’s Relentless Pursuit Of Moore’s Law To Bring CIOs Incredible Performance, Stronger Security, Lower Costs

Demonstrating how the company capitalizes on Moore’s Law, Intel previewed its forthcoming Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® processor 5300 series – products with four processors inside – for workstations and servers, and the Intel® Core™2 Extreme quad-core processor for the enthusiast market segment. Available this year, the products are based on the revolutionary Intel® Core™ microarchitecture and deliver socket compatibility with existing Intel platforms.

The chips will extend technology and performance leadership by delivering up to 50 percent more performance¹; within the same power envelope than today’s dual-core generation, already well recognized as the world’s highest performing processors. Gelsinger also reiterated that Intel will deliver a power-thrifty 50 watt quad-core server processor next year.

“Today saw the IDF stage awash in a sea of 65 nanometer silicon as we demonstrated the breadth and depth of our enterprise processor portfolio,” said Gelsinger. “We also confirmed our commitment to leading and working with the greater high-tech industry in a number of ways to champion true open industry standards that will bring more and more benefits to businesses of all shapes and sizes.”

Intel also revealed plans for more than 50 new SSE4 instructions, extending the Intel® 64 instruction set architecture to better take advantage of Intel’s next-generation 45 nanometer (nm) silicon manufacturing process and expand the performance and capabilities of Intel® Architecture. New products based on the Intel 64 instruction set architecture will first appear next year and benefit a variety of applications, including those involving graphics, video encoding and processing, 3D imaging, gaming, web servers and application servers.

The company also highlighted several new industry standards initiatives. Intel and IBM have co-developed a specification for a new PCI Express technology, codenamed “Geneseo,” that would extend the standard to include co-located hardware on the bus. The goal is to make such tasks as visualization and media processing, math intensive data crunching and content processing faster and more efficient than existing add-in cards or software approaches.

Intel and IBM plan to further collaborate with the PCI-SIG, one of the oldest and most respected open industry standards organizations and the group that maintains PCI and PCI Express specifications. As further example of its support for industry innovation, Intel has announced that it will license its front-side bus technology to select vendors.

New Family of Enterprise Class Processors
Gelsinger highlighted how the company has refreshed its entire line-up of dual-core products, including more than 30 new enterprise-class processors for both business PCs and servers, all launched in less than 100 days. Among these is a new family of dual-core Intel Itanium processors designed for the high-end, reduced instruction set computing (RISC)-dominated space. Intel’s Itanium processor family continues to gain momentum; worldwide system revenue in the first half of this year grew by nearly 40 percent compared to the same period last year, according to analyst reports.²

Intel also has extended the Intel Xeon processor line, targeting lower-end, single-processor servers typically used for home offices and small businesses with the introduction of the Dual-Core Intel Xeon processor 3000 series, dramatically improving server performance and power efficiency. Intel also launched the latest ultra-dense Dual Core Intel Xeon Processor 5148 that features a low thermal design point of only 40 watts.

For business PCs, Gelsinger disclosed details on the company’s next-generation Intel® vPro™ technology that will extend the platform’s manageability and security capabilities. Available next year, the platform will include the third generation of Intel Active Management technology, adding support for the new Web Services Management (WS-MAN) standard and new “system defense” features that can slow or stop the spread of viruses and worms. Further bolstering PC security, this next-generation technology will also include for the first time Intel Trusted Execution Technology, formerly codenamed “LaGrande Technology”.

Lastly, Gelsinger discussed a proposed method for measuring energy-efficient performance (energy efficiency at a given performance level) on the client and encouraged the industry to move toward standardization of methodologies that deliver meaningful results to end users.

About the Intel Developer Forum
IDF, now in its 10th year, is the premier global technology forum for hardware and software developers to confer on Intel-based platforms, technologies and solutions, and the new usage models they enable. Visit www.intel.com/idf for more information.

Intel, Xeon, Itanium, vPro, Core and the Intel logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.

* Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

¹ Performance Claim: Based on published/measured SPECint_rate_base2000 results Dual-Core Intel Xeon Processor 5160 based platform details: Dell PowerEdge 2950 Server platform with two Dual-Core Intel Xeon Processor 5160, 3.00 GHz with 4M L2 Cache, 1333 MHz system bus, 8GB (8x1GB) FB-DIMM memory, Microsoft Windows Server* 2003. SPEC binaries built with Intel C/C++ Compiler 9.1. Referenced as published at 123. For more information see http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/res2006q2/cpu2000-20060501-05940.html Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processor 53xx based platform details: Intel preproduction Server platform with two Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processor Clovertown, 2.67 GHz with 2x4M L2 Cache, dual 1333 MHz system bus, 8GB (8x1GB) 667MHz FB-DIMM memory; Microsoft Windows Server x32 Enterprise Edition. SPEC binaries build with Intel compiler 9.1.

² Q2 2006 Release of the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker. August 22nd 2006.