Intel`s CEO Paul Otellini Explains The Core-2 duo
Thursday, July 27, 2006SUSIE GHARIB: The world`s number one chip maker officially unveiled today its newest line of processors called the Core-2 duo. Intel says these chips work faster and use less power, a big advantage for big customers who use thousands of computers for their businesses. Major computer makers, including Dell and Hewlett-Packard are already shipping models powered by the Core-2 chip. New York bureau chief and technology reporter Scott Gurvey sat down with Intel`s CEO Paul Otellini this afternoon. Scott began by asking him what makes the new chips different from the Pentiums they are replacing.
PAUL OTELLINI, CEO, INTEL: What`s special about the new processor is that it sets records in every part of the market it serves in terms of notebooks, desktops and servers relative to performance and performance per watt. This is a new generation of products that is aimed at power efficiency.
SCOTT GURVEY, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: And that is really something new, isn`t it, because we have always been looking for the performance and of course we still are, but now we are trying to conserve some electricity and cut those power bills.
OTELLINI: Well, it`s not something new in notebooks, notebooks where you care about your battery life and you care about performance. This has been something which has been critical since the history of the notebook. And we introduced this technology in notebooks first about three years ago. What is new is that we`ve extended it for notebooks, but now we are bringing it to desktops and servers as well. And the desktop and server markets really can take advantage of the power savings particularly with the high electricity costs.
GURVEY: And of course we are also worried about the heat. I remember some laptops that were a little bit too hot to have in your lap.
OTELLINI: Not with Intel inside.
GURVEY: Tell me a little something about, you know, what it takes now, in terms of the rollout. I know, I saw already on the wires today that both Dell and HP are ready to ship models with the new processors.
OTELLINI: Actually, you can go out and buy some today. Best Buy has some very high end machines for gamers in 200 of their stores today. Standard desktops shipped early in August from basically everyone in the industry. And notebooks shipped later in August. There are over 550 design wins for these processors.
GURVEY: And in terms of some of the work that Intel has had to do, I know as we moved to the multiple core or multiple processor systems, you`ve had to design some new software tools to help the application developers, haven`t you?
OTELLINI: Well, yeah, yes, and we really started that about five or six years ago when we introduced a concept called hyper-threading into our microprocessors which essentially takes development for software and looks at having applications take advantage of multiple paths through the microprocessor. As we go to put two and three and four cores on a given chip, all that software is now ready to take advantage of that parallel architecture.
GURVEY: Do you expect this to drive up sales? I know there`s been some question about just how well the market is doing right now.
OTELLINI: Well, it certainly can`t hurt. Having an exciting new product out there has historically been good for Intel and good for the industry.
GURVEY: There is also the issue of graphics. I know that Intel for quite some time has been providing a graphics along with the processors and the chips that, you know, that it makes. Now we have AMD buying ATI and increasing at least some of the competition in the graphics area. Will we be seeing more from Intel in this area?
OTELLINI: Well, I think we`ll continue to focus on extending our lead. Today Intel is the largest graphics supplier in the world. It`s all integrated graphics. And every year we take advantage of Moore`s law giving us more transistors to do a better graphics job. You will see us continue to improve on a pretty linear fashion, graphics performance at the integrated low cost chip set level.
GURVEY: And what is the market place looking for for PC sales and chip sales right now?
OTELLINI: Well, I don`t know. I think the marketplace is looking for a large number. I think most analysts and most people in the industry see growth this year being in the 8 to 10 percent range, which is down a bit from the last couple of years. But for an industry that is shipping close to 250 million units a year, high single-digit numbers still have fairly good growth rate.
GURVEY: Do you think that there will be another spurt of sales let`s say after the beginning of the new year when Microsoft ships its Vista operating system?
OTELLINI: Perhaps and we`re optimistic about that. I think though you need to think about the world as being not just the United States any more in terms of PC sales. And as you go into the first quarter, you tend to have a very large spurt of sales in Asia associated with Chinese new years which is their peak selling system.
GURVEY: Very good, I thank you very much for joining us today and we look forward to seeing some of those new computers. I got to save up my own pennies I guess. Thank you very much, Paul Otellini of Intel.
OTELLINI: Thanks Scott.
