TG Daily interviews Intel Senior VP: "Core is changing the game"

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"For 2008, there will be a big improvement over Core"

TG Daily: What do you consider as Intel's most significant advantage over the competition at this time?
Perlmutter: The main advantage we always had is process technology. I think we have about a year lead. There are many aspects to designing processors for power efficiency, where I also believe we have an overall advantage: There is a lot of experience in designing mobile products. Also, I believe that we have more elements of the platform that will help us. For example, we have Centrino. We can optimize the CPU, the chipset and other components to optimize the battery life. It's not just a CPU game anymore.

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"Looking at Netburst, I wish we would have had a good enough mid-step in the 2003/2004 timeframe - which we really didn't have."David Perlmutter

TG Daily: Intel appears to be on a two-year-cycle for the transition to new process technologies and the transition to new micro architectures. In 2007, you will switch to a 45 nm production process. Will there be a new micro architecture in 2008 that replaces Core?
Perlmutter: "Replacing" is a hard word. We have developed a cadence. Every two years, we will have an architecture enhancement. For 2008, there will be a big improvement over Core, an enhanced die. It's a continuum of Core that will be better than Core.

TG Daily: Looking back in time, Netburst was introduced with the Pentium 4 in 2001. This architecture lasted about five years. Would it be correct to say that the life cycle of a certain microprocessor architecture will be shorter in the futurethan it was in the past?

Perlmutter: You have to differentiate between basic classes of micro architectures - which are defined for example by the number of pipe stages and basic structures - and core enhancements. From that perspective, Core will live way more than just two years. Looking at Netburst, I wish we would have had a good enough mid-step in the 2003/2004 timeframe - which we really didn't have.
If you have a new design or a micro architecture improvement, it does not mean that you are completely redesigning the micro architecture. Look at AMD, they carry along a lot of K7 pipe stages, they improve interconnects, their caching, and the number of cores. Our next architecture will not change in its basics, but it will be a re-implementation with a lot of other good stuff.

TG Daily: You are hinting at new features. Any details?
Perlmutter: I can't really go into the details, but there will be something new in the second half of 2008.

TG Daily: Let's keep it general: Where is room for improvement in Core?
Perlmutter: Well, we can improve the power/performance aspects and we can do better on system interconnects. Also, we can improve the basic performance: Integer and floating point performance will improve significantly.

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"The reason we took mobile at the center is because we realized that power/performance efficiency is the important factor. We simply see better scaling of performance over time using the mobile core."David Perlmutter

TG Daily: With Core, Intel introduces the first microprocessor architecture that is really based on a mobile processor at its heart. Previously, mobile processors were developed as derivates of desktop processors or separate from desktop processors. Are we seeing a new trend here? Will future processors be based on mobile processors that are optimized for desktop and server versions on the side?
Perlmutter: There is really nothing optimized on the side. It's about developing everything in parallel. The reason we took mobile at the center is because we realized that power/performance efficiency is the important factor. We simply see better scaling of performance over time using the mobile core. In general, you have to develop a lot of features in tandem. If you don't, then you don't get all three versions at the same time. Developing for one market and then retrofitting later is very time consuming. With Core 2 Duo, we optimized the core to a wider spread of applications than we did with the Pentium M architecture - which had very much a mobile focus. We learned from that mobile lesson and optimized from the beginning, going from mobile to desktop to server. What we decide to bring out first is based on things like business needs and customer readiness.

TG Daily: A year ago, it appeared that Intel processors were caught in a spiral of ever increasing power consumption. With Core 2 Duo, you cut power consumption in half. Now it looks like that certain pockets of power consumption have been defined, around 25 watts for mobile, around 65 watts for the desktop and 100 watts and higher for high-end desktop systems, even if the Core 2 Extreme is only rated at 75 watts right now. What is the trend on power consumption? Do you see certain pre-defined pockets or is power consumption still moving down - or up again?
Perlmutter: I will be steady for a while and then will go down.

TG Daily: What exactly does that mean? A few years out, you would processors expect to consume less power than today?
Perlmutter: Absolutely.

TG Daily: What is the key to reach this goal?
Perlmutter: Well, it certainly will get harder to do that. From a market perspective, this is what needs to happen. I believe that power will decrease for a very simple reason: For sure in the notebook and it's also becoming obvious on the desktop because of smaller boxes. In the server you need more density as well. You need to condense more and more computing power in any given space.

TG Daily: Are we talking about a gradual decrease - or huge jumps?
Perlmutter: In notebooks, it's probably going to be dramatic. I think we will be seeing much smaller form factors than today that will require lower power designs.

TG Daily: Let's look at the other end. Graphics appears to become more and more important in the mobile space. Last year, Intel projected that its first dual-core mobile platform Napa would be a "hell of a gaming machine." How important is graphics in the notebook today and in the future?
Perlmutter: I don't think that it is very surprising to you that I say that graphics and video capabilities will be more important over time. If you had asked me five years ago about graphics requirements in notebooks, I would have said you need the basics. That is still very true for corporate users, but as notebooks become more mainstream, we definitely cannot have the mobile lagging behind the desktop. Do we believe that you will need a full graphics card? I don't think so, but I believe people will want very good graphics machines going forward. I think that's going to be an even greater focus for us in the future.

TG Daily: Thank you for the interview.