Fall 2007 mobile peripherals
Each IDF is the occasion for Intel to present one or several new mobile peripheral concepts. This time, we will keep in mind a peripheral that was presented to illustrate the Moorestown platform, which was developed to be more energy efficient than the Menlow. The latter is already based on the very low power Silverthorne processor. However, in the domain of mobility, power consumptions should be reduced to a strict minimum.
But it wasn’t on the technical level which attracted the most attention (and it was only a non functional concept!) but more the design of the device. More or less all of the journalists present were wondering if Intel wasn't making a demonstration of the iPhone 2.0 because the overall concept was so similar.
Conclusion
The main message Intel got through in this IDF was "everything is on schedule". The evolution of the production process proceeds at a good pace, new processors will arrive on time (the successors are already on the horizon), parallel programming is about to evolve and massively parallel accelerators are starting to concretize.
In addition to advancing at a breakneck pace, Intel’s strategy is very coherent in its evolution of software while investing in the massively parallel processor market. All of this and aspiring to reach the general public level and take a significant part of the GPU market pie. Even if we have serious doubts about ray tracing, which we believe was more promoted to fascinate the crowd, we have to admit that the Larrabee could significantly impact the small world of PCs or at least start a revolution which could be based on its successors. We are therefore excited to know more on the subject.
Finally, once again this IDF made us conscious of the gap between Intel and AMD. Intel easily dominates everywhere. Although we all hope that AMD can more fully rival Intel for a more dynamic and innovative market, even in the most optimistic view we can see that this situation isn’t going to change that easily.
Intel is well committed on all levels and has colossal resources, while AMD is lacking in certain areas and has large financial problems. Now, we're all wondering when will AMD be able to become, once more, the « cuckoo bird » which comes out to shake up the well paced Tick/Tock of Intel ?
