Intel showcases world's first Moorestown platform at IDF Taiwan

Intel showcased the world's first Moorestown platform at the recently held Intel Developer Forum in Taipei, Taiwan.

In his opening keynote on Day 1 at the IDF: Innovating a New Reality, Anand Chandrasekher, Senior Vice President, General Manager, Ultra Mobility Group, Intel Corp., said: "It is a world in transformation. There have been 3 billion new entrants in the global economy. The resilience of the global economy has been incredibly strong. The Internet has equalized the level-playing field."

He added how technology innovation and strong industry collaboration have driven the digital economy over the past 40 years, and the universal impact that the Internet and mobile Web has had in people's lives.

"Technology innovation is the catalyst for new user experiences, industry collaborations and business models that together will shape the next 40 years," said Chandrasekher. "As the next billion people connect to and experience the Internet, significant opportunities lie in the power of technology and the development of purpose-built devices that deliver more targeted computing needs and experiences."

Asia's growing might
Chandrasekher added: "IT is more important today, than it has ever been over the last 20 years. Asia has been playing a dramatic role." In fact, in 2007, Asia accounted for over 25 percent of Intel's revenue. "Look at the PC companies. ASUS, Acer, Lenovo, etc., are now in the top 10. The number of PCs in China exceeds the US's population. There are more handsets in Taiwan than the people in Taiwan," he highlighted. As for the Internet, Asia is now the fastest growing region online.

The foundation of the Internet is silicon, whose foundation is the Intel architecture (IA). Chandrasekher said: "It is the ecosystem for growth, tomorrow. If you don't have the tools to drive the Internet ecosystem, you have fallen behind." As a comparison, during 1971, the 4004 processor had 2,250 transistors. In 2008, the Core 2 Quad processor has 820 million transistors. It also consumes 93 percent less power. "Process is one piece of the foundation. Architecture is the other," he added.

Welcome Nehalem!
Chandrasekher next focused on the upcoming Nehalem microarchitecture, which, he said, has an extremely energy efficient design. "We have introduced the turbo mode and dynamic power management. We have hyper-threading technology as well." He pointed out that Intel has a 32nm version of the Nehalem, which should be out soon. "There has been a huge performance increase, almost 2X, with Nehalem."

According to him, developers love parallel programming and the Intel IA. "We are giving the Larabee. It increases the throughput performance and the programmability."

World's first working Moorestown platform
The event's showstopper: a live video from a Moorestown lab in Taiwan, which also demonstrated the world's first working Moorestown platform! The Moorestown platform is scheduled for 2009-2010 timeframe.

Moorestown comprises of an SoC, codenamed "Lincroft," which integrates the 45nm processor, graphics, memory controller and video encode/decode onto a single chip and an I/O hub codenamed "Langwell", which supports a range of I/O ports to connect with wireless, storage, and display components in addition to incorporating several board level functions.

Chandrasekher showed off a ''Moorestown'' wafer to the delegates.

In the next blog, I will introduce you to the Father of the Atom!