SAN FRANCISCO--Intel executives are continuing to push their mobile computing efforts on multiple fronts, including with a newly announced partnership with Google to optimize the Android operating system for the chip maker's Atom processor platform.
In his opening keynote Sept. 13 at the first day of the Intel Developer Forum, Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini said the partnership with Google will be a key part of his company's smartphone plans, with the first Intel-based smartphones due out in the first half of 2012.
The first phones "will be all Android-based, hence the important of the Google partnership," Otellini said during a question-and-answer period with journalists and analysts after the talk.
Otellini was joined on stage by Andy Rubin, senior vice president of mobile for Google, and the two showed off a prototype smartphone running Intel's "Medfield" chip and the Android "Honeycomb" operating system.
The Google partnership came during a talk by Otellini that continued the computing continuum message he first brought up at the IDF in 2009. The idea is that users are looking to have a consistent and secure computing experience that can move from device to device without interruption, and Otellini outlined the way Intel is pushing toward that goal.
"The era of ubiquitous computing is now here, and it's well-established" he said.
Intel's ultrabrook strategy, first broached during the Computex show in May, is a key part of the strategy. Intel executives see ultrabooks as very thin and light laptops that offer many of the features of tablets--from long battery life to instant-on capabilities--and the advantages of traditional notebooks around such areas as productivity and compatibility with other systems.
Otellini said such OEMs as Asus, Acer, Lenovo and Toshiba are already beginning to ship--or will ship before the holiday season--the first wave of ultrabooks powered by current 2nd Generation Core processors. The next round will come in 2012 and will run on Intel s upcoming 22-nanometer Ivy Bridge chips, he said.
The third stage will be around Intel's " Haswell" processor, a system-on-a-chip (SoC) design that Otellini said will cut idle platform power by 20 times, and will offer as much as 10 days worth of battery life in standby usage. The design of Haswell due out in 2013 is complete, he said.
Intel also demonstrated a number of upcoming features that are designed to give users a consistency across multiple computing devices. With an Intel engineer, Otellini showed off a Cius business tablet powered by an Atom chip and running Android.
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Intel Unveils Google Partnership, Ultrabook Details at IDF
