Albert Yu, senior VP and GM, Intel Architecture Group, used the Intel Developer Forum Conference, Fall 2000 platform to demonstrate some of the technology Intel has lying in wait on its roadmap. Included in the demonstrations were low-power mobile solutions, the 64-bit Itanium solution, and the Pentium 4 processor, which Yu pushed all the way to 2GHz.
The Pentium 4 processor is built on an entirely new technology foundation, the first redesign of its micro-architecture since its P6 marchitecture was launched in 1995. The Netburst micro-architecture, as it is now officially slugged, offers a host of new technology that will allow Intel to introduce the P4 at 1.4GHz later this year. Using the 850 Intel chipset, the processor will use RAMBus memory, although the company admits that it will also support SDRAM, despite an initial commitment to RAMBus. As demonstrated, this technology will take the processor to at least 2GHz speeds.
The Itanium processors - which were also demonstrated by Craig Barrett, Intel president and CEO, in a simulated Web environment - represent Intel`s first steps in its 64-bit computing journey. The processors acted as database and streaming media servers in the demonstration, and were tested for their load balancing and fault tolerance capabilities on stage. As a SQL database server in the simulated dot-com, the machine and its surrounding architecture scaled from 5 000 concurrent simulated users to 15 000 simulated users without a performance impact through load balancing.
The Itanium will initially use 0.18-micron technology, but is expected to drop to .13-micron on copper soon after its initial release.
For mobile users, Yu showed a power-optimised notebook that utilises minimal power when in use but has the headroom to cater for the rare rogue app - referred to by Yu as a "power virus" - that could sap the machine`s battery.
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