Intel's Otellini to answer your questions

CHIPZILLA CEO, PAUL OTELLINI, will answer user generated questions in a BBC News interview to be held on Friday.

According to the Beeb, Otellini will answer users questions ranging from the technologically crucial to the personal and trivial.

But it’s likely that the Intel CEO will try to focus on Intel’s push into the mobile platform market, and portable internet devices. Otellini previously mentioned that Intel might be branching out in new directions as a way of covering itself in the face of major slumps in NAND memory prices earlier this year. Otellini told investors in March that Intel was aggressively pursuing four key new markets which would include really low-cost computers, mobile Internet devices (MIDs), consumer electronics and embedded systems space.

It’s thought that Intel’s Atom, a derivative of Intel’s Silverthorne for low-cost PCs, could even eventually be used in anything from mobile phones, to cameras, to petrol pumps, and anything else that can cheaply be connected to the internet.

But Chipzilla has also come in for some rather bad press lately, especially regarding European and American accusations that it sold into the public sector at below cost, used rebates to induce companies to exclusively use its chips (namely that it paid manufacturers to cancel AMD chip-based product launches) and that it is also trying to undermine the One Laptop Per Child project, all of which Mr. Otellini purportedly claims is "hogwash".

The interview seems to be Otellini’s way of giving Intel’s side of the story whilst also giving him a platform to expand on previous boasts along the lines of his claims to BBC News earlier this year that Intel’s main business strategy was basically to “dig a very big hole in the ground, spend three billion dollars to build a factory in it, which takes three years, to produce technology we haven't invented yet, to run products we haven't designed yet, for markets which don't exist.”

It will also give him a chance to explain why he believes Moore’s law is so important to Intel ideology and how he sees the future of semiconductor technology. We might even ask him a few ourselves, so feel free to send us any suggestions. µ

L’Inq
BBC