Intel CEO Otellini Unveils Centrino Duo and Viiv At CES
Dual-Core Tech Powers Longer-Running Notebooks, Broadband Entertainment
Las Vegas, 3/25/06 — How confident is Intel Corp. CEO Paul Otellini in the chipmaker’s new notebook and home-PC platforms? Put it this way: You don’t invite Morgan Freeman, Tom Hanks, and Danny DeVito to join you onstage if you’re afraid of being upstaged.
Otellini’s Thursday keynote at Las Vegas’ Consumer Electronics Show (CES) marked the formal announcement of two Intel initiatives anticipated for some weeks past: the second generation of the Centrino bundle — CPU, chipset, and wireless networking controller — that’s become a branding phenomenon in the mobile market, and a multimedia configuration that aims for similar success in the desktop and living-room PC segments.More Powerful, More Portable
Centrino 2.0 is called Centrino Duo, while the new entertainment-PC label is Viiv (rhymes with five). The latter includes systems using Intel’s dual-core Pentium D and Extreme Edition processors, but both platforms spotlight what Otellini called “our first new premium brand since [introducing the] Pentium in 1993″: Core Duo, the dual-core, 65-nanometer-process evolution of the Pentium M processor found in first-generation Centrino notebooks.
Why does this chip rate a name change when the Pentium M and Pentium 4 didn’t? Otellini answers, “This new microprocessor, we believe, is the processor for the next generation of computing. It’s more than just another processor, it’s a revolution.”
While 30 million Centrino-labeled laptops have been sold in the last 12 months, Otellini said, Intel is even prouder of its work with telecom companies and service providers to have “made WiFi ubiquitous … We expect to find WiFi in that coffee shop, and we’re disappointed when we don’t.”
But wireless Web surfing is no longer enough to satisfy “the digital media multitasker,” Otellini continued, noting how many application windows are open on the typical PC desktop: “We are all multitasking creatures, and the younger you are the more that’s true.” This has inspired “a massive change” in Intel’s CPU development from ever-higher clock speeds to multicore processing, which “shifts the power curve” by producing less heat and enabling better battery life in smaller devices.
As a result, Otellini said, the Core Duo can be up to 68 percent faster than the Pentium M while consuming 28 percent less power, making the dime-sized CPU “the world’s lowest-power dual-core chip.” As for PC makers’ reaction, he remarked, “It took us one year to ship the millionth Pentium processor. We’ll ship the one-millionth Core Duo in three weeks.”
While Otellini didn’t specify, it seems clear that a big percentage of those CPUs will be shipped along with the new Mobile 945 Express chipsets and Pro/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection that form the rest of the Centrino Duo bundle, supporting dual-channel DDR-2/667 memory; Intel’s enhanced, 8-channel High Definition Audio; and better WiFi performance.
Hollywood at Home: Viiv
While the Core Duo seems sure to find a home in a new crop of small-form-factor PCs and all-in-one PC/TVs, Intel isn’t stopping there. Otellini says the combination of dual-core processing, wired and wireless home networking, and content delivery via broadband Internet “will completely change what you expect from entertainment,” enabling nothing less than the anytime, anywhere, anything-on-demand convergence of movies, music, and TV that’s been dreamed about for decades. This brave new world will be heralded by a banner — OK, a sticker — on PCs, TVs, home theater centers, handheld media players, and other devices: “Enjoy with Viiv.”
Viiv is a combination of hardware and software — the latter featuring Microsoft’s Windows XP Media Center Edition today and Windows Vista later this year — that delivers a new multimedia experience, including streaming of HD content from a PC in one room to a big-screen TV in another. The TV might be a new one with Viiv built in, or an existing one fitted with what Intel calls a digital media adapter; behind-the-scenes technology will adapt different music and video formats to different destination devices and securely transport protected content.
Along with PCs that turn on as quickly as TVs, Viiv promises access to literally the whole world of entertainment, as filmed and onstage media execs joined Otellini’s presentation. An Indian company called Eros International will deliver on-demand Bollywood films to the estimated 50 million fans of the genre who live outside India.
A new set-top box will bring DirecTV’s satellite service and personal video recording capabilities to every room of the house. Turner Broadcasting’s Gametap service will offer over a hundred online games, suitable for play on your TV from the couch with a remote control instead of on your PC screen from two feet away with a joystick.
America Online will use what it calls HiQ technology for free (advertiser-supported) delivery of up to HD-quality video, including 14,000 episodes of Warner Brothers TV series ranging from “Wonder Woman” to “Babylon 5.” NBC’s NBCOlympics.com Web site will offer Viiv-only, hi-res highlights from next month’s Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, as ESPN Motion will for other sports.
Finally, Freeman and business partner Lori McCleary were joined by DeVito, Hanks, and Hollywood writer/directors Tom Shadyac and Brad Silberling to tout ClickStar, a pay-per-view venture (with investment from Intel) that will offer major movie releases on TV via the Internet within weeks of their debut in theaters. ClickStar also promises to let filmmakers dodge the big-studio system and bring their work directly to an audience, just as stars Freeman and Paz Vega and director Silberling will for the simultaneous theater and Viiv premiere of a new comedy called Ten Items or Less.
Update 1/6/06: While Otellini’s keynote had not a word about CPU speeds or 65-nanometer manufacturing, Intel has released specs for the first of what it calls more than 20 new processors, chipsets, and other products coming this month. The Core Duo chips feature a 667MHz front-side bus and 2MB of shared Level 2 cache; models include the battery-stretching (15-watt) L2300 (1.5GHz) and L2400 (1.66GHz) and 31-watt Core Duo T2300 (1.66GHz), T2400 (1.83GHz), T2500 (2.0GHz), and T2600 (2.16GHz).
There’s one lone Core Solo chip with one 1.66GHz core. New Pentium D dual-core processors with 65-nanometer technology include the models 920, 930, 940, and 950, at 2.8GHz, 3.0GHz, 3.2GHz, and 3.4GHz respectively.
