Intel Confirms Consumer Electronics Focus

Chip maker also hints that Pentium M chip will appear in desktop PCs.

Tom Krazit, IDG News Service

Intel today confirmed its plans to release processors targeted specifically at consumer electronics and digital home devices, and dropped some of the strongest hints yet that it plans eventually to shift its processors for desktop PCs to the Pentium M chip.

Don MacDonald, general manager of Intel's newly formed Digital Home Group, announced at this week's Spring Intel Developer Forum that Intel plans to develop three processors designed specifically to enhance the performance of digital displays. Few details were immediately available about the Rembrandt Digital Display processor, the Matisse Digital Video De-Interfacer, and the Monet Integrated Multimedia Display processor, but the chips will be part of platforms that Intel plans to deliver to consumer electronics manufacturers, MacDonald said.

Sources told IDG News Service in December that Intel was planning to amplify its stake in the consumer electronics market, but at that time the company declined to confirm those plans. In the past, Intel has sold its Pentium 4 and Celeron processors to vendors intending to use them in consumer electronics devices such as set-top boxes and video players, but it's now clear that the devices will be a significant focus of the Digital Home Group. Future devices will incorporate the technology that Intel plans to acquire from Oplus Technology, a deal that is expected to close in a few months, Intel said last week.

MacDonald also showed conference attendees a sleek small desktop PC based on Yonah, the dual-core successor to the Pentium M processor, which is slated to be widely released early in 2006. Intel is expected to shift all of its processors for client devices to the Pentium M architecture eventually, taking advantage of its low-power characteristics.

Shift to Consumer Focus

As part of a company-wide reorganization in January, Intel formed the Digital Home Group with "a laser focus" on the consumer, MacDonald said. His group is currently developing processors and platforms that use chips based on the venerable Pentium 4 architecture, but Intel has given MacDonald the freedom to pick architectures from across its assets, he said.

"The Digital Home Group can use any of the resources within Intel in our space," MacDonald said.

The current Pentium M processors provide plenty of performance for basic computing tasks that a small PC might undertake, according to Peter Glaskowsky, an analyst with The Envisioneering Group in Seaford, New York. And technologies within Yonah are expected to produce dramatic improvements in the performance of the chip for general computing tasks and for multimedia applications.

"If you want to make a PC the size of a laptop, you need to use laptop parts," Glaskowsky said. For their digital homes, consumers are likely to prefer smaller PCs that occupy less space than today's desktops and that operate without loud cooling fans--ideal characteristics provided by the Pentium M, he said.

For now, MacDonald's group is preparing to roll out the Anchor Creek platform for digital home PCs. This platform uses either the Pentium D processor, a dual-core processor, or the Pentium Extreme Edition 840 dual-core processor that supports hyperthreading technology for a total of four application threads.

These multiple threads will change the way that families use computers in their homes, MacDonald said. He demonstrated a desktop PC equipped with the Pentium Extreme Edition 840 that could play a high-definition video in one room while another family member played a video game in a second room. Both the video and the game were shown running on the system without any interruptions in the images, taking advantage of the multithreaded technology available in the Extreme Edition 840, MacDonald said. That chip will be available in the second quarter.

The Anchor Creek platform will also come with new chip set technology that supports improved graphics performance, MacDonald said.

In addition to the small-volume PC shown with the Yonah core during MacDonald's presentation, Intel also announced a concept design for a corporate desktop PC that uses the company's mobile technology.