NEW YORK -- Intel plans to aggressively introduce 90-nanometer processors in 2004, and expects to ship increasingly more wireless chips and high-end server processors, executives told financial analysts in New York on Thursday.
Shipments of Prescott, the 90-nanometer successor to the Pentium 4, will account for 60 percent of all Intel desktop processors by the second quarter of next year. Also, a version of the technology will be incorporated into the Celeron product line, according to Paul Otellini, Intel president and chief operating officer. Prescott's clock speed will hit 4GHz by the end of next year, he added.
Prescott will ship in this year's fourth quarter, but systems based on the chip are unlikely to have much impact if any on the holiday shopping season.
New Interests
Otellini and Intel Chief Executive Officer Craig Barrett updated the analyst community on a number of Intel's products, and outlined some of the chipmaker's strategies for new projects.
Because of the dominance Intel enjoys in the PC and low-end server markets, it is hard for the company to grow any faster than the general market in those areas, Barrett said. To achieve the kinds of growth rates that make financial analysts salivate, Intel plans to pursue business in emerging markets such as China and India, and emerging technologies such as the WiMax metro-area network wireless technology, he said.
Most of Intel's growth already comes from outside the U.S., and that trend will likely continue over the next several years, Barrett said.
Intel plans to ship its first WiMax chips by the end of the year, Otellini said. WiMax, based on the 802.16 standard ratified by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., is designed to wirelessly connect users over an area measured in square miles, rather than the more limited coverage afforded by Wi-Fi wireless access points and devices today.
Mobile Priorities
The company will also ship its first chip that combines Bluetooth and Wi-Fi in 2004, Otellini said. Intel recently purchased Mobilian, which has developed a Bluetooth/Wi-Fi chipset. Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology promoted by a wide range of vendors.
Mobile technology is a huge growth area for Intel, as many consumers and businesses are replacing older desktop PCs with notebooks, Otellini said. Dothan, the 90-nanometer follow-on to the Pentium M, is also scheduled for introduction next year, he said.
On the server side of the business, Otellini said Intel has shipped 100,000 Itanium 2 processors. He says Intel's volume is comparable to those of Sun Microsystems and IBM, which also make processors for high-end servers.
The road to Itanium's adoption has been bumpy, but its growth has come at Sun's expense, Otellini said.
"Sun, as Craig [Barrett] recently said, is now the Apple of the server world. They're not in a position to drive standards," Otellini said, alluding to the deal that Sun announced Tuesday to use the Opteron CPU, from Intel competitor Advanced Micro Devices, in a new line of low-end servers.
The Intel executives also noted the company raised its flash memory prices in the beginning of 2003, costing both market share and revenue. Otellini says Intel will push flash shipments with multilevel cells, which combine flash and SRAM memory chips into a small package designed for smartphones and high-end personal digital assistants.
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