Intel Goes Multicore At 64

San Jose, Calif. — Intel Corp. will roll out a next-generation Pentium architecture geared for energy-efficient, multicore processors at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco next week.

The company will not provide details until chief executive officer Paul Otellini's Aug. 23 keynote speech. But observers expect Intel to roll out a version of its notebook Pentium M architecture updated for 64 bits and geared for multicore implementations. The architecture ultimately will find its way into desktop and server CPUs.

"This is a paradigm shift," said Nathan Brookwood, analyst with Insight64 (Saratoga, Calif.). "Historically, Intel would design a desktop processor and tweak it for notebooks and servers. The seed of the next generation will be from the mobile, not desktop, group."

The shift essentially puts Intel's mobile design teams in Israel at the head of the queue for concepts that are then fed to desktop and server teams in the United States. "Right now, the Israeli design approach is sweeping through Intel," Brookwood said.

The new architecture is expected to continue power-savings concepts of the Pentium M, like using shorter pipelines than the desktop Pentium 4, as well as shortcuts to launch common instructions. It will also transition the Pentium M from 32 to 64 bits. Finally, it will provide a more thoughtful approach to multicore than Intel's initial products, which sometimes simply put two die in a common package."They've had a chance to sit back and think about multicore. I would anticipate there will be more sharing of bus interfaces, L2/L3 caches and other resources where they could save power or gain performance," said Brookwood.

The new chips, to debut in the second half of 2006, are expected to plug into Intel's existing chip set and motherboard platforms. In 2007, Intel is expected to package the Pentium M architecture with an embedded memory controller and high-speed serial interconnect.

Separately, Intel will unveil its Digital Health group, created earlier this year in Otellini's first major reorganization. Louis Burns, the group's general manager, will share the unit's vision and may sketch out its first products, likely derivatives of Intel CPUs and chip sets.