Fall IDF 2006 - Day 1: 45/65nm, UMPC Update and Quad-Core
by Anand Shimpi & Larry Barber on September 26, 2006 5:03 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
UMPC Update
Six months ago at Spring IDF everyone was talking about the Ultra Mobile PC, but with the UMPC launch long gone the world hasn't changed much at all. UMPCs, much like Tablet PCs after their introduction, are little more than toys with little function thanks to size, battery life and display constraints. Despite the lackluster market reception, Intel is still committed to developing processors for the UMPC market and firmly believes that at some point, the issues associated with these devices will be resolved.
The Core Solo/Pentium M processors used in current UMPCs use approximately 5W of power, and by the 1st half of 2007 Intel is expecting to cut the power of these chips in half. In another year, we'll be looking at 1/10th the power (0.5W) and 1/7th the size of today's UMPC processors, which will hopefully lead to longer battery life and smaller form factors. Intel gave a realistic sounding target of 7 hours of battery life for a UMPC by 2008, much better than the 3 hours of today's best UMPCs.
Anand Chandrasekhar demonstrated a prototype UMPC with WiMAX support during Otellini's opening keynote:
The UI was custom designed by a company called streetdeck, and appeared to be far easier to navigate than the current UMPCs that simply use the default Windows XP UI.
One of the biggest limitations of UMPCs is the fact that they have no custom UI, similar to what things would be like if Media Center didn't have a 10-ft UI. Windows Vista will address some of the issues associated with UMPCs that have small, high resolution displays, but ultimately a UI similar to what streetdeck has put together will be necessary for UMPCs to succeed.
Volkswagon came on stage with a demonstration of an in-car entertainment system that could wirelessly link up with the prototype UMPC:
The NAV system in the car could receive locations from the UMPC:
Of course streaming audio/video from the UMPC to the car's entertainment system was a part of the demonstration:
The front two seats featured the ever-popular "TVs in the headrests" feature, and the driver was able to stream a movie to one screen and a commercial to another screen so each rear passenger could have his/her own entertainment. Add in two pairs of IR headphones and you've got the perfect keep-the-kids-quiet entertainment system in a car.
Final Words
We'll have more IDF coverage later today, but for now it's off to another meeting...
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GNStudios - Wednesday, September 27, 2006 - link
Is Quad-core going to much faster than dual-core, like when core 2 duo came?Reply is appriciated. :-)
Niv KA - Wednesday, September 27, 2006 - link
I have reasons to belive that whatever will come after Gesher will be very different from what we have today. Gesher is translated to brigde in Hebrew. Therefore I have reason to belive that what ever Gesher will be, it will be a transition to a new technology.I know I repeated myself a few times.
-- Niv K Aharonovich
sprockkets - Wednesday, September 27, 2006 - link
It used a Netburst and most likely a prescott core processor to operate WTF?GhandiInstinct - Wednesday, September 27, 2006 - link
The day, in a press conference, the day in which multi-code is mastered in software, that we see in a video game demo, a full fledged Torando tearing down a metropolis.yacoub - Tuesday, September 26, 2006 - link
Good coverage so far: Lots of pics, informative text between them, and lots of new tech incoming from Intel! wootporkster - Tuesday, September 26, 2006 - link
Any news on Santa Rosa chipsets? I couldn't see them in the road map.porkster - Tuesday, September 26, 2006 - link
Intel and Microsoft have no idea when it comes to what people will buy and can afford.Ye, like in the picture we are all going to buy 3 and 4 of these flop devices for our cars. Without these devices being under $200, no one will take then serious.
It seems like anytime someone bring up a portable, they have to use an expensive cpu in it. I can't see why you can't jsut echo a wifi'ed screen from another computer at home or in the car. A device the is a terminal, not a separate computer.
mino - Tuesday, September 26, 2006 - link
"Years ago Micron talked about equipping a chipset with an on-die L3 cache to help improve performance, and it's looking like Intel will be doing just that"IBM has it since 2002 ... ;)
BTW it was the main reason IMB did not jump on Opteron so eagerly. They have a chipset hugely hugely superior to Itel's Truland since 2003. Game over period.
That snoop cache is the thing which brought SC Nocona Xeons on par with SC Opterons in 4P-8P scenarios!!!
First Intel DC Smithfield _IS_ single-die, it is just glued together but single-die. The reason being MCM puts huge strain on FSB so they put an arbitter on a glued chip, to help achieve even mediocre 800FSB on their chipsets of the time.
mino - Tuesday, September 26, 2006 - link
"Years ago Micron talked about equipping a chipset with an on-die L3 cache to help improve performance, and it's looking like Intel will be doing just that"IBM has it since 2002 ... ;)
BTW it was the main reason IMB did not jump on Opteron so eagerly. They have a chipset hugely hugely superior to Itel's Truland since 2003. Game over period.
That snoop cache is the thing which brought SC Nocona Xeons on par with SC Opterons in 4P-8P scenarios!!!
BTW First Intel DC Smithfield _IS_ single-die, it is just glued together but single-die. The reason being MCM puts huge strain on FSB so they put an arbitter on a glued chip, to help achieve even mediocre 800FSB on their chipsets of the time.
mino - Tuesday, September 26, 2006 - link
screwed title, if posiible please delete/vote out. Thanks.