AT ITS ANNUAL Investor Day conference yesterday in Satan Clara, California, Intel's Paul Otellini said that, to better insulate itself against plunging prices for NAND flash memory, Intel would aggressively pursue four markets including low-cost PCs, mobile Internet devices (MIDs), consumer electronics and the embedded systems space.

Chipzilla believes that each market is worth approximately $10 billion a piece. Otellini also sought to convince investors that, despite Intel's pretty dire state in the memory market, its core computing business is still all systems go.

Intel's key to all four potential markets is the company's still unreleased Silverthorne processor, based on Intel's lower power consuming 45-nanometer manufacturing process. As we reported earlier in the week, Intel announced that Silverthorne, designed for MIDs, and Diamondville, a derivative of Silverthorne for low-cost PCs, would be christened "Atom" due to its diminutive size.

Intel is now going to start building a common processor architecture that OEMs and ISVs can both use to build hardware and software for all four markets without having to drastically change their platform.

Otellini reckoned that by cornering the four specific markets, whilst maintaining Intel's core PC business, the company could tap in to a growing user yearning for what he called "richer Web experiences". According to Otellini, " It's not just the one billion people that have access to the Internet now, it's the next two billion people".

Intel apparently sees embedded space as a market with still more potential left to exploit, with Otellini reckoning that products like cell phones, cameras, storage devices and even petrol pumps, were ripe for Intel processors based on the Silverthorne core, due to the fact that they were reasonably cheap to connect to the Internet. The first of these new embedded platforms is scheduled to be released by the third quarter of 2008. Intel is also pushing ahead with a processor called Canmore, also based on the Silverthorne core and designed for devices like set-top boxes for televisions.

Otellini also mentioned that Intel is still on schedule to deliver its new microarchitecture, Nehalem, later this year. Nehalem will support between one and eight processing cores, each supporting two instructional threads, and offering an integrated memory controller. These new processors should help to bring Intel a few steps closer to combining the CPU and GPU (graphics processor unit) on the same piece of silicon.

In what concerns its more traditional business, Intel execs told investors that they would continue to increase the company's 45 nanometer portfolio, having already shipped four million of the processors. They pledged to have 72 different models on the market by the end of 2008. Additionally, Intel plans to ship a six-core processor called Dunnington, designed for multi-socket systems, later this year. µ

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