Hot! IDF Spring 2003: the reportage continues

The first IDF day is over. Hasn’t brought any announcements – it was traditionally dedicated to IT segment evolution strategies.

Craig Barrett made a keynote speech. He spoke of industry and new technologies prospects for the near and far future. He underlined the scalable content concept (same looking content on any display be it your smartphone, notebook or large TV). It’s clear industry requires standards and scalable platforms in order to achieve this.

Hot themes of this IDF include:

1. Intel Centrino – the initiative and brand offering an entire component serie:
   • Pentium 4-M (ex-Banias) processor
   • New family of 855 mobile chipsets
   • Mini PCI WiFi module
   • Configuration drivers and software
   • The most important: certification of notebooks and other mobile solutions for WiFi and other standard compatibility, including operation time.
2. 90nm Prescott and its future servers brothers: Nocona (1Mb cache, dual configurations) and Potomac (4Mb cache(!) and multi-CPU configurations)
3. Manitoba "all-in-one" solution for handsets that features XScale and DSP cores (including wireless GPRS part), 4Mb flash memory. Currently only Intel can offer such a platform with wide developer support, including the reference design and software development kits
4. Itanium 2 in the Madison variant with 6Mb cache
5. The all-chipset transition to PCI Express bus in 2004, including related new form-factors and a standard codenamed New Card to replace the PC Card that features Low Power PCI Express, USB 2.0 and SMBus. Such bays will be integrated in notebooks as well as desktops (it’s high time – I’ve got 3 notebook cards which I´d like to use with my desktop as well.)

We’ll discuss all of the above soon and now some information (it’s nice to spend the evening in a bar talking with right people. :-)

• Prescott will be announced and showcased at IDF tomorrow
• In 2004 Intel will support DDR II memory modules in servers and then in desktops
• Manitoba smartphones will be inexpensive – about $300-350 initially to get cheaper in the future. The chip itself will cost about $25.
• Thursday will bring more on Nocona and Potomac. For now: Nocona is a 90nm chip with 1Mb cache and initial 3GHz; expected in Q4. Potomac – a 90nm chip with up to 4Mb cache and initial 2GHz+; expected early in 2004
• Besides, existing 130nm server solutions will reach 3GHz before the year ends and already now will obtain 1Mb caches for dual configurations.

Appendix: The photo of DDR II DIMM PC5300 (667MHz) on Infineon BGA chips. The company is ready to make them in volumes already in 2004.

P.S. After the keynote Craig Barrett said he is a big fan of Matrix looking forward to the release of Matrix 2 and even Matrix 3. :-)

At the same event we’ve watched some excerpts from these movies and were introduced an Atari game that is to connect the sequel and "triquel".

More news to follow very soon! Stay tuned and read the newest!

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