 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
ARTICLE
By Robert Syputa, Senior Analyst
On March 2nd, 2008, Intel officially took the wraps off one of the best prepared for shifts in company fortunes ever engaged by the largest IC company – Atom and five other new entries along the evolutionary road map for processors. In their core digital world, Intel has been the most instrumental for creation of new IT and networking industries. And the company has played an early role in solid state memories and enabling semiconductor processors that have been leveraged in diverse areas of electronics including chip sets, graphics, and evolved memory and bus architectures. The question for well over a decade has been, “Where does Intel go from here?” Obviously Intel has championed WiMAX but that only raises more questions about how WiMAX and wireless in general fits into the picture to contribute in a significant way to Intel’s sales and profits. WiMAX can’t survive as an altruistic effort to usher in new technology for other’s benefit. WiMAX now enters upon competition for next generation global communications but how does Intel leverage this foot in the door to participate broadly in new devices and networking? In the question of where Intel is heading in core processors is wrapped up evolution of personal broadband wireless as the universal connectivity layer of converged communications, entertainment and computing. With Atom, Nehalem, Menlow, and particularly Moorestown, Intel sets upon multiple x86 core micro-architectures that can be used in new classes of small yet powerful portable devices and also in new classes of networking and media and applications servers that leverage the world’s richest and most diverse development environment. The development environment leverages multiple OS, web and program development environment. Enabling the new chips are new high-k and metal interconnect based semiconductor design process technologies that have been about 12 years in development. The knowledge of the roadmap for these processes and the Moore’s Law progression of processing, integration, cost and power capabilities is what initiated Maravedis’ exploration into OFDM, MIMO and other technologies as enabling of a groundbreaking evolutionary stage of wireless broadband more than eight years ago. We knew that until wireless designs finally converted (but evolving) to true digital frequency domain and spatial domains that could make better use of spectrum to transform wireless into personal broadband everywhere that we could not see Intel assuming a major role. A dream of microcircuit development since early geniuses at Intel, TI, and Motorola had first dreamed about the blue sky of digital ICs in the 60s has been unified communications. But to achieve unified communications, computing had to become distributed and wireless: the two are inextricably connected by practical tying of communications to place and people. Inevitably, this vision has been a frustrated dream due to lack of mass of industry development and enabling semiconductors; that is until now. Intel almost stumbled on their success in microprocessors; earlier attempts at wireless were premature: voice centric wireless that did not leverage core competencies in semiconductor processes and computers and networking could not be leveraged. Now I strongly suggest that Intel is on the way to establishing longer roots that penetrate horizontally into the hallo ground of the wireless industry at large and take it into the smart distributed wireless broadband network computing. Intel’s Atom Enters the Company into SDWN as the Next Computer Revolution I had talked about ‘Clash of the Titans’ starting seven years now in a way that discussed process technology and digital wireless and antenna technologies as key enablers. But the discussion did not fully embrace the prospects that Intel would finally veer towards the massively parallel, robust processing architectural motif. With wireless finally reaching the stage of digital communications from low level PHY and, abstracted high-level MAC as part of common open protocols, a tremendous new revolution will be achieved that greatly amplifies the microminiaturization of the computer. The sub-nucleotide DNA of digital circuits has awaited the lifeblood and veins of multi-dimensionally adaptive wireless broadband evolution. The engines of abstraction for the either world of communications has been the pursuit of massively distributed and massively parallelism of smart networked communications. The ‘network is the computer’ of the wired world only to become partially lifted from its moorings as wireless broadband starts to come of age. The first salvo in the campaign is Intel’s Atom The Atom is the first truly unique design that uses Intel’s exciting high-k isolation property semiconductor and metal interconnect processes. This evolution has required many years of efforts and tooling up of new process ecosystem from core lithographic and silicon wafer and deposition and extraction processes. What sets it apart is the price/performance/power dissipation ratio. And, fitting with evolution of networks, busses and communications media ecosystems, Atom becomes enabling of a new field of electronic applications in embedded devices at extremes of the spectrum of applications. This is starting down the path of departure from massively integrated development: for Intel the most dramatic shift since the dawn of the first PC processors. Wireless broadband becomes the inter-device-location and personal use catalyst that multiplies the number and utility of connections and degrees of creative freedoms to build applications. The fuels for a renewed digital revolution are programs and content that connect people, places, resources and actions most intimately and instantaneously. This is the world that Intel is prepared to enable like no other company. Before moving on you may wish to read Intel’s recent press release:
Power consumption of processors is a key concern for mobile devices. It is not the only concern: disk drives, removable media drives, displays, wireless modems, memory, etc. all consume power which impacts battery life of portable devices. These issues are being worked on by companies in both the Smartphone and mobile computing industries - made all the more important as these fields converge. Intel says nothing about WiMAX or LTE in their recent Atom press release. One of two initial versions is designed to support mobile broadband communications which extends to WiMAX, 3G, WiFi, UMB, LTE and further generations of wireless. Intel has said that they plan to integrate wireless functions in future mobile device processors. Most likely future processors will either integrate or work with multiple wireless systems that quite possibly will include both WiMAX and LTE (WiMAX-LTE). What is most important about Atom is the new path this sets for personal to massively parallel and smart distributed computing. This is of phenomenal importance to unified communications Additional questions are how well Intel and other WiMAX companies can meet the challenges of competition from LTE, how open Intel is to adoption of LTE as well as WiMAX, and how well these networks integrate. Qualcomm, TI, Broadcom and other semiconductor companies have their unique strengths and competitive positions. Qualcomm in particular is well suited to compete in multi-spectrum and multi-mode convergence of wireless. Impacts on mobile:
For more information you can contact the author. robert@maravedis-bwa.com Copyright © 2008 by Maravedis Inc. All Rights Reserved.
|
|
|
|
|||
| Created by: Virage>2.0 |
