e.Digital Corporation (fka EDIG)

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Intel puts the 'Internet on a chip'

As a result, Intel can build a single chip that includes an XScale processor core, flash memory and a MicroSignal Architecture DSP core. Thanks to the clock speed of the XScale chip up to 1GHz, and other performance gains achieved through the integration of the three chips, Intel said the new Internet chip will speed the delivery of applications such as streaming video to handheld computers and cell phones. A DSP serves to refine signals, such as a voice, coming into a cell phone.

"What we've done is taken what was previously a minimum of three chips, and possibly as many as five, and brought it all into one chip. When you integrate components together, you have a much higher level of performance that's available," Fazio said. In the case of Intel's new chip technology, integrated memory ensures the processor is fed with enough data "so you can run (applications) that were previously not thought possible to run on these devices," he said. At the same time, Intel said the chip will consume less power by eliminating the buses, or data pipelines, that connect the three chips. Buses burn a relatively large amount of power. "The mobile Internet is not designed to duplicate the PC.

It is designed to enhance the Internet with a new experience," Engibous said during an April speech at a J.P. Morgan H&Q investor conference. Intel, for its part, may be more focused on processing power than on communications. Putting the emphasis on the processor "is a better way to process data" in a phone or handheld, an Intel spokesman said. To date, Intel has produced only test versions based on its Internet-on-a-chip concept. However, it plans to begin shipping its first chips based on the three-way technology in the first half of 2002.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,5083051,00.html

H.P.