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Intel Unveils Low-Power Chip

New XScale design could power PDAs and cell phones.

By James Niccolai, IDG News   

The new XScale microarchitecture is based on Intel's existing StrongARM chip, but offers much lower levels of power consumption, said Ron Smith, vice president and general manager of Intel's wireless computing and communications group, speaking here at the Intel Developer Forum.

The design will appear in a new family of Intel processors that will roll out over the next several quarters, including chips for personal digital assistants and Internet-enabled cellular phones. The chips will also appear in networking storage products, routers, and switches, Smith said.

XScale processors could let manufacturers offer handheld computers and mobile phones that combine personal management and calendar functions with wireless Internet access and even full-motion video, he said.

One analyst praised the product for being "extremely versatile," but notes that Intel will run into stiff competition from the likes of Hitachi and Motorola, who make similar types of processors. The first XScale processor could arrive by the end of the year, says Linley Gwennap, principal analyst with the Linley Group.

Palm is rumored to be looking at XScale for its future Palm devices, which currently use a microprocessor from Motorola, Gwennap says. "Palm holds 80 percent of the PDA market; it would be like capturing the crown jewels," he says.

Low-Power Chips

Intel demonstrated a prototype XScale chip Wednesday, running at 200 MHz and consuming just .05 watts of power. At 800 MHz it consumed less than 1 watt of power.

Intel said it will introduce products based on the new microarchitecture in the coming quarters, but it wouldn't be specific.

"This is a microarchitecture announcement, not a product announcement," Intel's Smith said. "Stay tuned for the products."

Intel is already developing two next-generation StrongARM chips for smart phones and handheld computers that operate at low-power levels, according to a source familiar with the company's plans.

XScale appears to represent a new brand name for the follow-on StrongARM chip that observers had expected to be called the StrongARM 2. Intel seems keen to drop the "ARM" moniker and brand the chip as one of its own, Gwennap says.

Intel licenses the ARM core from chip design company ARM Holdings. If XScale is based on ARM, Intel will continue to pay a royalty fee to ARM for each XScale product that it sells, the analyst notes.

The XScale microarchitecture builds on the ARM core by adding Intel's dynamic voltage management technology--which varies the amount of power consumed depending on an application's needs--and its media processing technology. That function adds multimedia capabilities to the chip in a similar way in which Intel's Streaming SIMD instructions enhanced the Pentium III, Smith said.

XScale also borrows from the Pentium III's Superpipeline technology, which is what helps it to achieve higher clock rates. The architecture is capable of scaling to close to 1 GHz, Smith said.