Intel out to move computing from devices to the cloud

• Accelerates expansion of offerings across data center processor product lines based on 22nm technology
• Next-gen 64-bit Atom processor for microservers, codenamed ‘Avoton,’ sampled to customers

DURING Intel Corporation’s annual developer forum earlier this week, company executives announced new technologies and partnerships aimed at transforming how people experience technology from the device to the cloud.

The Intel Developer Forum or IDF was held in Beijing from April 10-11.
 
The announcements included details on new data center product lines based on the 22-nanometer (nm) process technology and the new Intel rack scale architecture, along with details on the forthcoming 4th generation Intel Core processor family, the company said in a statement.
 
During her keynote, Diane Bryant (pic), Intel senior vice president and general manager of the Datacenter and Connected Systems Group, underscored the importance of the data center in enabling amazing personal computing experiences to deliver real-time information and services.
 
She also outlined the steps Intel is taking to provide the hardware and software needed for data analytics to improve the capabilities of intelligent devices and data center infrastructure.
 
“People are increasingly demanding more from their devices through applications and services whether at home, at work or wherever they may be,” Bryant said.
 
“Intel is delivering a powerful portfolio of hardware and software computing technologies from the device to the data center that can improve experiences and enable new services,” she claimed.
 
Bryant outlined plans to accelerate the expansion of Intel’s offerings across the data center processor product lines based on its 22nm manufacturing technology before the end of the year, thereby enabling a more cost-effective and efficient data center infrastructure.
 
Intel has also just launched the new Intel Atom S12x9 processor family customized for storage, just four months after the debut of the Intel Atom S1200 processor for microservers.
 
The company said it plans to deliver two more Intel Atom processor-based products this year that promise to deliver new architectures, improved performance-per-watt and an expanded feature set.
 
Bryant demonstrated for the first time the next-generation Intel Atom processor family for microservers, codenamed ‘Avoton,’ and confirmed it is currently shipping samples to customers for evaluation.
 
Avoton will feature an integrated Ethernet controller and is expected to deliver industry-leading energy efficiency and performance-per-watt for microservers and scale-out workloads.
 
Re-architecting the data center
 
Intel also plans to develop a reference design for rack scale architecture that uses a suite of Intel technologies optimized for deployment as a full rack.
 
Hyper-scale data centers run by companies that maintain thousands of servers and store vast amounts of data require continued advancements in rack designs that make it easier and more cost effective to deal with major growth in users, data and devices, the company said.
 
Traditional rack systems are designed to handle a wide variety of application workloads and may not always achieve the highest efficiency under all hyper-scale usages.
 
Intel claimed the reference design will help re-architect a rack level solution that is modular at the subsystem level (storage, CPU, memory, network) while providing the ability to provision and refresh or logically allocate resources based on application specific workload requirements.
 
Benefits include increased flexibility, higher density and higher utilization leading to a lower total cost of ownership, it added.
 
Additional information on these announcements as well as the new Intel Atom processor S12x9 product family for storage servers, Intel Xeon processor E3v3 product family, Intel Xeon processor E7v2 product family and Intel Atom processor for communication and networking devices codenamed ‘Rangeley’ is available here.
 
Reinventing the computing experience
 
Meanwhile, in his keynote, Kirk Skaugen (pic), Intel senior vice president and general manager of the PC Client Group, provided a deeper look at the forthcoming 4th generation Intel Core processor family, which he said is now shipping to OEM customers and will launch later this quarter.
 
“Ultrabooks based on the 4th generation Intel Core processor family will enable exciting, new computing experiences and all-day battery life,” he said. “It will also bring to consumers a new wave of ‘two-for-one’ convertible and detachable systems that combine the best of a full PC experience with the best of a tablet in amazing new form factors.”
 
The new Intel Core microarchitecture will allow the company to deliver up to double the graphics performance over the previous generation, Intel claimed.
 
In addition, the new graphics solution will have high levels of integration to enable new form factors and designs with excellent visual quality built in.
 
Skaugen demonstrated these graphics improvements on the 4th generation Intel Core processor-based Ultrabook reference design called ‘Harris Beach.’ The demo featured Dirt 3, a popular gaming title, showing the same visual experience and game play as a discrete graphics card that users would otherwise have to add separately.
 
He also showed the 4th generation Intel Core processor-based concept, codenamed ‘Niagara,’ a premium notebook with the ability to play the unreleased enthusiast title Grid 2 from CodeMasters without the aid of a discrete graphics card.
 
Along with touch capability, Intel Wireless Display (Intel WiDi) will come standard on all 4th generation Intel Core processor-based Ultrabook devices to allow people to quickly and securely stream content and apps from devices to the big screen, free from the burden of cables, Intel said.
 
 
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