Intel Corp (INTC)

[Windsock]

Intel's Pain Machine

http://www.forbes.com/home/technology/2007/03/28/intel-penryn-nehalem-tech_cx_bc_0328intel.html

Intel calls it its "tick-tock" strategy. It could also be described as a plan for dishing up an annual dose of pain to competitor Advanced Micro Devices.

In a briefing with reporters Wednesday, the chipmaker introduced a new design for its lineup of processors, dubbed Nehalem, and offered new details on the so-called Penryn line of chips it will introduce during the second half of this year. Pat Gelsinger, general manager of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group, described Nehalem as the biggest change to the way Intel builds chips in more than a decade, comparing it to the shift Intel made in the mid-1990s to the Pentium Pro design.

Nehalem is part of Intel's so-called "tick-tock" strategy for cranking keeping the pressure on rival AMD by focusing its manufacturing might and research and development efforts on revamping its lineup of processors each year.

With each tick, Intel plans to take advantage of updates to its manufacturing processes to, for example, squeeze more transistors into each piece of silicon, as it will with Penryn this year. Intel will roll out six Penryn processors for laptop, desktop and server markets under its Core 2 and Xeon brands that will pack more transistors into each processor by shrinking their size to 45 nanometers from 64 nanometers today. Intel promises this will up their performance without increasing their consumption of power.

Each "tock" represents a new design for its lineup of chips, represented by Intel's Nehalem architecture. Nehalem will allow Intel to squeeze as many as eight cores--or computer "brains"--onto each slice of silicon next year. Among other benefits, more cores will allow computers to tackle more tasks at the same time. Multiple cores would allow a user to edit a PowerPoint presentation in one window while watching a movie in another without slowing down a computer's performance. Moreover, Intel claims each core will be able to perform two tasks at the same time.