Intel Makes Enterprise Pitch at CES

Intel does not plan on leaving its enterprise customers out in the cold at the 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show Jan. 7 to 10 in Las Vegas.

When the shows kicks off, the chip maker plans on rolling out 16 new, 45-nanometer microprocessors, including new Xeon models for servers as well as new laptop and desktop chips.

While CES has traditionally been a forum for consumers, Mooly Eden, vice president and general manager of Intel's mobile group, said the company's coming products speak to both IT manager and consumers.

One example of this strategy is Intel's refresh of its "Santa Rosa" platform for laptops, which will include several new processors from the company's new line of 45-nanometer Penryn chips. These chips range in performance from 2.10GHz with the Core 2 Duo T8100 processor to 2.80GGHz with the Core 2 Extreme X9000 chip. These processors also include between 3MB and 6MB of L2 cache and a front side bus of 800MHz.

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Intel is also planning to offer better security features, including improvements to its Active Management Technology, which provides a hardware and software management engine that allows a number of on-board capabilities, on the mobile platform for enterprise customers, which has now been renamed Centrino with vPro Technology. For consumers, Santa Rosa offers better graphics capabilities thanks to a new SSE4 instruction that will help speed up functions like rendering high-definition video.

Richard Shim, an analyst with IDC, said that Intel is appealing to both IT administrators and consumers at a time when the PC space continues to move toward mobility, but with each side looking for different features in a laptop.

"A lot of these improvements with the Santa Rosa refresh are meant to appeal to the consumer market," said Shim. "For example, you have support for 802.11n [wireless LAN], which is something the commercial market isn't ready for until it's an official standard, but its something consumers want because of the range it offers."

To read more about Lenovo jumping into the consumer market with IdeaPad, click here.

For commercial users, Shim said, Intel has been making strides with its vPro technology and built-in management capabilities that have helped put Intel far ahead of what Advanced Micro Devices has done with its mobile platforms. Improvements in battery life are also crucial.

"On the commercial side, there are improvements to performance and especially battery life," Shim said. "You have features within the platform like Deep Power Down and those are the types of features the commercial industry wants and it's one of the key drivers for mobility."

In addition to the new notebook processors, Intel plans to offer enterprises a sneak peak at four new, 45-nanometer Xeon models, including three quad-core chips and a dual core Xeon—the E3110—which clocks in at 3GHz and has 6MB of L2 cache and a 1333MHz FSB.

Read more here about Intel and the 2008 CES.

There are also seven new desktop models. That portfolio includes three quad-core chips and four new dual-core processors all build on the 45-nanometer manufacturing process.

The quad-core desktop models offer clock speeds of up to 2.83GHz along with 12MB of L2 cache and a 1333MHz FSB. The dual core chips have top clock speeds of 3.16GHz, 6MB of L2 cache and a 1333MHz FSB.

The release of these models, in addition to all the Penryn chips, come at a time when Intel's main competitor, AMD, has run into delays bringing its quad-core desktop and server processors to partners. Before the show, Hewlett-Packard announced that it would be the first top-tier PC vendor to offer consumer desktop based on an AMD Phenom processor.

The mobile and dual-core desktop processors are due in January, while the Xeon and quad-core desktop chips should hit the market later in the first quarter.

Besides the 16 new microprocessors Intel will bring to market by the end of the first quarter, the company plans to talk about its "Menlow" platform for MIDs (mobile Internet devices) that includes a new 45-nanometer processor called Silverthorne. However, specific details are being withheld until later in the year, said Eden.

The Silverthorne processor is a new type of microarchitecture from Intel that will be produced on the company's 45-nanometer manufacturing process. Intel has said that the processor will use 10 times less power than current models and the entire platform can fit onto a 74-milimeter by 143-milimeter motherboard.

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