Hoping to leap ahead of smaller rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Intel Corp. unveiled details of a next-generation computer chip design that it claims will perform better — and consume less power — than its current offerings.
Intel's troubles have mounted over the past year as the Santa Clara-based company has shuffled product plans, managed inventory build ups and supply shortages, and competed against AMD products that many observers say deliver performance that's superior to Intel chips.
Between the fourth quarter of 2005 and the same period of 2004, Intel lost 5.3 percentage points of market share to AMD, according to Mercury Research. It remains — by far — the largest microprocessor maker with 76.9 percent of the worldwide market at the end of 2005.
On Friday, Intel lowered its revenue forecast for the current quarter after seeing weaker-than-expected demand and a "slight" share loss to rivals.
During the semi-annual Intel Developer Forum, Gelsinger demonstrated a desktop chip based on the new microarchitecture. The processor, code-named Conroe, delivers 40 percent better performance while consuming 40 percent less power than today's Pentium, he said. It will be available in the third quarter.
Intel also gave details about a new chip for computer servers based on the new design. Dubbed Woodcrest, it will boost performance by 80 percent while consuming 35 percent less power, compared with a 2.8 gigahertz Xeon processor. It will be available in the third quarter.
Intel, which in years past focused on building faster processors, has increasingly invested in chips that consume less power. That's because today's faster chips generally use more watts than in years past, creating servers and desktops that are expensive to keep cool and laptops that burn through battery reserves.
The Core microarchitecture builds on the design of Intel's Pentium M processor for laptop computers, which debuted 2003. Intel generally overhauls its chip design every five or six years. A new architecture is usually applied to desktop processors first and gradually migrates to servers and laptops. This is the first time a new design has started with the notebook chip and moved to desktops and servers.