Intel promotes dual-core and much more Intel Developer Forum Special By: Vanessa Ho IT World Canada (30 Sep 2005) Intel Corp. has pronounced 2006 as the year of dual-core.

At the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in San Francisco, the chip maker announced it would offer three new dual-core products – for servers, desktops and notebooks – in the latter half of next year. A dual-core chip is a single chip with two distinct CPUs that process simultaneously. Everyday tasks can take advantage of this technology. For instance, dual-core enables routine tasks – such as e-mail checks and software updates – to run in the background without slowing down primary tasks and applications. Each of Intel's new dual-core microprocessors: Woodcrest (servers), Conroe (desktops) and Merom (laptops) are expected to increase performance up to five times while reducing power.

“We need to think about delivering performance against a new metric,” said Paul Otellini, Intel president and CEO, in his opening keynote. And that new metric, he said, is performance per watt. Multi-core processors deliver performance without the power penalties that characterize the GHz approach, Otellini said.

Boosting performance while reducing power was a common theme at the IDF. By the end of this decade, Otellini hopes to take the power envelope down on its products from five watts to half a watt.

As well, Otellini said from now until the end of 2006, Intel will ship more than 60 million dual-core processors. And that's not the half of it. Intel won't stop at dual-core but has projects for quad- core and even double digit cores, the CEO said.

Multi-core technology, he said, will lead to a "significant increase in performance and efficiency and significant decrease in energy consumption and energy bills for users.”

Another highlight of the conference was Intel's unveiling the latest iteration of its Centrino notebook technology (designated "Napa") which offers better power management, radio performance and graphics while decreasing power consumption and reducing the size of the notebook by 20 per cent.

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