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INTEL BANKS ON NEW CHIPS AND NEW TECHNOLOGY
Chris Nuttall

When asked about morale at his company, Paul Otellini recalls the mood of staff a week ago when Intel warned Wall Street about another tough quarter.
During an open forum for workers at the world's biggest chipmaker, the chief executive explained that demand for its microprocessors was turning out to be weaker than expected in the first quarter as it suffered further losses in market share to rival AMD.
Response from the audience of sales, marketing people and engineers at Intel's Folsom campus in the foothills of California's Sierra Nevada was «as lively and robust and challenging as anything we've had», he recalls. «It was not a bunch of people who were morose or shocked.»
This week the chipmaker had a chance to fight back at its Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in San Francisco, where it unveils many of its product plans and chip roadmaps to its developer community. Executives' speeches focused on its first new architecture in five years being introduced in the second half. It promises major performance and energy-saving improvements for the complete range of mobile desktop and server processors.
Intel's 100,000 employees worldwide have a case for being downhearted, with shares in their company dipping below $20 to their lowest level in 18 months. But their leader recalls that each time Intel has combined new processor designs with advances in core technologies, it has made rapid gains in market share.
Mr Otellini predicts this alignment will happen again this year as the new chips become available and Intel's huge manufacturing capacity switches to silicon with circuit widths of just 65 billionths of a metre, down from the current 90 nanometre standard, Intel says it is a year ahead of AMD in making the switch.
The cost savings brought about by the smaller circuitry mean the price cuts that analysts see as inevitable as Intel tries to win back market share will be less painful.
For its part, AMD argues it is still getting far better performance than Intel out of 90nm and customers are favouring its processors on more than just price grounds.
All processor manufacturers are emphasising «performance per watt» in their sales pitches - arguing that the new dual-core technology that puts two processors on the same chip gives both performance improvements and energy savings. These can dramatically cut utility bills that exceed the cost of the computer over its lifetime. The developer forum was told that Intel's new architecture would bring an 80 per cent improvement in performance and a 35 per cent increase in energy savings in its top-end server processors.
With PC demand weakening, Intel is also exploring new markets and concepts to mantain its growth. Its one-year-old Digital Health division is still in its formative stages but Digital Home has got off to a strong start with the launch of the Viiv platform in January and the shipping of hundreds of thousands of units this quarter.

CHRIS NUTTALL
Tratto dal «Financial Times» del 13 marzo


  • Alignment: allineamento, sinergia
  • Architecture: architettura (informatica)
  • Billionths: miliardesimi
  • Campus: insieme dei terreni e degli edifici che fanno parte di un'università, specie negli Stati Uniti
  • Chief executive: amministratore delegato
  • Chipmaker: produttore di chip/microcircuiti integrati
  • Chip roadmaps: progetti dettagliati per la produzione di nuovi chip/microcircuiti integrati
  • Cost savings: economie di costi
  • Desktop (computer): elaboratore/PC da tavolo
  • Developer: sviluppatore (ovvero "chi si occupa di sviluppare" il termine italiano, per quanto goffo, è assai comune)
  • Digital Health: sanità digitale
  • Dual-core technology: tecnologia a doppio nucleo
  • Employees: dipendenti
  • Energy saving: risparmio di energia
  • Executives: dirigenti
  • Manufacturing capacity: capacità produttiva
  • Market share: quota di mercato
  • Marketing: marketing, distribuzione, commercializzazione, collocamento
  • Marketing people: operatori del settore commercializzazione
  • Processors (Micro): microprocessori
  • Nanometre: un miliardesimo di metro
  • Product plans: piani di prodotto
  • Quarter: trimestre
  • Rival: concorrente
  • Sales people: operatori del settore vendite
  • Sales pitches: discorsi promozionali
  • Server processors: processori per server
  • Staff: dipendenti, impiegati, personale
  • Utility bills: bollette per il pagamento delle utenze
  • Watt: watt (unità di potenza elettrica)
  • Workers: dipendenti (qui meglio di "lavoratori")